Mount Union borough

From Water Carrier to Comptroller

Albert Gayton Postlethwaite was born January 28, 1845, in Wayne Township, Mifflin County. His family moved to Mount Union in 1855, to the Shaver farm at the lower end of town.

In August 1857, when he was 12, he carried water for the workmen rebuilding part of the Aughwick dam in the Juniata River near Newton Hamilton.

He was 18 when he was mustered in on July 17, 1863, as a private in Company D of the six-month battalion of the 22nd Pennsylvania Cavalry. J. Simpson Africa's 1883 county history calls Company D the battalion's Blair County company. On August 5, less than three weeks later, he was promoted to sergeant major. Samuel Bates's History of Pennsylvania Volunteers lists him on the battalion's staff and says he was mustered out with the battalion on February 5, 1864.

Albert's mother's brother, William C. Gayton of Mount Union, was in the company too. Charles Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union places him in Company D and calls him captain. J. Simpson Africa's 1883 roster lists a William Gayton as the company's first lieutenant, mustered in on the same day as Albert. The sources do not say whether they are the same man.

Africa says the battalion went into the field at the time of Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania, in July 1863, and guarded the fords and bridges of the Susquehanna. After Lee's army retreated across the Potomac, it went into Virginia and was employed in various duties in the Shenandoah Valley until its term ran out. Welch says Albert served in southern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Shenandoah and Loudoun valleys.

Apart from the war and what Welch calls only "four winter terms," he stayed with the canal companies until navigation closed in 1875, the last seven years collecting tolls at Northumberland. He went on to the Erie Railroad and, in February 1877, to the office of the general manager of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Welch says that on July 1, 1883, he became comptroller of the St. Paul and Northern Pacific Railway, with offices in St. Paul, Minnesota. A Minnesota newspaper that November printed a notice that the company's land department would be conducted by "Mr. A. G. Postlethwaite, comptroller." In June 1885 he signed a sworn petition to the St. Paul city council as the company's comptroller and land commissioner.

The St. Paul Daily Globe called him Major in 1886 and again in 1893. In April 1886 it wrote of "Maj. Postlethwaite, comptroller of the Northern Pacific" when he was nominated for school inspector. The rosters give his rank as sergeant major.

In July 1887 the city's Board of Education elected him president, and in July 1888 the new board elected him again. Welch gives him five terms on the board, from 1886 until 1891, and says he declined a third term as president "owing to pressing business cares."

Welch adds that he served for several years as general land agent of the Northern Pacific, went back to Philadelphia in the spring of 1897, and by 1909 lived in Passaic, New Jersey. His Find a Grave memorial gives his death as May 14, 1924, at Passaic, and his burial in Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia.

Checked against the record. We checked his war service against J. Simpson Africa's 1883 county history, Samuel Bates's History of Pennsylvania Volunteers and Charles Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union. Africa and Bates agree on Company D, the July 17, 1863 muster and the August 5 promotion, and both give February 5, 1864 for the muster out. The birth date, the 1855 move, the canal and railroad years and the July 1, 1883 start in St. Paul come from Welch's sketch. St. Paul newspapers from 1883 to 1893 name a comptroller and a Board of Education president called Postlethwaite, and the 1893 wedding notice matches the family Welch describes, so we take them to be the same man. Still open: the St. Paul Daily Globe printed his resignation from the board in October 1890, when he moved from the Third Ward to the Seventh. We did not find whether he came back, so the 1891 end of his board service rests on Welch. No source we read explains the title Major. Whether Welch's William C. Gayton and the rosters' William Gayton are one man is not confirmed, since Welch calls him captain and the roster calls him first lieutenant. We did not open his federal service record, and his death date and burial come from a Find a Grave memorial.

Sources