Joel Buchanan Danner

Joel Buchanan Danner (1804 – July 29, 1885) was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. He was born in 1804 in Liberty, Maryland, a rural community in Frederick County. Little is recorded about his parents or early family life, but his subsequent career suggests that he received a practical education suited to commerce and local public service in the early nineteenth century Mid-Atlantic region.

As a young man, Danner moved to Pennsylvania and settled in Gettysburg, Adams County, which was then a growing market town and county seat. There he engaged in the hardware business, supplying tools, implements, and related goods to local residents and the surrounding agricultural community. In addition to his hardware trade, he was involved in carriage building, a skilled craft that combined woodworking and metalwork and was essential to transportation in the pre-railroad and early railroad eras. His work as a merchant and manufacturer placed him among the town’s established tradesmen and contributed to Gettysburg’s local economy.

Danner’s standing in the community led to his service in local government. He served as a justice of the peace in Gettysburg, a position that involved handling minor civil and criminal matters, administering oaths, and performing other judicial and administrative functions at the local level. This role reflected the trust placed in him by his neighbors and gave him practical experience in public affairs and the application of law, experience that would later inform his brief tenure in national office.

Danner entered national politics as a member of the Democratic Party, which at the time was one of the two major political parties in the United States and was particularly strong in Pennsylvania. He was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-first Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Representative Henry Nes. His service in the U.S. House of Representatives thus came by way of a special election, and he represented a Pennsylvania district during a period marked by debates over territorial expansion and sectional tensions in the years leading up to the Civil War. Although the surviving record of his specific legislative activities is limited, his election underscores his prominence within his party and his district.

After completing his service in Congress, Danner did not pursue a prolonged national political career. Instead, he resumed his former business pursuits in Gettysburg, returning to the hardware trade and carriage building that had formed the foundation of his livelihood. He continued to live in Gettysburg as the town grew in regional importance and, in later years, as it became nationally known for the pivotal Civil War battle fought there in 1863, though there is no detailed contemporary record of his personal involvement in wartime events.

Joel Buchanan Danner died in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 29, 1885. He was interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, a burial ground that would become historically significant as the site near which President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. His life reflected the trajectory of a nineteenth-century American tradesman who combined commercial enterprise with local public service and a brief period of national legislative responsibility.