Representative Ebenezer McJunkin

Ebenezer McJunkin (March 28, 1819 – November 10, 1907) was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. He was born at Center Top, in Butler County, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1819. Raised in western Pennsylvania during a period of rapid regional development and political realignment, he came of age in a community that would remain the center of his professional and public life.

McJunkin pursued higher education at Jefferson College (now Washington & Jefferson College) in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1841. After completing his collegiate studies, he read law in the traditional manner of the period and was admitted to the bar in 1843. He then commenced the practice of law in Butler, Pennsylvania, establishing himself as an attorney in the county where he had been born and educated.

In addition to his private legal practice, McJunkin entered public service at the county level. He served as deputy attorney general for Butler County, Pennsylvania, in 1850, a role that placed him at the center of local law enforcement and judicial administration. As the national debate over slavery and sectional issues intensified, he became active in the emerging Republican Party and was chosen as a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention, which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. During the American Civil War, McJunkin further contributed to the Union cause by serving as a first lieutenant of a militia unit, reflecting both his political alignment and his willingness to support the war effort in a military capacity.

McJunkin’s prominence in law and politics in Butler County led to his election as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected to the Forty-second Congress (serving from March 4, 1871) and reelected to the Forty-third Congress, thus serving two terms in office. As a member of the Republican Party representing Pennsylvania, he contributed to the legislative process during a significant period in American history, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents during the Reconstruction era. In the Forty-third Congress he served as chairman of the United States House Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Navy, where he oversaw and reviewed spending and administrative practices within the Navy Department at a time when federal expenditures and governmental accountability were matters of growing national concern.

McJunkin resigned his seat in Congress on January 1, 1875, in order to accept a judicial appointment. That same year he became president judge of the seventeenth judicial district of Pennsylvania, a position he held from 1875 to 1885. In this capacity he presided over a broad range of civil and criminal matters, bringing his long legal experience and legislative background to bear on the administration of justice in the district. His decade on the bench marked the culmination of his formal public service career in state and federal government.

After completing his term as president judge, McJunkin returned to private legal practice. He resumed the practice of his profession in Butler, Pennsylvania, continuing to be a respected figure in the local bar until 1900, when he retired from active professional life. He spent his later years in the community where he had lived and worked for most of his life.

Ebenezer McJunkin died in Butler, Pennsylvania, on November 10, 1907. He was interred in North Cemetery in Butler, closing a life that had spanned from the antebellum era through the Civil War and Reconstruction into the early twentieth century, and that had included service as a lawyer, militia officer, congressman, and judge.