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 30
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WILLIAM LAWRENCE KEE.
W ILLIAM L. KEE is a member of the present House of Delegates of West Virginia, and is Chairman of the Gubernatorial Contest Committee now in session. He was born September 17, 1849, in Pocahontas county, Virginia. The son of a farmer and shoemaker-with brief schooling in the primi- tive log house, supplied with rail-split seats supported by peg-legs, he studied and succeeded in life. From 1870 to 1872, he taught school. In the meantime he read law, and was admitted to the Bar at Beverly, Randolph county in 1878, where he still pursues the honored avocation. He was Mayor of Beverly in 1888; was elected to the Legislature of 1889, from his district, by a majority of 622 votes in Randolph, and 37 in Tucker county ; serves on the Committees of Elections and Privileges, Judiciary, Counties, Districts and Corporations, Forfeited and Unappro- priated Lands, and Penitentiary. He is also chairman of the Committees on Railroads, and State Boundaries. He is a devoted Jacksonian Democrat, and energetic and capable.
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SOLOMON S. FLEMING.
T O this farmer, as legislator, may be attributed the resolution to accept for our State the National grant of public lands, which began the endowment of our present University. He was born October 19, 1812, in Middletown, two miles west of Fairmont, Virginia. He was reared on his father's farm; schooled by winter sessions in a log house, under poor teachers and with few books. In 1835 he married Elizabeth Ebert, by whom eight children-two boys and six girls-were born, all of whom are now married and living in Harrison county. In 1841 he moved to Shinnston, and has for thirty years been a merchant and farmer. With the opening of the war in 1861, began his public life. He was a member of the Wheeling Con- vention to restore the Virginia Government; served in the House of Delegates of the new State from 1863 to 1869, and filled the presiding officer's chair part of this period; was a use- ful and laborious member in the committee work of all those sessions, especially as Chairman of the Committee of Finance and Taxation in 1866-7. In 1862 he was empowered to re-or- ganize the One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Regiment of Vir- ginia Militia and muster the shattered remnants into defensive order. He volunteered into the Legislative Company which went to Brown's Island to prevent General Morgan's crossing to West Virginia territory. In 1863 the Confederate cavalry, under General Jones, raided his store, and his merchandise was again taken in 1865.
FRANCIS ASBURY GUTHRIE.
H ON. F. A. GUTHRIE, the present Judge of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, constituted by the counties of Kanawha, Mason and Putnam, was born April 12, 1840, in Tyler county, Virginia. He attended the ordinary schools of the neighbor- hood, then the college at Meadville, Pennsylvania. At the opening of the war in 1861, he enlisted in the One Hundred and Eleventh Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry, as a private; was promoted the same year to Sergeant; in 1862 to Lieutenant of Company E; then in 1863 to Captain. In September, 1862, he received a medal for bravery at the battle of Antietam. After the war he attended college at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he
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studied law, and was admitted to the Bar in 1867. He removed to Mason county and was elected Prosecuting Attorney and served two years. In 1880 he was elected upon the Fusion ticket, by the Republican and Greenback parties as Circuit Judge for the term of eight years. In 1888 he was re-elected upon the Repub- lican ticket by an overwhelming majority over S. S. Green, Democrat. He was the nominee of the Republicans for State Supreme Judge at the election in 1884, but was, with the other candidates, defeated.
Judge Guthrie resides at Point Pleasant, on the Ohio river; is affable in manner, sociable, prompt in the dispatch of the cases upon a crowded docket ; fond of fishing and hunting, is popular, and is an able jurist.
PRESLEY W. MORRIS.
" T THE Senator from Ritchie has the floor" on this page of the record of our representative men. He was born July 24, 1850, in New Martinsville, Wetzel county, Virginia. A student in early life in the common schools, he became a teacher, and from 1870 to 1878 taught others and led them up the hill of knowledge. In his town of Harrisville he has been a member of the Council, Recorder, and Mayor. In his county (Ritchie) a member of the Board of School Examiners and County Super- intendent of Public Schools, and was a candidate for the nomin- ation to the office of Prosecuting Attorney. The counties of Harrison, Calhoun, Doddridge, Gilmer and Ritchie, sent him to the State Senate for the term from January, 1886 to 1889. He was endorsed as a faithful public servant by the same constitu- ency re-electing him for another four years' term by a majority of 489 votes. His influence is felt upon the floor and in the committee room. He is a fearless and ready debater, and takes a prominent part in every discussion. He is a member of the Committees of Judiciary, and Federal Relations, and one of the Senate members of the Joint Committee on Contest for Governor. He has been a prominent candidate before the Republican Con- vention of the Fourth District for the Congressional nomination ; is active upon executive committees, and finds time, amidst a fair law practice, to edit one of the sprightliest and best news- papers of the State, the Ritchie Gazette, in which he has earned the reputation of being a humorist. He was President of the State Press Association for years.
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FOLGER EIN.
HON. JAMES H. FURBEE.
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JAMES H. FURBEE.
J AMES H. FURBEE was born in Monongalia county, Vir- ginia, October 27, 1827. His great grandfather, Caleb Furbee, served with distinguished honor as Captain in the Con- tinental army in the Revolutionary war. He was a resident of Delaware, to which State he had come from England, about the middle of the eighteenth century. His son, George Furbee, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, about the first of the present century, moved into the wilderness of Monongalia county, Virginia, where with other pioneers, he set about form- ing a settlement. He and his family succeeded in clearing out a large farm, near the Monongahela river. His son, James Furbee, father of James H. Furbee, removed to the vicinity of what is now Mannington, in the " forties," where he began open- ing up the country. He engaged in farming, and when the country was cleared out, in dealing in stock, which was entered into and continued by James H., when he grew to manhood. After the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was opened in 1852, he became the agent for the company, acting in that capacity for many years. He was married October 17, 1855, to Sarah J. McCoy, of near Middlebourne, Tyler county, Virginia, whose family were Scotch-Irish, from the north of Ireland. They were all Protestants, and nearly all Presbyterians. The grandfather and father removed to the United States in 1801, and settled in the Shenandoah Valley, from whence they came to Tyler county. They and their connections became one of the most prominent families in the county. John McCoy, uncle of Mrs. Furbee, represented that district in the State Senate of Virginia several terms. John W. McCoy, of Fairmont, one of the prominent attorneys of the State, is a brother of Mrs. Furbee. After marriage Mr. and Mrs. Furbee came to Mannington, where they still remain and where they have reared a large family, who are now grown and engaged in business there. Leslie C. Furbee operates the large woolen factory, W. S. Furbee the large flour- ing mill, and the others are engaged in lumbering and mer- chandising.
J. H. Furbee was appointed Deputy Internal Revenue Collector for the Government in 1862, and served as such for five years. Since the war he has engaged largely in the lumber business ; also in merchandising. He retains his preference for farming
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as he always kept a farm or two near Mannington, to which he devotes his leisure hours. He was chosen by the people of Marion county to represent them in the Legislature in 1878, and in 1880 he became the nominee of the Republican party for Senator for the Second District, and carried the District by the narrow margin of eight votes. He was not permitted to take the seat to which the people had chosen him, however, as the County Commissioners of Marion county, on a mere technicality, rejected the returns from Benton's Ferry precinct, which had given him a majority of fifteen, thus seating Hon. Fontaine Smith, his opponent." When it again became Marion county's turn to have the nominee, in 1886, he was the unanimous choice of his party, and was elected to the Senate by a large majority.
His education was received at the select schools, such as the country afforded at that time. When the free school system was inaugurated, he took an active interest in establishing it firmly, and in extending its usefulness. He was made early the President of the Board of Education of Mannington District, which comprises one-third of the county, and gave the cause his best efforts for many years, only retiring, voluntarily, when the duties interfered seriously with his large business interests, that demanded his entire attention.
On his mother's side his ancestry is distinguished and honor- able. The Boggess family was one of the early Virginia settlers, being located near Alexandria. They early moved into Western Virginia, where they took a prominent part in the affairs of our then new and undeveloped country. Their connections include a great many of the best people of Marion, Harrison, Mononga- lia and other counties. Thomas Boggess was the first Auditor of the new State of West Virginia.
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THOMAS R. CARSKADON.
HOS. R. CARSKADON is one of the representative farm- ers of the country, practical as well as theoretical. " I claim the honor of no other profession or calling than that of a farm- er," he writes. Yet the Prohibitionists of the country recognize in him one of the strongest men in their movement. He was born in Hampshire county, Virginia, in 1837, of Scotch-Irish parentage. His father, though a slave-holder, favored in the Virginia House of Delegates, of which he was a member six years, a measure for the abolition of slavery.
Young Carskadon grew up on a farm and had scant educa- tional advantages. He joined the M. E. Church in boyhood, and has been honored by election and appointment to every position of trust and responsibility open to a layman of that denomina- tion. He took his political creed from his father, and cast his first vote, in 1860, for the Whig candidates, Bell and Everett, and against the ordinance of secession. After the breaking out of the war, in the fall of 1861, he left his young wife and home and fled North, rather than relinquish his Republican prefer- ences. Remaining intensely loyal to the Union and the Repub- lican party, he was persecuted by his neighbors, and one hun- dred and twenty-five head of cattle and twenty-five horses were taken from his farm. He was elected a member of the Conven- tion of 1862-3 that framed the Constitution of West Virginia, and was the youngest man in that body.
President Lincoln appointed him Assistant United States As- sessor, and President Johnson made him Assessor of the Second West Virginia District, but afterwards removed him for radical Republicanism. He was one of the Grant Presidential Electors in 1868, and a Hayes Elector in 1876. For many years he was a member of the West Virginia Republican State Committee. In 1888 he was unanimously chosen as candidate for Governor on the Prohibition, or third party, platform, and received quite a complimentary vote. In 1884 he begged the Committee on Resolutions of the Republican State Convention to favor the submission of the Prohibition amendment to the people, and, failing, he appealed to the open Convention, amid the jeers and hisses of delegates. Then he joined the Prohibition party, and has been one of its most enthusiastic supporters and honored
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members ever since. He lives on a fine farm called "Radical Hill," near Keyser. He is one of the most attractive and force- ful platform speakers in West Virginia.
JOSEPH WESLEY GALLAHER.
H ON. J. W. GALLAHER, whose face fronts this page, was born at Roney's Point, Ohio county, Virginia, the 23d day of August, 1826. About the year 1834 his parents removed to the present limits of Marshall county; attended the ordinary schools of the day, and completed his education at the High School of Rev. Nicholas Murray, in Moundsville. He began Mercantile life in 1848, and has made that his principal occupa- tion to the present. Before the war he was elected Mayor of Moundsville, and served several years. Upon the platform of the "Constitution, the Union and the enforcement of the laws," he was Presidential Elector on the Fillmore ticket from the Fif- teenth Congressional District of Virginia.
To the Democratic National Convention of 1868, that met in New York City on Independence Day, he was sent as a delegate from the First Congressional District, and by that body was made the Vice-President from West Virginia.
In the Convention of 1872 to revise the State Constitution he, along with Judge A. F. Haymond, represented the Second Sen- atorial District, composed of Marion, Wetzel and Marshall coun- ties. He served upon the thoroughly burdened Committees of Taxation, Finance, Education, Corporations, and Schedule.
His fitness, by general experience and business habits, sug- gested him for appointment by Governor Jacob, in 1875, as one of the Commissioners to equalize the State land assessments.
For ten years Col. Gallaher was President of the Board of Directors of the State Penitentiary at Monndsville.
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A LITTL
HON. JOSEPH W. GALLAHER.
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PROMINENT MEN OF
JAMES BREWER SOMMERVILLE.
N EAR Wellsburg, Brooke county, Virginia, June 5, 1852, was born the lawyer and legislator whose name heads this biography. He is the son of William M. and Margaret A. Som- merville, who were poor, and brought him up to hard work. His early schooling was very meager. He graduated from West Liberty Normal School in 1873, afterwards attended Bethany College, so noted from its President being the founder of the sect known as Disciples. For five years thereafter he taught school, during which time the leisure hours were devoted to law studies and general reading. In September, 1878, he was ad- mitted to the Bar of his native county, from which point, as an office center, he continued to practice his profession, until with- in a year, when he removed to the city of Wheeling. He mar- ried Aggie G. Hosie, of Brooke county, May 13, 1879. In Brooke county he had a large practice, and was employed in and won a number of difficult and important cases. Though but a short time a resident of Wheeling, his practice is large and is constant- ly increasing. He is prominent in the Democratic party and with the people of his section, and has an acquaintance cover- ing the entire State. He has always manifested a deep interest in education, and, under appointment by Governor Jackson, April 4, 1881, was made a member of the Board of Regents for the State Normal Schools. In May, 1885, he was appointed Regent of the Deaf, Dumb and Blind School at Romney, but re- signed February 20, 1886. In 1887 he was a Regent of the Uni- versity. He was elected by an intelligent constituency as a mem- ber of the House of Delegates, session of 1877, serving upon the Committees of Election and Privileges, Education and Enrolled Bills. He was next promoted to the State Senate, representing the counties of Brooke, Hancock and Ohio, serving two sessions, 1885 and 1887. In the former year he was upon the Committees of Judiciary, Public Buildings and Humane Institutions, For- feited and Unappropriated Lands, Public Library, and Educa- tion. In 1887 he was Chairman of the Committee on Educa- tion and a member of that of Railroads, Finance, and Claims and Grievances, as well as the Judiciary. During this memor- able session he was often voted for by friends for United States Senator, hoping in him to find a solution of the dead lock.
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WILLIAM WORKMAN.
W T ILLIAM WORKMAN, son of Joseph and Elizabeth Workman, was born in Kanawha county, Virginia, April 12, 1821. Education in those days was rare and limited. In a school near Bald Knob, he was enabled only to receive instruc- tion in the rudiments of the English language and the primary principles of arithmetic. A close student, he read much, and was thrown into the society of intelligent men, he disciplined his mind in serious, useful thought. He made common sense his guide, and became a good logician before he knew what logic meant. He became a successful teacher, and studied only such books as tended to develop the higher faculties of mind. When the war of the rebellion came on, he was determined in his opposition to secession and was warmly attached to the Ùnion.
September 15, 1861, he was taken prisoner by H. C. Pate, and spent eighteen months in Libby and Saulsbury prisons. In 1866 he was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates, in which and in the Senate, he served six terms-House of Del- egates, 1866-'67; Senate, 1868, and extra session, 1868-'69 ; House of Delegates, 1885. He was an indefatigable and intelli- gent member in each, and his zeal in the performance of his duty won for him the unstinted praise of his colleagues. He was president of the Board of Supervisors and of the County Court of Boone county, eight years, during which time he gave the greatest satisfaction. He was appointed Deputy Collector of United States Internal Revenue, under General I. H. Duval, in 1880, and continued until the change of Administration in 1885.
As Legislator, President of Board of Supervisors and County Court, his conduct was always in strict conformity with his conscience, and never has he allowed passion or prejudice to pervert his judgment. As an officer of the United States Gov- ernment, while discharging his duty faithfully, he always ad- vised the people to obey the laws and lead quiet, sober and industrious lives.
In the life of this Legislator we can see what industry and integrity can accomplish-an example that our young men may follow with profit to themselves and with honor to their country.
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PROMINENT MEN OF
ROBERT FLAVIUS FLEMING.
H ION. R. F. FLEMING was born February 14, 1842, at Fair- mont, Marion county, Virginia. He is the second son of the late Benjamin F. Fleming, a Marion county farmer. He worked on the farm and went to school until he entered his twentieth year. A severe illness in 1859-'60 prevented accept- ance of a cadetship in the Virginia Military Institute; was taken with diphtheria the first of May, 1861, which was followed by general paralysis in June of the same year. He was at his worst at the time of the General Jones raid, in April, 1863, at which time he could articulate but indistinctly, could see but dimly, and could move neither hand nor foot. From that time recovery was gradual, but slow. In 1865 he was admitted to the Bar and began the practice of law at Glenville ; and for fifteen years he was engaged in the active practice of law in Gilmer, Calhoun and Braxton, and in special cases in Lewis, Roane and Nicholas counties. At the State election in 1880 he was elected Judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit, composed of the counties of Gilmer, Calhoun, Clay, Roane and Jackson, and retired from the Bench with the close of the year 1888. In the year 1873 he married Miss Emily Talbot Moore, only daughter of the late Charles J. Moore, of Weston.
In 1882 Judge Fleming moved to his present home in Ravens- wood, on account of the health of his family. In the year 1866, and again in 1868, he was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Gil- mer county, and at the election of school officers in 1868 was chosen County Superintendent of Free Schools. He qualified and served out the term, although not a candidate for the office, and did not know that he was being voted for until late in the day the election was held. From the time of the establishment of the Independent School District of Glenville, until he re- signed to take office as Judge, he held the position of President of the Board of Education of that Independent District. Some years after the close of the late war he was appointed by the Board of Public Works a Commissioner from the First Congres- sional District to value the railroad property of the State. He is now engaged in the practice of his profession in Jackson and adjacent counties.
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GEORGE ROBERT LATHAM.
W HEN our storm-created State was not four years old she had a representative citizen in the commercial diplomatic force of the United States abroad. That representative was Consul G. R. Latham, at Melbourne, Australia, sent there in April, 1867. He was born March 9, 1832, in Prince William county, Virginia, and was reared on a farm, and received in early life little more than a common school education. He utilized this to the best advantage, and made it serviceable in self-sup- port. He taught school in Loudoun county eight years, studying history, literature and law in the long winter evenings and dur- ing Saturday of each week, and in the hours of vacation. He was admitted to the Bar in 1858 and at once began practice in Taylor county. The calm in 1860 before the political storm found him editing a weekly journal, the Western Virginian, with the motto at head of title page, "The Constitution, the Union and the Enforcement of the Laws," advocating the election of John Bell, of Tennessee, as President, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, for Vice President. This Whig enterprise was of course wrecked in the days of disaster that followed close. The step from this platform into adherence to the Union cause was easy. He became an ardent advocate of a restored govern- ment, and a separate State for the Western counties, and was prominent in the primary meetings which led to the regular Convention of June, 1861, at Wheeling. Entering the army, May 20, 1861, as Captain of Company B, Second Virginia In- fantry, he was promoted, May 20, 1862, to the rank of Colonel, which he maintained till the close of the strife. During service in the army he was elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress from the Second West Virginia District. The President soon after appointed him Consul to Melbourne, where he served three ex- act years, returning and landing in New York on the same day of 1870 in which he sailed away from American shores in 1867. Since then agricultural pursuits have been the main attraction, and official position almost unthought of. In 1875-6 he served as Superintendent of Free Schools in Upshur county, at Buck- hannon, where his home then was. He was also Supervisor for the District of West Virginia in taking the Tenth United States Census.
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CAPT. JOHN M'LURE.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
JOHN McLURE.
APT. JOHN McLURE was born in the town of Zelieno- ple, Butler county, Pennsylvania, January 22, 1816. His father and family moved to the then small town of Wheeling in the summer of the same year, and located upon the bank of the river in a log house a short distance above what was then called the " old Sprigg tavern," at that time kept by Alex. Sprigg, which stood upon the same site where now stands the " Wind- sor Hotel." His father was a house carpenter, which business he carried on in Wheeling for some time. At the age of six- teen the subject of this sketch made his first adventure upon the Ohio river. He left his home unknown to his parents in February, 1832, a few days after the great flood of that year. This was his first trip down the Ohio. He took passage on the steamer " Magnolia," commanded by Rachiel Church ; Dock Neidenbush was clerk, a Mr. Jones was first engineer, Wash- ington Dunbar, second engineer, and James Hiner and a Mr. Phillips, pilots. On this trip the steamer encountered a severe trial of the great flood, such as drift, floating houses, trees and all conceivable obstructions. When they reached Cincinnati and Louisville, the flood had attained its highest point. Arriv- ing at Louisville in the night, no landing could be found, so the steamer ran in along side of some frame houses to which a line was made fast. About midnight a severe storm arose, carrying steamboat, houses and the families that lived in the buildings, over the Ohio river falls, all landing safely together at Shipping Port, at the foot of the falls. The steamboat the next morning returned to Louisville and remained there for several days, wait- ing for the waters to recede so that it could again ascend the Ohio. The flood soon subsided and the boat started for Wheeling and Pittsburgh. It had many difficulties to contend with; landings had been destroyed and wood-yards carried away, making it difficult to obtain wood for fuel. Coal was not used for fuel for steamers in those days. After eight days hard work the boat reached Wheeling, and our young hero rejoiced that he was home once more.
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