Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/237



ILLIAM MURRAY BLACK, son of a celebrated temperance advocate; military engineer in the United States army; author of valuable essays on engineering and allied subjects; was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, December 8, 1855. His father, James Black (1823-94), son of John Black of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, one of the pioneer constructors of large public works in this country, was a well-known lawyer of Lancaster, especially noted for his energy and devotion to duty; a member of the Washingtonian Temperance Society in 1840, a projector of the National Temperance Publication Union, in 1859, financial agent of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, and organizer of the Ocean Grove Association of New Jersey in 1869; of the National Prohibition party in 1869, and pioneer presidential candidate of that party in 1872, receiving 5,608 popular votes for president of the United States. During the Civil war he was a friend of Governor A. G. Curtin, of Pennsylvania, and of Thaddeus Stevens. He served as private in the Pennsylvania militia, declining a commission as liable to weaken his efforts to induce others to enlist. He went to the front in the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns. He was the author of "Black's Cider Tract" (1864); "Is there a Necessity for a Prohibition Party" (1876); "A History of the Prohibition Party" (1885); and numerous other pamphlets on the temperance movement.

His mother, Eliza Murray Black, was a direct descendant from John Murray who came from Scotland to the Swabana valley, Province of Pennsylvania, in 1732, and whose descendants bore their part in the war of the Revolution, as officers of various grades, and in the early state and national governments.

As a boy William Murray Black was particularly interested in games of soldiers. When not at school, his father taught him to experience and appreciate the essential dignity of all forms of necessary labor. He graduated at the high school, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1870; while there he received the benefit of the precepts and example of that veteran educator, Doctor J. P. McCaskey, who to his