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Gc 975.4 M52 v.1 1195032
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00826 8929
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/menofwestvirgini01biog
MEN
OF
WEST VIRGINIA
VOLUME I
Ec 975.4 M52 V.I ..
ILLUSTRATED.
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BIOGRAPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, GEORGE RICHMOND, Pres .; C. R. ARNOLD, Sec'y and Treas. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 1903.
1195032
PREFACE.
Having brought to a successful termination the task of compiling and editing the sketches contained in these two volumes of the Men of West Virginia, we desire, in presenting the work to our patrons, to make a few remarks, necessarily brief, in regard to the value and importance of biographical works of this nature. We agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson that "Biography is the only true History," and also are of the opinion that a collection of the biographies of the leading men of a State or Nation would give a more interesting, as well as authentic, history of their country than any other that could be written.
The value of the production that we herewith present to the citizens of the Mountain State, containing sketches and portraits of the leading and most repre- sentative men of the State, cannot be too highly estimated. With each succeeding year the haze of Obscurity removes more and more from our view the fast disap- pearing landmarks of the past. Oblivion sprinkles her dust of forgetfulness on men and their deeds, effectually concealing them from the public eye, and, because of the many living objects that claim our attention, few of those who have been removed from the busy world remain long in our memory. Even the glorious achievements of the present age may not insure it from being lost in the glare of greater things to come, and so it is manifestly a duty to posterity for the men of the present time to preserve a record of their lives and a story of their progress from low and humble beginnings to great and noble deeds, in order that future generations may read the account of their successful struggles, and profit by their example. A work devoted to life sketches affords the best means of preserving ancestral history, and it also becomes, immediately upon its publication, a ready book of reference for those who have occasion to seek biographical data of the leading families. Names, dates and events are not easily remembered by the aver- age man, so it behooves the generations now living, who wish to live in the memory of their descendants, to write their own records, making them full and broad in
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PREFACE.
scope, and minute in detail, and insure their preservation by having them put in printed form. From the time when the hand of civilized man had not yet violated the virgin soil with the desecrating plow, nor with the ever-ready frontiersman's ax felled the noble, almost limitless, forests, to the present period of activity in all branches of industry, we may read in the records of the lives of the State's leading men, and of their ancestors, the steady growth and development which have been going on here for a century and a half, and bids fair to continue for centuries to come. A hundred years from now, whatever records of the present time then ex- tant, having withstood the ravages of time and the ceaseless war of the elements, will be viewed with an absorbing interest, equaling, if not surpassing, that which is taken to-day in the history of the early settlements of America.
It has been our purpose in the preparation of this work to pass over no phase or portion of it slightingly, but to give attention to the smallest points and thus invest it with an air of accuracy, to be obtained in no other way. The result has amply justified the care that has been taken, for it is our honest belief that no more reliable production, under the circumstances, could have been compiled.
One feature of this work, to which we have given special prominence, and which we feel sure will proveof extraordinary interest, are the portraits that appear throughout the two volumes.
To those who have been so uniformly obliging and have kindly interested them- selves in the success of this work, volunteering information and data, of which we have been glad to avail ourselves, we desire to express our gratefel and profound acknowledgement of their valued services.
CHICAGO, ILL., May, 1903.
THE PUBLISHERS.
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(Now the Ohio County Court House and Public Building of the City of Wheeling.)
THE OLD STATE CAPITOL BUILDING AT WHEELING.
Men of West Virginia
HON. FRANCIS H. PEIRPOINT.
HON. FRANCIS H. PEIR- POINT .- The late Governor Peir- point, well named the "Father of West Virginia," occupies a high place among American statesmen, and lives now in memory as a patriotic citizen, an inde- pendent thinker, a strong product of the Republic's political life, and at the same time a man of such high and honorable ideals that he will be remembered ever
for his integrity, his manhood and his solidity of character.
Francis H. Peirpoint was born June 25, 1814, in what is now Marion Coun - ty, West Virginia. His father, Francis Peirpoint, was a small farmer and the youth grew to manhood surrounded with the appurtenances of a humble country home. In childhood he ac- companied his parents to Fairmont, or Middletown, as it was then known, and lintil the age of 21 assisted in agricul- tural pursuits. His education up to this time had been only such as was afforded by the local schools, but his ambition was not satisfied and be determined to seek collegiate advantages. That he was capable of and willing to make the journey of 180 miles on foot, in order to reach Allegheny College, his selected alma mater, was but typical of the man, who, later in his career, faced opposing factions and a depleted State treasury with a firmness and resource which brought about success. During his
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season of four and a half years at this institution before graduating, he had the advantage of associating as com- rade and fellow student with such dis- tinguished men as Gordon Battelle, Bishop Simpson, Bishop Kingslea and Homer Clarke, and cemented friend- ships which continued through life.
Returning to West Virginia, he taught school for eight months while preparing to go to Mississippi to engage in the study of the law, where he re- mained but one year, being called home by the illness of his father. He entered then upon the practice of the law at Fairmont and was so engaged at the outbreak of the Civil War. A man of ability and intelligence, he could hardly avoid being drawn actively into poli- tics, although the fact remains that un- til he was elected Governor the only public office he ever held was that of presidential elector. Mr. Peirpoint held extreme abolition views and is con- ceded to have done more than any other man in West Virginia to induce anti-slavery sentiment. After the pas- sage of the Ordinance of Secession in 1861, he addressed the people of all places in the western part of the Old Dominion, urging them to resistance, and was threatened more than once with arrest for his resistance of the civic authorities of the State. Al-
though he was strongly in favor of a division of the State. he opposed as premature a movement to organize Western Virginia into a new State, at the convention held May 12, 1861. It was through his efforts that a commit- tee was appointed to determine "what was best to be done for Virginia." Be- fore this committee he stated his plans, which were considered feasible, and were carried out, resulting in the call- ing of a new convention at Wheeling on June 13, and the election of a Gov- ernor and State officers loyal to the Union; the resulting government in current history is known as the "Re- stored Government of Virginia." Dur- ing the proceedings of this convention Mr. Peirpoint secured the loan from two Wheeling banks of $10,000 on his per- sonal notes, in order to pay the ex- penses of the delegates at the conven- tion, who were, for the most part, with- out money and threatened with evic- tion from their boarding houses. Mr. Peirpoint was unanimously made Pro- visional Governor by this convention. and at the end of the year was regularly elected to the office by the people. At the close of his term of two years he was re-elected for a succeeding term of four years.
After the division of the State, in 1863, Governor Peirpoint removed the
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seat of government from Wheeling to Alexandria, and after the surrender of General Lee removed it to Richmond, arriving in the spring of 1865, and in a few months had completely restored the State government. Nearly the whole judiciary was changed and the leading journals and statesmen of the South were generous in their commendation of the whole body of officials connected with the State government during Gov- ernor Peirpoint's administration. He was the first Governor of Virginia who ever proclaimed a thanksgiving.
When the term of office had ex- pired Governor Peirpoint retired from the political arena. His work was done and well done. In the repose and quiet of his boyhood home at Fairmont he passed the remaining years of his life, his nobility of character and his kind and genial and unaffected simplicity of life gaining him an affection almost amounting to reverence. His eminent services are a part of the history of the State. At the advanced age of 85 years he passed away, and his honored re- mains were placed in Woodlawn Ceme- tery, beside those of his wife, who has preceded him by some years. Gover- nor Peirpoint took a great interest in religious work and throughout life was a consistent member of the M. P. Church.
HON. JOHN JAY JACKSON.
HON. JOHN JAY JACKSON, known as "The Iron Judge," was born in Parkersburg, Virginia, now West Virginia, August 4, 1824, and is the eldest son of John J. and Emma G. ( Beeson) Jackson.
The first of the family in America was John Jackson, a native of Ireland, who came to this country and settled in Calvert County, Maryland, about 1748, removing with his family to Northwest- ern Virginia (now the State of West Virginia) about 1768. His eldest son, George, the great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was colonel of a regiment in the Revolutionary Army, and in Washington's campaigns won rank and reputation. In 1788 Col.
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George Jackson was elected a member of and represented the Northwestern District of Virginia in the convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States, and subsequently repre- sented this district for several terms in Congress. His son, John G. Jackson, was the first district judge of the West- ern District of Virginia, serving from IS19 until his death in 1825. John J. Jackson, the father of the present bearer of the name, a graduate of West Point in 1818, served on the staff of Gen. An- drew Jackson, resigning in 1823. He was prosecuting attorney for 25 years for the County of Wood, State of Vir- ginia, and for five years was a member of the Legislature from the said county, and was a member of the Virginia Con- vention of 1865-61, but opposed the Ordinance of Secession. The mater- nal grandfather of John J. Jackson, the late Hon. Jacob Beeson, was commis- sioned by President Monroe in 1819, the first United States district attorney of the Western District of Virginia, a position he filled until his death in 1823.
The subject of this sketch received his early education in private common schools, and was prepared for college by Rev. Festus Hanks ( Princeton, 1829). He entered Princeton in the sophomore class in 1842, was selected as one of the orators of his class at
commencement, and graduated in 1845. After studying law with his father and with Judge John J. Allen, of the Su- preme Court of Virginia, he was ad- mitted to the bar in 1846, and the fol- lowing spring began the practice of his profession in the courts of Western Virginia. In 1848 he was appointed by the County Court of Wirt County to be first prosecuting attorney for the Commonwealth, and the following year was also appointed prosecuting attorney for Ritchie County. Judge Jackson served with honor and ability as a mem- ber of the Virginia Legislature for four years, being first elected in 1851, and re-elected in 1854. He was also an elector on the Whig ticket in the presi- dential elections of 1852, 1856 and 1860, and was one of the electors who cast the vote of Virginia for Bell and Everett.
August 3, 1861, Judge Jackson was appointed by President Lincoln to be judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Vir- ginia, and for over 42 years he has dis- charged the duties of this office with wisdom, fidelity and righteousness, and has won the respect and confidence of the bar and the people of his native State. Since his elevation to the bench, Judge Jackson has taken no active part in politics.
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While in college he was a member of the Cliosophic Society.
He was married July 8, 1847, to Carrie C. Glime, of Parkersburg. They have two children : Lily Irene and Ben- jamin Vinton Jackson.
"Judge Jackson is now conspicuous in the public eye as the jurist who holds radical views as to the rights of labor agitators to agitate, and as to the pun- ishment which may properly be inflicted upon them, because he is the author of the now famous contempt decision in the case of 'Mother' Jones and other agitators for the United Mine Work- ers.
"In studying the character of this unique man, now nearly 79 years of age, go back to his younger days and see what he was then. An incident at Richmond serves well our purpose :
"The citizens of the Virginia capital gave a banquet in honor of the Whig electors. This young lawyer from what was then called Northwest Vir- ginia was down for a toast. Speakers who preceded him talked little but se- cession. Lincoln had been elected, South Carolina was preparing to go out of the Union, Southerners feared and detested the new regime and abhorred the threatened coercion of sovereign States. The heart of aristocratic, in- trepid Virginia was fired with the new
idea, and this night it leaped into flame. Speech after speech was made in favor of secession. The tide was running strong that way.
"When Jackson's turn came his blood was hot with indignation, but he controlled himself and started calmly. He knew the fierceness of the passion which he had to face, and realized the need of caution. He began with the simile that our sisterhood of States could be compared to a family. The family must have a head, responsible and authoritative. It was for the head of the family to issue his orders, to lay his injunctions, for the good of all. If his commands were disobeyed it was his duty to punish. The Federal govern- ment at Washington was the head of the Union family. Every citizen of the Republic, every foot of soil was subject to its sovereign will.
" 'Damn him, he's in favor of coer- cion!' cried a rich planter from the other end of the banquet hall. At this a storm of hisses broke, and for a few moments it was doubtful if the audience would permit the speaker to continue. Hisses greeted every word he uttered.
"Finally a measure of quiet was re- stored, and Jackson went on, nothing daunted.
"'Would you coerce a sovereign State?' a voice interrupted.
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" 'There is no such thing as a sover- eign State,' he retorted. 'All the States in this Union are satellites revolving around the central sun, which is the government at Washington.'
"At this point more hisses filled the air and the banquet hall was in an uproar.
" 'Would you coerce South Caro- lina?' called out a man with a great voice.
"'If South Carolina attempted to leave this Union of States, one and in- separable, now and forever,' roared Jackson in reply, 'if that child rebels against the authority of the head of the national family, by the Eternal, I'd whip her till she was ready to come back again !'
"More hisses, mingled with cries of 'Pull him down! Pull him down!'
" 'I am a Jackson and you can't pull me down!' was the defiant answer.
"This paraphrase of the words of Old History caught the crowd. A latent sentiment in favor of the Union began to express itself and the speaker found he had friends in the audi- ence.
"With the tide now running his way, the bold young orator shamed his hear- ers for their threats to pull him down. 'Is this our Virginia?' he asked. ‘Are you the sons of the cavaliers, gallant
and generous ? Has it come to this, that a Virginian cannot enjoy freedom of speech before an audience of Vir- ginians ?'
"He asked them what they of East Virginia had to complain of anyway. Their slaves were secure. They had the Fugitive Slave Law. They lost few slaves, because they had Maryland between them and the North. The country from which he came, up on the Ohio River, had lost more slaves than all of the eastern part of the State. His own father's plantation had lost more than all the plantations along the James and the Rappahannock.
" 'The people of my part of the State have uncomplainingly borne our losses,' he declared. 'We like our slaves, but we like the Union better. And I say to you here and now, that if the State of Virginia secedes from the Union, as sure as there is a God in Heaven. North- west Virginia will secede from the State of Virginia !'
"Like a bolt of thunder from a clear sky came this declaration, bold and prophetic. It threw the assemblage in- to an indescribable uproar. But it set in motion the waves of thought which at one time promised to hold the Old Dominion in the Union.
"In those days there were few sten- ographers. Speeches were rarely re-
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ported in full. But an imperfect ac- count of Jackson's courageous address was printed in the New York Herald. It attracted the attention of Lincoln. Jackson was summoned to Washington and asked to take the United States judgeship. 'You are the man we want and must have,' said Lincoln; ‘a born Virginian who can make a speech like that at Richmond is the man we need on the bench.' Jackson demurred. He was doing well with his law practice. The salary of the judgeship was only $2,500 a year. He asked two or three days for consideration, and while he was considering the President sent his nomination to the Senate and it was confirmed.
"Forty-two years ago Mr. Lincoln signed the commission. Judge Jack- son is the senior member of the Federal bench. It is said, and probably with truth, that he had tried more cases than any other man that ever sat in a United States Court. John Marshall and Ste- phen J. Field sat 34 years in the Su- preme Court. Judge Jackson is seven years past their mark, and bids fair to be in the harness for many years to come."
As was given in the same article from which the foregoing is quoted, "Judge Jackson comes from one of the oldest and most distinguished families
of the State, and is a near relative of 'Stonewall' Jackson. His father, Gen- eral Jackson, was admitted the strong- est and most influential Union man in Western Virginia when the war oc- curred. The Judge's brother was once Governor of the State, and another brother was one of the most distin- guished State judges this State has ever produced. Manual strength, great brain power and uncompromising hon- esty have been characteristics of the family. In a family of intellectual giants, he is universally considered the strongest. Very positive and of great moral and physical courage, yet he is known as one of the very kindest of men. His sentences of criminals have always been the very lightest and most merci- ful, and in cases calling especially for mercy and sympathy. All who know him join in saying that his sympathy for suffering humanity may sometimes override his judgment. As evidence of this, since he imposed the punishment upon the defendants in the recent strike cases, every one of them has been re- leased from confinement by his own order, after they came into court and made the promise that if they were re- leased they would not further violate the law or the injunction of the court. "Had he desired political distinction he could have been in the United States
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Senate from this State for years; in fact, he was prominently considered and earnestly urged to accept second place on the ticket with Mr. Bryan when the latter was first nominated for the Presidency, but this he positively de- clined.
"In the crisis of separating West Virginia from the Mother State and preserving civil authority in the land of unceasing battle during the war, he showed an ability that has never been excelled. His stand for the Union was worth armies of men in the Federal cause. Just before 'Stonewall' Jack- son drove Banks out of the Valley of Virginia, the Department of Justice re- quested Judge Jackson to go to Win- chester and hold a term of the United States Court with a hope that it would be attended with the same result that he had accomplished at Charleston, West Virginia, and quiet to some extent the situation of that region of country. He arrived there the day before 'Stone- wall' Jackson drove Banks out of the Valley, and was unable to hold his term of court. 'Stonewall' Jackson said that he would have rather caught the Judge upon that occasion than the whole of Banks' army. This instance was com- municated to the Judge by another re- lative; Gen. William L. Jackson. All three of these gentlemen were cousins.
"These matters of personal charac- ter are mentioned to show that a man of those elements would most unlikely render a corrupt decision, and that the chance of mistake about the facts or the law would be very rare.
"The injunction itself prevented one person from destroying the property of another; kept those who wanted to work from intimidation and violence from those who tried to prevent them from working. It did not prohibit any- one from organizing or joining any trade union ; it did not prevent anyone from striking or joining the strike; it simply did what every other court act- ing under the American and English law has done in such cases without ex- ception for the last four hundred years.
"The defendants in the strike cases violated that injunction as was shown in the trial, by such weight of evidence that but one of the defendants dared to go on the witness stand and deny it, and that one only made equivocal de- nials.
"Judge Jackson found them guilty and imposed punishment for their guilt. which every fair minded man must ad- mit was very moderate.
"There are many mooted questions of law concerning conspiracies, organi- zations, and boycotts connected with
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the labor problem, but none of these questions were involved in Judge Jack- son's decision. He simply decided what every other court (without ex- ception ) has held when the same char- acter of questions was before it for hearing.
"If it is wrong for one man to keep another from work when that other de- sires to labor, and if it is wrong to pre- vent one man from injuring or destroy- ing another man's property, then it is the fault of the law, as has been pro- nounced by an unbroken line of deci- sions for centuries past, and it is not the fault of the court whose sworn duty it is to administer the law.
"There is much talk about the power of the court to punish for contempt, and whether the guilt of those accused of violating an injunction should not be inquired into by a jury.
"Now, whether this power is right or wrong, it is not the fault of the courts, but of the law-making authority, for hundreds upon hundreds of deci- sions from the hightest State and na- tional courts in this country hold that it is legal power rightfully invested in the court by the law, and could not be ex- ercised by a jury. And, therefore, if the law is wrong the law-making au- thority should repeal it. While the law stands unrepealed, can we in semblance
of justice attack the courts and pile abuse and calumny upon them for administering the law just as they find it, when they would, in fact, violate their oaths and be liable to impeachment if they failed or refused to enforce it as it is, but rather as they personally might think it should be?
"But an injunction is merely a pro- nunciation of the law on the statement of facts before the court, and like every other sentence of the law imposed by courts, its only beneficial effect is in being enforced. The authority to grant an injunction must carry with it the authority to enforce it the same as the power to pronounce the sentence of death upon a murderer, and must also possess the power to direct the proper officer to execute the sentence and to see that it is done. It is less than useless to grant an injunction unless it is to be enforced. But the vital point to be kept in mind is that Judge Jackson en- forced the law only as it is found and as he found it.
"When the defendants were before Judge Goff on a writ of habeas corpus, 167 decisions of the highest courts of this country and England were cited, showing the legal authority of the court to impose the sentences upon the de- fendants, which were imposed by Judge Jackson."
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