General Abner Lacock, United States Senator and Distinguished Citizen, Died in Beaver County, April 12, 1837

In the Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States published in 1876, appears the following brief notice of a once prominent citizen of Pennsylvania:

“Abner Lacock, born in Virginia, in 1770. Without the advantage of much early education, he raised himself by his talents to eminence as a legislator, statesman and civilian. He filled various public stations for a period of nearly forty years; was a Representative in Congress from Pennsylvania from 1811 to 1813, and United States Senator from 1813 to 1819. He died in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, April 12, 1837.”

A search for further information concerning one of whom so little is known by the public, but who was honored with the highest offices in the gift of his neighbors and of the whole people of our State, reveals many interesting details and important events in the life of this man.

Abner Lacock was popularly known as General Lacock. He was born in Cobs Run, near Alexandria, Virginia, July 9, 1770. His father was a native of England, and his mother a native of France. The father emigrated to Washington County, Pennsylvania, while Abner was quite young, and settled on a farm.

In 1796 Abner removed to the town of Beaver, then in Allegheny County, and was one of the first settlers in that neighborhood.

His public career commenced almost immediately after his settlement at Beaver. On September 19, 1796, he was commissioned by Governor Thomas Mifflin a justice of the peace for Pitt Township, Allegheny County. This appointment made him the first public official within the present limits of Beaver County, which was formed out of parts of Allegheny and Washington Counties, March 12, 1800.

In his first office Lacock evinced such a natural strength of mind and sound intelligence that he was elected in 1801, the first Representative to the State Legislature from Beaver County, which post he filled until 1803, when he was commissioned the first associate judge for the new county, but he resigned at the end of the year to again enter the Legislature. The first session of court was held in Abner Lacock’s house, February 6, 1804.

After serving four successive terms in the House, in 1808, he was elected to the Senate, representing Allegheny, Beaver and Butler Counties in the upper body of the Pennsylvania Legislature with marked ability.

263The War of 1812 with the agitation which preceded it brought him into the larger field of national politics. In 1810 he was elected by the people of his district as the “War Candidate” to Congress, when he showed such qualities of leadership that in 1813 the Legislature of his State with great unanimity elected him a Senator of the United States. He served in the House during the Twelfth Congress and in the Senate in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Congresses.

General Lacock was a warm friend of Madison and Monroe, and a bitter enemy of Andrew Jackson. In his later years he was an Adams and Henry Clay Whig.

On December 18, 1818, a select committee of five members was appointed in the Senate of the United States, to investigate the conduct of General Andrew Jackson in connection with the Seminole War. Of this committee Senator Lacock was chairman, and author of the report made February 24, 1819, which severely arraigned Jackson with the violation of the Constitution and International Laws.

This action of the committee made Jackson and his friends furious, he threatening members of the committee with personal violence. Lacock was unafraid and wrote frequently about Jackson’s boasting only in public, and that he should never avoid him a single inch.

The clash never came, and they left the capital on the same day, and in the same public conveyance.

General Lacock was one of the most active promoters of internal improvements in the State of Pennsylvania. Soon after his term in the United States Senate had ceased, he entered heartilyheartily into the scheme for uniting the waters of the Delaware and the Ohio by a State line of Canals and railroads. On April 11, 1825, he was appointed one of five commissioners to make a complete survey of the route for the contemplated improvementsimprovements.

On February 25, 1826, the Legislature authorized the commencement of the work on the canal. General Lacock was chosen to supervise the construction of the Western division of the canal from Pittsburgh to Johnstown.

The first canal boat built or run west of the Allegheny Mountains was named the “General Abner Lacock.” It was built at Apollo by Philip Dally.

Later General Lacock repeatedly served Beaver County in the State Legislature, and in 1836 was appointed to survey and construct the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal, known as the “cross-cut canal,” connecting the Erie division of the Pennsylvania Canal with the Portsmouth and Ohio Canal, contracting in its service in that year his last illness.

Besides those named, General Lacock held, or was offered many other positions of high public trust, both in this and other states.

Abner Lacock obtained the title of General in the early part of his 264public career while serving as an officer of the Pennsylvania militia. As early as 1807 he was a brigadier general, commanding a brigade in the counties of Beaver and Butler.

General Lacock was the friend and earnest champion of the common school system, which when first proposed was very unpopular in Pennsylvania. His library was one of the largest in Western Pennsylvania, and was partially destroyed by a flood in the Ohio River in 1832.

General Lacock was of medium height and well proportioned. He was strong and athletic. He was the father of a large family, but there are no living male descendants of this distinguished citizen.

He died at his residence, near Freedom, on Wednesday morning, April 12, 1837, after a long and painful illness.