2025- 1- PS Bancroft Sees Action

Peter Sanford Bancroft, Professor, Captain, and Editor

Vitals 
Peter Sanford Bancroft 
  B. 24 Dec 1830 Canaan, CT 
  D. 16 May 1916 in Butler, PA 
  M. April, 1865 Isabell (Belle) S Brinker, youngest daughter of Jacob Brinker who was B. 1846 Butler, PA D. 1874 Butler, PA 
 

Children: 
  1 * Flora Gertrude Bancroft 1867-1949 
  2 Earl D Bancroft 1868-1927 
  3 Grove Graham Bancroft 1869-1899 

Peter Sanford (PS) Bancroft was born in Connecticut but moved at 8 years old with his parents, who settled on a farm near in northwest Pennsylvania in Meadville. His father was the Rev. Earl Bancroft, a retired minister and local preacher of the Methodist church. His mother was a daughter of Grove Pinney.
PS Bancroft worked on the farm, attended county schools and then Allegheny College, from which he graduated in 1855 magna cum laude. 

Career 1 - Professor of Greek and Latin
For the next few years he was Professor of Greek and Latin at Madison College (now part of Waynesburg U). 

Career 2 - The Civil War and an Officer 
In September, 1861, he joined the army of the Union and was made Second Lieutenant in Company E, One Hundred Eleventh Regiment, PA Infantry.  

On September 17, 1862, in the battle of Antietam, his right arm was shattered by a bullet. While in hospital suffering from this wound he was promoted to the rank of Captain. 
March 16, 1863, he resigned and was discharged on surgeon's certificate of disability. In Apr. 1863 the U.S. War Department created the "Invalid Corps" made of worthy disabled officers and men who had been in the army. It was variously called Invalid Corps or Veteran Reserve Corps, and Bancroft signed on and he was appointed First Lieutenant in the Veteran Reserve Corps. 
In December he was appointed Captain and later assigned to the Third Regiment of that corps. This appointment was confirmed by the issue of a Captain's commission with 'the advice and consent of the Senate' and signed by President Abraham Lincoln. 

His grandson Charles Tilton had possession of the commissioning signed by Lincoln until he sold it to antiques dealer in the 1900's. Bancroft continued in service with the Invalid/Veteran Reserve Corps until February 1866, nearly a year after the close of the war. 

Captain PS Bancroft, Union Army

Career 3 - Marriage, Family and Farming 
In April, 1865, in his 35th year Bancroft married 19-year-old Bella S. Brinker, youngest daughter of Col. Jacob Brinker, a former sheriff of Butler County and Sarah Ann Graham. They were farming the Meadville farm when Belle (Brinker) Bancroft died in 1874, leaving 3 small children. 

"Belle" Brinker, wife of PS Bancroft

Career 4 - A Widower with a Family, Moving to Town, The Witherspoon Institute 
Within three years of his wife's death, when the youngest was still a small child, PS Bancroft and his family moved to Butler in 1877. In the wake of his personal economic struggles and the nationwide postwar recession, he decided to go into education. 
He took the Witherspoon Academy (a school begun as a Presbyterian school and subsequently run as a Lutheran school), and turned into a non-sectarian private school. The reorganized school was known as the newly re-formed Witherspoon Institute. PS Bancroft was for a number of years Principal (manager and administrator). 
The 1880 Census has the family living with his widowed mother-in-law, Sarah (Graham) Brinker. He was 49, she was 71 or 72.

Career 5 - Newspaper Editor 
While running the Witherspoon Institute, he was also a staunch supporter of the cause for which he fought. While the Civil War was officially over, the disputes leading up to it were still hotly felt in the public area.
PS Bancroft was a member of the (fairly new) Republican Party. In Butler former war veterans who were fellow Republicans felt they needed a publication. Newspapers of this period normally took a political viewpoint as their raison d'être. In March, 1889, he entered newspaper work in the office of The Butler Eagle, and October of 189 [?}, he became associate editor of the Butler County Record.
He worked as the Associate Editor until May 6, 1916, ten days prior to his death, when he was taken ill. Strangely, the newspapers report that in 1915, his son-in-law (with whom he lived) resigned his job to take a job in Utah, and PS Bancroft was planning on moving with them. But sadly, Tilton never moved, he dying before a year had passed from his resignation. Tilton died 15 Jun that year, having outlived his father-in-law by less than one month.
For most of his life in Butler,PS Bancroft lived in a multi-generational home: either with his mother-in-law, or his daughter and her family. At the time of his death at 85, he was living with his daughter Flora, her husband William Tilton, and his grandson, Charles Bancroft Tilton. 

PS Bancroft and grandson Charles Tilton (early 1900s)

 
(See post 3 The Dangers of Being Honored, a recounting being honored in town)