USA > West Virginia > Prominent men of West Virginia: biographical sketches, the growth and advancement of the state, a compendium of returns of every election, a record of every state officer; > Part 25
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73
326
PROMINENT MEN OF
Fort Sumpter, the State was virtually drummed and fifed out of the Union, and the Legislature, called together for the purpose, passed an act of secession. General Northcott remained in Tennessee until the 11th of July, 1861, when he and his family went to Vevay, Indiana. In December of that year he, in con- nection with Hon. John S. Carlile, commenced the publication of the National Telegraph, a Union paper, in Clarksburg, West Virginia. He continued to edit this paper until August, 1862, when Mr. Carlile made a new departure in politics; General Northcott withdrew from the paper, and accepted the commis- sion of Lieutenant Colonel of the Twelfth West Virginia In- fantry Volunteers. During his term of service he was in a number of engagements. On the 15th of June, 1863, he was captured at Winchester, Virginia, and remained a prisoner of war until March, 1864, when he was paroled for exchange. After his exchange he participated in Sheridan's campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. His confinement in Libby Prison and fatiguing service in the summer of 1864, seriously impaired his health and he was compelled to resign on that account, which he did on the 5th of January, 1865. He was subsequently bre- vetted Brigadier General, by President Johnson.
After the war closed he resumed editorial charge of the Na- tional Telegraph and continued to conduct that paper until the latter part of the year 1874. In 1866 he was appointed Post- master at Clarksburg. He continued in office only eight months, when President Johnson removed him, because he would not indorse the remarkable Restoration policy of the President. In 1867 Chief Justice Chase appointed him Registrar in Bank- ruptcy upon the recommendation of Hon. John J. Jackson and others.
General Northcott's life has been one of great activity ; and notwithstanding he has been forced, through straightened cir- cumstances, to labor hard for the support of his family, he has made himself extensively acquainted with literature. His range of reading has been wide, embracing theology, law, romance and science. He has never been neutral in anything, and has always been an active politician. His father was a Federalist and carefully instructed him in the doctrines of that party. Before he had arrived at a voting age, the Whig party was or- ganized and he became an active member of it, and so continued
327
WEST VIRGINIA.
until it disbanded. He then voted with the Opposition until the war, when he became a Republican.
Although his health was seriously impaired while in the mil- itary service, he continues to labor in some capacity ; and now, at the age of seventy, he is a Justice of the Peace, and has been several terms Mayor of the City of Clarksburg, his adopted home.
JOHN J. DAVIS.
H ON. JOHN J. DAVIS represented the First District of West Virginia in the Congress of the United States from March 4, 1871, to March 3, 1875. He was born, May 1, 1835, at Clarksburg, Harrison county, Virginia, and was educated at the Northwestern Academy, in that town ; studied law, and was admitted to the Bar when only twenty years of age, and still practices his profession in his native county.
Mr. Davis was a member of the Convention to restore the State Government of Virginia, in 1861. In 1864 he was a Pres- idential Elector upon the McClellan ticket; and in 1868 was one of the delegates from the State at large to the National Demo- cratic Convention in New York. In 1869 he was elected from Harrison county to the House of Delegates of West Virginia; and again in 1870, serving with ability and fidelity. He was elected, in the fall of 1870, to the Forty-second Congress, as a Democrat, receiving 11,836 votes, against 10,569 votes for Na- than Goff, Jr., Republican. At the August, 1872, election he was re-elected to the Forty-third Congress, as an Independent candidate, over Col. Benjamin Wilson, Democratic nominee, re- ceiving 13,361 votes against 12,948 votes for his opponent.
In 1884 Mr. Davis was an Elector upon the Cleveland Presi- dential ticket, and in the Electoral College aided in casting the vote of West Virginia for the successful candidate. March 3, 1887, he was appointed, by Gov. Wilson, one of the six years Directors of the Hospital for the Insane at Weston. He has been Grand Dictator of the West Virginia Grand Lodge, Knights of Honor; is prominent in the Presbyterian church of his town; and is able, consciencious and successful in his law practice.
328
PROMINENT MEN OF
A.LITTLE.
HON. E. BOYD FAULKNER.
329
WEST VIRGINIA.
E. BOYD FAULKNER.
H ION. E. BOYD FAULKNER, whose portrait fronts this page, was born in July, 1841, at the princely home of his distinguished father, the Hon. Charles James Faulkner, in Martinsburg, Berkeley county, Virginia. His education was under select home preceptors; then at Georgetown, D. C., Col- lege, and at the University of Virginia.
While his father represented the United States at the Court of St. Cloud in the metropolis of sunny France, he traveled extensively in Italy and Switzerland; then attended lectures upon constitutional law in Paris, and at the early age of eighteen was acting as Secretary of the American Legation.
With the opening of civil war in America he returned to cast his destiny with the South under the banner of his native Vir- ginia, and was for a short time Aid on the Staff of Governor Letcher, but resigned to serve as an officer in the Confederate States army. In June, 1864, he was captured, and with other prisoners taken to Johnson's Island, where he was confined one year. The war over, in 1867, he went to Hopkinsville, Ken- tucky, as the law partner of Judge Petree, and in the Seymour campaign of 1868, was made Elector of the Second Congres- sional District of that State.
In 1872 he resumed citizenship at Martinsburg, West Vir- ginia. He was elected from Berkeley county to the House of Delegates in 1876, where he served with ability and prominence, and with fidelity to his constituency. They so endorsed him, that, in 1878, he was elected to the State Senate. He declined at the hands of his party the Presidency of that body. He was a prominent candidate before the Democratic Convention, in 1884, for nomination for Governor. In 1885 President Cleve- land tendered to him the office of Consul-General to Egypt, which, at the solicitation of devoted friends, he decided not to accept. He was then offered the Mission to Persia, which he likewise declined. He is one of the leaders of his party in the State, is an able and popular lawyer with an extensive and lu- crative practice, and the attorney for several railroads and other corporations.
330
PROMINENT MEN OF
CHARLES McLANE.
D R. CHARLES McLANE, eldest son of Alan and Elizabeth McLane, was born in Ulster, county of Tyrone, Ireland, September 4, 1790, and died in Morgantown, West Virginia, May 22, 1878. With his parents and younger brother, William, he emigrated to America sometime in the year 1805. The fol- lowing year they settled in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, where, after attending school, he read medicine with Dr. John Luther. He completed his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. It was during the period in which the fathers of that famous school were in their prime; and he had many anec- dotes to relate in connection with the early teachings of such men as Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American medicine, and Dr. Philip S. Physic, who sustained the same relation to Amer- ican surgery. He had, somehow, been so impressed by these masters, that, throughout his long life, medical students and medical men seemed to catch an inspiration from his very pres- ence.
From Lancaster county he moved to Connellsville, Fayette county, Pennsylvania, where he formed a co-partnership with his brother, William, and practiced till his brother's death. In 1823, being thirty-three years of age, he settled permanently at Mor- gantown, Virginia. Here his judgment and skill and inventions, as a physician and a surgeon, won for him a reputation wider than the State in which he lived.
Dr. McLane was a great teacher. He was not satisfied to simply impart knowledge, but he seemed to transmit to his pupils a part of himself-the feeling that the medical profession is the noblest calling. Among the most distinguished of his medical students may be named Dr. Thomas Laidley, of Pennsylvania ; Dr. C. Billingsly, of Missouri; Dr. Joseph A. McLane, of Mor- gantown; the late Dr. Isaac Scott, of Parkersburg, and the late Dr. Hugh W. Brock.
Dr. McLane married, in 1815, Eliza Kern, daughter of John and Catherine Kern, of Greensburg, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania. She died in 1874, only four years previous to her husband's death. Three children survived them, namely, Dr. Joseph A. McLane, of Morgantown; Mrs. Emily Scott (since deceased), wife of Dr. Isaac Scott, of Parkersburg, and Mrs. Virginia M. Warren, wife of Isaiah Warren, Esq., Wheel- ing, West Virginia.
331
WEST VIRGINIA.
Dr. McLane, like Timothy, had known the Scriptures from his childhood. At early manhood he was ordained a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, which relation he continued to sustain till the time of his death. He was an able defender of Christianity, and especially of the doctrines of the Church of his choice. His style was forcible; and whether he preached in the country or in the town, in the log school-house or upon the camp-ground, his sermons always showed most thorough preparation. Among men of learning he ranked as an able divine. He was a man of deep piety and of strong faith, and he often knelt at the bedside of the sick to ask divine guid- ance before proceeding to administer medicine.
He was an earnest advocate of "total abstinence," and he never tasted intoxicating liquors, as a beverage, in his life. In giving his opinion of the value of stimulants as medicine, he once said : "After forty years extensive practice, I believe that healthful food is far better than stimulants for the sick. In fact, I believe them to injure far more than they benefit." He gave his deepest pity to the wives and children of drunkards, but he was very severe on liquor sellers, whom he characterized as "the devil's wet-nurses."
He belived that our Union of States is the best form of Gov- ernment on the face of the earth, the model toward which all civilized Nations are tending, and that to sever this Union would impede the progress of human civilization.
Few men in the past have been so well informed or so highly endowed as Dr. McLane. He was familiar with almost every subject of philosophy and of history. He was habitually polite, both at home and abroad, to the rich and to the poor. He was a lover of music, had a sweet voice in singing, and played upon instruments. His wit was proverbial, and often keen, but al- ways pure. He was medium in size, symmetrical in form, and in features faultless.
During several of the last years of his life he was known as " the patriarch of the town," and was esteemed and revered by all who knew him, as few men have ever been. His brain, which had always been active, continued clear to the last; and his faith in God, which had always been strong, remained steadfast to the end. As the ripe fruit falls in autumn, so he closed his ca- reer on earth, in the eighty-eighth year of his age.
332
PROMINENT MEN OF
When we consider his knowledge of medicine and surgery, theology and music, philosophy and history, we may safely con- clude that we shall not often see the equal of Dr. McLane.
LEWIS RUFFNER.
T HE name of Ruffner is one of the oldest and most esteemed in the Kanawha Valley. General Lewis Ruffner, as his memory is best known, was born October 1, 1797, the son of David and Ann (Brumbach) Ruffner, of Kanawha Salines, Vir- ginia. From birth to death, at advanced age, he spent the years of an honorable and useful life within his native county. He was one of the most experienced salt manufacturers in the State. With little ambition for public place, he was, at the age of twenty-one, commissioned by the Governor as a Magistrate in his district. The duties were faithfully discharged, without fee, favor or affection, for twenty-four years. He was a mem- ber of the General Assembly of Virginia in 1825-6, and of the Constitutional Convention to restore the Government of Vir- ginia, 1861. In 1863-4 he was a member of the House of Dele- gates of West Virginia, in the former year receiving from the State a commission as Major General of militia. He was twice married: first to Elizabeth A. D. Shrewsberry, November 2, 1826; second, to Viola Knapp, of Vermont, December 3, 1843. Earnest H., a son by the last marriage, is in the regular army, a Captain in the Engineer force, and was for a while in charge of the Lock and Dam Improvement of the Great Kanawha River, upon which nearly two million dollars of the National Treasury have been commendably spent. He died at his home near Charleston at the advanced age of upwards of four score years.
333
WEST VIRGINIA.
GREENBURY SLACK.
G REENBURY SLACK-" Uncle Green," as he was usually titled among his neighbors-was born in Kanawha county, Virginia, December 3, 1807. Whilst upon the farm of his father, John Slack, he used every spare hour for study, and with the aid of select and private schools acquired a fair English educa- tion. He was a Justice of the Peace, by the commission of Virginia's Governor, and also a leading member of the M. E Church. He was sent to Wheeling, in 1861, as a delegate to the Convention which reorganized the State Government. He was also a member of the Convention of 1863, to frame a Con- stitution for the State of Kanawha-afterwards christened West Virginia. He served in the State Senate from 1863 to 1868. He died at his home in Charleston July 1, 1873. For native acumen but few West Virginians were his superior. He was an omniverous reader, and retained nearly everything he read. In many respects, he was a remarkable man.
EDWARD C. BUNKER.
€ DWARD C. BUNKER, generally known as Judge Bunker, was born in New York City. October 9, 1830, and came to Kingwood, Virginia, at an early age, along with his uncle and guardian, Israel Baldwin. He entered Washington College, Pennsylvania, in 1844, but ill-health prevented his continuance till graduation. In 1849 he began law studies with Guy R. C. Allen, of Morgantown, and in 1850, was admitted at Kingwood. He married Delia, daughter of Hon. Harrison Hagans, located in Morgantown in 1857, and became a member of the law firm of Willey & Bunker. Served as Prosecuting Attorney of Mon- ongalia county from 1861 to 1863, then was elected to the State Senate, from whence he was appointed by the Governor, Judge of the Eleventh Circuit. This required his removal to Pied- mont, where he died November 24, 1867. He was a just judge, a genial companion, and a favorite wherever he went.
334
PROMINENT MEN OF
.................
...........
J. MANZ&CO CHICAGO
HON. ROBERT S. BROWN.
335
WEST VIRGINIA.
ROBERT S. BROWN.
HE subject of this sketch is descended from pioneer stock.
His grandfather, William Brown, a native of Maryland, having married Patience Marvel, of Delaware, settled in the Ohio Valley in the year 1773. In April, 1776, alarmed for the safety of his family, in that exposed country where the savages were being incited by emissaries of Great Britain to wage a war of extermination against white settlers, he left his cabin in the wilderness and returned with his family to Delaware; entered the Continental army and served during the War for Independence, and in 1785 returned to Western Virginia, and settled in what is now Brooke county, and where he was a prominent man ; served as a member of the County Court, was the Sheriff of the county, and for many years was a member of the Legislature. Here Joseph Brown, the father of our subject, was born and reared. He married Rachel Hood, a native of Balti- more county, Maryland, and like his father chose the occupation of farming, and lived a long, an honorable and useful life, and died, as he had lived, triumphing in the glad promises of the Christian's faith, in July, 1882, having passed the ninetieth year of his age. He is buried beside his beloved Rachel, who with him for sixty years had adorned the divine doctrines of the Master within the folds of the Methodist Episcopal Church. They reared and educated a family of nine sons and one daugh- ter, all of whom they lived to see happily married and settled in life, except their third son, James Marvel Brown, who gave up his life at the age of nineteen years in defense of the honor of his country, in her war with Mexico, in 1847.
Robert S. Brown was born April 6, 1828; was brought up on the farm, and early inured to the toils and hardships that at- tend this honorable but arduous vocation. He attended in winter such schools as the country then afforded; he was early fond of reading, and devoted the moments of leisure spared from labor to the perusal of such books as his father's ample library afforded. The development of this inclination of mind being observed by his parents, induced them to aid him with the means of obtaining a classical education, and he entered Bethany College, Brooke county, Virginia, in 1845; chose the profession of the law, and commenced its practice at Elizabeth, Wirt county, Virginia, in April, 1849. He soon secured a
336
PROMINENT MEN OF
liberal and lucrative practice ; was elected Prosecuting Attorney, and re-elected to that office both in Wirt and Roane counties until he went on the Bench as Judge of the Circuit in which he resided.
Prior to the war, like his ancestors, he was a Democrat, and voted for John C. Breckenridge for President, in 1860; but when Mr. Lincoln was elected, actuated by those high qualities of patriotism and sound common-sense, for which he was at all times noted, he at once declared his fixed purpose to support the administration of the President constitutionally elected, and opposed those who on that pretext made the great tragic effort to break up our national unity. He was an early and active advocate, and liberal promoter of the counter revolution set on foot by the loyalists of Western Virginia at Wheeling, which resulted in the formation of the new State of West Vir- ginia ; and it is confidently believed and asserted that no man contributed more of his time, talents or means to achieve that happy result for the people of his State, than he whose name heads this biographical sketch.
In 1864, Mr. Brown was chosen Elector for the Third Con- gressional District of his State, and cast his vote for the re-elec- tion of President Lincoln; and in May, 1868, he sat as a delegate in the Chicago Convention, served on the Committee on Resolutions that prepared the party platform on which General Grant was nominated; and as Elector-at-Large, with Hon. A. W. Campbell, of Wheeling, canvassed and carried his State for the Republican ticket.
On the first day of January, 1869, he went on the Bench as Judge of the Tenth Judicial Circuit of West Virginia, com- posed of the counties of Jackson, Roane, Calhoun and Gilmer, to which office he had been elected with unusual unanimity, for the term of six years. He brought to the judicial office the same intelligent zeal and industry that had always characterized his conduct of other affairs, and was universally regarded as a most able, learned and impartial Judge. Declining a re-elec- tion, his voluntary retirement was marked by meetings of the Bar and people in every county of his circuit, who in their published resolutions declared their respect and esteem for him as a man, confidence in him as an able, honest and upright Judge, and regret at his retirement from office.
337 .
WEST VIRGINIA.
In 1878 Judge Brown was elected to the State Senate by an overwhelming majority, and served therein four years. His standing in that body may be inferred from the following edi- torial notice in a leading newspaper in his State, in January, 1879: "Judge Brown is a man of strong character, and as a born leader has spent a life of public service; he stands con- fessedly forward in the body of which he is now a member. His character and ability mark him out as a prominent man. He is upon many of the important committees, and his dictum is always listened to with interest. He has retired from active practice of the law, and devotes his time when at home to his large property interests ; his home farm at Ravenswood is one of the largest and finest on the Ohio river."
Before the war the Odd Fellows' Lodges in Western Virginia belonged to the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Virginia; and on the return of peace the Grand Lodge of West Virginia was organized, and Judge Brown joined Ravenswood Lodge, No. 15, in 1865; he passed its several chairs, and in 1877 repre- sented it in the State Grand Lodge; was successively elected Grand Warden, Deputy Grand Master and Grand Master; and in October, 1881, was elected one of its Representatives to the Sovereign Grand Lodge for the term of two years; met with that august body in Baltimore, and in Providence, Rhode Island, at the session of 1883.
He was united in marriage, October 2, 1849, with Anna H., eldest daughter of Ephraim Wells, Esq., a prominent and wealthy citizen of Jackson county, Virginia, who served the public as Presiding Justice of the County Court of Jackson county for two terms, and filled with credit many other posi- tions of honor and trust. Mr. Wells, in 1835, had bought (at five dollars per acre,) from Dr. Peter, a devisee of George Wash- ington, a large tract of land on the Ohio river adjoining the town of Ravenswood, and moved on it from Brooke county, in March 1836. It was then all in woods, as was, in fact, at that time, nearly all the land in Jackson county. This land had been patented to George Washington by King George III in 1772. Mr. Wells had, in years of great labor and perseverence, cleared out and improved a large part of this land, and in March 1866, sold it to Judge Brown for one hundred dollars per acre for the whole tract, which shows the great rise in the price of land in that section. .
26
338
PROMINENT MEN OF
Judge Brown is the father of three sons. The eldest, W. J. Brown, is a farmer at home, unmarried. The second, Ephraim W. Brown, after taking a course at Bethany College, married and settled on a farm adjoining his father's, and is one of the most prominent and successful farmers in Jackson county. The youngest son, Charles L. Brown, after graduating at Bethany College, read law in his father's office a year, and at- tended law lectures at the University of Virginia, and was ad- mitted to the Bar in Jackson county immediately after he reach- ed his majority. At the age of twenty-two years, he was elected to the House of Delegates of West Virginia from that county, and at the expiration of his term, he was chosen a member of the State Senate for four years, and after his term expired, de- clined a re-election. He is married and lives in Ravenswood.
Judge Brown has filled many other prominent positions in the State and county in a way honorable to himself and satisfac- tory to the public. He has attained an eminent rank at the Bar and as a Judge, and is among the most extensive and intelligent farmers in West Virginia. Energy and active perseverence in the attainment of honorable ends have been the leading char- acteristics in his life-work.
For forty years, he has mingled actively with the people of West Virginia, without deserting them a single day in war-time or in peace, and during that time, no man has enjoyed in a greater degree their confidence and respect.
BENJAMIN WILSON. :
H ON. BENJAMIN WILSON was born in Harrison county, Virginia, April 30, 1825; educated at the Northwestern Academy, at Clarksburg; attended law school at Staunton, Virginia; was admitted to the Bar in 1848; served as Common- wealth's Attorney for Harrison county from 1852 to 1860; member of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia in 1861; was Presidential Elector-at-Large on the Democratic ticket of 1868; a member of the West Virginia Constitutional Conven- tion, that met at Charleston in 1872; was made a delegate-at- large to the National Democratic Convention at Baltimore in 1872, that nominated Horace Greeley for President; elected as
339
WEST VIRGINIA.
Representative to the Forty-fourth Congress from the First District, with 12,799 votes against 12,631 for Nathan Goff, Jr., Republican ; re-elected to the Forty-fifth Congress, receiving 17,902 votes against 16,067 for Charles F. Scott, Republican, serving from December 4, 1875; was again re-elected to Con- gress in 1880, defeating John A. Hutchinson, the Republican candidate; was appointed Assistant United States Attorney in the Department of Justice at Washington by Grover Cleveland till superceded in 1889. He is now in the employ of the Government as attorney in settling the French Spoliation Claims.
Colonel Wilson served his constituents in Congress in a most efficient manner. He was constantly at his post of duty, and was attentive, courteous and polite to all with whom he came in contact in the discharge of his public and private duties as a citizen and Representative.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.