Captain Horace K. Langley

Captain Horace K. Langley (deceased), the son of Capt. Samuel G. and Sarah A. (Hilton) Langley, was born at Lee, New Hampshire, about the year 1830. His father later lived in Newburyport, Mass., and was a shipbuilder. [For the ancestry of our subject, the reader is referred to the sketch of Capt. Samuel G. Langley, which appears elsewhere in this book.] Like his distinguished brother, Capt Langley was early accustomed to the water, and when but a lad began the life of a sailor, going as cabin boy with an older brother, John F. Langley, who was sailing on a line of vessels between Boston and New York City. In 1845, the brother was lost, and young Langley returned to his home, and was for a time employed with his father at Newburyport. Along in the 'fifties Horace K. came out to Buffalo, N. Y., and began sailing from that point; subsequently he went to Chicago, and entered the service of the Western Transportation Company, and was with it for many years, during which time he sailed the propellers Omar Pasha, Mohawk, Bucephalus and the Concord - all first-class vessels, some of them in the Detroit and Chicago trade and some running Chicago and Buffalo. He also sailed for Duncan Stewart, of Detroit, the Anna Young, between Buffalo and Saginaw and intermediate ports. After leaving that company's service he came to St. Joseph and went to farming, having years before located his family at that point. Later he sailed the Skylark for a season or two between St. Joseph and Chicago, and then returned to the farm, on which his death occurred December 4, 1875.

Captain Langley possessed many of the sterling qualities of his brother Samuel G., and ranked with the first-class masters then on the lakes. He was a Mason, and in politics a Republican.

In 1849, he was married to Mrs. John F. Langley, whose maiden name was Davis, a daughter of Samuel and Sarah (Chapman) Davis, the daughter being a native of Connecticut, but who grew up in New York City.

Capt. John F. Langley, a brother of Horace K., was a native of Lee, New Hampshire, born in 1820, and at the age of fourteen left home and went to Boston. He seemed determined upon going on the water, and so was apprenticed to a Mr. Davis, of Connecticut, who owned or was on a line of vessels between Boston and New York, and in that company young Langley served out his time. At nineteen he was made master of one of the vessels, and remained in that company's employ until he was lost on the schooner Reecide off Hell Gate, in February, 1845. Captain Langley married the niece of the Mr. Davis referred to, and to this union were born two children; George and Kate. After the death of John F., and in 1849, the widow married the brother, Capt. Horace K. Langley. She now resides at Rockford, Illinois.

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Volume I

This version of Volume II is based, with permission, on the work of the great volunteers at the Marine Captains Biographies site. To them goes the credit for reorganizing the content into some coherent order. The biographies in the original volume are in essentially random order.

Some of the transcription work was also done by Brendon Baillod, who maintains an excellent guide to Great Lakes Shipwreck Research.