About the Author

Thomas William Dick
(1839-1924)

Thomas William Dick was born on October 27, 1839 in Wheatland Township in southeast Indiana County, Pennsylvania. He was the second son of Ulster born farmer and tanner James Dick and his second wife Mary Stewart Dick. He was educated in the common schools of nearby Armagh and became a local teacher. A few months after casting his first presidential vote, for Abraham Lincoln, Thomas volunteered for the Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry in defense of the Union. He mustered as a private with Company H of the 41st Regiment of the Twelfth Pennsylvania Reserve Corps on July 24, 1861. He spent some time recruiting in central Pennsylvania before rejoining his unit during its extensive campaign service with the Army of the Potomac. He was promoted to sergeant on December 14, 1862. A year and a half later, he was wounded slightly at Spotsylvania, Virginia during the Battles of the Wilderness. He received his first injury, in fact, just over a month before he and the rest of the regiment mustered out at the end of their three-year enlistment. The 41st fought in many of the important engagements of the American Civil War, including Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, losing 181 men to battle and disease.

Returning home, Dick took a course, probably in the classics, at the well-known Elder's Ridge Academy, and then in the spring of 1865 he began studies in the law with local attorney William Banks. He was admitted to the bar in Cambria County, Pennsylvania in November 1868 and located his practice in Ebensburg. He extended what was to become a lucrative career into insurance representing the Hartford, Aetna, and Phoenix. For many years he sat on local school boards, headed area Presbyterian Sunday Schools, and was active in the Ebensburg post of the Grand Army of the Republic.

In October 1867, he had married Johnstown native Miss E. Lucie Kern, a graduate of Pittsburgh Female College. The couple had four sons and two daughters. Thomas William Dick died in 1924.

Please visit the following link for materials authored by Thomas William Dick maintained in the Their Own Words database:

Dick, Thomas William, 1839-1924.

Researched, authored, and edited by John Osborne, Ph. D., and James Gerencser.