History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 37

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HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

at the age of nine years. Grace is the wife of Winton E. White, a farmer at Point Pleasants in Mason County. Miss Maude is at home. Laura, a former teacher, is now attending the Mountain State Business College at Parkers- ourg. Miss Mary teaches the Wolf Run School in Pleas- ants County. Miss Dicie is at home. Georgia is the wife of Ralph A. Smith, an employe of the Octo Gas Company at Flushing, Ohio.

Guy Carleton MacTaggart was educated in the rural schools of Pleasants County and the public school at St. Marys. He left school at the age of eighteen, and his first work as a teacher was done in the Spice Ruu School. Then followed a term in the Raven Rock School, two terms it Mount Olive, his home school, three terms at Eureka and one term at Belmont, all in Pleasants County.

Mr. MacTaggart, in November, 1912, was elected county superintendent of schools to fill a vacancy caused by the leath of his predecessor. For that reason he began his luties immediately, and in 1914 was elected for the full four year term and in 1918 for a second full term, run- ning from 1919 to 1923. His offices are in the Graded School Building on Washington Street in St. Marys. He has under his supervision seventy-six schools, seventy-six teachers, with a scholarship enrollment of 2,500.

He is a member of the State Educational Association and Ohio Valley Round Table, and keeps in touch with all the progressive movements in educational affairs. He was a member of the County Council of Defense at the time of the war, a Four-Minute Speaker, and did all the work he could for the successful prosecution of the war. He is a republican, a member of the Baptist Church, is affiliated with St. Marys Lodge No. 41, F. and A. M., Sistersville Chapter No. 27, R. A. M., Mountain State Com- mandery No. 14, K. T., and Nemesis Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Parkersburg.

Mr. MacTaggart's home is at Eureka, where he owns a modern residence. Ile married at Eureka, November 29, 1917, Miss Judith A. Ruckman, daughter of Aaron and Rhoda (Outward) Ruckman. Her mother died in 1916 and her father is a farmer at Eureka.

ORION LEE LAZEAR. Many years ago, when Sistersville was just coming into prominence as an oil center, a group of young men of enterprise, under the name of Lazear Brothers, took hold of a small business as dealers in feed and grain, and while death has removed one member of the firm the old title is still continued, with Orion Lee Lazear as the active manager of a business that now cov- ers a wide scope, including flour and feed manufacturing, ice and the handling of other commodities.

Orion Lee Lazear was born in Tyler County, West Vir- ginia, January 22, 1878. The Lazears have been in Tyler County for over eighty years. It is a family, as the name indicates, of French stock, and the name was transplanted to America shortly after the Revolution. For a number of years representatives of the name lived in Greene Coun- ty, Pennsylvania. The grandfather of O. L. Lazear was Joseph Lazear, a native of Greene County, where he mar- ried Mary Gray, of the same county. In 1838 they left their farm in Greene County and moved to Tyler County and spent the rest of their lives on a large farm on Mid- dle Island Creek, seven miles east of Sistersville. Among the children of this pioneer couple who reached mature years were Clark, Franklin and John W.

John W. Lazear was born in Greene County in 1837, and was an infant when the family moved to Tyler County. He was reared and married there, became a successful farmer, served six years as member of the Board of Edu- cation of Union District, and for öne term was a mem- ber of the Tyler County Court, serving in this office six years. He was a republican and was a prominent worker in the Protestant Methodist Church. He married Nancy J. Strouss, who was born at Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1842, and is still living at Sistersville. Her parents were Wil- liam and Margaret (Oliver) Strouss, and her father for many years was a mate on an Ohio River steamboat. John W. Lazear, who died in 1900, was the father of a family of ten children: Joseph S., who was in the livery busi-

ness at Mannington, West Virginia, and still had his home there when he died at Wheeling in 1918, at the age of fifty-two; William M., who was one of the firm of Lazear Brothers at Sistersville, where he died in 1909, at the age of forty-one; Nora, who died in Sistersville in 1909, aged thirty-nine, was the wife of Arza E. Underwood, a flour miller, who died at St. Mary's, West Virginia; Ida, wife of Lewis M. Thomas, a farmer at Kirkersville, Ohio; Jesse F., who was a teaming contractor and lived near Cameron, West Virginia, but died in the hospital at Wheeling in 1899, at the age of twenty-seven; George W., a wholesale dealer in hay and coal at Mount Vernon, Ohio; Orion Lee; James H., a farmer at Kirkersville, Ohio; John B., in the furniture and undertaking business at Mannington; and Ira F., a traveling salesman, with home at Wheeling.

Orion Lee Lazear lived on his father's farm until he was nineteen years of age. In the meantime he attended the rural schools and a subscription school at Middlebourne. For 21/2 years he worked for his brother William at Man- nington, and then he and his brothers William and George W. bought a small feed and grain business at Sistersville from its former proprietor, S. W. Lawrence. This was the beginning of the firm Lazear Brothers. In 1906 Wil- liam and O. L. bought out their brother George, and at the death of William, in 1909, his widow succeeded to his interests, but Orion L. has continued as active manager, and through successive developments has made Lazear Brothers a firm of the highest financial standing in this section of the state. The firm owns the plant and offices at 406 Diamond Street. In 1901 they bought from Ben- jamin Showalter, a retail ice business, and since then Lazear Brothers have supplied Sistersville with practically all the ice for domestic purposes. In 1917 Mr. Lazear bought from E. Roome the Riverside Mills, an old milling establishment on Water Street, with a capacity of thirty- five barrels of flour per day, and doing a custom business in the grinding of feed and meal.

Besides this extensive business Mr. Lazear is secretary and treasurer and a stockholder of the Sistersville Under- taking Company. Lazear Brothers are stockholders in the Oil Review Publishing Company of Sistersville.

Mr. Lazear has done his modest part in community af- fairs, serving two years on the City Council, votes as a republican, is a member of the Presbyterian Church, is a past master of Phoenix Lodge No. 73, A. F. and A. M .; member of Sistersville Chapter No. 27, R. A. M .; Moun- tain State Commandery No. 14, K. T .; Nemesis Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Parkersburg; and is a past ex- alted ruler of Sistersville Lodge No. 333, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

In 1901, at Mannington, Mr. Lazear married Margaret I. Enoch, daughter of Nathan and Frances (Hopkins) Enoch, now deceased. Her father was an oil field worker. Mrs. Lazear died in January, 1909, at Sistersville, leaving two children: Nancy F., born February 15, 1904, now a student in the Mount de Chantal Academy at Wheeling, and Paul, horn December 26, 1908. On April 9, 1913, at Sistersville, Mr. Lazear married Miss Anna R. Morrissey, daughter of Jack and Mary Elizabeth Morrissey, now deceased. Her father was also an oil field worker.

EZEKIEL DEAN GARDNER, who is established in the plumb- ing and tinning business in his native city of Martinsburg, Berkeley County, was here born on the 9th of August, 1867, and he is a son of John F. and Emma (Showers) Gardner. John F. Gardner was born at Smithsburg, Washington County, Maryland, a son of George Gardner, who is sup- posed to have been born at Reading, Pennsylvania, the latter having been a son of one of two or three brothers who came from Holland to America in the Colonial period of our national history and established residence in Pennsylvania. George Gardner learned the weaver's trade, at the time when weaving was done by hand. He lived for a number of years at Smithsburg, Maryland, and then came to Mar- tinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), where he died at the age of eighty-four years. The maiden name of his wife was Getzendanner, and she was reared at Frederick, Maryland. She preceded him to the life eternal.

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John F. Gardner received good educational advantages, and as a young man he taught school on Stephen Street at Martinsburg until the outbreak of the Civil war, when he engaged in the provision business, to which he here gave his attention until his death, at the age of fifty-two years. His wife was a daughter of Ezekiel Showers, who was an early settler in Berkeley County, where he purchased a large tract of land, including that now comprising Green Hill Cemetery, an appreciable portion of his landed estate being now within the city limits of Martinsburg. Mr. Showers erected and equipped a woolen mill on Tuscarawas Street, and this he operated successfully in addition to his farming enter- prise. His wife, whose maiden name was Susan Sibert, was a member of the well known family of that name iu this section of West Virginia. Mrs. Emma (Showers) Gardner died at the age of sixty-seven years. Her children were six in number: Susan, Hannis, Kate (who died young), John Franklin (deceased), Ezekiel Dean, and Roberta Lee (died at the age of twenty-five years).

Ezekiel D. Gardner gained his early education in the public schools of Martinsburg, and as a youth he served an apprenticeship to the carpenter's trade. After follow- ing this trade for a time he established himself in the plumbing and tinning business, in which he here continued until 1904, when he was elected sheriff of the county. Upon the completion of his term of four years he was renamed for a similar period as a clerical assistant in the office of the sheriff, and next served four years as deputy sheriff. At the expiration of this last period he resumed business in the plumbing and tinning line, in which he has continued with excellent success. Mr. Gardner is affiliated with Equality Lodge No. 44, A. F. and A. M .; Lebanon Chapter No. 1, R. A. M .; Palestine Commandery No. 2, Knights Templars; the Lodge of Perfectiou; Osiris Temple, Mystic Shrine, at Wheeling; and also with the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

At the age of thirty years Mr. Gardner married Miss Mary Cecelia Sullivan, who was born and reared at Martins- burg and who is a daughter of Michael and Elizabeth Sulli- van. Mr. and Mrs. Gardner have two children: Louise Marie and John Frederick.

ROGER EARL WATSON, who is engaged in the successful practice of law at Martinsburg as one of the able and repre- sentative members of the bar of Berkeley County, has the distinction of being the only person born in the old home- stead of Gen. Charles Lee, a Revolutionary officer, at Lee- town, Jefferson County, West Virginia, the date of his nativity having been February 10, 1886.

The lineage of the Watson family traces back to stanch English origin, and the name has been one of prominence in the history of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, in connection with both civic and material development and progress. From Scotland, via England, James Watson with three brothers came to America prior to 1740, and settled in St. Mary's County, Maryland. He married Mary Greene, who, according to family tradition, was a sister of Gen. Nathaniel Greene, the distinguished Revolutionary officer. James Watson bought land near Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland, where he developed the fine estate known as Chestnut Ridge. By marriage the Watson family became related to Charles Carroll of Carrollton, another dis- tinguished figure of the Revolutionary period. Numerous representatives of the family were identified with early Indian conflicts, and members of the family also gained fame as scouts and soldiers of the patriot forces in the war of the Revolution. Among the numerous children of James and Mary (Greene) Watson were three sons, Joseph, Zeplanialı and James Greene, and through one of these sons the subject of this review is a descendant of James Watson, one of the three original representatives of the family in America.

John James Watson, father of him whose name initiates this article, was born in what is now Jefferson County, West Virginia, August 15, 1836, his father, James Watson, hav- ing heen born in Maryland, and who came thence to Vir- ginia and developed a large farm estate in the vicinity of Leetown, Jefferson County, he having been the owner of a

goodly number of slaves. He was somewhat more than seventy years of age at the time of his death. The maiden name of his wife was Elizabeth Shaull, and their children were ten in number, namely: Benjamin, George, John J. Ephraim, Charles, Snowden, Joseph, Daniel, Lydia and Elizabeth.

John J. Watson was reared on the old homestead, and a the inception of the Civil war he entered the Confederate service, in which he participated in the first battle of Bul Run and many other important engagements, besides which he served for a time as courier between Generals Lee and Jackson. He was wounded in the forehead, and bore the scar until his death. In the last year of the war he was : member of Clark's Cavalry, and he was its last survivor He was present at the surrender of General Lee, his service having covered the entire period of the war. After the war he was for twenty-five years engaged in mercantile busines at Charles Town, Jefferson County, and he then removed to Martinsburg, where he continued a few years in the same line of enterprise, and then retired from active business his death having here occurred November 1, 1921. Hi wife survives hin, her maiden name having been Ella Vir ginia Rogers. Her birth occurred in Jefferson County, she being a daughter of Isaac and Drusilla (Nicely) Rogers The only child is Roger Earl, immediate subject of thi sketch.

In 1904 Roger E. Watson graduated from the Martins burg High School, as president of his class, and in the same year he entered the University of West Virginia, where he took a course in the department of chemistry. For two years, from 1906, he was engaged as a chemist with the H. C. Frick Coke Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and he then entered the law department of the University of West Virginia, in which he was graduated in 1910, h having been president of his class in the junior year. Afte: receiving his degree of Bachelor of Laws, with concomitan admission to the bar of his native state, Mr. Watson opened an office at Martinsburg, where he has developed a sub stantial and representative law practice and gained secur vantage-ground as a resourceful trial lawyer and conserva tive counsellor. He has been active in local campaign service of the democratic party, and is one of the loya and progressive citizens of the fine little city that is the judicial center of Berkeley County. Mr. Watson is affiliated with the Pi Kappa Alpha and the Theta Nu Epsilon fra ternities of the University of West Virginia, and as ar undergraduate in that institution he was active in athleti affairs, he having been assistant manager of the basebal team in 1910 and manager of the second team of that year

Mr. Watson married, July 4, 1919, Miss Catherine Me Harg, of Boston, Massachusetts, the one child of this union was Roger Edward.

C. WARDEN PIPPEN has devoted considerably more than half his lifetime to the business and profession of life in surance. He is a man of unusual achievements in that call ing, which demands the broadest qualifications of industry resourcefulness and commercial integrity.

Mr. Pippen, who is general agent in West Virginia for the Massachusetts Life Insurance Company, was born a Baltimore, Maryland, in 1884, son of Charles Edward and Roberta O. (Hamill) Pippen. His father, a native 0; Gloucester County, Virginia, moved to Baltimore when : young man and married there a daughter of Robert Warder Hamill, who owned and operated the first steam flour mil in Baltimore.

C. Warden Pippen acquired a good general education il the public schools of Baltimore, and finished his third yea in the City College of Baltimore. He was only seventeen when, in 1901, he gained his first practical knowledge 0 the life insurance business as a clerk in the Baltimore offic of the New York Life Insurance Company. He was ther two years, and then removed to Atlanta, Georgia, and be came assistant cashier for the Mutual Life Insurance Com pany. Subsequently he went to Nashville, Tennessee, a cashier for the same company in that city, and later wa transferred to Washington as superintendent of agents The eleven years he spent with the Mutual Life were th

Walter A. Duyden

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HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

period in which his powers were developed and in which his reputation became widely extended as a successful insur- ance man. He then formed a new connection with the Massachusetts Life Insurance Company of Springfield. This company sent him to Charleston as general agent, and he established his office and home in the capital city in 1914. Mr. Pippen is general agent for the entire state except teu counties.

Mr. Pippen brought to his new duties at Charleston the . knowledge and resources acquired by years of toil, ex- perience and training, and in this state he has added to his reputation as an insurance producer. Every year the busi- ness eredited to his Charleston headquarters has shown a gratifying increase. It is especially worthy of note that in the year 1921, a year of anti-elimax to practically every business and industry in point of volume as contrasted with the years of war inflation that succeeded, the West Virginia agency was une of only fifteen agencies in the Union to show an increase in volume of insurance business for the Massachusetts Life Company over the record of the previous year.

Mr. Pippen is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Kanawha Country Club, Elks, and has the honor of being secretary of the Lions Club of Charleston. He assisted in organizing this elub on September 30, 1921. Its member- ship embraces a representation of what may well be called the best of strong, vigorous, active citizenship of Charleston, men of high character and devoted to the best interests of the city. Mr. Pippen married Miss Blanche Watson, of Baltimore. Their two children are: Gretchen B. and Jean Ann Pippen.

JACOB W. GATRELL is closely associated with some of the primary business interests of the Eastern Panhandle, par- ticularly those involved in the handling and storage and also the production of the most distinctive output of this region-fruit. He grew up in the cold-storage business, and the Rothwell-Gatrell Company, of which he is president, is one of the larger concerns of this kind at Martinsburg.

Mr. Gatrell was born in Martinsburg, a son of Charles Anthony Oscar Gatrell and grandson of Charles Gatrell. Charles Gatrell, who was born in 1807, was a native of either Jefferson or Berkeley County, and his ancestors were pioneers here. Owing to the early death of his father Charles Gatrell had to become a wage earner to assist in the support of an invalid sister and a blind mother. The best wages he could earn was 6 cents a day. His industry and long continued application to work brought him a reason- able degree of prosperity, and after rearing his family he bought a home in Shepherdstown, where he spent his last days and died at the advanced age of ninety-four. He married a Miss Leshorne, whose people were carly settlers of Berkeley County, and she died some years before her husband.

Charles Anthony Oscar Gatrell was boru ou a farm in Berkeley County in 1845, and during his youth learned the trade of miller. He spent practically all his active life as a miller at Martinsburg, where he died at the age of seventy- two. He married Emma Eliza Hess, who was born at the family homestead then located at the corner of Queen and West Race streets in Martinsburg, daughter of David H. and Mary (Cline) Hess. The Hess family is represented elsewhere in this publication. Mr. Jacob Gatrell and his sister, Maud, are the only living children. His sister and her mother occupy the old home in Martinsburg.

Jacob W. Gatrell was educated in Martinsburg, and the industrious habits of his family have earned him a career of usefulness and sueeess. He worked at different lines as a boy, and at the age of twenty-three he went with the Roth- well Cold Storage Plant. He learned that business in every detail, was advanced to general manager, and eventually became a large stockholder. In 1921 he reorganized the business as the Rothwell-Gatrell Company, of which he is president and general manager. This plant has storage capacity for 50,000 barrels of apples, manufactures thirty- five tons of ice daily and supplies ice to the city in addition to refrigeration for the storage plants.

Mr. Gatrell married Louise I. Hanshew, a native of Mar-

tinsburg and daughter of Allen and Bernice Hanshew. The four children of Mr. and Mrs. Gatrell are Ann, Jacob W., Jr., Louise and David. Mr. Gatrell was reared a Lutheran. Among other business interests he is vice president and treasurer of the Rothwell Farm and Orchard Company, is president and general manager of the Pomona Orchard Company, and is a stockholder in the Imperial Orchard Company. He is affiliated with Tuscarora Lodge No. 24, Modern Woodmen of America.

WALTER SMITH SUGDEN, after graduating in law, located at Sistersville, West Virginia, and in that rapidly grow- ing center of the oil industry is found abundant demands upon his professional talent. Mr. Sugden is associated as attorney or in other official relations with a number of the corporations that give distinction to Sistersville as a com- mercial center.

Mr. Sugden was born at Amsterdam, New York, April 9, 1880. His father, James T. Sugden, a prominent New York manufacturer, was born in Yorkshire, England, Oe- tober 5, 1837, and was about twenty years of age when he came to the United States. In 1860 he established his home in Amsterdam, New York, where he had charge of the spinning department in carpet mills, and later became a manufacturer of knit underwear. He established and built up a very large industry of that kind at Amsterdam. He was in every way a most substantial citizen, giving liberally of his time and means to causes outside his im- mediate business. He was a member of the Board of Water Commissioners of the City of Amsterdam and su- pervised the building of the first city waterworks. He was president and for twenty-two years member of the Board of Education. He was for forty-seven years a vestryman in St. Ann's Episcopal Church and was affiliated with Welcome Lodge of Masons. Although a resident of Amster- dam, at the time of his death, April 18, 1921, he was visit- ing in Sistersville. . James T. Sugden married Elizabeth L. Smith, who was born at Thompsonville, Connecticut, De- cember 19, 1849, and is now living with her son in Sisters- ville. Walter S. is the oldest of her three children. The second, May, died at the age of eight years. Gilbert Taylor lives at Lockport, New York, and is president of Wester- man & Company, Incorporated, manufacturers of bar iron.

Walter Smith Sugden attended the public schools of Amsterdam, graduating from high school in 1898. He prepared for university in Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 1899, and then entered Har- vard University, where he graduated A. B. in 1903 and received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1906. Mr. Sugden took a prominent part in student activities, and most of the old followers of university football recall him as one of the star players for the Crimson and also selected as one of the "All-American team." While in university he was a member of the Institute of 1770, a sophomore elub, the Dickey Club, the Hasty Pudding Club, and Theta Nu Epsilon.

Mr. Sugden removed to Sistersville, West Virginia, in 1906. He had other interests to engage him for a time, and on January 12, 1910, was admitted to the bar and has since been active in a law practice, largely in corpo- ration law. He is a member of the law firm of Kimball & Sugden, formed in 1910. This firm is chief counsel for Petroleum Exploration, organized under the laws of the State of Maine, with headquarters at Sistersville; for the Wiser Oil Company of Sistersville, Amity Gasoline Com- pany of Sistersville, Western Petroleum Exploration of Sistersville. The firm is local counsel for the Baltimore & Ohio Railway Company, the American Oil Development Company of Pittsburgh, the Barnsdall Corporation of New York City, and are attorneys for the First Tyler Bank & Trust Company of Sistersville. The offices of the firm are in the Thistle Building.

Mr. Sugden is individually a vice president of the Agnew Torpedo Company, Columbia Oil Company of West Vir- ginia, secretary of the Oil Review Publishing Company of Sistersville, and a director of the Wiser Oil Company, Amity Gasoline Company, Petroleum Exploration, and First Tyler Bank & Trust Company.

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History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 37

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