[p. 970] a well-known business man of New Castle, proprietor of the Oak Park Monumental Works, situated near the Oak Park cemetery, New Castle, was born May 8, 1863, in England, and is a son of Eli S. B. and Emeline (Aunger) Beer.
Eli S. B. Beer died in 1903. Like his father and grandfather, he was a marble and granite worker, and probably there were few others who reached such perfection in monumental work, the branch to which he especially directed his efforts. He won a medal for being one of the most expert granite workers at the London Exposition, in 1862, and the statute [sic] which gained him this coveted distinction now stands in the great London Museum. In 1870 he came to America and eighteen months later was joined by his wife and their eight children. He had obtained the position of superintendent of the stone work on the bridge crossing from Buffalo, N. Y., to Fort Erie, Canada, and he established his family at the latter place. Subsequently he entered the employ of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad and did the stone work on the double track railroad between Buffalo and Cleveland, and this work brought him to Ashtabula, Ohio, to which place he transferred his family in 1873. When his contract with the railroad was completed, he started into the monument business and continued in the same until his death, after which his son, Frederick G., as administrator of his estate, sold the works to John A. Beer, one of the sons of Eli S. B., who still operates them at Ashtabula.
Frederick G. Beer served a seven years' apprenticeship with his father, learning the monument business, after which he worked some years at the trade in Pittsburg, and in 1898 he came to New Castle, where he has built up a large and growing business. At Ashtabula, Ohio, Mr. Beer was married to Elizabeth Tanner and they have four children—Mabel, Gertrude, Frederick and Kenneth. He is a member of the Odd Fellows and of the P. H. C.
20th Century History of New Castle and Lawrence County Pennsylvania and Representative Citizens Hon. Aaron L. Hazen Richmond-Arnold Publishing Company, Chicago, Ill., 1908
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