BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MAHLON S. KEMMERER
Mr.
Kemmerer is of German antecedents, the family having been early settlers in
Cherry Valley, Monroe Co., Pa. Among
the children of his grandfather, Conrad Kemmerer, who resided in the above 
county, was Charles, a native of Cherry
Valley, and a millwright by occupation.
He married Mary Ann Price, daughter of John J. Price, and early
lumberman of that vicinity, whose children were a son, Mahlon S., and a
daughter, Annie (Mrs. W. W. Watson, of Scranton, Pa.). Mrs. Kemmerer, after the decease of her
husband, married Walter Leisenring, whose children were Gertrude H. (now Mrs.
T. M. Righter), Ada L., Mary W., Albert C., and Walter. Mahlon S. Kemmerer was born Aug. 27, 1843,
in Cherry Valley, Pa., and in early youth be3came a resident of Carbon
County. His education was such as the
common schools afforded, supplemented by a period at Dickinson Seminary,
Williamsport. His business career began
at fourteen as clerk in a colliery-store at Summit Hill, Carbon Co. In 1862, the heavy freshet of that year
having suspended operations in the coal regions, he joined a corps of engineers
employed by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, and engaged in repairs
connected with the property of the company.
This corps then undertook the survey of the Lehigh and Susquehanna
Railroad. Mr. Kemmerer remaining with
them for four years in the capacity of assistant engineer. The succeeding four years were spent as
mining engineer and assistant superintendent of the Upper Lehigh Coal Company,
after which he began an active business career as a member of the firm of
Whitney, McCreary & Kemmerer, shippers of coal, the firm subsequently
becoming Whitney & Kemmerer. He has
since that date been largely identified wit the coal and iron interests of
Sandy Run, and later at Harleigh, Pond Creek, and other collieries. He is director and considerable owner of stock
of the Connellsville Coke and Iron Company, as also a director and stockholder
in the Carbon Iron and Pipe Company, and an owner and director in the Carbon
Rolling-Mill Company. He is secretary
and treasurer of the Virginia Coal and Iron Company, and director of the Alden
Coal Company, of Wilkesbarre. Mr. 
Kemmerer has recently been appointed by
Governor Pattison one of the commissioners to revise the mining laws of the
State. He was married, Dec. 1, 1868, to
Annie L., daughter of Hon. John Leisenring, of Mauch Chunk. Their children are three in number, John L.,
Mahlon L., and Gertrude L. In politics,
Mr. Kemmerer is a Republican, but without either taste or leisure for the
allurements of public life. His
religious education prompts him to accept the tenets of the Presbyterian faith.
END
*****************************
RETURN
TO THE MATHEWS & HUNGERFORD INDEX
PAGE
From
The History of the Counties of Lehigh & Carbon, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
By
Alfred Mathews & Austin N. Hungerford
Published in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1884
Page 711
Transcribed from the original in March, 2003
by
Jack Sterling
Web page by
March 2003