128 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY PAPERS. merit service two years prior to this, and with his family was stationed at Kanawha Falls, West Virginia, and they were in the famous Lightburn retreat, which resulted in ev-Governor Wise gaining possession of that portion of Western Virginia. Before enlisting in the Civil War, Mr. Carson bought a farm in Ohio and moved his family thereto. The subject of this sketch was the eldest of four children, and upon him devolved the duties of caring for the farm, although he had hardly reached the age when children are admitted to the public schools in these days. The experience gained during those trying times proved of inestimable value to him in after years, teach- ing self reliance, and giving him a true estimate of that which goes to make true manhood. The few winter terms which Mr. Carson attended the district schools made up his schooling. When in later years the necessity of an education dawned upon him, he sought to obtain it, and in a measure succeeded by a course of private instruction and home study. The taste for read- ing developed early in life, and literature became more and more the aim and object of his subsequent efforts. At the age of twelve he began to work in a cooper shop and, excepting six months spent in New York City, con- tinued at that trade for fourteen years. He began the study of law in Youngstown, O., in 1878, which was con- tinued for nearly three years, but was abandoned for newspaper work on the "Daily News" of that city, in which calling he has since been engaged. In 1880 Mr. Carson was married to Miss Lyda G. Eobinson of Niles, Ohio. To this union were bom two sons, James H. and Charles B. Carson. In 1885, he moved to Beaver Falls and shortly afterwards became a reporter on the "Tribune," and the local correspondent of the Pittsburg and New York papers. Mr. Carson is a member of the M. E. Church, which he joined in 1873 at Bellaire, O. In newspaper work he is a firm believer in the theory that
