History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 14

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In the meantime he was diligently studying law, beginning under Judge James Morrow Jr., of Fairmont. He was ad- mitted to the bar in 1881 and in 1888 admitted to practice before the West Virginia Supreme Court. Judge Meredith in 1882 was elected prosecuting attorney of Marion County to fill an unexpired term, and was then re-elected for a full term of four years. For many years he has been one of the recognized leaders of the republican party in his section of the state. In 1908 he was elected a member of the State Senate, taking his seat January 1, 1909, for a term of four years. That was the year of the memorable deadlock, when fifteen republican senators and fifteen demo- cratic senators failed to agree as to the admission of some elected republicans. A republican cancus was in session fifteen days, Judge Meredith being its chairman, and when these republicans were threatened with arrest for not taking their seats and permitting the organization of the Senate, Judge Meredith and his followers avoided arrest by going to Cincinnati, where they remained about a week and then returned, after which the organization was completed with a republican as president of the body. Judge Meredith became chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

With this exception Judge Meredith was engaged in a growing and important private law practice until January 1, 1921, when he went on the bench as judge of the Circuit Court of Marion County. He was elected on the republican ticket in November, 1920. When he went on the bench Judge Meredith resigned as a director of the People's National Bank of Fairmont and severed all his official relations with other corporations.

Judge Meredith is a member of the West Virginia Bar Association and in 1918 was a delegate to the annual con- vention of the American Bar Association. During the World war he was active in Draft Board work, the Red Cross and Liberty Bond campaigns, and as a "Four Min- ute" man made numerous addresses all over the country.

In 1883 he married Dora Swisher, daughter of B. F. Swisher, of Fairmont. She died in 1886, leaving two sons: Dana S., who was born in 1884 and died in 1910; and Aubrey W., who was born in 1885 and died in 1915, having graduated from the Fairmont High School, attended the Fairmont State Normal, and in 1910 graduated LL. B. from West Virginia University and was coming into a successful practice as a lawyer at the time of his death. The second

wife of Judge Meredith was a daughter of the late Sylvanus Hall, of Fairmont. She died leaving no children. In June, 1914, Judge Meredith married Frances Dent, who was horn at Ironton, Ohio, daughter of H. C. Dent. They have one son, Winfield Scott Meredith, Jr., born January 6, 1916.

ISAAC .TAYLOR PETERS, M. D., has the sterling character- istics and the technical knowledge and skill which make for maximum success in the exacting profession of his choice, and he is established in active general practice at Mayheury, McDowell County. In an important mine prac- tice he is associated with his older brother, Dr. E. F. Peters, in whose personal sketch, on other pages of this work, is given adequate record concerning the family his- tory.

Doctor Peters was born at Camp Creek, Mercer County, West Virginia, January 3, 1890, and is a son of Joseph and Mary Alice (Ellison) Peters, the father having been born in Virginia and the mother in West Virginia. Joseph Peters was a successful teacher prior to his marriage, and thereafter became a prosperous merchant and influential citizen of Mercer County, where he served many years as county assessor.

After leaving the public schools, Doctor Peters entered the Concord State Normal School, at Athens, West Vir- ginia, 1906, and in this institution he was graduated in 1910. He taught one term of rural school and then was made superintendent of the schools of the North Fork and Elkhorn districts in McDowell County, an office of which he continued the incumbent two years. In 1918 he was gradu- ated in the Medical College of Virginia, at Richmond, Vir- ginia. In 1913, the New Medical College of Virginia con- solidated with the University College of Medicine under the name of The Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, and has nothing to do with the school at Charlottesville. In his senior year he served as an interne in the Memorial Hospi- tal at Richmond, and after receiving his degree of Doctor of Medicine he passed seven months as an assistant in the Johnston & Willis Sanitarium in that city, where he gained further fortifying experience. For the ensuing ten months he was associated in practice with Dr. R. V. Shanklin, at Gary, West Virginia, and since that time he has maintained a professional alliance with his brother, at Mayheury. He has in connection with his practice a well equipped oper- ating room and also a limited number of beds for the im- mediate accommodation of patients who may require same prior to being taken to regularly constituted hospitals. Doctor Peters is an active member of the McDowell County Medical Society, and holds membership also iu the West Virginia State Medical Society and the American Medical Association. He is a republican in political adherency, is affiliated with the Blue Lodge, Chapter and Commandery bodies of York Rite Masonry, as is he also with the adjunct organizations, the Mystic Shrine and the Order of the Eastern Star, besides which he is a member of the Knights of Pythias.

In 1920, at Huntington, this state, was solemnized the marriage of Doctor Peters to Miss Lillian V. Davis, daugh- ter of John L. and Dora (Rhodes) Davis, Mr. Davis being engaged in business as a real estate dealer, timber operator and contractor. The only child of Doctor and Mrs. Peters died in infancy.

STEPHEN T. BIRD, D. D. S., a prominent and popular Princeton dentist, has been in the practice of his profession there for over ten years, though for two years of this time he was absent on army duty. Few men attached to the Expeditionary Forces saw and participated in more strenu- ous scenes along the battle front than Doctor Bird.

He was born at Athens in Mercer County, July 8, 1883, and is of Scotch-Irish ancestry and of Old Virginia stock. His parents, J. S. H. and Elizabeth S. (Vermillion) Bird, were both horn in Virginia. His father was a farmer, and in the Civil war became a Confederate soldier in a Vir- ginia regiment under the command of General Breckenridge. He served until captured, and then remained at Fortress Monroe until the close of the war. After taking the oath of allegiance he returned home and resumed his work as a

HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

civilian on the farm. He kept in close touch with public affairs, for many years served on the school board, and was an active member of the Baptist Church.

Stephen T. Bird acquired a common school education at Athens, and supplemented this by attending the State Nor- mal College there, graduating in 1904. The next two years he was a clerk for the Borderland Coal & Coke Company and the Thacker Coal & Coke Company, and in 1906 he be- gan the study of dental surgery at Central University of Kentucky at Louisville, spending his vacations again in the service of the coal and coke companies. He graduated in 1909, and after one year of practice at Bluefield estab- lished his home and office at Princeton, in 1910, and has since achieved a splendid reputation for proficiency in his chosen calling.

His war record is one deserving special attention. Prob- ably no man in West Virginia knows more of the realities of modern warfare than Doctor Bird. June 10, 1917, he re- ceived a commission as first lieutenant in the Dental Corps, but as a matter of fact he performed the duties of a dentist only while in the rest areas iu France, and while on front line duty he was exposed to all the dangers and performed all the services required of regular physicians and surgeons at the battle front, chiefly in first aid. July 14, 1917, Doc- tor Bird was called to duty, being sent to Washington, D. C., and assigned to the Sixth United States Engineers of the Third Division. November 3rd he received orders for over- seas duty and sailed December 3, 1917, arriving at St. Nazaire, France, December 24, 1917. He was with the Sixth Engineers in the Haute Marne sector on construction work for a month, and his regiment was then put on the British front on the Somme River with the Fourth British Army Division. Here it was that Doctor Bird bad his first experience at the front giving first aid to the wounded, and for days was under constant fire. He continued with the British command until June 5, 1918, and then returned to the Marne and was assigned to the French Third Army Corps, and finally the Sixth Engineers were restored to their place in the Third American Army. On July 15, 1918, be- gan the big battle as the Aisne-Marne defensive, when for three successive days the Germans made their last great effort to break through. The critical day was July 18th, and from then until August 14th the battle became known and was properly described as the Aisne-Marne offensive of the allies. All this time Doctor Bird was at the front, and the sights and scenes in which he participated are to him like a maze of horror, and yet they present an accurate picture of the realities of war. After the offensive Doctor Bird and his command were put in the rest area at Gondre Cour until September 4, 1918, were then moved over to the St. Mihiel sector and after three days participated in the Meuse-Argonue phase, there relieving the Seventy-ninth Division on September 29, 1918. Doctor Bird was in the Argonne fighting until October 1st, and was then returned to the rest area at Barleduc, where they remained until the signing of the armistice, November 11th. During the Ar- gonne action Doctor Bird was wounded and for eleven days was in a hospital. A few days after the armistice was signed the Third Division started on its long hike into Ger- many and Doctor Bird was on the march from about No- vember 15, 1918, to Christmas, when they reached their destination at Ochtendung. Here he remained until April 21, 1919, when he received an order to join the Thirty-sec- ond Division for bome, and he went to Brest with the Second Battalion of the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Infantry, sailed out of Brest May 3rd, arrived at Hoboken May 9th, and after a week in Camp Mills went to Camp Meade, where he received his honorable discharge and returned to Princeton. During the war Doctor Bird participated in field duty during five major operations of the allied armies.

Doctor Bird is unmarried, is a member of the Missionary Baptist Church, is a Royal Arch and Knight Templar Ma- son and Shriner, a member of the American Legion, a char- ter member of the Princeton Country Club, and profes- sionally is affiliated with the State and American Dental Societies, and the Mercer, Mingo and McDowell Counties Dental Society.

HON. EDWARD COOPER, who represented the Fifth West Virginia District in Congress throughout the period of the World war, is a lawyer by training and early profession, but for over twenty years has devoted his time and ener- gies to the business of coal operator, and is one of the best known in the Pocahontas field in Mercer County. His home is in the Town of Bramwell, located on the branch of the Norfolk & Western Railroad, near Bluestone Juuction.

Mr. Cooper was born February 26, 1873, at Treverton, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, son of John and Maria (Padbury) Cooper. His parents were both born iu England, and immediately after their marriage came to the United States, about 1863, during the Civil war times, and lived for a number of years in Pennsylvania. John Cooper had been foreman in coal mines in England, and he resumed the same work in this country. He was born in 1838. He was a regular miner in Pennsylvania, but was soon promoted to foreman. In 1872 he removed to West Virginia and began opening mines in the New River coal fields along the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, first at Quine- mont and later at Cooper, near Bramwell. Here he devel- oped the first Pocahontas coal mines in West Virginia, and the first Pocahontas coal shipped from a West Virginia operation was mined and shipped by John Cooper. He was one of the successful coal operators of his time, and was also president of the Bank of Bramwell when he died in 1898. He was active in the cause of the republican party as a layman, and was one of the first masters of the Ma- sonic Lodge at Bramwell and had attained the thirty-third supreme honorary, degree in Scottish Rite Masonry.

Edward Cooper was the second son in a family of six children, and has spent practically all his life in Mercer County. He attended a private school at Pocahontas, Vir- ginia, for three years, and then entered Washington and Lee University, where he took three years in the academic course and spent two years in the law department, gradu- ating in law in 1893. Mr. Cooper actively practiced at Bramwell for two or three years, but in 1898, at the death of his father, gave up his profession and took charge, along with his brother, Thomas H. Cooper, now deceased, of the coal properties at Cooper. His interests as an operator have become widely extended, and he has been a director in some of the most prominent mining corporations in the Pocahontas field, including Mill Creek, Coaldale, MeDowell, Crystal, the Pocahontas Consolidated Company and the Flat Top Fuel Company.

Mr. Cooper for a number of years has been a leader in the republican party in his section of the state. He was a delegate to the Chicago National Convention in 1912, where he supported the nomination of Mr. Roosevelt. In 1914 he was elected a member of the Sixty-fourth Congress, and re-elected in 1918. As a business man of wide experience, a successful coal operator, he was able to do a great deal of valuable work for the Government while in Congress, and during the period of the war.

On October 5, 1895, Mr. Cooper married Frances Doug- lass Smith, of Lexington, Virginia, daughter of James R. and Fannie (Douglass) Smith. Mr. and Mrs. Cooper have two children, Edward, Jr., born October 19, 1897, and Frances Douglass, born October 5, 1902. Edward, Jr., vol- unteered in the Marine Corps at the declaration of war against Germany, and having been trained in the Culver Military Academy of Indiana he was at once made a drill sergeant, and was assigned to duty throughout the war period at Paris Island, South Carolina.

Mr. Cooper and family are Presbyterians. He is a Royal Arch and Knight Templar Mason and Shriner, a member of the Elks and the Moose, and belongs to the Shenandoah Club of Roanoke, Virginia, the Bluefield Country Club, Mercer County Country Club and the Falls Mills Hunting and Fishing Club, also the Pinechest Shooting Club of Thomasville, North Carolina. Mr. Cooper was for eight years a member of the town council of Bramwell, a posi- tion he now occupies.

HARRY BOWEN is a leading operator in the Pocahontas fields of Mercer County, his home being at Simmon Station,

HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

Freeman Post Office, half a mile from Bramwell. He has been active in the coal industry forty years and in later years has acquired widening interests in other affairs.

Mr. Bowen was born October 14, 1860, at Ashland, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, son of Jonathan P. and Hannah (Evans) Bowen, the latter a native of Pennsyl- vania. Jonathan Bowen was less than a year old when his parents landed in this country on coming from Wales. Jonathan Bowen went to work with his father in coal mines when a mere boy, and with the death of his father he be- came the real head of the family at the age of twelve years, supporting them by work as a miner, and from this humble station reaching responsibilities as mine foreman and superintendent while in Pennsylvania. In 1885 he re- moved to West Virginia, joining Mr. Booth as a partner in the Booth-Bowen properties, which had been opened in 1884 by Mr. Booth and were pioneer developments in the Pocahontas field. Jonathan Bowen was a Union soldier in a Pennsylvania regiment and for many years was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Harry Bowen acquired a common and high school educa- tion in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, graduating from high school at the age of sixteen. His association with the mining industry began as utility boy, and he also worked in the blacksmith's shop, and finally became company blacksmith for the Reading Coal & Iron Company, a cor- poration with which he remained for seven years.

In February, 1887, Mr. Bowen came to West Virginia to take charge of his father's business, and has therefore been a resident of Mercer County thirty-five years. He still has the management of the Booth-Bowen mines and opera- tions, and is also vice president of the Bank of Bramwell. Mr. Bowen is a Royal Arch and Kuight Templar Mason, also a Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, and has held all the chairs in the Blue Lodge and is a past high priest of the Chapter and past eminent commander of the Knights Templars. He is a member of the Bluefield Country Club and the Shenandoah Club of Roanoke, Virginia.

Mr. Bowen has achieved a gratifying share of material prosperity, and the inspiration for his work has been his home and family. He has reared and liberally provided for his own children, and is very proud of his seven grandchil- dren. In 1881, at Mahanoy City, Schuylkill County, Penn- sylvania, he married Miss Harriet Hopkinson, daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth (Howard) Hopkinson. Her parents were both born in England. The children born to Mr. and Mrs. Bowen are Elizabeth, now deceased, Jonathan, Ethel, Joseph and Hedley. Jonathan married Miss Stanger and is living at Bramwell. Joseph, who married Elizabeth Pritchard, has four children, named Joseph, Ethel, William and Ann. Hedley, whose home is at Freeman, West Vir- ginia, married Mary Blanton, and their three children are Harry, Hedley and Virginia.

CAPTAIN ROLLO J. CONLEY, a veteran of two wars, and for many years a prominent officer in the West Virginia National Guard, is a Fairmont lawyer, and has practiced his profession in that city since 1909.

Captain Conley is a member of an old Pittsburgh family, but was born during the two years that his parents lived in Fulton, Illinois. His birth occurred March 27, 1874. He is a son of Joseph X. and Marietto (Gay) Conley, a grand- son of Joseph and Mary (McRoberts) Conley, and great- grandson of Hugh Conley. Joseph Conley was for many years in the drug business at Pittsburgh, where he died in 1854. Joseph X. Conley, who was born at Pittsburgh April 21, 1851, learned the drug business and for several years continued in that line in the West. On returning to Pitts- burgh he resumed the same line of business. While in the West he married Marietta Gay, a native of Connecticut and daughter of Rev. William Gay, who for fifty-nine years was a Presbyterian minister.

Rollo J. Conley was educated in the city schools of Pitts- burgh, in Slippery Rock State Normal School in Pennsyl- vania, and finally in the law department of West Virginia University. On leaving normal school he entered the rail- way mail service. He was in the employ of the Government fourteen years, and for the last several years devoted his

leisure time to the study of law in the offices of Judge W. S. Meredith of Fairmont, rounding out his studies with a course in West Virginia University Law School. He was admitted to the West Virginia bar in 1909, and since that year has been gaining a steadily increasing practice in his profession, and has relations with a number of prosperous business undertakings. He is secretary-treasurer of the Willetts Clay Company, secretary-treasurer of the Hall Garage Company, vice president of the Acme Book Com- pany, secretary of the Martin Brothers Drug Company, and director of the Fairmont Building and Loan Association.

Captain Conley has a highly creditable record as a soldier. At the time of the Spanish-American War he ob- tained a leave of absence from the mail service and en- listed in the Tenth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer In- fantry. As a buck private he spent fifteen months in the Philippines, where he was on duty during the Philippine insurrection. On the return trip home bis regiment was given shore leave in Japanese ports. Captain Conley in 1912 entered the West Virginia National Guards as a private in Company H of the First Regiment and after various promotions was made judge advocate general, with the rank of major. In 1918 Captain Conley resigned from the National Guard and accepted a commission as cap- tain in the Quartermaster's Department of the National Army, and in that capacity spent one year in France. He returned home in August, 1919, and was mustered out. Captain Conley was one of a party of 150 members of the American Legion which visited the battlefields of France and Belgium during the summer of 1921. Everywhere they went they were feted, and were received with welcome by both high and low, being entertained by the municipal authorities of many cities, and also by King Albert of Belgium, President Millerand of France and Marshall Foch and others. Captain Conley is a past commander of Heint- zelman Post No. 17 of the American Legion, and is judge advocate general of the West Virginia Department of Vet- erans of Foreign Wars.

Fraternally he is affiliated with Fairmont Lodge No. 9, A. F. and A. M., Fairmont Commandery, Knights Templar, Mountain City Lodge, Knights of Pythias, Fairmont Lodge of Elks, the Kiwanis Club and the Chamber of Commerce. He and Mrs. Conley are members of the Presbyterian Church.

November 21, 1899, Captain Conley married Georgia E. Hall, daughter of Sylvanus W. Hall of Fairmont. The four children of their marriage were: Virginia, born April 23, 1901, died July 12, 1901; Joseph, born August 28, 1902; Frank, born January 11, 1907; and Rollo Hall, born No- vember 10, 1912.

HARRY CLAY HADDEN has made for himself excellent rep- utation and worthy success in connection with mercantile enterprise in the City of Princeton, Mercer County, where he is head of the firm of H. C. Hadden & Company, one of the representative establishments of the city.

Of Scotch and Irish ancestry, Mr. Hadden was born at Oakdale, Pennsylvania, in Jauuary, 1878, and is a son of Alexander A. and Agnes K. (Jackson) Hadden, the former of whom was born in Ireland and the latter in Pennsyl- vania. The Jackson family came from Scotland and settled at South Fayette, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in an early day. Alexander A. Hadden was reared in his native land and came to the United States about 1875. He he- came a mine superintendent in the coal fields of Pennsyl- vania, and was an expert mine man. He died in 1910. His wife died in 1906.

After attending the public schools of his native town and also Oakdale Academy at the same place, Harry C. Had- den found employment, and in the meanwhile attended night school in Duff's Business College, Pittsburgh, Pennsyl- vania, where he gave special attention to the study of bookkeeping and business English. After completing his course he studied surveying, and for eighteen months he worked as a surveyor. He then entered the employ of the Pittsburgh Coal Company and afterward the Boomer Coal & Coke Company, in which the late Marcus A. Hanna, of Cleveland, Ohio, was one of the interested principals, and

Preco J. Conley

HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

in the interests of this corporation he came to Boomer, West Virginia, where the company controlled coal mines. In 1909 he came to Princeton and engaged in the general merchandise business on a modest scale. From this nu- cleus, with fair and honorable dealings and effective serv- ice to patrons, he has developed the substantial and well or- dered business of Hadden's Reliable Department Store, which in every sense merits its title of "reliable." Here are handled dry goods and kindred lines, as well as ready- to-wear apparel for women and children. The success which has attended the enterprise is the more gratifying to record when it is recognized that Mr. Hadden has depended entirely upon his own ability and efforts in making his way to the goal of prosperity. He is a loyal member of the Princeton Business Men's Club, is a charter member of the Princeton Country Club, is affiliated with the Blue Lodge, Chapter and Commandery of the York Rite of the Masonic fraternity, and also with the Mystic Shrine, and he and his wife hold membership in the Presbyterian Church, of which his first wife likewise was a zealous mem- ber.

In 1901 Mr. Hadden wedded Miss Frances J. Scott, of Monongahela, Pennsylvania, and she is survived by three children: Mildred, Harry and Josephine. In February, 1918, was recorded the marriage of Mr. Hadden and Miss Edna French Lipps, daughter of David M. Lipps, who was born in the State of Virginia. The one child of this sec- ond marriage is a son, Earl.

ROBERT LEE DUGAN. In the handling of ready-to-wear garments for both men and women, as well as furnishing goods of the most select lines, Mr. Dugan has established one of the most modern and attractive mercantile empori- ums in the City of Princeton, and the effectiveness of its service is shown in the substantial and appreciative pat- ronage accorded.

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History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 14

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