The Sechlers at the Mount Union depot

Joseph C. Sechler and his son Rudolph each hold a first in Charles Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union. Welch calls Joseph the first Pennsylvania Railroad agent at Mount Union, and Rudolph the first agent and yard superintendent there for the East Broad Top.

The railroad came first. The Huntingdon Journal of June 11, 1850, reported that the first locomotive had reached Huntingdon "on Thursday last," which was June 6, and that regular passenger trains began the next day. Welch gives the same date and says the locomotive arrived "thus passing through Mount Union." The Journal's report does not name Mount Union.

Joseph Sechler was living in Newton Hamilton, Welch says, when he was appointed passenger and freight agent at Mount Union as the agency was established in 1850. In December of that year he and his family came to Mount Union and lived in part of the old warehouse, which he had fitted up for the purpose. The warehouse proved damp and inconvenient, and the railroad rented a house for the family until a new one could be built.

J. Simpson Africa's 1883 county history says the first tickets at Mount Union were sold in the freight house, and that a building then standing in front of the East Broad Top passenger depot served as the ticket office until a later one was finished. Africa says J. C. Sechler was appointed ticket agent and was still at his post, one of the oldest and most faithful employees of the road.

Welch says Joseph held both jobs until 1876, when business had grown enough that the company separated them. W. W. Fuller came from Thompsontown to take the freight business, and Joseph became ticket agent alone, in charge of the station. He stayed until illness stopped him in the early part of 1885, and he died that September 12.

Rudolph, born in Newton Hamilton in 1846, worked with his father in the freight office for about 12 years as a warehouseman. He left the Pennsylvania Railroad for the East Broad Top on September 3, 1873. Welch, writing in 1909, says he had been with that company ever since and had been made its ticket agent a few years before, though illness was then keeping him from the work. A 1913 history of the Juniata Valley calls him the East Broad Top's freight agent at Mount Union.

Welch gives the East Broad Top one more first in town. He calls Robert S. Seibert, who was the railroad's president and general manager when Welch wrote, the first ticket agent for that company at Mount Union, in 1874.

Checked 2026-11-01 · Primary sources and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive

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