WILLIAM FORGIE is a Canadian by birth, a Scotchman by descent. His grandfather, Francis Forgie, a son of Scotia, probably of the Highlands, as he spoke the Gaelic dialect, was a soldier in the British army, and on his retirement from the service joined the Irish constabulary. He married a Miss McClelland, and they both died in Ireland, the parents of five sons, named respectively: Samuel, William, Thomas, Francis and James, of whom the four youngest immigrated, in 1824, to Canada, making a settlement on the Bay of Quint, in Hastings county, upper Canada (now Ontario). From Montreal to their new home they poled up the St. Lawrence what was known as a "Durham scow." The nearest mill to their place of settlement was at Kingston, some sixty miles east, and thither they had to take their wheat in sacks slung over the back of an ox, they walking alongside, and as there were at that time no roads they had to be guided by the sun to their destination. Of these stalwart young men, William followed lumbering and was drowned while rafting in the Moira river, which empties into the Bay of Quint (he had crossed the ocean several times). Francis Forgie, father of our subject, became a farmer. He married Elizabeth, daughter of John Mulholland, a Methodist minister in Ireland, where he died (his widow immigrated to Canada with her only son who was drowned in the St. Lawrence and four daughters, Eliza, Rebecca, Mary and Elizabeth, and lived to an advanced age, dying an earnest Christian, devoted to her faith). After marriage Mr. and Mrs. Francis Forgie continued to reside on their farm in Canada. They were the parents of six children, viz.: Isabella, married to Thomas E. Bell, of Peterboro county, Ontario; John and James, in Pittsburgh; Mary J., wife of John McCaw, of Hastings county, Ontario; William, the subject of this sketch, and Thomas Edward, who died when young. The mother of this family died in 1854, and in 1862 the father married a Miss Ramsey, who bore him two sons: Frank (working with his half-brother, William) and Samuel C. (deceased). She died in 1868, a member of the M. E. Church; the father passed away in 1887 at the age of seventy-seven years. William Forgie, the subject proper of this memoir, was born March 17, 1850, in the township of Thurlow, county of Hastings, Ontario, and his education was received at the common schools of the neighborhood of his birthplace. Until twenty years of age he worked on the home farm, and then proceeded to Red river, in the "Northwest," along with the troops sent out to quell the Riel rebellion of that year. He and a neighbor, William McCready, had been comrades in the Argyle Light Infantry, of Belleville, Ontario, and when volunteers were called to suppress this rebellion, they joined the First Ontario Rifles. In the "Northwest" they served two years, and had a taste of the winters out there, which were remarkable for their severity. In 1873 Mr. Forgie came to the United States, making his first home here at Parker's Landing, on the Allegheny river, where he was employed as an oil producer, in which, during the twelve years he was engaged in the business, he met with varied success. In 1886 he came to Washington, where for a time he continued his oil speculations, and in 1887 he embarked in the manufacture of oil and gas well rig irons, cants, arms and pins, etc. He also turns out a large number of the far-famed and most useful sand reel and tool-wrenching jack (of which he is the patentee), vast improvements on anything of the kind hitherto made, and which add very materially to the convenience and profit of the trade. In 1876 Mr. Forgie married, in Parker's Landing, Miss Henry, who died in September, 1878, leaving a six months-old son, who followed his mother in September, 1879. Our subject married, in 1889, Miss Ida Belle Lytle, daughter of' Robert Lytle, of Donegal township. The family residence, which Mr. Forgie recently built, in Washington, is situated on Hall avenue. Politically he is a Republican, in sentiment a free-trader: while in Canada he was an Orangeman and a Presbyterian, and he is still an ardent advocate of Protestant rights and religious principles.

Text taken from page 1471 of: Beers, J. H. and Co., Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1893). Transcribed February 1997 by Neil and Marilyn Morton of Oswego, IL as part of the Beers Project. Published February 1997 on the Washington County, PA USGenWeb pages at http://www.chartiers.com/.

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