This photograph by Isaac Kunkel was taken in Williamstown, Dauphin County in the early 1870s. The image depicts the Anthony family at the superintendent’s home of the Summit Branch Railroad Company on Market Street in Williamstown.

The image shows six members of the Anthony family. Major Joseph Anthony and his wife Jane, their twin daughters Elizabeth and Mary stand on the porch. The two children on rocking horses in front of the house are likely Joseph and David. The couple had several older children not in the photograph and a toddler and baby not in the image. The household also included two “domestic servants” – teenager Grace Dowen and Irish immigrant Joanna Roach.

Major Joseph Anthony joined the Summit Branch Railroad Company as superintendent of the Williamstown Colliery in 1865. The native of Waterford, Ireland had settled in Schuylkill County in the years before the Civil War and married Jane Brown in March 1856.

When the Civil War broke out, Anthony joined the 96th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry as an officer, his experience as the leader of a fire company captain before the war likely playing a part.

When the 129th Pennsylvania was organized in Schuylkill County in 1862, Anthony transferred to the regiment and took on the rank of Major. He participated in two bloody battles with the regiment – Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. In the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863, Anthony was shot in the chest by a Confederate bullet. He was medically discharged from the US Army as a result of his wound and returned to Schuylkill County.

His leadership role as an officer in the United States Army gave him opportunities at home. He took on management roles at a colliery in Schuylkill County before moving to Williamstown with his family in 1865. He held the superintendent role at Williamstown Colliery, and later, at Short Mountain Colliery as well. He resigned his position due to poor health in August 1880.

Upon his retirement, the Lykens Register had this to say: “His career has been a remarkably successful one, very few strikes or serious disturbances having occurred with the vast number of men under his charge. In his retirement, there is scarcely a more popular man in the county than Major Anthony, and all classes of the community will unite in wishing him restored health and a long lease of life.”

Anthony had less than five years to live when that was written – he died in February 1885 in Linglestown, near Harrisburg. He succumbed to complications from the wound he received at Chancellorsville in 1863. His war wound never quite healed and caused increasing health problems as he aged. Joseph Anthony was 58-years-old.

---