ANDREW W. KERR, one of the most successful and well-to-do agriculturists of Washington county, is of immediate English descent. His father, William A. Kerr, born in 1816, a son of Andrew, was a native of England, as were all his antecedents. When he was yet a child, his parents brought him to this country, making a settlement in Washington county, Penn., where they passed the rest of their days. They were the parents of the following named children: Margaret, who died at the age of five days; Agnes, deceased wife of William Smiley; Hannah, who died at the age of eleven months; Mary, married to Robert Caldwell., of Hopewell township, both deceased (she died after him in 1877, at the age of sixty-eight years); and William A., father of the subject of these lines. The father of this family died May 28, 1823, at the age of forty-five years, his wife, Margaret, survived him till April 20, 1865, when she, too, departed to the "Better Land" at the age of eighty-two years. William A. Kerr received his education at Frankfort Academy, Washington county, Penn., and taught school for several years in Hopewell township. On July 4, 1844, he married Miss Margaret Tweed, a native of Washington county, Penn., born June 20, 1815, of a very early family of the county. After marriage they located on a rented farm in Hopewell township until 1854, when they bought a farm in Buffalo township, on which they lived until 1872, in which year they sold it and bought another in the same township, where William A. Kerr died January 16, 1887, at the age of seventy years. and which farm is at this time in the possession of the subject of this sketch. The widowed mother is now living in Buffalo village. They were the parents of three children viz.: Elizabeth Caroline, widow of John G. Farrer (she is now assistant matron at the County Home; Mr. Farrer volunteered in Company K, Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, in the summer of 1862, and served until the close of the war); Mary Margaret. married to H. W. Leech, of Buffalo village, and Andrew W. William A. Kerr was a stanch Republican, and held various township offices. During invasion of Pennsylvania in the Civil war he enlisted for State protection. Andrew W. Kerr was born August 5, 1849. in Hopewell township. Washington Co., Penn., and received his education at the schools of the neighborhood of his new home in Buffalo township, whither the family had moved in 1854. Here he was reared to farm life, and lived over thirty years. On December 16,1874, Mr. Kerr married Miss Alma V. Giles, whose father (at that time deceased) was of Pittsburgh, Penn., and whose mother has since departed this life. Four children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Kerr, viz.: Annie Margaret, William Albert, Florence Estella and James Wiley. In 1887 the family moved into the borough of Washington, Mr. Kerr having built an elegant and commodious residence on Prospect avenue. At present he is a partner in a flouring mill in that place. Our subject and wife are members of the U. P. Church at Washington, and in politics he is a Republican.

Text taken from page 303 of: Beers, J. H. and Co., Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1893). Transcribed June 1997 by George A. and Mary Ann Plance of Gainesville, FL as part of the Beers Project. Published June 1997 on the Washington County, PA USGenWeb pages at http://www.chartiers.com/.

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