History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 174

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JAMES P. SCOTT. The year 1922 finds Tucker County receiving effective service from one of its leading attorneys in the important office of prosecuting attorney, and this county official, Mr. Scott, has been a resident of Parsons, the county seat, since 1886.

He was born at Simpson, Taylor County, this state, April 21, 1857, a few years before the creation of West Virginia as a commonwealth of the Union. He attended the public schools of his native village, the West Virginia College at Flemington, and finally graduated from the State Normal School at Fairmont. He taught seven terms in the rural schools and one term as principal of the school at Webster. He retired from the pedagogic profession shortly after at- taining to his legal majority and became the publisher and editor of the Simpson New Era, a weekly paper. Thereafter he read law under the preceptorship of Judge Lucas at Charles Town, and at the age of twenty-three years he was admitted to the bar at Grafton. He soon afterward came to Tucker County and founded the Tucker Democrat, a weekly paper, at St. George, where he also engaged in the practice of law as a partner of Col. A. B. Parsons. He con- tinued these relations at St. George until the county seat was transferred from that place to Parsons, and he followed the county government to its new seat, both in the practice of law and in the publishing of his newspaper, which is now published by Daniel W. Ryan and which is one of the oldest county newspapers in this part of the state, with continued influence as an advocate of the principles of the democratic party.

Mr. Scott has served as a member of the Board of Teach- ers' Examiners for Tucker County, as commissioner in chancery, and is now divorce commissioner of the county, as well as its prosecuting attorney. He was reared a democrat, and has never wavered in his allegiance to the party, his first presidential vote having been cast for Hancock in 1880. He has been for many years chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of Tucker County, has been a delegate to many county, judicial, congressional and state conven- tions of his party, and has given yeoman service in advanc- ing the interests of his party in West Virginia. Mr. Scott served three terms as mayor of Parsons, has been several times elected a member of the city council, and is now serv- ing his third term as city attorney. In 1920 he was elected prosecuting attorney of the county, and in his administra- tion he has vigorously and effectively prosecuted violators of the laws of the state and nation. He is affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America, is a director of and the attorney for the First National Bank of Parsons, of which he was one of the charter stockholders, and he aided also in the organization of the Tucker County Bank, of which he was formerly a director.

In Webster, this state, in the year 1893, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Scott and Miss Virginia Adams, who was there born and reared, her father having been for many years proprietor of the Adams House, a leading hotel in the village. Mr. Adams was a direct descendant of Presi- dent John Quincy Adams and came from Massachusetts to what is now West Virginia, where he passed the remainder of his life. He married Margaret MeClintick, from Lan-

caster, Pennsylvania, and they became the parents of two sons and seven daughters, all of whom attained to maturity. Mrs. Scott, the youngest of the number, died on the 16th oť September, 1915, and is survived by two children, Miss Lah Ruth, who is her father's companion and who presides over the domestic and social affairs of the pleasant home, and Miss Ethel Fay, who holds a position in the internal revenue department of the Government at Washington, D. C.

Mr. Scott is a son of Sandy M. and Rachel (Davis) Scott, the former of whom was born in Monongalia County and the latter in that part of Harrison County that was set off as Taylor County in 1844. Morgan Scott, grandfather of the subject of this review, likewise was a native of Mo- nongalia County, where his father, Col. David Scott, was one of the first settlers, Colonel Scott having come from the South Branch Valley of Virginia to what is now West Vir- ginia after having served as a patriot soldier and gallant officer in the War of the Revolution. After his removal to the wilds of the present West Virginia he endured the full tension of life on the frontier, and in special evidence of this it is to he recorded that his daughters Phoebe and Ann were here murdered by the Indians. Sandy M. Scott was a carpenter by trade, and followed this vocation througout his active career. He was a Union soldier in the Civil war as a member of the Seventeenth West Virginia Volunteer Infantry, was a democrat in politics, and was a citizen of sterling character. His death occurred at Simpson when he was about seventy-six years of age, and his wife passed away in 1876. Lemuel W., oldest of their children, is an architect by profession and resides at West Union, Dodd- ridge County; Dora became the wife of A. E. Lake, and her death occurred at Simpson; James Porter, immediate subject of this sketch, was the next in order of birth; and Bruce was a resident of Liberty, Texas, at the time of his death.

Morgan Scott, grandfather of James P., married Sarah Barker, her death having occurred in Wirt County and that of her husband in Monongalia County. Sandy Morgau Scott was the eldest of their three children. The only daughter first married a man named Barker, who met his death while serving as a Confederate soldier in the Civil war, and thereafter she married William Dulin, her home being now in Calhoun County; Morgan, youngest of the children, died in Wirt County.

WAYNE K. PRITT has been a resident of Tucker County since he was a child of two years, and is now a representa- tive member of its bar, he having been established in the successful practice of law at Parsons, the county seat, since 1911.

Mr. Pritt was born in Randolph County, this state, Janu- ary 23, 1872, and is a son of George W. and Lucinda (Ingram) Pritt, the former of whom was born in what is now Randolph County, West Virginia, and the latter in Washington County, Pennsylvania. George W. Pritt, whose death occurred at Hambleton, Tucker County, in 1892, at the age of forty-seven, was the only child of Edmund and Susan (Ryan) Pritt, the parents of the former having been pioneer settlers in what is now Randolph County, West Vir- ginia, and the lineage of the family supposedly tracing back to Irish origin. Representatives of this branch of the Pritt family were stanch supporters of the Union in the period of the Civil war. Edmund Pritt survived his only son and was a resident of Hambleton, Tucker County, at the time of his death, in 1894, when about seventy-six years of age. The widow of George W. Pritt survived him by ten years and died at Parsons in 1902, when past fifty-four years of age. Of their children the subject of this review is the eldest; Harriet is the wife of Walter Bagshaw, of Parsons; Charles E. resides at Columbus, Ohio; Frank W. resides at Charleston, West Virginia; and Bess is the wife of Robert W. Swink, of Parsons.

Wayne Kennedy Pritt was two years old when the family home was established on a farm near Parsons, and he con- tinued his association with the work of the home farm until he was twenty years of age. That he profited fully by the advantages of the public schools was demonstrated in

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the success which attended his efforts during four terms of service as a teacher in the rural schools of his home county. In the meanwhile he attended the summer normal school at Philippi, and after leaving the pedagogic profession he was for four years in charge of the office of the Hendricks Company at Hendricks. In 1896 he was elected clerk of the Circuit Court of Tucker County, and of this office he con- tinued the incumbent twelve years. In the meanwhile he found his duties and environment a spur to his ambition to enter the legal profession, and with characteristic determina- tion and receptiveness he devoted himself closely to the study of law in a private way, this having continued during the two years which he passed as a student in the Univer- sity of West Virginia, where he specialized in elocution and other branches of value in connection with his chosen profession. He was admitted to the bar in 1911, and has since been engaged in successful practice at Parsons. In 1912, on the republican ticket, he was elected prosecuting attorney of Tucker County, in which office he served four years and added materially to his professional equipment and prestige. Mr. Pritt served several years as chairman of the Republican County Committee of Tucker County, has been an effective campaign speaker and a delegate to state, congressional and judicial conventions of his party, as well as to the republican national convention of 1904 which nominated Roosevelt for the presidency, he having been sergeant at arms of the West Virginia delegation at this convention. In the World war period Mr. Pritt was one of the active workers in the local patriotic ranks, was a member of the Legal Advisory Board of his county, was a Four- Minute speaker in behalf of the Government loans and other war measures, and was chairman of the local com- mittee in one of the drives of the Salvation Army. He is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Elks, Knights of Pythias, and the Beta Theta Pi college fratern- ity, and is a member of the Methodist Protestant Church, in which he has served as a trustee and as a conference delegate. He is still a bachelor.

CLAUDE FREDERICK CUNNINGHAM is an engineer by pro- fession, was associated with railroad and other construction work for a number of years, and since locating at Hunting- ton has carried on a large business with his private capital in the buying and selling of timber and mineral lands. He is also the present county surveyor of Cabell County.

Mr. Cunningham, who was born at Wallace in Harrison County, West Virginia, represents a branch of the Cunning- ham family that came out of Ireland to Virginia in Colonial times. His great-great-grandfather was a soldier in the Revolutionary war. His grandfather, Walter J. Cunning- ham, was born in old Virginia in 1832, and spent the greater part of his life as a farmer in Marion County, West Virginia, where he died at Peoria in 1903. He was a Union soldier in the Civil war. He married a Miss Walker, a native of old Virginia, who died in Marion County.

Ekana F. Cunningham, father of the Huntington business man, was born in Marion County, November 9, 1848, and as a young man removed to Harrison County, where he married and where he followed the trade and business of carpenter in the vicinity of Clarksburg. In 1911 he moved his family to Clarksburg, and died in that city November 6. 1921. He was a republican, a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and in 1865 he enlisted and served during the few remaining months of the Civil war. Ekana F. Cunningham married Selana Hannah, who was born in Har- rison County in 1844 and died at Bulltown in Braxton County in 1900. Their children were: Mattie, who died when one year old; Claude Frederick, who was born June 30, 1883; Clyde, who died at the age of four years; Clint, who died when nine years old; and Maude, wife of Charles Gaines, dispatcher for the Street Electric Railway Company at Clarksburg.

Claude Frederick Cunningham spent his younger life in a county district of Harrison County, attending school there and later, as his practical work and experience showed the need of it, he took correspondence courses and civil en- gineering with the American Correspondence School of Chicago and the International Correspondence School of

Scranton. In the meantime, in 1903, at the age of twenty, he went to work in the engineer corps of the Wabash Railway, serving 11/2 years in the capacity of rodman, for one year was instrument man with the C. C. & C. Railroad, for two years was transit man with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and was then promoted and for four years was stationed at Barboursville, West Virginia, as resident engineer. In the meantime he had studied diligently in the general field of engineering, and had completed his correspondence courses in 1908.

When Mr. Cunningham resigned from the Chesapeake and Ohio service in 1912 he took work as assistant engineer with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad at Birmingham, Alabama for three months, but in August of the same year came to Huntington, where he had an extensive business in the general practice of civil engineering until 1915. Since that year he has devoted his chief time and his capital to the real estate business, buying farms, coal lands and timber lands, handling all such transactions on his own account and doing no brokerage business. His offices are in the Stevenson Building at 1123-27 Fourth Avenue.

Mr. Cunningham was elected county surveyor of Cabell County in November, 1920, beginning his term of four years on January 1, 1921. He is a republican, and in the order of Masonry is affiliated with Minerva Lodge No. 13, A. F. and A. M., at Barboursville, Lodge of Perfection No. 4, and Knights of Rose Croix No. 4 of the Scottish Rite at Huntington, West Virginia Consistory No. 1 at Wheeling, and is a member of the Masonic Club of Wheeling, and Huntington Lodge No. 313, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

On October 14, 1911, at Huntington, Mr. Cunningham married Miss Beulah Thompson, daughter of Robert T. and Ada (Burris) Thompson, residents of Cincinnati, where her father is a passenger conductor with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham have one son, Jack, born April 4, 1918.

WILLIAM HOMER WILSON, M. D. The First National Bank of St. Albans, of which Doctor Wilson is president, is an institution that has combined conservative banking with effective service to the community. A number of the best known citizens in that part of Kanawha County have been executive officers and directors of the bank.

The bank was established in January, 1910, and its capital is still maintained at $25,000, while the surplus and profits are nearly equal to the capital. The organizer of the bank was C. J. Pearson, who was its president until 1921. When he removed from St. Albans and resigned he was succeeded in August, 1921, by Dr. W. H. Wilson, who was one of the original directors and had been vice president for one year before his election to the presidency. The original vice president was M. W. Stark, who about two years ago left St. Albans. The first cashier was R. C. Sweet, who sold his interest to S. D. McGee, who for two years has been vice president and cashier. The bank now has total re- sources of about $500,000, and the deposits equal over eighty per cent of the resources. The bank has steadily paid dividend, and its stock is worth over $200.

Dr. W. H. Wilson was born at St. Albans, November 14, 1875. Oliver T. Wilson, his father, a building contractor, was also born at St. Albans, son of Samuel and Parthia (Teays) Wilson. Samuel Wilson came from Virginia when a young man and was a farmer and tobacco manufacturer. He died at the age of ninety-two, and his son Oliver T., at the age of seventy-three. Oliver T. Wilson married Mary C. Carpenter, and she is living.

Dr. W. H. Wilson grew up at St. Albans, where he at- tended the public schools, and in 1898 graduated from the Baltimore Medical College. He was at Washington the day the first shot was fired in the Spanish-American war. For three years he practiced as assistant physician in the insane asylum at Spencer, and another three years in the Hospital for the Insane at Huntington. This was a wonderful ex- perience and a valuable training preceding his private prac- tice. Since 1904 he has been engaged in a general practice at St. Albans, and is an able physician and surgeon as well

EL. Commingham

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as a successful banker. He is a member of the Kanawha County, West Virginia State and American Medical Asso- ciations.

Doctor Wilson has served several times on the St. Albans Council and also as mayor. He has been vice president and president of the Board of Trade, and is president of the High Lawn Land Company. He is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, a member of the Knights of Pythias and president of the Rotary Club. Doctor Wilson married Kate L. Lackey, of St. Albans.

F. LORY & SONS. One of the older industrial establish- ments of Charleston, ante-dating the World war period, is F. Lory & Sons, planing mill operators. The business was established as a partnership in 1905, and in 1912 was in- corporated. The business employs about twenty-five men, operates the machinery with power produced by natural gas engines, and makes a specialty of interior finish, floor- ng aud house trim, mainly from hardwood lumber. Prior to 1905, when the business came to Charleston, F. Lory had operated a sawmill plant in Clay County.

F. Lory was horn in Switzerland, and was brought when boy to the United States, was reared in Ohio, and learned the sawmill operation in that state. In 1880 he moved to Kanawha County, and he was a figure in the lumber industry of the state until his death in 1914, at the age of sixty-six. The company also bought real estate and developed several lesirable sections of residence property, and still owns some property of this kind in Charleston.

The four sons of F. Lory are now all identified with the business, Ed being president of the company, Fred, vice president, Albert, secretary and treasurer, and Christopher, also having a share in the work. They grew up along saw- mills and planing mills, and Ed Lory has been president since the company was incorporated.

The mother of these sons is still living. Her maiden name was Anna Whitmer, and she was horn at Switzerland, but was married in Ohio. Besides her sons there is a laughter, Elizabeth, wife of C. W. Burdette, of Charleston. The family are members of the Lutheran Church.

Ed Lory married Lottie Mayer, of Charleston. They have five children, John, Anna, Elizabeth, Dorothy and Louise.

FRENCH ARLINGTON YOKE. There is no class of men in the country today who are performing a more important service than that which has for its object the proper instruc- tion of the rising generation through the medium of the public-school system. The conscientious educator of the twentieth century does not consider his obligation to his pupil by any means discharged when he has heard him recite, or has imparted to him the subject matter of the textbook. These duties are really of a secondary importance compared with the urgent need for awakening in the plastic mind a desire for further information and an appreciation of the high ideals in every walk of life. One of the young men of Monongalia County whose life so far has been de- voted to the highest kind of educational work is French Arlington Yoke, superintendent of the Piedmont city schools, whose success in his chosen calling is generally recognized, and whose usefulness as a citizen is unques- tioned.

French Arlington Yoke was born on Stone Coal Creek, Lewis County, West Virginia, April 18, 1891, and he is a son of Solomon Gordon Yoke, and grandson of John Yoke, the founder of the family in West Virginia, who came of English, Irish and Dutch descent. Professor Yoke can trace his family back in this country to an ancestor whose service as a soldier in the American Revolution gives to him and the other members of his family the right to mem- hership in the Sons of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Solomon Gordon Yoke was born in the same locality as Professor Yoke, the year of his birth being 1850. His educational training was limited to that given in the com- mon schools, but he has always been a reader and student, and had little difficulty in qualifying himself for teaching school, and for eighteen years was numbered among the successful educators of Lewis County. During all of that

time he was also engaged in farming, and after he retired from the schoolroom he devoted all of his time to agricul- ture until he moved to Morgantown to engage in the broker- age business. He is a democrat, and has served Lewis County as its assessor. For many years he has been a con- sistent member of the Methodist Protestant Church. He married Helen N. Wolverton, a daughter of James and Elizabeth (Ferrel) Wolverton. James Wolverton was born in Scotland, but was brought to the United States by his parents when he was still a child, and he was reared at Big Bend, Calhoun County, West Virginia, where he was mar- ried. He took no active part in the war of the '60s, but was a prominent man of his locality, where he served as a magistrate, and he was influential in the ranks of the demo- cratic party. In religious belief he was a Baptist. His life was devoted to farming, and he died at Big Bend. Mr. and Mrs. Solomon G. Yoke became the parents of the following children: Frank R., who is superintendent of the schools at Weston, West Virginia. Grace Elizabeth, who married W. H. S. White, president of Shepherd's College of West Virginia; and French Arlington, who is the youngest born.

Growing up in the midst of a highly intellectual atmos- phere it was but natural that French Arlington Yoke should enter the profession which had claimed his father for so many years. After graduating from the preparatory school of the University of West Virginia, at Morgantown, he completed the literary course in that institution, and re- ceived his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1915, since which time he has been actively engaged in educational work. His first school after leaving the university was that of West Union, and he remained there as superintendent. In 1917 he came to Piedmont to succeed W. H. S. White, his brother- in-law. Professor Yoke belongs to the county, state and national educational associations, and is a valued member of all of them, his original ideas and thorough grasp of the problems of the work giving him a high standing among his brother educators.

On October 27, 1915, Professor Yoke married at Oakland, Maryland, Helen Jo Lenhart, of Kingwood, West Virginia, a daughter of James A. Lenhart, of that city, a sketch of whom appears elsewhere in this work. Professor and Mrs. Yoke have one son, Kent Arlington, who was born Septem- ber 22, 1919. Professor Yoke belongs to the college fratern- ity Phi Sigma Kappa. He has traveled the Masonic route from the Blue Lodge through the York Rites to Osiris Temple, Mystic Shrine, of Wheeling, West Virginia, and he belongs to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias. Drawn in the Selective Draft, Profes- sor Yoke was placed in Class 4 and was expecting to be called to the colors when the armistice was signed. Pro- fessor Yoke is earnest, sincere and thorough in his work, to which he is devoting the abilities of a really superior mentality, and the parents of Piedmont are fortunate indeed in having their children under his wise and watchful care and subject to the stimulus of his constant efforts in their behalf.

A. JAY VALENTINE, judge of the Twenty-first Judicial Circuit and a resident of Parsons, Tucker County, has been a business lawyer in that county for more than a third of a century, having tried his first case before reaching his majority. His is an unusual record for a West Virginia lawyer and judge, since he has never represented the defense in a criminal trial and has never appeared in a contested separation case between husband and wife. The civil and business branches of the law have been his special field, and it is also noteworthy that he was never a candidate for public office until he made the race for circuit judge.

Judge Valentine was born near Valley Furnace in Bar- bour County, March 8, 1866, son of Andrew and Rachel (Digman) Valentine, also natives of Barbour County, his mother being a daughter of George Digman. Andrew Valen- tine was a lieutenant in the Confederate army under General Imboden, and was never wounded in service, but for the last eleven months of the war was a prisoner at Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio. He manifested the interest of a good citizen in politics and was a democrat. He died in 1887 and

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is buried near Montrose, West Virginia. The mother died in 1891. They had three children: Judge Valentine; Sarah E., wife of Stephen Murphy, of Montrose; and Carrie B., wife of Thomas Gross, of Levels, West Virginia.

A. Jay Valentine spent the first fifteen years of his life near the hamlet of Meadowville in Barbour County, on his father's farm. In 1882 the family moved to Randolph County, and another five years of his life were spent in the environment of a farm near Montrose. It was immediately after leaving this community that Judge Valentine began his professional work at St. George, then the county seat of Tucker County. llis early education was acquired in the common schools and summer normal schools, and for four years he taught in the rural districts of Randolph County. As he looks back upon it Judge Valentine regards teaching as the hardest work he ever did. While teaching he became interested in the law, made some progress in his reading, and his two principal preceptors were the late A. C. Bow- man of Barbour County and W. B. Maxwell, still practicing in Randolph County and a former member of the Tueker County bar. Mr. Valentine was admitted to the bar at Beverly, then the county scat of Randolph County, in 1887, taking his several examinations for admission, one under Judge A. B. Fleming, another under Judge Henry Brannon and another under Judge W. T. Fee. In his first year of practice he was associated with W. B. Maxwell, of St. George, West Virginia, but after a year he relied upon himself to handle all his law business. That business was principally in the commercial and corporation law, and before many years he had a very extensive clientele.

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History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 174

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