This family attained great longevity, as is again shown in the father of Major Delany, who gave every indication of a hale old age, when he was carried off by the cholera which swept over Pittsburg at one time, when he had reached his eighty-fourth year. In life he was known as a man of great integrity of character, of acknowledged courage, and was remarkable for his great physical strength. He was well known in Martinsburg, where, for a stipulated sum, he obtained his freedom, thence went to Chambersburg, whither his family had preceded him. He bore a scar on his face, the result of a wound, which adds another testimony to the “barbarism of slavery.” It was inflicted by the sheriff of the county, who, with eight men, went to arrest him one morning, because he had nine times torn the clothes from off the person of one Violet, as he was endeavoring to inflict bodily punishment on him. Each time, as he dashed the man Violet from him, he assured him he had no wish to injure him. The sheriff and his men, approaching, were warned by him to keep off. He then fortified himself behind a wagon in a lane, and, being armed with its swingle-tree, bade defiance to the authority attempting to surround him. The better to effect a retreat, if necessary, by climbing backwards he raised himself to the top of the fence, his face to his persecutors. At the moment the top was gained, he was brought to the ground, senseless and bleeding, by a skilfully-directed stone. He was then secured and taken to prison at Charlestown. The sheriff was desirous of shooting him; but Violet, with a view to his market value rather than appreciation of his determined courage, objected most decidedly to this, adding that he was “too good a man to be killed.” The stone was thus substituted for the bullet. With this mark of brutality daily before the eyes of his children, and in its train all the humiliations and bestial associations to which their hapless race was subjected, it is no matter of wonderment that Martin Delany should watch every enactment concerning his race with exactness, and his bitterness against their oppressors and abettors would sometimes outrun his sense of the politic, or that all his efforts should, through life, converge to the same end to contribute his aid to root out every fibre of slavery and its concomitants. On the 15th of March, 1843, he was married to Kate A., youngest daughter of Charles Richards, of Pittsburg, the grandfather and father of whom had been men of influence and wealth of their time. This daughter was one of the heirs to their estate, which had increased in value, as it embraced some of the best property in the city of Pittsburg, estimated at nearly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This was finally lost to them in 1847, simply by a turn of law, in consequence of the unwillingness of attorneys to litigate so large a claim in favor of a colored against white families.