USA > West Virginia > Encyclopedia of contemporary biography of West Virginia. Including reference articles on the industrial resources of the state, etc., etc. > Part 30
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CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY OF WEST VIRGINIA.
Chariton County, Mo., now serving a third term in that office, married Fanny Applegate, of Keytesville, Mo .; James Thomas Rucker, stud- ied law and is now principal of the High School of Lewisburg, W. Va., married Ida Gertrude Riffe, of Greenbrier County, W. Va .; Edgar Parks Rucker, lawyer, located at Prince- ton, Mercer County, W. Va., married Maud Applegate, Keytesville, Mo. E. P. Rucker was nominated by acclamation four years ago for the State Senate of the Eighth District and came within 403 votes of being elected, where there had existed some years before a Democratic majority of 3,000 to 3,500. He was popularly called " the boy candidate" and effectively stumped the district himself, which largely accounted for his flattering indorsement. He also ran for Con- gress in 1892 and polled 20,750 votes with Pro- hibition and People's party candidates in the field, but was defeated by the Democratic can- didate, Hon. J. D. Alderson, who was re-elected by 1,946 plurality. All of Dr. Rucker's sons are successful and prominent. It is seldom that a family of boys grow up so uniformly creditable to their parents. Soon after President Harri- son's inauguration he appointed Dr. Rucker Postmaster of Lewisburg, dating from May 10, 1889. It may be stated in conclusion that Dr. Rucker's army record is well known in Washington, and he is frequently in correspon- dence with the War Department, answering in- quiries relating to important historical events in which he took part and to which he cheer- fully refers in an accurate and comprehensive manner.
JOEL McPHERSON.
JOEL McPHERSON* was born in the village of Upperville, Fauquier County, Va., on the 28th day of October, 1807. He was of Scotch- Irish stock, his father's name being John Mc- Pherson and his mother's Sallie McDonald. Badenoch (Kingussie), Scotland, was, as it yet is, the land and home of the McPhersons, and Kingussie was the capital of their county. The old church-yard there has been the burial-place of the clan for more than five hundred years.
Joel McPherson came to and settled in the county of Greenbrier about the time he reached manhood, and on the Ist day of July, 1830, was married to Amanda McClung, daughter of the late John McClung, of Greenbrier County, and in this county he made his home until his death, which occurred on the 13th day of January, 1888. His wife died June 16, 1887, and their fifty-seven years of married life were singularly beautiful in the complete harmony that existed between them and in the attachment shown each other. Colonel McPherson when he first settled in Lewisburg was employed by Charles Arbuckle & Co. as clerk and salesman in their store; and from the year 1831 until 1850 had control and management of the sheriffalty of the county, and through all that long period he acquitted himself with much credit by his uniform attention and politeness to the court, bar, jurymen, and all having business in the courts. In the year 1846 Colonel McPherson was unanimously elected by his fellow-citizens (having no opposition) to represent them in the Legislature of Virginia. Legislative honors were then sought after and very highly prized; but one term of this representative service fully satisfied Colonel McPherson. He declined any subsequent re-election, preferring the quiet of his own home in the bosom of his family to any such honor. In the year 1849 he was elected Clerk of the County Court by a hand- some majority of the justices then sitting and constituting such court, a very full bench being present, and by subsequent appointments and the suffrages of the people he held that office until the close of the Confederate War. After reconstruction, when the courts of the new State of West Virginia were opened for the transaction of business, Colonel McPherson was, by the Judge of his Judicial Circuit, appointed Clerk and Recorder of the county and elected by the Board of Supervisors its Clerk. These several offices he held for a number of years. When first elected Clerk he had reached the meridian of life; had not had the advantages of early training and drilling in the minute details and duties of Clerk, but his constant presence at the post of duty, his pleasing manner, and won- derful address soon placed him in the front ranks of the clerks of Virginia and West Vir- ginia; and without doubt the county of Green-
* This sketch, prepared by M. L. Spotts, Esq., was first pub- lished in the Greenbrier Independent. It contains a few changes and additions, including the names of his children.
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brier owes him a debt of gratitude for his skill and management in the care and preservation of the public records during the Civil War. In- deed, but for his earnest personal efforts with one of the Federal commanders who was greatly incensed because of certain developments of the battle fought at Lewisburg, the town would certainly have been destroyed. Another writer, in speaking of him as Clerk, says:
" His office was a model of neatness and order. Every book and paper was in its appropriate place and at his immediate command. His cour- tesy to every one, and expressly to those who had business in his office, was proverbial. All in all, I have rarely known his equal and certainly not his superior as Circuit Court Clerk-and I have had some opportunities of observation and com- parison. He was always `at his post. I never knew him to be behind in the entry of his orders or to keep the court waiting a moment; and when the sheriff opened the court in the inorning he was always found erect at his desk, with his order book before him, from which he read in a voice clear and audible to the attor- neys behind the bar the entries of the preceding day. He would have considered it derogatory to the dignity of the court to have remained seated while performing this duty. The sharp- ness with which political lines were drawn after the war, and the fact that he was not in harmony with the dominant political sentiment of the county, lost him some friends and subjected him to much unmerited criticism; but the large outpouring of his friends through the bitter storm of that day in which he was borne to his last resting-place attested the fact that he still held a warm place in the hearts of these old associates."
In March, 1866, Colonel McPherson, George W. Summers, James Burley, Burton Despard, and James O. Watson were, by the Legislature of West Virginia, then in session, appointed com- missioners to act in conjunction with John B. Baldwin, George W. Bolling, Thomas S. Flour- noy, R. H. Maury, and William J. Robertson, commissioners appointed by the Legislature of Virginia, for the purpose of bringing to the at- tention of capitalists the advantages of acquir- ing the charter and franchises of the Covington and Ohio Railroad, etc., and the result of the labors of this commission was the transfer of these franchises to the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company, and the consequent con- struction of that great highway which now tra- verses the two States. Colonel McPherson was
for a long time (since December 25, 1835, when he was commissioned by Governor Little- ton W. Tazewell, until the year 1862, when he resigned) Colonel of the old One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Regiment of Virginia militia, and took great pride in the spring musters and in the training of officers. Where is the full- grown man of Greenbrier who does not recall in the "long ago" the fine personnel of the Colonel mounted on his well-caparisoned horse, surrounded by his staff, leading the regiment to the field of review? Another marked charac- teristic was his love of the mystic order. As a member of Greenbrier Lodge No. 49, of Free and Accepted Masons, he was often called upon to serve as Master of the lodge, and was for many years the only High Priest Clinton Chap- ter of Royal Arch Masons had. As Master, High Priest, Deputy Grand Master, Masonry in the town of Lewisburg was indebted to his de- votion and interest for much of its prosperity in past years. On the 28th day of September, 1829, he was initiated, passed to the degree of Fellowcraft on the 26th of October, and on the 7th of December following was raised to the degree of Master Mason. He was also a de- voted Methodist from conviction, and under his hospitable roof the local and itinerant preacher was ever a most welcome guest. Indeed, his hospitality was unbounded; he was never so well pleased as when entertaining his friends, and he always presided at the board with won- derful grace and ease. As a father he was most untiring in his efforts for the education and ad- vancement of his children, and his devotion to his family was especially marked and tender. The evening of his life was spent in the repose and quiet of his home, " Briarfield," a part of the original White Sulphur Springs estate, and in full view of that far-famed watering-place, whose beautiful grounds are watered and washed by the waters of Howard's Creek and embosomed by Kate's and Greenbrier Moun- tains, and there it was that he passed away on the date above given. The last interview the writer had with Colonel McPherson took place in the autumn of 1887. He then with much feeling and emotion referred to the sorrows and bereavements through which he had passed in the last few months-first the death of a be- loved daughter, then Miss Rebecca McClung,
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who had been an inmate of his family for forty years, and last the wife of his youth, and in that sad recital added, "How could I have borne all this weight of bereavement and sorrow unless sustained by the grace of my Heavenly Father?" We believe that his end was peace, and that he has safely crossed the turbid stream separating the visible from the invisible. Peace to his memory. His remains were laid to rest in the Lewisburg graveyard with Masonic honors. Rev. W. H. Woolf, of the Lewisburg Methodist Epis- copal Church, South, preached the funeral ser- mon in the Presbyterian Church to as large a con- course of people as ever gathered there on a like occasion. Colonel McPherson was the last Clerk of Greenbrier County under the old Virginia dis- pensation. Following are Colonel McPherson's children : Sarah Ann, died in infancy, born April 16, died June 21, 1831; John Harvey, who became a physician and married Mary Jane Hoge, a daughter of Rev. Peter Hoge, of Vir- ginia, deceased, and sister of Judge James W. Hoge, deceased, of Putnam County, W. Va .; Washington Wilson, deceased, named for his birthday, which was the 22d of February; Samuel McClung, deceased, was a surgeon in the Confederate Army, Fifty-ninth Virginia Volunteers, "Wise's Legion;" Mary Copeland, wife of Dr. Samuel H. Austin, a distinguished physician and surgeon of Lewisburg; Rebecca Adaline, who became the wife of John W. Har- ris, Esq., a prominent lawyer of Lewisburg, died February 28, 1887; Joel Crawford, killed by an accident on the Richmond and Peters- burg Railroad, November 25, 1876; and James Calwell, a practising lawyer of Lewisburg, a member of the Town Council, Commissioner of the Circuit Court, and a well-known citizen. A surviving brother of Colonel McPherson is Hon. John W. McPherson, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Christian County, Ky, residing at Hopkinsville.
JOHN W. HARRIS.
JOHN W. HARRIS, Esq., a prominent lawyer of Lewisburg and President of the Bank of Ronceverte, is of English stock and was born in Albemarle County, Va., December 5, 1840, of Miletus B. and Frances C. Harris. His ele-
mentary training was in the schools of the neighborhood, and in his school vacations he was instructed in the rudiments of business in his father's store. To the latter he attached great value, though he never took kindly to the trade of merchandise. At sixteen years of age he was entered as a student of Dickinson Col- lege, Pennsylvania, where he remained several sessions. Returning to his home he read law for a while, and then entered the law class of the University of Virginia, where he remained two years and where he took an active part in the University societies, and was elected Final Orator of the Washington Society. The war breaking out, he entered the Confederate service with a company of students known as the Uni- versity Volunteers, which he was instrumental in forming. After about a year of service he returned to his home with health greatly im- paired, resumed his legal studies, and was ad- mitted to the bar in the fall of 1862. At the close of the war he established and for some time edited a newspaper published at Scotts- ville, in his native county. In January, 1866, he was married to Adeline, daughter of Colonel Joel McPherson, of Greenbrier County, W. Va., and about a year thereafter removed to said county, where he has confined himself closely to his profession, though connected with various important business enterprises, among others the Bank of Ronceverte, of which he is Presi- dent, and the St. Lawrence Lumber Company, of which he is a director. Mr. Harris was elected Prosecuting Attorney of his county in 1872 and served in that position for four years, during which time also he discharged the prin- cipal duties of prosecutor for Monroe. He is a pronounced Democrat and was the first member of his party to make a canvass of the southern portion of the State on a distinctly tariff reform issue, which he did in the year 1882, amid much opposition from members of his party. In the year 1884 he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Congress, and in the nominating convention received the solid vote of Green- brier, Monroe, and Summers Counties-the only counties in which he then practised his profes- sion-and a scattering vote from other portions of the district, but was defeated. In the same year, however, he was elected Presidential Elector, and was appointed to convey to Wash-
FOLGER ALAL
Okey Johnson
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ington the vote of the electoral college of his State. Mr. Harris was married for the second time in December, 1889, to Dora, youngest daughter of the late C. R. Mason, the distin- guished railroad constructor, having lost his first wife some three years previously. Mr. Harris is a scholarly gentleman, of observant habits, which have been quickened by travel at home and abroad, and as a lawyer has risen to eminence in his profession. He has paid a good deal of attention to the timber resources of the State, and at the World's Fair Banquet held at Charleston in February, 1891, made a speech on that subject which was extensively published.
SAMUEL H. AUSTIN.
SAMUEL HUNTER AUSTIN, M.D., of Lewisburg, a distinguished physician and sur- geon and a representative citizen of Greenbrier County, was born March 18, 1840, in Augusta County, Va., and is the son of Dr. A. M. Austin. His mother was Mary L., daughter of Samuel Hunter. In 1843 they moved to West Milford, Harrison County. Samuel had the ad- vantages of the old Virginia system of schools; entered the Virginia Military Institute at Lex- ington in 1856, for two years, then studied medi- cine under his father at the Winchester Medical College. During the first two years of the war he was First Lieutenant in the Twenty- second Virginia Infantry, then till the war closed was Acting Assistant Surgeon in the Twentieth Virginia Cavalry under William L. Jackson. He attended medical lectures in the . College of Virginia at Richmond, and gradu- ated therefrom in March, 1866, and returned to Lewisburg, in Greenbrier County, W. Va., where he still practises medicine, enjoying a large practice and the confidence that his skill and eminence in his profession give him. Dr. Austin is Surgeon of the Second Regiment of the National Guard. He is now and has been for the last six years Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee. He married Mary Copeland, eldest daughter of Col. Joel McPherson, for many years Clerk of Greenbrier County and one of her most prominent citizens. They have an interesting and talented family of seven children. His brother, Charles N.
Austin, was born March 16, 1832, and married Martha J. Armstrong, of Jackson County. He graduated in medicine, class of 1856, from the Cleveland (Ohio) Medical College. During the war between the States he was in the Confeder- ate service, first as Lieutenant, then as Surgeon. In 1864 he resumed the practice of his profes- sion in Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, where he still resides.
OKEY JOHNSON.
HON. OKEY JOHNSON, ex-Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia and ex-member of the Senate of that State and ex-member of the Constitutional Convention of 1872, was born in Long Reach, Tyler County, Va., March 24, 1834. He was one of a family of nine children, of William and Elizabeth Johnson, all of whom grew to manhood and womanhood. His father was born in Hamp- shire County, Va., in 1789. He was by occupa- tion a farmer, and under the old statute of Virginia, which gave the position of High Sheriff to the oldest justice of the peace, he having properly that designation, attained to the office of High Sheriff of Tyler County. He had settled in Tyler County, after having emigrated from Hampshire County in 1813. He brought with him to Tyler County Elizabeth Taylor, his first wife, and to them were born five sons and one daughter; she died in 1828, and he married again, in 1831, Elizabeth Die, by whom he had eight sons and one daughter. The daughter of the first wife married Friend Cochran, who was a prosperous farmer in Pleasants County. The daughter of the second wife married J. W. Carter, D.D., who became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Raleigh, N. C. Okey John- son was one of the sons by the second wife, and, as was customary at the time when he was a boy, he was brought up on the paternal farm, working in the summer and attending school in the winter. He thus succeeded in obtaining a sufficient preliminary education to enable him to enter the high school at Marietta, Ohio, which he did in 1854, graduating from that school in June, 1856. In the year last named young Johnson entered Harvard Law School and gradu- ated in 1858, with the degree of LL.B. After
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his graduation he returned to his father's farm, where it is said of him that he raised two crops of potatoes, besides apples, and, combining the two products, made two successful trading-trips to Memphis and New Orleans. This was doubt- less by way of respite and relaxation after ar- duous study and severe mental labor. Having completed his combined agricultural and mer- cantile undertaking successfully, he began the practice of law in his native county. Here he ran for prosecuting attorney in 1860, but was defeated. The following year, which was that of the beginning of the Civil War, he remained at home, but in May, 1862, he went to Parkers- burg, Va., where he began the practice of the law and continued to pursue it with entire suc- cess. In 1864 he was an Elector on the Demo- cratic ticket which carried George B. McClellan at its head as the candidate for the Presidency. In 1870 he was a candidate for the State Senate from the Fifth District. This district had at the previous election given a Republican majority of 650, and Mr. Johnson made such a successful canvass that he carried every county in the dis- trict not only with this majority of 650 which before had been Republican, but with 100 added to that, making 750 Democratic majority in all. Unfortunately Mr. Johnson was seriously ill at the time of his election and was only able to hold his seat during two weeks, being sick all the time and eventually obliged to return home, where he came near dying with typhoid pneu- monia. He made good use of his two weeks in the Senate, however, where he succeeded in hav- ing passed the " Flick Amendment," for the relief of the disfranchised, and this by a unanimous vote. He eventually resigned his seat in order that the bill calling the Constitutional Conven- tion might pass. To this Constitutional Conven- tion he was elected, by over two thousand major- ity, a member from the Fifth Senatorial District, and, as a matter of fact, he took a most prominent part in the framing of the existing State Consti- tution of West Virginia. In 1872 Senator John- son was Elector-at-Large on the Democratic Na- tional ticket, and in fact during all the years between 1864 and 1876 he was earnestly and enthusiastically and indefatigably engaged as a worker in the interests of the Democratic party. During all these years Senator Johnson was engaged actively in following the practice of
his profession as a lawyer in Wood and the adjoining counties, a remarkable and interest- ing fact in the history of his professional career being that he was admitted to practice at the Suffolk bar (Boston, Mass.) and also at the Parkersburg, W. Va., bar, in the same year, something certainly unusual if not unique. It may be remarked, parenthetically, that Judge Johnson was so fortunate as to receive his law tuition from such men as Theophilus Parsons, author of the accepted standard authority on contracts; Emory Washburn, the distinguished author of a work on the Law of Real Property; and Hon. Joel Parker, ex-Chief Justice of New Hampshire, who were professors in the Harvard Law School at the time when he was an attend- ant at that institution. The fact of his obtain- ing his earliest instruction in the law from such able and profound authorities is to be properly considered in reviewing the career of so eminent a lawyer and judge as the gentleman we are considering. His license in Boston was obtained in July, 1858, and signed by Judge Nash. His West Virginia license was obtained in 1858 and signed by Judges G. D. Camden, David Mc- Comas, and George W. Thompson. In the State Constitutional Convention which met at Charles- ton, W. Va., in January, 1872, and of which Mr. Johnson was a member, he was very active and earnest. Later he devoted time and his best ability in frequent and eloquent speaking on the stump, for the purpose of procuring the ratification of the Constitution which he had helped to frame. In 1876 he was elected Judge of the Supreme Court by a majority of 17,000 votes over his competitor, the Hon. W. H. H. Flick, late United States District Attorney for the District of West Virginia, and entered upon the tenure of his office January 1, 1877. He served his full term of twelve years on that bench, and during seven and one-half years of that period he was President of the court, having been elected to this important position twice, an honor which has never occurred in regard to any other judge since the or- ganization of the court. During his official term the judges who served with him were Green, Haymond, Moore, Patton, Snyder, and Woods. The opinions delivered by Judge Johnson during his term of service in the Su- preme Court numbered about three hundred and
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are contained in the reports of that court, be- tween the tenth and thirty-first volumes, both inclusive, in all twenty-two volumes. It is said of the first opinion written by him and reported in Volume X. of those reports, being in the case of Lockhart and Ireland against Beckley and relating to fraudulent conveyances, that it is cited oftener than any other decision which he made, and that its doctrines were eventually in- corporated in the later text-books treating upon the subject to which that opinion relates. In that opinion, Judge Johnson laid down one of the rules for determining fraud, succinctly and emphatically, in the following words: " Fraud is to be legally inferred from the facts and circumstances of the case, when these facts and circumstances are such as to lead a reason- able man to the conclusion that the conveyance was made with intent to defraud creditors." Nothing could be clearer than this fine exposi- tion of what inust now be necessarily considered a clear principle of law. An able writer has commented as follows on this and other of his opinions :
" The rule for detecting the cunning devices of fraud as thus laid down was new, and is a safe principle to follow in practice. Judge Johnson also laid down another just doctrine touching the question of fraud, and this is that when a conveyance is made to a woman who is inarried at the time, and such conveyance is assailed as fraudulent as to creditors of her hus- band, the burden rests upon her to show that it was purchased with means other than those of her husband. The principles governing cases of fraud have been construed more rigidly by the West Virginia court against the fraudulent grantor than in most of the other States, and Judge Johnson had much to do with bringing about this action of the court. He decided many cases involving constitutional questions, and in every instance wherein his opinion has been reviewed his judgment has been sustained. His opinion holding the provisions in our State Constitution protecting the property of returned Confederates from seizure under the 'War Tres- pass' judgments not in contravention of the Constitution of the United States, was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Freeland vs. Williams, reported in Volume 131 of the United States Reports. His decision in which he held that the Legislature could not exempt any species of property from taxation unless it came within the exemption clause of that instrument was also affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States. His
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