Thomas Daugherty of Allentown, former president of the Lehigh Telephone Company, and now a director of the Consolidated Telephone Company of Pennsylvania and the Inter-State Telephone Company of New Jersey, was born December 20, 1836, at Beaver Meadow, then Northampton and now Carbon County, Pennsylvania.

Thomas Daugherty, after attending the public schools until twelve years of age, entered upon his business career as a clerk in a general store at Summit Hill. Pennsylvania, where he remained until he was engaged in the location and construction of the Lehigh Valley Railroad as a member of the engineer corps from 1853 until the completion of the road in 1856. During the three succeeding years he was bookkeeper for Packer Douglas, at Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania. Early in the year 1859 he went to the west, crossing te plains from Leavenworth to Denver, Colorado, with an ox team. In the latter state he was engaged in prospecting and mining until the early part of 1861, and during the winter of 1859-60 he served as assistant clerk of the Colorado legislature under the provisional government, while, following the adjournment of the assembly, he taught the first school in the territory, at Golden City, Colorado. In the spring of 1860 he was with the prospecting party that discovered the California Gulch diggings at the headwaters of the Arkansas river, where twenty years later the Leadville diggings were opened. When he went west in 1859 he traveled for two hundred miles through the Buffalo range. The prairie at intervals was covered for miles with herds of buffalo, so that the district appeared to be one vast buffalo robe, thousands of the animals being on their way to the northern feeding grounds. Large numbers of them were slaughtered by the Pike's Peak emigrants, who generally only made use of the hump and tongue, the balance of the carcasses being devoured by the great packs of wolves that followed in the path of the emigrant trains.

Following the outbreak of the Civil war, Thomas Daugherty was mustered into the United States service on the 18th of April,1861, and served for three months under the president's first call for seventy-five thousand men, as a member of Company A, First Regiment of Pennsylvania, Volunteers, commanded by Captain James L. Selfridge. He became a member of Captain William J. Palmer's independent company, the Anderson Troop, on the 12th of October, 1861, at Carlisle. Pennsylvania. The company was raised under an order of the secretary of war, and acted as bodyguard for Major General Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, then commanding in Kentucky. and Mr. Daugherty became a fourth sergeant of the company. He participated in the battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, Perryville, Murfreesboro, or Stone River, and was at Fort Donelson the day after the surrender, where lie saw General Grant for the first time. He was also in the siege of Corinth, Mississippi. and in numerous smaller engagements. For a time he was on duty in the Gault House in Louisville, Kentucky, and witnessed the shooting of Central Nelson by Jefferson C. Davis. On the 26th of March, 1863,Mr. Daugherty was mustered out of service the entire company.

In the following year Mr. Daugherty became bookkeeper at the Yorktown Colliery in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, and continued in that position for thirty years, during the last eight of which time he was also a member of the firm, the business being conducted under the George H. Myers & Company. In November 1894, he removed from Yorktown Colliery to Allentown, and became interested in the independent telephone business. He was one of the organizers and the president of the Lehigh Telephone Company, and remained at its head until the business was merged into that of the Consolidated Companies of Pennsylvania, of which he is now a director. He is also a member of the directorate of the Inter-State Telephone Company New Jersey.