OF CAMBRIA COUNTY.

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On January 4, 1886, he married Miss Catherine, a daughter of Joseph J. and Harriet (Hoffman) Mishler, of Jenner Cross Roads, Somerset county, Pennsylvania, who was born January 4, 1847. She is one of a family of two children. Her sister, Sarah Mishler, is the wife of George W. Nicodemus, a resident of Jenner township, somerset county, Pennsylvania. HON. JAMES J. THOMAS, an ex-member of the House of Representative of Pennsylvania, and who is in the foremost rank among those leaders of that branch of industry which enables Pennsylvania to take a prominent place among the agricultural States of the Union, is a son of John and Mary A. (Campbell) Thomas, and was born at Kaylor station, Cambria county, Pennsylvania, September 27, 1838.     The Thomas family is one of the many honest, honorable and substantial families of the United States that trace their transatlantic ancestry to Wales,--Thomas, a paternal ancestor of the subject of this sketch, was a soldier in the English army. He was stationed in Ireland, where he afterwards married and resided until his death. Michael Thomas, one of the decendants of the Welsh soldier, was born and reared on the “Emerald” Island, and held an office under the English government until 1820, in which year he came to Cambria county and settled at Munster, where he died in 1835, aged eighty-five years. He married a Miss Mulhern, who was a member of an old Irish family, and by whom he had eight children—four sons and four daughters. The second child born to them was John Thomas (father), whose birth place was in county Donegal, in 1792, and who came with his parents in 1820 to Cambria county, where he died on his farm

at Kaylor Station, in September, 1887, when lacking but five years of being a centenarian.     He was a man of good education and followed teaching in Ireland, and teaching and farming in Cambria and Indiana counties after coming to this State. He quit teaching in 1864, and many prominent and successful men of the older citizens in this and Indiana counties ascribe their success to the instruction which they received when pupils in his schools.     He voted for every presidential nominee of the Democratic party, from Andrew Jackson down to 1894, and although a man of standing and influence, he never sought for office, and never held but one office which was the postmastership at Munster, under Van Buren's administration. He was a member of the Catholic church, and in 1836 was married by the illustrious Father Gallitzin, to Mary A. Campbell, who died September, 1870, aged fifty-seven years. Her father, Patrick Campbell, was a native of the North of Ireland, and came out in 1800 to what is now Cambria county, where he purchased a farm and reared a large family.     To Michael and Mary Thomas were born a family of three sons and eight daughters: Ann; Hon. Jas. J.; Mary J., wife of Frank Quinlan, a professor and county office holder in Michigan; Margaret, Bridget and Susan, residing on the home farm; Cecelia, now know as Sister Mary Gonzaga, of the Sisters of Charity of the Greensburg convent; Philip now dead; Sarah, wife of L. W. Weakland, of Cumberland, Maryland, and Ellie, who died in a convent in Altoona; she was known as Sister Mary Joseph.     James J. Thomas attended the public schools long enough to learn to spell, and then received his education at the hands of his father

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