James Denton Hancock    

JAMES DENTON HANCOCK, attorney at law, was born June 9, 1837, in Wyoming valley, two miles from Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, son of James and grandson of Jonathan Hancock, the latter a native of Virginia and descended from a family which has been represented in the “Old Dominion” since the seventeenth century. The wife of James Hancock was Mary Perkins, daughter of David Perkins, who was a brother of Colonel Aaron Perkins of the Revolutionary war. Their father was killed in the Wyoming massacre. James D. Hancock was reared in his native county, obtaining an academic education at Wyoming Seminary and other local institutions, and graduated at Kenyon College, Gambier. Ohio, in June, 1859. In 1861 he became a tutor at the Western University of Pennsylvania, where he was elected professor of mathematics in the following year. In 1863 he was admitted to the bar at Pittsburgh, and was engaged in the practice of his profession in that city until 1865, when he removed to Franklin and has resided here continuously ever since. In 1877 he was appointed attorney for the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company; he was appointed attorney in Pennsylvania for the Pittsburgh, Titusville and Buffalo Railroad Company in the following year, continuing in that capacity until 1888, when he became general solicitor for the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad Company, of which position he is the present incumbent with headquarters at Buffalo. He was appointed a trustee for Warren Insane Hospital in 1881 by Governor Hoyt, and has been continued in that position by successive reappointments, serving as president of the board in 1888. Politically he has been a Democrat since 1861, and promi­nent in the movement for tariff reform. In 1883 he delivered a lecture upon the subject of “Petroleum versus Protection” at Franklin and other places; it attracted wide attention and was awarded a silver medal by the Cobden Club, of which the author was elected an honorary member. He was chairman of the sub-committee and drew the original draft of the resolutions passed at the Tariff Reform Convention at Chicago in 1885, and in 1889 was chairman of the committee on resolutions. He is the author of numerous articles upon various economic questions relating to the tariff. In 1865 Mr. Hancock married Miss Ella C. Hitchcock, of Pittsburgh, who died in 1871. In 1873 he married Miss Mary K. Hitchcock, a sister of his first wife. Of a family of five children there are living: Lawrence P., a graduate of Kenyon College, who was admitted to the bar August 26, 1889; Ella C., and Mary E. 

History of Venango County, Pennsylvania : its past and present, including its aboriginal history, the French and British occupation of the country, its early settlement and subsequent growth, a description of its historic and interesting localities, its rich oil deposits and their development, sketches of its cities, boroughs, townships, and villages, neighborhood and family history, portraits and biographies of pioneers and representative citizens, statistics, etc., etc.
Chicago, Ill.: Brown, Runk & Co., 1890, pages 805-806.  Read this book on line - Free Trial Search Hundreds of 1880s-1890s Pennsylvania County History Books for biographies and historical information on your ancestors.  View the book page images on line and print them out for your genealogy file!  Free Access to the old history books - plus birth & death records, census images and ALL other records at ancestry.com.