General Ebenezer Warren Sturdevant was born June 11th, 1806, in Braintrim, Luzerne (now Wyoming) county, Pa., on the property there originally owned by his maternal grandfather, then by his father. He remained at home until the age of fifteen, living the uneventful but careless life of a boy on a country farm. At that age he entered the old Wilkes-Barre Academy, then under charge of Doctor Orton as principle, and remained under his tuition a year, making such advancement educationally that he was fitted to continue his studies at Hamilton Academy, at Hamilton, Madison county, N.Y. Remaining at that institution two years, he entered the sophomore class at Hamilton College, under the presidency of Doctor Davis. A year later a large number of the class, including General Sturdevant, left Hamilton to enter at various other colleges, General Sturdevant entering the junior class at Union College, under the presidency of Doctor Nott. Here he took all the degrees conferred at the institution, was the junior and senior orator, and graduated in June, 1830, receiving all the honors in a class of 106, the largest that had at that time graduated from any American educational institution. In the July following his graduation General Sturdevant entered the law office of Hon. Garrick Mallery, at Wilkes-Barre, and remained two years as a co-student with the late Hon. G.W. Woodward, justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. He was duly admitted to the bar, and when he came into practice was appointed prosecuting attorney of Luzerne county by Governor Wolf, and one of the aides of the governor, with the rank of colonel. He was a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1838–39, and 1842 was elected brigadier general of the brigade comprising the northeastern counties of Pennsylvania, and subsequently promoted to the office of major general of the division to which his brigade was attached. He held the two offices consecutively during a period of seventeen years, and is known as the oldest major general in the State. General Sturdevant was in the active practice of his profession, successfully, up to 1857. In 1840 he removed to his present residence, then just completed, on Firwood farm, which he had purchased four years before, from the residence since owned by Hon. L.D. Shoemaker, which General Sturdevant had erected in 1834 and sold in 1838. During the years of his active business and professional life General Sturdevant accumulated a large amount of real estate, enhanced in value by deposits of coal, from the royalties upon which he is in receipt of a handsome income. Since his retirement from an active practice he has been chiefly engaged in the management of his real estate interest, but formerly he was identified with many of the most important enterprises of the State and section, acting as director of one of the branches of the Reading Railroad, for which he procured a charter, and taking an active part in securing legislation authorizing the construction of the North Branch Canal. He has been for thirty years a manager of the Wilkes-Barre Bridge Company, and was a director of the old Wyoming Bank, and for years he was president of the Wilkes-Barre borough council. At present he is a director of the First National Bank of Wilkes-Barre, and has long been a member of the city council and chairman of the committee on law and ordinances. During a long term of years General Sturdevant has been in some manner connected with most of the important business enterprises looking to the development and improvement of the various interests of the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys. His connection with the now gigantic iron interest of the Lackawanna in the days of its infancy is peculiarly interesting. In 1839 he was requested by the president of the Bank of North America, Philadelphia, as the agent and attorney of the bank, to visit a body of the land owned by the bank in the old township of Providence, Luzerne county, with a view to looking after iron ore reported to have been discovered on one of the bank tracts by a well known hunter of that vicinity. On a pleasant morning he set out in his buggy, carrying with him a saddle, a pair of saddle bags and a hatchet in preparation for a journey through the wood if it should be necessary. Passing through the locality of Scranton, then called Slocum Hollow, where were then the old red Slocum house, the old forge on Roaring brook, and in the vicinity the residence of Elisha Hitchcock, he found about two miles beyond the man he sought, to whom he agreed to pay $50 in consideration of his showing him the ore, provided that a test should prove it to be valuable. After unharnessing his horse, which he accoutered in saddle and saddle-bags, the general mounted and followed the old hunter (who carried his rifle with an eye to the possibility that they might arouse a deer from his mid-day nap) about five miles, over a foot path pretty well obstructed by fallen trees, to Stafford Meadow brook, near which, in a small ravine, on a tract in the warrantee name of Daniel Van Campen, and owned by the Bank of North America, they found outcroppings of iron ore on both sides of the gully. Taking as much of the ore as the general could carry in his saddle–bags, the two returned to the hunter’s house, and hastily harnessing the horse the general drove back to Wilkes-Barre by moonlight. The next day the ore was securely boxed and sent to the president of the bank by stage. Soon General Sturdevant received a letter from the president enclosing a statement of the very favorable analysis of the ore by Professor Booth. The general paid the promised $50 to his friend the hunter, and the Scrantons a little later bought the Daniel Van Campen tract, with other lands adjoining, and took initial steps leading to the wonderful development of the interests of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company, and through them of the thriving, energetic and rapidly growing city of Scranton. General Sturdevant, who has been a life-long Democrat, was for a long time quite prominent in public affairs; but during the last few years he has not been active politically. Though often tendered the candidacy for high political honors, he has never willingly consented to the use of his name except as a nominee for delegate to the State convention to amend the constitution of Pennsylvania, of which he was elected a member. He was the youngest delegate in that body. For many years General Sturdevant has been a member of the Protestant Episcopal church. For more than thirty years he was a vestryman of St. Stephen’s church, Wilkes-Barre. He was a liberal contributor towards the establishment of St. Clement’s parish, in which Firwood is located, and the erection of its house of worship, and since the organization of the parish he has been senior warden of this church. General Sturdevant was married May 1st, 1832, to Martha Dwight Denison, of Wilkes-Barre, daughter of Austin Denison, of New Haven, and Martha Dwight, and a niece of President Dwight, of Yale College. On her mother’s side she was of the seventh generation of descendants of Colonel Timothy Dwight, grandson of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass., the common ancestor it is believed of all who legitimately bear his family name on this continent. She was a lady of very superior education and fine accomplishments, as honest a Christian woman as ever lived, proud of the old Dwight name and cherishing through life every incident of the history of the family, with which she was thoroughly acquainted. She died October 20th, 1842. Only one child, Mary Elizabeth Sturdevant, who was born April 10th, 1833, and died June 18th, 1835, was born of this marriage. May 12th, 1847, General Sturdevant married Lucy, daughter of Judge Charles Huston, a judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who bore him four children–Charles Huston, Mary Elizabeth, Edward Warren and Lucy Huston–and died May 3d, 1879, at the residence of her daughter, Mrs. J.N. Stone, jr., in Philadelphia, surronnded by her husband and children, in the fullest confidence of faith and holy hope, in the sixtieth year of her age. For more than thirty years Mrs. Sturdevant had lived in Wilkes-Barre amid an increasing circle of appreciative and loving friends. A devoted wife and mother, a faithful and exemplary church member, a constant worshiper in her parish church, a most efficient teacher in the Sunday-school, and a true friend to all, to whom her friendship was helpful and full of comfort, her loss to the whole community, and especially to the parish of St. Clement’s church, was so great as to seem irreparable. She was born in Bellefonte, Center county, Pa., and was trained under the pastoral care of Rev. George W. Natt. She left, besides her husband and her two sons and two daughters, a countless number of mourning friends, to whom the bereavement of her loss was greater than can be told.
General Sturdevant, still in active business life and identified with the leading interests of Wilkes-Barre and vicinity, an efficient and prominent member of the city council, sound in health and thoroughly alive to the important events of the time, is passing the latter years of his life at Firwood farm, the care of which is his daily occupation and pleasure. Samuel Sturdevant, father of General E.W. Sturdevant, was born at Danbury, Conn., September 16th, 1773, and died March 4th, 1847. His wife, Elizabeth Skinner, was born at Hebron, Conn., July 16th, 1773, and died August 26th, 1833. His father, Rev. Samuel Sturdevant, took an active part in the struggle for American independence, entering the army as an orderly sergeant and being promoted to a captaincy, serving uninterruptedly from the battle of Lexington to the surrender at Yorktown, when he soon emigrated to Braintrim, where, at the place known as Black Walnut Bottom, he bought a large farm and resided there until his death, in 1828. Ebenezer Skinner, General Sturdevant’s grandfather on his mother’s side, had located in 1776 at the mouth of Tuscarora creek, only two miles distant, on lands adjoining the after purchase of the Rev. Mr. Sturdevant. At the advance of the Indians down the valley in 1778 he, with his family, went by canoe down the river to Forty Fort, that being then and for many years afterward the only means of travel up and down the Susquehanna. One of his sons, John N. Skinner, was in the battle of Wyoming and the old man was one of those in charge of the fort as protectors of the women and children. General Sturdevant’s mother, then but seven years old, was with her mother in the fort and after the massare went on foot, with the women and children spared by the Indians, through the wilderness called the "Shades of Death," to the Delaware river and thence to Connecticut.