My Genealogy Hound

ELDER W. SHARPE, a prominent retired farmer of Newton township, was born Oct. 5, 1829, and is a descendant of an old family of Scotch-Irish extraction.

Benjamin Sharpe, the grandfather of Elder W. Sharpe, was born in Scotland, and settled in Cumberland county about 1776, where he purchased large tracts of land.

John Sharpe, son of Benjamin, was also born in Newton township, Cumberland county, Pa., and married Jane McCune, a member of an equally prominent family. They had a family of seven children, namely: Margaret married a McKeehan; Hannah married Robert Hayes; Isobel married John Gracey; Samuel is deceased; Alexander is deceased; Elder W.; and John is a retired farmer at Chambersburg. Only two of this family survive. The father died in 1832, and the mother in 1847.

Elder W. Sharpe was left fatherless at the age of four years. He was educated in the district schools, and later attended the old Rhoads school and the Stoughstown school, his education being completed in his nineteenth year. Until his marriage in 1853, he remained on the homestead, settling then on a farm on the Harrisburg & Chambersburg pike road, on a property known as the old Sharpe homestead. Here he engaged in general farming and afterwards bought 130 acres, which he put under a fine state of cultivation and improved with good buildings. Mr. Sharpe has been one of the good wheat farmers of this section, often raising as much as 1,000 bushels of this grain a year. He has always believed in good stock, and has fully tested the different kinds on his farm, and has always been recognized as one of the intelligent and prosperous farmers of Newton township. In 1897 he rented his farm and retired from active labor, settling in a very pleasant and comfortable home in Shippensburg.

In 1853 Mr. Sharpe married Elizabeth Kelso, of Newton township, daughter of James and Mary Kelso, a prominent pioneer family of this locality. They have had the following children born to them: John Sharpe, principal of the Blairstown Academy, at Blairstown, N. J., a very scholarly man; James A., on the old Sharpe homestead; Sarah, wife of William Gracey, of Centerville; Brady, a resident of Nebraska; Edgar, deceased; Jane S., wife of John Woodburn, a farmer of Newton township; Rev. Robert, who is a Presbyterian minister stationed in New Jersey; Wallace, a farmer in Nebraska; Mary at home; and Elder W., deceased.

In politics Mr. Sharpe is affiliated with the Republican party, and has always taken considerable interest in local, state and national politics, but has always steadily refused political preferment. Both he and wife are consistent members of the United Presbyterian Church at Newville. Mr. Sharpe is held in high esteem in his community, possessing the sterling traits of character which make of him a devoted husband and father, a good neighbor and a first-class citizen.