THOMAS, Edward Harper, clergyman, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 11 April, 1811, died in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 18 September, 1869. He was apprenticed at the age of nine years, but succeeded by self-application under great difficulties in his early life in securing a good education. In 1830, having become a member of the Church Of God, a religious denomination organized by Reverend John Winebrenner, he was ordained to the work of the ministry, and for more than twenty years served as an itinerant. In 1854 he took editorial charge of the "Church Advocate," the official paper of his church, and removed to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he resided until his death.--His son, Robert Harper, journalist, born in Philadelphia, 28 January, 1834, received a good English education, served as aide with the rank of colonel on the staff of Governor Andrew G. Curtin, and was commissioner of internal revenue from 1862 till 1866. In 1870 he purchased the "Valley Democrat," of Mechanicsburg, changing the name to the " Independent Journal," and subsequently to the "Farmer's Friend and Grange Advocate." He was commissioner from Pennsylvania to the World's industrial and cotton centennial exhibition at New Orleans in 1884--'5, and also to the American exposition at London in 1887.