Biographical & Portrait Cyclopedia of Cambria County Pennsylvania, p.150

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150 BIOGRAPHICAL AND PORTRAIT CYCLOPEDIA

in private instruction. He was reared on the farm, and in 1858 became a teacher in the common schools, where he taught, with few intermissions, until 1892. While teaching he also gave close attention to the management of his farm and made a special study of agriculture. He owns and resides upon a farm of one hundred and thirty-eight acres of good land in the eastern part of Carroll township, where he has been successful for the last twenty years as a general farmer.
    On April 22, 1867, Mr. Thomas married Tillie A. Glasser, a daughter of Frank Glasser, of St. Boniface, this county. Hon. James J. and Mrs. Thomas have six children: John F.; Mary L.; Annie; Samuel; Emma, and Otto. Of these children Annie and Samuel are teachers.
    James J. Thomas is a Catholic in religion, being a member of the Catholic church, and in politics has always been a strong democrat. He has held the most important of his townships offices, was elected and served during 1877-78 as a member of the legislature from Cambria county, and during Cleveland's first administration was storekeeper in the United States revenue department of the Twenty-third district, comprising a larger part of western Pennsylvania. In 1892 he was re-elected to the legislature of Pennsylvania, and in the session of 1893 was appointed by Speaker Thompson, as a member of the congressional and judicial apportionment committees, and the committees on vice and immorality, and constitutional reform. He also served as vice-president of what was known as the Agricultural Caucus, of which the venerable John Cessna, of Bedford, was president, and Senator Critchfield, of Somerset, was secretary, and was a member of a sub-committee on congressional apportionment with representative Lawrence as chairman, and Messrs. Richmond, Cotton and Ritter as fellow-members. He served during Lee's first invasion of Pennsylvania in the Fourth Pennsylvania regiment of emergency men until the regiment was discharged after the battle of Antietam.
    He was appointed on a committee of five to draft a road bill. He was also selected by the friends of the Miles tax-bill—a reform measure—as one of a committee to take charge of the bill on the floor of the House.
    While prominent and active as a legislator in securing needed agricultural legislation, yet he has labored effectively for the farming interests, not only of his county, but for the whole State, in the Pennsylvania State Grange and the Pennsylvania State Board of Agriculture, of which organizations he is a member and an officer. He is a member and the master of Concord Grange, No. 1125, Patrons of Husbandry, and a member of the executive committee of the State grange, and when the Cambria County Mutual fire Insurance company was organized, August 1, 1895, in the true interests of grange members, he was made a director and elected as its president. In the autumn of 1895, in recognition of his many valuable services in behalf of farming, Mr. Thomas was elected chairman of the committee appointed by the State Board of Agriculture to formulate a basis for the re-organization of the State Board of Agriculture rendered necessary by the creation of the State Department of Agriculture, which had previously placed him on its list of lecturers for farmers' county institutes.
    James J. Thomas, whose life-career has been in the interests of agriculture, education and politics, is a man who has won public confidence and whose character is above the breath of suspicion.

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