Joseph
Harbaugh
(1806-1874)
Joseph
Harbaugh was born on Sept.
20, 1806 in or near Rockwood, Somerset County, PA, the eldest son of Leonard and
Elizabeth (Pritts) Harbaugh Sr.
Joseph and his sister Mary were twins. When he was a boy, his mother died, and his father then married widow Martha (Minerd) Imel.
As a boy, Joseph and his parents moved to a farm at what is now Clairton Lake near Scullton, Somerset County, very close to the mountainous border of Fayette County, PA.
After many years as a bachelor, Joseph married Jane Williams (1832-1908) on Oct. 6, 1853. He was age 47 at the time, and she was just 21.
The Harbaughs had seven children -- Elizabeth Anderson, John Harbaugh, William "Hickman" Harbaugh, Winfield "Scott" Harbaugh, Mary Eliza Hall, Marshall Harbaugh and James Harbaugh. Joseph was age 65 when his youngest son was born. Sadly, son Hickman passed away on Aug. 23, 1863, at the tender age of four and a half years.
When the federal census was taken in 1860, they lived on the family farm compound next to his parents and half-brother David Harbaugh. Joseph is marked as a farmer and Jane as a "spinster." The 1870 census shows the 63-year-old Joseph and 32-year-old Jane and four young children in the home. Joseph was a farm laborer and Jane occupied "keeping home." Among their immediate neighbors were his married sister and brother in law, Adaline and Charles Minerd, and presumed sister in law and her husband, Julia and Jonas Rowan.
Joseph
and his younger half-brother David Harbaugh
(who were a quarter of a century years
apart in age) both bought tracts of their father's farm.
(Marked "J.&D.Harbaugh,"
the farm appears at right on a rare 1860 map of the county, with the
original housed in the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg. The dotted line
to the left of their farm is the county border.) That
farm today is part of the Clairton Anglers Club. The letters "S.H."
may stand for "School House," and that property is thought to have been the site of the old, one-room Harbaugh
School.
Very little is known of Joseph and Jane's adult lives.
Joseph died on Feb. 3, 1874, at the age of 68. He was laid to rest at the Indian Creek Baptist Church at Mill Run, Fayette County. At the time, his youngest son James was just two and a half years of age.
Jane outlived him by more than 30 years, and she died on Nov. 10, 1908. She is buried with her husband. Their grave marker has faded, and is in some danger of becoming completely illegible.
Copyright
© 2000-2003, 2006-2007 Mark A. Miner.
1860 Map of Somerset County courtesy of the
Pennsylvania State Archives.
Joseph Harbaugh's grave marker photo by Sharon (Sheldon) Kern.