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 35
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The year he graduated he was tendered the professorship of mathematics in Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio, but declined it. He soon afterward accepted a professorship in the Normal Col- lege at Hopedale, Ohio, where, for four years, he filled the chairs of language, logic and literature. On account of impaired health he resigned his professorship, and in the summer of 1871 re- turned to Hancock county, West Virginia. Without solicita- tion on his part, he was, in the autumn of that year, made the nominee of the Republican party and was elected a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He was twice subse- quently re-elected to the same position-being a member of the celebrated sessions of 1872-'3 and of 1874-'5.
While in college he had devoted much study to parliamen- tary tactics. His colleagues in the Legislature were not long in
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discovering this fact, and he was universally recognized as the best parliamentarian in the entire Legislature.
In the session of 1874-'5 Mr. Campbell was the nominee of the Republican caucus for Speaker of the House of Delegates, but the Democrats being in the majority, he was defeated. During that session he introduced the famous resolution that led to the investigation of the State finances, and resulted in the presenta- tion of articles of impeachment against the Auditor and Treas- urer of the State. He would, as a parliamentary right, have been appointed the Chairman of the Investigating Committee, but, upon his own motion, he surrendered his personal ambition for the public good, and recommended the appointment of the Hon. John Hanson Good, a member of the dominant party, to said position. The investigation and trial were necessarily pro- tracted, and resulted in the conviction of the Treasurer of mal- feasance in office, while the charges against the Auditor were not sustained.
In 1872 Mr. Campbell was examined before the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State and was admitted to the Bar. With oc- casional brief intervals, he has practiced his profession in Han- cock and Brooke counties, and at Steubenville, Ohio, down to the present time.
Since the year 1872 Mr. Campbell has been an active factor in the politics of the State. In 1880 he was made Chairman of the Republican State Convention, and was also nominated as one of the Presidential Electors of West Virginia. He was assigned by the State Committee, that year, to make a canvass of the Great Kanawha Valley region of the State, in company with the Hon. George C. Sturgiss, the Republican candidate for Governor. They spoke in many places to large gatherings of people, and made for themselves enviable reputations as platform speakers. Mr. Campbell is logical in thought, fluent in speech, and eloquent in utterance. He always commands attention in his public ad- dresses.
In 1884 he participated in the Blaine and Logan campaign throughout West Virginia; and by invitation of the State Com- mittee, was one of the few Republicans selected to accompany Mr. Blaine in his tour through a portion of the State, and spoke to a massive audience at Parkersburg from the same platform with that inimitable statesman.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
In 1880 he was tendered the nomination for Congress in the First District, but declined ; in 1886 he was mentioned in con- nection with a like nomination, and in 1888 he was actively in the field for that position, but was defeated. A few weeks after the holding of the Congressional Convention, he was unani- mously nominated as a candidate for one of the Circuit Judge- ships of the First Circuit of the State, and was elected by a large majority. He is now serving efficiently in that capacity. His Circuit embraces the counties of Hancock, Brooke, Ohio and Marshall.
In 1884 Judge Campbell and Hon. B. J. Smith organized the Citizens Bank at New Cumberland, which from then till now has been under the management and superintendence of the former.
Judge Campbell is an intense American. He believes in the equality of the human race, and the just rights of all men before the law. While he is a partisan in politics, he is not narrow in his views, but believes in the doctrine of allowing the greatest liberty to every citizen. He is a member of the Disciples Church, yet he is liberal in his religious convictions, and in a sense is non-sectarian. He has never married.
JAMES DALLAS EWING.
N eminent member of the Bar, and an ex-Judge of the State Supreme Court, writes : " J. D. Ewing is a lawyer of prom- inence in Wheeling. His ability is recognized by the Bar; and he has earned a reputation for honesty, integrity and prompt- ness in professional duties. He has never sought and never held public office. He was once nominated for Circuit Judge, and would have honored the judicial ermine." Mr. Ewing was born December 19, 1832, in Ohio county, Virginia, and has spent his life there and in the adjoining counties of Marshall and Wetzel. He was born and brought up on a farm, but having adopted the law as his profession, has continued its practice, with what suc- cess may be inferred from the above comment from an eminent brother lawyer. The West Virginia Bar has no more conscien- tious, honorable member than J. D. Ewing, of Wheeling.
34
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COL. DANIEL. D. JOHNSON, A. M.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
DANIEL DYE JOHNSON.
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IN the hours when the people west of the Alleghenies needed the services and counsel of all their sons, Daniel D. Johnson was not absent or deficient. He was born in Virginia April 28, 1836, and still resides at Long Reach, Tyler county. He grew up to manhood on his father's farm, laboring nine months each year and enjoying the benefits of a private school at home dur- ing winter months. At the age of twenty-one he entered Mari- etta College, Ohio, where he spent two years, and in June, 1860, graduated from Columbian College (now University), Washing- ton, D. C.
From the galleries of Congress he listened to the exciting de- bates of the hour, which presaged the coming storm; attended as spectator the great Union Convention at Baltimore, in May, 1860, and, returning to the labors of the farm, determined to re- sist all attempts to dissolve the Nation. He took an active part in the canvass that preceded the election of members of the Vir- ginia Convention in February, 1861, opposing secession in all its forms; was a member of the Mass Convocation at Wheeling in May, and also of the Delegated Convention of June 11, 1861, and did his part in preventing what is now West Virginia from being annexed to the Southern Confederacy. In August, 1862, he entered the Union army as Major of the Fourteenth West Virginia Infantry, and was promoted July 29, 1863, to be Col- onel thereof. He was in many hard-contested battles, wounded at Opequan, and in several engagements acted as Brigade Com- mander, and was mustered out and finally honorably discharged July 3, 1865.
In 1866 he served as a member of the House of Delegates, and led in opposition to the Test Oaths which were enacted by that Legislature. There had been no organized resistance to such measure, but by his public criticism he aroused a sentiment which later resulted in the transfer of the political power in the State to the Democratic party.
In religious affairs he was equally active. The Baptist de- nomination owes to him its rescue from apathy and discourage- ment and its present aggressive condition. He was mainly in- strumental in organizing the General Association of West Vir-
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ginia, which elected him its first President, and so continued him several years.
In 1866 he was the Democratic candidate for Congress in his district, and made an aggressive and bold canvass, but was de- feated. In 1868 he delivered the Master's oration at his Alma Mater, Columbian College, and received the A.M. degree. He was a member of the State Senate from 1872 to 1879, and was President thereof; was an able and quick parliamentarian, pop- ular and impartial. He also served one term as Clerk of the Senate. The same Senatorial counties elected him to the Con- stitutional Convention of 1872, in which he took a prominent part. In 1873 he was appointed Regent of the State University and was President of the Board for many years. He is still a Regent, having been thrice re-appointed. In 1880 he was Presi- dential Elector by a larger majority than any of his colleagues, and voted for General Hancock in the Electoral College; was an Alternate to the Democratic National Convention in 1880, a delegate to the one of 1888, and Chairman of the State Con- ventions of 1876 and 1880.
. Colonel Johnson is a farmer, loving agricultural pursuits, but has taken part in every political campaign within the State since 1865. He was admitted to the Bar soon after the war, and has maintained a lucrative practice ever since. No man has stamped deeper impression for good on the State of West Vir- ginia than Col. Dan. D. Johnson, whose portrait now faces the reader.
ULYSSES NEAR ARNETT.
N EAR Rivesville, Marion county, Virginia, lived Jonathan Arnett and his wife, Elizabeth. There was born, upon a stock farm, November 7, 1820, their son, Ulysses Near, who, in 1877, presided over the Senate of his native State. His educa- tion was obtained from the common schools. From 1857 to 1859 he represented Marion county in the General Assembly of Vir- ginia. He was a member of the Convention of 1872 to revise the State Constitution, and served in the Senate from 1874 to 1877, in the latter year as President. He was a popular Democrat, and served the people in many local offices till his death, December 3, 1880, and resided in and owned a beautiful home on the banks of the historic Monongahela river.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
THOMAS H. HARVEY.
ROM Scotland, before the Revolution dawned in America, came a valuable branch of the Harvey family to the shores of the New World, and settled in the Old Commonwealth of Virginia, east of the mountains, on tidewater. Thence one of the descendants moved west and located upon a farm, near Buf- falo, Putnam county, on the banks of the Great Kanawha river. Here was born, May 24, 1844, Thomas H. Harvey, the subject of this sketch. He labored as a tiller of the soil, in late spring, summer, and early fall, and in winter attended school in the vil- lage of Buffalo, until the spirit of war swept over the South, when he entered the Confederate army, as a private soldier of the Thirty-sixth Virginia Regiment of Infantry Volunteers. He was wounded at Fort Donaldson on the last day of that hard- fought battle.
At the close of the war, as soon as the smoke of ill feeling in the border States had been dissipated by the protecting records of General Grant, Mr. Harvey returned to the Kanawha Valley and began the study of law. After a year's course of home study he entered Washington College, Lexington, Virginia, and grad- uated in law at the session of 1867-'8. He located at Winfield, the county seat of Putnam, and began practice in July, 1869, at- tending in order the Courts of Putnam, Wayne and Cabell coun- ties.
In 1872 Mr. Harvey was elected Prosecuting Attorney for Putnam county, and served acceptably in that office four years. In 1878 he was elected to the State Legislature, and served as a member of the House of Delegates of 1879 from the county of Cabell. His readiness in debate, coupled with a fair knowledge of parliamentary law, made him a formidable member of that body. In 1888 he was the nominee of the Democratic party for Circuit Judge, embracing the counties of Cabell, Wayne, Lincoln and Logan, and after a spirited contest was elected, defeating Judge Ira J. McGinnis, who was in the same campaign an Inde- pendent candidate for re-election.
Judge Harvey resides in the growing city of Huntington, and is serving with great acceptability in his present judicial position.
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HON. ROBT. F. DENNIS, A. M.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
ROBERT FLOURNOY DENNIS.
C OL. WM. H. DENNIS, was for many years President of the State Senate of Virginia. He was one of the stock known as " old Virginia gentlemen," highly respected and use- ful to his State. His eldest son, the subject of this sketch, was Robert F. Dennis, born in Charlotte county, Virginia, Septem- ber 18, 1823. After preliminary preparation he entered Wash- ington College, Lexington, Va., and was graduated in 1845, taking first honors in his class. The Faculty afterwards invited him to deliver the A.M. oration, which he did. He studied law at the University of Virginia, under Professor Minor, and settled in Lewisburg in 1849, where he married the youngest daughter of John A. North, August 29th of the same year, and soon after was elected Prosecuting Attorney of the counties of Greenbrier, Pocahontas and Fayette (four years each), having a strong op- ponent in each county, and was re-elected another four years for Pocahontas county. The Democratic Convention nominated him for Judge of that Circuit, but Judge Homer A. Holt, Inde- pendent Democrat, defeated him by the coalition process.
In the war of 1861-'65 he was Captain of Co. E, Twenty- seventh Virginia Infantry, Confederate States Army, and served in the "Stonewall" brigade one year, when he was transferred to the Transportation department. The enemy captured him in June, 1864; he suffered ten months' imprisonment in Camp Chase, Ohio, and was exchanged in February, 1865.
As a lawyer, Captain Dennis has always enjoyed a respectable and lucrative practice, and the esteem of clients and the Bar. In social life he has ever been popular, and with the people none the less so. He was elected to the West Virginia Senate eight years, from 1876 to 1883 inclusive, in which body he was chair- man of the Judiciary Committee and of the Committee on Re- vision of the Laws. He has been a Trustee of Washington-Lee University since 1878. He is now practicing law in Greenbrier, Pocahontas, Summers and Monroe counties, also in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and in the Federal Court.
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PROMINENT MEN OF
CHARLES BROOKS SMITH.
T HE Hon. Charles B. Smith, one of the uncertified Congress- men of West Virginia, who has the responsibility of Fed- eral patronage distribution without the compensatory salary attached, resides at Parkersburg, in the Fourth Congressional District. He was born near his present residence. February 24, 1844. His grand father, Robert Smith, came from England in 1819 and settled in Wood county; and his father was an excel- lent tinner, and died in 1867. The son had the benefit of com- mon and select schools, under Professor John C. Nash and others. In February, 1864, he enlisted in the First West Virginia Cav- alry, and was in succession promoted to second lieutenant, first lieutenant and captain of Co. E. He was with Sheridan down the Shenandoah Valley, and at the surrender at Appomattox, and was mustered out in July, 1865. He then engaged in steam- boating from Parkersburg to Gallipolis, Ohio, to the year 1870. He has been in the oil business ; in the wholesale queensware trade in 1879, and a contractor upon the Ohio River Railroad at its construction from the Little to the Great Kanawha river. He served as Recorder of Parkersburg in 1875-6; was a member of the Council in 1877, and Mayor from 1878 to 1880, and Sheriff of Wood county from January, 1881, to January, 1885.
Capt. Smith is now and has been since 1887, in the foundry business, and sells stoves and castings in new and old Virginia, and from New York to Cincinnati along the line of the Balti- more and Ohio Railroad.
He is a pronounced Republican, and is prominent in every convention, but is a business man too busy to indulge in office hunting at the expense of his mercantile custom. In August, 1888, the party convention at Point Pleasant nominated him by acclamation for congress to represent the Fourth District in the Fifty-first Congress. At a previous convention he refused a nomination, and this time accepted under protest. He made but few speeches, but by personal canvass reached each of the twelve counties of the district. At the election he received on the face of the returns, 19,837 votes, to 19,825 votes for his opponent, Hon. James Monroe Jackson. Upon review of the county cer- tificates Gov. Wilson issued his certificate to Judge Jackson. The clerk of Pleasants county in giving the vote wrote "twe," the last letter imperfect, but decided by the Governor to be twelve,
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WEST VIRGINIA.
and by the friends of Capt. Smith to be two. This, with the throwing out of a small vote in another county, finally brought the issue of a certificate away from Capt. Smith by three, and he is left to carry the contest before the House of Representatives at the next session, December, 1889.
Captain Smith is one of the popular men of West Virginia, and has always borne an honorable and upright name.
JOSEPH SNIDER.
OL. JOSEPH SNIDER, the senior Senator from Monon- galia county in the present Legislature, is the son of Elisha Snider, and was born February 14, 1827, in the county in which he now resides. He was reared on a farm, and re- ceived a fair education. He was a Douglas Democrat in 1860, but when the war broke out he opposed secession. He was in the first mass Convention at Wheeling, also a member of the Convention which ordained the formation of the new State; was in the Legislature of the Re-organized Government of Virginia, and voted against the continuance of slavery. He was Colonel of the Seventh West Virginia Infantry, and in the battle of Antietam had his horse shot from under him. At Fredericksburg he received a bullet wound in the head. By many battles the regiment was so depleted as to require consoli- dation into four companies, and in September, 1863, Colonel Snider, with other supernumerary officers, was mustered out. He was then commissioned Colonel of the Fourth West Vir- ginia Cavalry, a six months' regiment, and served till April 14, 1864. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1872 ; also of the House of Delegates of that year, and was re-elected to the session of 1875. In these positions he served his constituents with diligence, ability and satisfaction. Colonel Snider was elect- ed to the State Senate, serving in 1887 and 1889. In the present session he is Chairman of the Committees of Claims and Griev- ances, and of Militia, and a member of those of Public Printing, Immigration and Agriculture, Railroads, Public Buildings and Humane Institutions, and Judiciary. He is a Republican, and has been. since West Virginia was formed. The Colonel is a friend of education and has been President of the Board of Union District, in his county, for years.
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PROMINENT MEN OF
(
HON. GEORGE J. ARNOLD.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
GEORGE JACKSON ARNOLD.
G EORGE JACKSON ARNOLD, one of the able and early advocates of a new State west of the Alleghenies, was born in Culpeper county, Virginia, March 16, 1816. He re- moved to Lewis county in 1830, where he has since resided. He read law late in life and was admitted to the Bar in 1848; was elected to the office of Prosecuting Attorney of Lewis county in 1852, and again in 1856-serving eight years in a most satis- factory manner. In 1861 he was elected to the Legislature of Virginia. The war coming on, Mr. Arnold being opposed to secession, went as a delegate to Wheeling in July, 1861, where the Legislature of the Restored Government of Virginia was in session. He was placed on the committee to prepare a bill for the formation of a new State, and gave the movement his hearty support. He was the draughtsman of the bill that gave us the new State of West Virginia. During that interesting session, he participated in all of the debates with great fearlessness, and may be justly regarded as one of the old State's re-organizers in the dark days of war, having voted for the Union and taken that side of the question which made a new State an imperative necessity. His services to his country in those months when the flag needed friends and protectors, were of great value and were highly appreciated. He retired to private life after West Virginia was made a State, and remained in the peaceful prac- tice of his profession, and in farming and stock-raising until 1878, when he was elected to the House of Delegates of West Virginia, and took an active part in the sessions of 1878 and '79. On his return home he declined to be a candidate for re- election.
While engaged in the practice of his profession, he made our land laws and land titles a specialty, and upon questions per- taining to them his opinions are entitled to great weight. In- deed, he maintains a very high rank in that branch of the pro- fession. Mr. Arnold was at one time an independent candidate for Judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, but was defeated. He held the opinion that a judge ought not to be elected as a partisan, but should be, in all respects independent of party and party action. He issued a circular letter to the voters of the circuit, from which I excerpt one paragraph, which shows the
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true character of the man, and reveals the fact that he is the right kind of material out of which to make a judge :
" My opinion always has been, and is now, that a Judge, to be upright, impartial and just in his decisions, should divest himself of all prejudice, both personal and political, and mete out the law alike to all persons, whether of one party or another, whether rich or poor, exalted or humble,-in other words, that in dispensing justice, he should "know no man." He should never suffer himself to lend his position in order to promote party ends, or use his office as an engine of oppression, or to gratify feelings of revenge."
Some years ago Mr. Arnold quit the practice of law and re- moved to one of his large grazing farms on the upper West Fork of the Monongahela river. He is one of the largest land- owners in West Virginia, and has made stock-raising a special study. The farm on which he now resides is a magnificent boundary of rich grazing land, which he keeps under a high state of cultivation. Passing through it, as the writer has often done, it is not an uncommon sight to see his short-horned cattle grazing upon, not a thousand, but almost a hundred hills. He is in all respects a model farmer and grazier. He is perhaps by odds the largest stock-raiser in West Virginia, and may be classed among our wealthiest citizens.
Mr. Arnold is a man of large information, and keeps posted on the progress of affairs. He is practical in every respect, and is charitable to the sick and the poor. His door is ever open to generous hospitality.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
CHARLES LEANDER BROWN.
HARLES L. BROWN, youngest son of Judge R. S. Brown, was born in Elizabeth, Wirt county, Virginia, June 20, 1859. After due preparation he entered Bethany College, Brooke county, West Virginia, and graduated June 20, 1878, his nine- teenth birthday. He represented the Alumni of the Neotrophian Society of that College at the anniversary celebration, Novem- ber 5, 1879, having been elected as the alternate of Hon. John C. New, of Indiana.
Mr. Brown was admitted to the Bar, February 26, 1880, and practices in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and in the various courts of Jackson and adjoining counties. The docket of the Supreme Court at Charleston has important cases, in which he is sole counsel, and some in which he is either chief or assistant counsel. His rapidly growing practice of important and lucrative cases manifest the appreciation, by clients, of his industry as an attorney and his legal acumen.
Not only in the courts, but the people generally, recognizing his ability and glowing promise of usefulness, demanded his ser- vices in legislative halls. In August, 1882, the Democratic Coun- ty Convention of Jackson county nominated him for the West Virginia House of Delegates, and at the October election he de_ feated J. M. Adams, Republican candidate, and ran ahead of his ticket, receiving more votes than any candidate in the county at that election, although Jackson was considered a Republican county. In the House of Delegates of 1883 he served on the following committees : Chairman on Federal Relations-one of the most important,-member of the Judiciary, and of Counties and Municipal Corporations. His being placed on such import- ant committees is evidence of a confidence in his ability rarely reposed by legislative assemblies on one so young-only twenty- three-and this being his first experience among law-makers. But the House Journal, of his bills introduced and passed, as well as his committee work, show that the confidence was not misplaced. He was elected to the State Senate in 1885, and served four years with distinction and usefulness.
Mr. Brown is yet a young man, but exhibits legislative and le- gal traits not often found among his seniors, and which give promise, if his life is spared, of a useful and honorable career.
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PROMINENT MEN OF
417.TLE
CAPT. JAMES M. PIPES.
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