Tuesday, February 24, 2009

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Joseph Sinton
Obituary: 1836.
Departed this life, on Friday morning the 29th of January, Mr. Joseph Sinton, in the 63rd year of his age.

The Deceased was a native of the County Down in Ireland, and emigrated to America in the year 1795; resided some time at Sunbury as a merchant; and in 1804 removed with his brother to Wilksbarre where for more than thirty years they have done an extensive business; and were probably known by more persons than any other two men in Luzerne County.

The understanding of the deceased was naturally strong; his moral perceptions clear and accurate; his mind well stored by extensive and judicious reading; his temper cheerful; his manners plain but affable; so that he was a man that you liked to meet; his person, without being large, giving the appearance of health and strength; he was one whose hand one always shook with a feeling of genuine cordiality. In business his integrity was universally and justly confided in. After the busy labors of the day, he delighted to retire to his room adjoining the store, where were his ledgers, his library and his bed. Here or in the parlor, forgetting the merchant, you found the literary man, not pedantic but bearing an instructive part in conversation - ready with apt quotations from favorite volumes. The works of Dr. Johnson had been among his early studies, and the maxims of that moralist were often on his tongue. Cooper, among the Poets, we think was his favorite author. He lived and died a bachelor, though no one seemed fitter to grace or enjoy the family circle, as head of a family.

Joseph Sinton was a member of the Borough Council for a number of years and for a long time one of the directors of the Philadelphia Branch Bank, and was at the time of his death a member of the Board of Directors of the Wyoming Bank. Though he had not the least ambition to enter into political life, yet he entertained decided opinions and expressed them with independence and freedom.

A member of the Society of Friends in a country where few of them have settled, by his excellent moral deportment, his upright conduct, his plain, simple, unaffected habits and manners, and his benevolent disposition, he gave a favorable impression of that estimable society.... He has not left an enemy on earth; his virtues green as the loved hills of his native Isle, will long be cherished in memory....The writer of this may justly say that he has lost one of the earliest, one of the truest, one of the best of friends.