History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 72

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At Mannington, this state, on the 5th of December, 1912, Mr. Grimes wedded Miss Zola Park Gump, the accomplished and charming daughter of James and Luverna (Park) Gump, natives of Monongalia County, this state. Mrs. Grimes was graduated at the Mannington High School in 1905, and her higher education was received in the West Virginia Wesleyan College. Mr. and Mrs. Grimes have no children.

CHARLES A. RAY, M. D., has completed a third of a cen- tury in the essentially social service of a physician and sur-

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geon. The greater part of his time has been given to his duties as physician and surgeon for coal companies, but he is now one of the staff of the Kanawha Valley Hospi- tal at Charleston, all his work being in connection with that institution.

Doctor Ray was born at Kanawha City in Kanawha County in 1864, son of John E. and Deborah (Gay) Ray. His father devoted practically his entire active career to the great salt industry of the Kanawha Valley. His home was at Kanawha City, where he died in 1920, at the age of eighty-six. The mother is still living. Both parents rep- resent long lived families.

Doctor Ray attended public schools, and received his medical education in the College of Physicians and Sur- geons at Baltimore, from which he graduated in 1887. The first twelve years after his graduation he was physician and surgeon for the Winifrede Coal Company in Kanawha County. For eighteen years following that he was surgeon for the Cabin Creek Consolidated Coal Company in the same county. Thus for thirty years he performed the im- portant duty of a mine physician, safeguarding the health and treating disease in the mining towns. Doctor Ray be- came associated with the Kanawha Valley Hospital at Charleston in 1917. The head of this hospital is Dr. G. A. MacQueen, whose professional record is given on other pages. Doctor Ray has charge of diagnosis and internal medicine as a member of the staff. He is active in both his profession and as a citizen, is a member of the State, County, Southern and American Medical Associations, and for many years has been one of the influential leaders in county politics. He is chairman of the democratic county executive committee. Doctor Ray has an important and valuable diversion in a nice stock farm in Kanawha County.

He married Miss Mamie A. Fisher. They are the par- ents of three sons: John V., a lawyer at Charleston; T. S. Ray, in the coal business; C. A. Ray, a student in the Uni- versity of Cincinnati. Doctor Ray is a York Rite, Knight Templar and Shriner Mason, an Elk and a member of the Kiwanis Club.

GEORGE JAMES DICKERSON is a citizen and business man upon whom high estimate is placed in the City of Hunting- ton, where he is president of the Dickerson Lumber Com- pany. He was born at Ravens Eye, Fayette County, this state, January 21, 1878, and is a son of Albert Reuben Dickerson, who was born in Virginia, March 3, 1845, and who now resides near Barboursville, Cabell County, West Virginia. His parents removed to what is now Fayette County, this state, about 1856, and he was there reared and educated, and his marriage was there solemnized. He con- tinued as one of the representative farmers of that county for many years, and since 1914 bas resided on his fine farm in Cabell County. He is a democrat, and while a resident of Fayette County he served in various offices of local trust, including that of county superintendent of schools, a posi- tion which he retained two terms. He has exceptional abil- ity as a practical surveyor, and has probably surveyed more land in Fayette, Greenbrier and Nicholas counties than has any other one man. He surveyed and purchased all of the land for Mrs. Joseph Berry, who became the owner of a very large landed estate. He is an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, while his wife is a member of the Baptist Church. He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, and he gave gallant service as a sol- dier of the Confederacy during the last three years of the Civil war. His wife, whose maiden name was Pheola V. Rodgers, was born in Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia), March 2, 1849, and is a representative of an old and influential family of that county. Of the chil- dren of Mr. and Mrs. Dickerson the eldest is Herbert J., who is a prosperous farmer in Fayette County; William Rodgers is a merchant at Lansing, that county; Lulu M. died at the age of three years; George James, of this re- view, was next in order of birth; Grace C., who now resides at Huntington, is the widow of Wallace D. Amick, M. D., who was engaged in practice at Glenalum, Mingo County, at the time of his death; John Edward is traveling salesman for a wholesale lumber company of Birmingham, Alabama;

Lawrence A. is associated with the Azel Meadows Realty Company of Huntington; Alice is the wife of Walter D. Boone, cashier of the bank at Mount Hope, Fayette County ; lda is bookkeeper for the Dickerson Lumber Company at Huntington.

The rural schools of Fayette County afforded George J. Dickerson his early education, and thereafter he was for one year a student in Valparaiso University at Valparaiso, Indiana. In 1902 he became stenographer in the office of the O. L. Packard Machinery Company in the City of Chi- cago, and one year later he went to Baltimore, Maryland, where he was for three months a stenographer in the offices of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Ile next took the posi- tion of bookkeeper in the Bank of Mount Hope in his na- tive county, won promotion to the position of assistant cashier, and retained this office until 1905, in May of which year he removed to Huntington and organized the Carolina Lumber Company, of which he continued the general mana- ger until March, 1918, when he organized the Dickerson Lumher Company, of which he has since continued the presi- dent aud general manager. Walter Perkins, of Bluefield, is vice president of the corporation, and L. P. Quesenberry is its secretary and treasurer. The company handles all kinds of lumber and building supplies, with offices at 632 Ninth Street, and under the progressive direction of its president has been developed the leading enterprise of its kind in Huntington-in fact, the concern is conceded to be one of the largest and most important in the exclusively retail lumber trade in the entire state. Mr. Dickerson is also secretary and treasurer of the Piney Creek Coal Con- pany.

While the activities of so called practical politics liave had no appeal to Mr. Dickerson, he is most loyal and pro- gressive as a citizen and is a staunch supporter of the principles of the democratic party. He is a vital member of the local chamber of commerce, holds membership in the Guyan Country Club, and is affiliated with Huntington Lodge No. 313, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He owns and occupies one of the fine, modern residences of the city, at 210 Sixth Avenue.

In September, 1909, at Huntington, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Dickerson and Miss Clara Medford, who was born near Wheeling, this state, and who was a student in Marshall College nearly four years. Mr. and Mrs. Dick- erson have three children: George "Jim," Jr., born in August, 1910; Mary Louise, born in July, 1913; and Albert Medford, born in January, 1915.

Mr. Dickerson is a scion of a family that was founded in Virginia in the Colonial period of our national history. There his grandfather, William Diekerson, was born in the year 1807, and he removed to what is now Fayette County, West Virginia, in 1856. He there became a pioneer farmer and there he and his wife passed the remainder of their lives, his death having occurred in 1891, and his wife, whose maiden name was Mary J. Maddox, having died at the ven- erable age of eighty-six years.

Lawrence A. Dickerson, youngest brother of the subject of this sketch, responded to the first call for volunteers when the nation became involved in the World war, and at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, he received his commis- sion as a second lieutenant. He later was in service at Chillicothe, Ohio, and he was at Camp Sevier, North Caro- lina, where he was commissioned first lieutenant, and re- ceived his honorable discharge after the close of the war.

WALTER S. WooD has written some important chapters of the history of the coal industry in West Virginia during the past quarter of a century. From rather small and mod- est beginnings his name has come to be associated with some of the biggest coal corporations in the state. His active partner in many of these enterprises has been Mr. Quin Morton.

Mr. Wood, whose home for a number of years has been at Charleston, was born in Mecklenberg County, Virginia, in 1874, son of John S. and Jennie (Scott) Wood. He grew up on the old homestead in Mecklenburg County, was edu- cated in the public schools of Clarksville, Virginia, and in 1892, at the age of eighteen, entered the claim department

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of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad at Cincinnati. While in that city he was also in the employ of the Carlisle Coal Company, subsequently merged into the Kineon Coal Com- pany, with which he remained a period of about four years. It was with this equipment of experience that Mr. Wood came to West Virginia in 1896 and engaged in the coal business with the St. Clair Coal Company at Eagle in Fay- ette County. He remained with that company until 1900. August 1st of that year he joined in the organization of the Falls Colliery Company at Glen Ferris, West Virginia. This company in 1901 he sold to the Kanawha & Hocking Coal Company. He returned to Eagle as general superin- tendent of the Gordon Coal and Coke Company, remaining in that capacity until the spring of 1904, when he acquired a controlling interest in the Standard Splint Gas Coal Com- pany on Paint Creek. Mr. Wood was closely identified with this enterprise and kept his residence at the Paint Creek properties until 1913, since which date his home has been in Charleston.

In the meantime, with broadening interests, he was pres- ident of the Keeney's Creek Colliery Company at Winona from February, 1911, until it was sold to the Maryland Coal Company in 1917, and was president of the Sullivan Coal & Coke Company at Sullivan in Raleigh County from 1908 to 1919.

Mr. Wood's active association with Mr. Quin Morton dates from 1916, in which year the Wood Coal Company of Logan County was organized. Mr. Wood is still presi- dent of this corporation. He was one of the organizers and was vice president of the American Eagle Colliery Company, when organized in 1918, and he is now president of that company. He is president of the Leevale Coal Company, organized in 1919; president of the Hopkins Fork Coal Company, organized in 1917; president of the Imperial Smokeless Coal Company and vice president of the Wood-Morton Fuel Company, and is vice president and general manager of the Middle Creek Coal Company at Hartland, on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, organized in 1917. Mr. Wood is also one of the state's bankers. He or- ganized and is president of the Bank of Quinwood, a flour- ishing bank of $50,000 capital at Quinwood in Greenbrier County.

Mr. Wood is obviously a man of many prominent inter- ests and high standing in the business and social life of Charleston. He is a member of St. John's Protestant Epis- copal Church, and is a Knight Templar and thirty-second degree Mason and Shriner. He married Miss Lucy Sims. Their four children are Virginia, Helen Reid, George Wal- ter and Alice.

GEORGE HENRY CAPERTON has been a factor in the coal industry of West Virginia forty years, and as president of the New River Coal Operators Association and the Smoke- less Coal Operators Association of West Virginia he ranks as one of the very first in the coal industry of the state.

Mr. Caperton, whose home has been at Charleston for a number of years, represents an honorcd and distinguished name in West Virginia and old Virginia. His first Ameri- can ancestor was John Caperton, who came from the North of Ireland. It has not been ascertained whether he was of Scotch or Norman French origin. His settlement was made in Maine. However, his immediate descendants left that state and some of them settled at Crump's Bottom, six miles below the present Town of Hinton, West Vir- ginia, among the first in that section of the frontier. The great-grandfather of George H. Caperton was Adam Caper- ton, who lost his life in an Indian battle known in history as Estill's Defeat. The Capertons have represented a strong, sturdy race of men in all their generations in American citizenship. They were trans-Allegheny pioneers, associated with the first of those who penetrated and crossed the mountains and settled in the valleys of what is now West Virginia and Eastern. Kentucky.

The grandfather of the Charleston coal operator was Hugh Caperton, who was born in 1780, and was one of the early pioneers in Monroe County in what is now West Vir- ginia. For several years he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, and was elected as a Federalist to

the Thirteenth Congress, serving from March 4, 1813, until March 3, 1815, during the second war with Great Britain. His son, Allan T. Caperton, was a member of the Confed- erate States Congress and afterward represented West Vir- ginia in the United States Senate from 1875 until his death in 1876. Hugh Caperton, who died in Monroe County Feb- ruary 9, 1847, possessed the pioneering enterprise of the strong men of his day. He was wealthy according to the standards of his time, owned several thousand acres of land, had extensive interests in agriculture, livestock and timber, and was a large shipper of livestock and other products to Baltimore.

His strong and sturdy qualities descended to his son G. H. Caperton. Hugh Caperton married Jane Erskine, daughter of Michael Erskine. Jane Erskine's mother, while her family was migrating from Virginia to Kentucky, was captured by the Indians and held in captivity two or three years. She afterward married Michael Erskine and lived in Monroe County. The son, G. H. Caperton, was born in Monroe County, his home being at Union, and he became a man of substance and large affairs. Before the Civil war he removed to Lynchburg, Virginia, and after the war went to Amherst County, Virginia. He married Mary E. Hen- derson.

George Henry Caperton, son of G. H. and Mary E. (Hen- derson) Caperton, was born at Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1860, and his home until he reached his majority was in Amherst County. He attended school at Lynchburg, and was also a student at the Virginia Agricultural and Me- chanical College, now the Virginia Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg in Montgomery County. Following his student career he farmed a year in Amherst County, and in 1880 left there and located at Fire Creek in Fayette County, West Virginia, on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. Here began his first operations in the coal industry, and he kept his home in that vicinity until 1906, since which year his residence has been at Charleston, though most of his coal operations are in the New River District. Through many years of successful business effort he has achieved his po- sition as one of the largest coal operators in West Virginia. The New River Coal Company, of which he is president, is a selling company. He is also president of the Slab Fork Coal Company, operating a number of mines in Raleigh County. The Scotia Coal & Coke Company, of which he is president, operates its mines in Fayette County. He is also president of the South Side Coal Company, operating mines in Fayette County.

The fruits of his extensive experience and good judgment have been made available to the coal operators' organiza- tions of the state, and it is not only a personal honor but a recognition of his leadership that he is president of the New River Coal Operators Association and the Smokeless Coal Operators Association of West Virginia. He is also a director of the West Virginia Coal Association. Mr. Caperton is president of the New River Banking & Trust Company at Thurmond. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce at Charleston and the Edgewood Country Club.

At Warrenton, Virginia, he married Anna P. Chambliss, a native of Greenville, South Carolina. Her father, Dr. John Alexander Chambliss, was one of the noted Baptist ministers of his day. Mr. and Mrs. Caperton have five chil- dren: George H., Jr .; William Gaston Caperton; Mary, wife of Dr. Eugene M. Blake, of New Haven, Connecticut; Caroline McHardy, wife of Dr. McRae C. Banks, of Raleigh County, West Virginia; and Erskine Miller Caperton, now a student in the University of West Virginia.

ROY O. SEARS is a successful Charleston business man, president of the Sears Monument Company, and has been in this business all his active career. He has earned a high reputation for skill and achievement on the artistic as well as the commercial side of the industry.

Mr. Sears was born at Hillsboro, Highland County, Ohio, June 3, 1883. He attended public school, but even as a schoolboy was selling newspapers, and that developed his early abilities as a salesman. Quite early he began selling monuments, and his increasing experience in this line

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brought him a first class traveling position with a promi- nent monument manufacturing concern of Boston, for which he represented an extensive territory from Portland, Maine, to Indianapolis, Indiana.

When his affairs had progressed to a point where he felt justified in going into business for himself Mr. Sears se- lected Charleston as the most eligible city, and made his start here in 1911.

The Sears Monument Company, of which Mr. Sears is president, are designers and manufacturers of monuments of all descriptions, statuary, bronze work and mausoleums, giving particular attention to the manufacture and instal- lation of mausoleums. They have on their staff only the most successful and talented designers and engravers. Their plant at Charleston has produced many examples of genuine art. It is probably the largest plant of its kind in West Virginia, and one of the most important in qual- ity of output in the country. Since the great war Mr. Sears has designed and manufactured a number of memo- rials to the dead soldiers. Chief among these should be mentioned the Putnam County Memorial in commemoration of the men who made the supreme sacrifice in the World war, erected in 1921 by the taxpayers of Putnam County, and this memorial is a work of art. Still more recently, in December, 1921, Mr. Sears met with the Vicksburg Monu- ment Commission at Point Pleasant. The purpose of the meeting was to select designs of monuments and markers for the Vicksburg National Military Park. The commission had been empowered by the last Legislature to provide a suitable memorial to the memory of the men who served in the battle and siege of Vicksburg. The designs selected by the commission consist of a colossal size bronze bust of Maj. Gen. Arza M. Goodspeed and four other monuments erected to West Virginia men, known on battlefields, as markers, all to be placed at the different positions held by the men during the siege. Mr. Sears was awarded the contract for the erection of one large monument, four small ones, one colossal size bust and five bronze tablets to be placed on monuments and to bear inscriptions of the positions held by West Virginia men. This work was com- pleted in the spring of 1922.

Just recently they have been awarded the contract to erect a large soldier monument to be erected in the Court House grounds at Wayne, Wayne County, West Virginia. This will be the largest and most expensive soldiers' monu- ment that has been erected in West Virginia. This work will be completed in the fall of 1922.

Mr. Sears is a member of the Charleston Rotary Club and is a Knight Templar and Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner.

ROBERT DOUGLAS ROLLER, M. D. Besides its prominent physician in Charleston, the capital city honors the name Roller for the distinguished services of his father, Rev. R. D. Roller, now a retired Episcopal clergyman.

The Rev. R. D. Roller was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, in 1850, graduated from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1875, and immediately began his life work in the Episcopal Church. A service that has proved his great- est and most lasting achievement was rendered for thirty years in Charleston, from the beginning of his work as rec- tor of St. John's Episcopal Church in 1888. St. John's had just begun building when he took charge and organized the parish while the foundation was being laid, and he built up and made this one of the largest and most influential churches of the denomination in the state. After thirty years he was retired in 1918, with the title of Rector Emeri- tus. His active ministry made him part and parcel of the life of Charleston, and the community will long cherish his character and service here. Rev. Doctor Roller, who repre- sents an old family in Virginia, where his ancestors set- tled prior to the Revolutionary war, married Caroline Booker.

Their son, Dr. Robert Douglas Roller, was born in old Virginia in 1880, and grew up in Charleston. He gradu- ated in the literary course from the University of West Virginia in 1900, and then began his medical studies in the University College of Medicine at Richmond. He received his M. D. degree in 1905. For about ten years Doctor

Roller performed the arduous duties of physician in the coal fields, chiefly in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Then fol- lowed a period of hospital work in Connecticut, and from there he went to New York for the purpose of continuing his hospital and post graduate experience. While there, in the summer of 1917, he enlisted in the Medical Corps of the United States Army, receiving the commission of cap- tain. Doctor Roller did most of his honor work at Camp Pike, Arkansas. After more than two years of continuous service he received his honorable discharge in October, 1919, with the rank of major. Doctor Roller early in 1920 re- sumed private practice at Charleston, and is now a special- ist in internal medicine, with office in the Coyle & Richard- son Building. He is a member in good standing of the County, State and American Medical Associations.

HERBERT DEWITT MCCLINTOCK, a popular citizen and representative business man of the City of Huntington, has developed an important industrial enterprise in the manufacturing of lumber and cooperage stock, and con- ducts the thriving business under the title of the H. D. Mc- Clintock Lumber Company, with offices at 420 Tenth Street. In addition to being sole proprietor of this business he is also president of the Tri-State Lumber & Stave Company.

Mr. McClintock was born at Dempseytown, Venango County, Pennsylvania, on the 16th of June, 1873. His pa- ternal grandfather, Gen. James R. McClintock, was a suc- cessful farmer in the vicinity of Dempseytown and served as a brigadier general in the Pennsylvania State Militia. He was beyond the age limit for service in the Civil war, but he recruited and trained companies that went to the front and made gallant records in defense of the Union. He married Jerusha Tennant, of New London, Connecticut, a member of a family that was founded in New England in the Colonial days. The original American progenitors of the MeClintock family came from Scotland to this coun- try in the early Colonial period of our national history.

Charles A. MeClintock, father of the subject of this re- view, was born on the old homestead near Dempseytown, Pennsylvania, December 7, 1846, and died at Huntington, West Virginia, August 19, 1914. He was reared in his na- tive county, and there his initial enterprise of independ- ent order was in connection with farm industry. Later he engaged in the manufacturing of lumber and barrel staves, and in 1889 he engaged in this line of manufacturing enter- prise at Huntington, where he passed the remainder of his life, a successful business man and highly esteemed citi- zen. He was a democrat in politics, was affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and the Independent Order of Odd Fel- lows, and both he and his wife were zealous members of the Presbyterian Church. In his native county he married on October 6, 1870, Miss Adeline Richey, who was the daughter of William and Angeline Givon Richey. She was born in the year 1847, and died in the same year as did her husband, on July 21, 1914, James Pliny, eldest of their children, is living retired at Los Angeles, California, he being a veteran of the Spanish-American war; the sub- ject of this sketch was next in order of birth; William R., who likewise served in the Spanish-American war, resides at Arcola, Mississippi, and is the manager of a plantation near that place; Miss Emma is a popular teacher in the public schools of Huntington; Mabel is the wife of C. Lloyd Ritter, a prominent lumber manufacturer and finan- cier, and they reside at Huntington; Laura is the wife of Henry C. Walburn, of this city, he being state agent for the Bankers Life Insurance Company of Lincoln, Nebraska, and president of the Huntington Board of Education.

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History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 72

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