Collection of 56 Manuscript Diaries kept by Henry S. Funk of Springtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1869-1886, 1888, 1894-1905, 1907-1931

56 pocket diaries, totaling approximately 6167 pages of diary entries, plus 420 pages of memoranda, accounts and notes, various bindings, entries in ink in very good, clean and legible condition.

An unusually lengthy run of diaries in which Funk records the daily events of his life. He records the incidents in his many business activities, domestic and daily life, and his time in the State Legislature. The diaries present over half a century of Bucks County history as lived by one of its prominent citizens.

Henry Schleiffer Funk (1844-1937)

Henry Schleiffer Funk was born on 23 December 1844 at Springtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Funk (1804-1845) and his wife Susan Schleiffer (1804-1900). The Funk family were Bucks County residents going back at least to his great grandfather Abraham Funk (1734-1788). Henry Funk's father, grandfather and great-grandfather, Abraham Funk, were all buried at the Springfield Mennonite Meetinghouse and Cemetery at Pleasant Valley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Henry Funk was a farmer and a proprietor of saw and flouring mills. Locally he served as a justice of the peace, and as the postmaster of Springtown (1884-1885, 1889-1893) during the Garfield and Harrison administrations. He also founded and was the publisher of the Springtown Times (1885-1915).

Funk established an insurance company, Globe Mutual Live-Stock Insurance Company in 1887; and served as secretary and director for the Quakertown and Eastern Railroad Company, a railroad that he helped to found. The Q & E connected Springfield and Pleasant Valley to Easton or Philadelphia. Funk also became the president of the Keystone Manufacturing Company; and he became president of the Franklin Telephone Company, and a director of the Quakertown Trust Company.

In politics he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as a Republican in 1894 and 1896. He was not a candidate for re-election to the House in 1898.

For entertainment, Funk helped organize the Euterpean Orchestra which played in Springtown for a number of years.

Funk was married twice. He first married Ellen M. Horlacher (1844-1884), in 1868. After her death, Funk married Sallie Catharine Laubach (1864-1949), in 1887. Funk and his first wife had at least two children: Henry Horlacher Funk (1869-1958) and Susie E. Funk (1876-1955).

Henry S. Funk died on 1 January 1937 at Springfield Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He was interred at Springtown Cemetery in Springfield.

References:

Ancestry.com, as viewed on 26 Feb 2021, for compiling genealogies of the Funk family.

Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Henry S. Funk, 1895-1896; 1897-1898, as viewed on 26 Feb 2021 at: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/BiosHistory/MemBio.cfm?ID=5815&body=H