Armstrong County PA Archives Biographies.....Mosgrove, Hon. James June 22, 1822 - ????
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Source: History of Armstrong County, Chicago: Waterman, Watkins and Co. 1883.
Author: Robert Walter Smith, Esq.

  ...John Mosgrove, father of the subject of this sketch, 
was a native of Ireland, and one of the first settlers of 
Kittanning, coming to the locality as a young man about the 
time the town was laid out.  He was a carpenter by trade, 
and followed that occupation during the greater part of his 
residence in Kittanning, which only terminated with his 
death.  His wife, Mary Gillespie, was the daughter of John 
Gillespie, one of the pioneers of Armstrong county. They 
were the parents of five children.  Andrew J. Mosgrove, the 
only brother of our subject, was by profession an attorney.  
He entered the service of the United States as a volunteer 
soldier and met his death in the Mexican war.  Of the three 
sisters, Margaret, the eldest, is the wife of Thomas B. 
Storey; Phebe Isabella is the widow of the late Judge 
Jackson Boggs, and Anna Jane is the wife of Simon Truby.

  James Mosgrove was born in Kittanning, June 14, 1822.  At 
a very early age he engaged in the iron business, accepting 
the position of clerk at the Buffalo Furnace in this county. 
 Combining a well regulated and fine business capacity with 
the qualities of integrity and perseverance, he at once 
commanded the respect and confidence of his employers, and 
the management of the furnace was soon placed in his hands.  
In 1845 he married Miss Rebecca Jane, daughter of Robert 
Brown.  About the same time he entered into a partnership 
with his brother-in-law, that late James E. Brown, of 
Kittanning, and became part owner and active manager of Pine 
Creek Furnace, which position he held from 1845 to 1880, 
passing through all the different phases and vicissitudes of 
the iron business during that long period of thirty-five 
years.   He has also been engaged quite extensively in oil 
production.  Mr. Mosgrove's superior ability as a practical, 
strong and enterprising business man is universally 
admitted. Few men can be found in Armstrong county, or for 
that matter in Western Pennsylvania, who equal him in the 
possession of the combination of characteristics which 
command success.  He is now largely interested in the 
business affairs of the county, being president of the 
Kittanning Ironworks and president of the National Bank of 
Kittanning.  He was the principal organizer of this 
financial institution, and from the death of James E. Brown 
until July, 1882, when its charter expired, was president of 
the old First National Bank. In politics Mr. Mosgrove has 
always been a democrat.  He accepted the nominatin of the 
greenback party for congress in 1878, when it was tendered 
to him, not because he had abandoned any of his democratic 
principles, but because he had for years advocated the 
financial doctrines of the greenback party.  In that 
campaign he ran far ahead of his ticket, but was defeated on 
account of the failure of the democrats to indorse his 
nomination, which he had a right to expect they would do.  
He never sought a political office in his life, and he 
furnishes a notable example of the office seeking the man 
instead of the man seeking the office.

  In 1880 he was nominated for congress by both the 
democratic and greenback parties without any solicitation on 
his part, and was elected by a majority of 756 votes over 
his competitor, and that, too, in a republican district.  He 
served his constituency intelligently and efficiently - 
creditably to himself and acceptably to the people of the 
twenty-fifth congressional district of Pennsylvania.  In 
1882 he was renominated, but declined to serve as a 
candidate.

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