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 39
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In March, 1870, he was by the Governor appointed one of the three Commissioners on behalf of the State of West Virginia to confer with Commissioners of the State of Virginia to adjust and settle the matter of the debt of the State of Virginia as between the two States.
In September, 1870, he was by the Governor appointed Judge of the Sixth Circuit to fill a vacancy therein. He resigned the commission as to the matter of the State debt and qualified as Judge of that Circuit, and continued in that office till October 20, 1872, when he resigned and removed to California. In 1875 he resumed the practice of law at Santa Barbara, where he is still actively engaged in the practice.
WELLINGTON VROOMAN.
H ON. WELLINGTON VROOMAN, one of the Republican members to the existing House from Wood county, was born February 13, 1835, at Palatine Bridge, Montgomery coun- ty, New York. His father, Samuel A., was a consulting en- gineer, contractor and builder. Wellington was educated at the Academy in Alleghany county, Maryland, to the age of seven- teen. From 1852 to 1853 was route mail agent from Cumber- land to the end of the Baltimore and Ohio road; then became a clerk in the office of the Baltimore and Ohio Company at Cumberland, and afterwards at Wheeling; then, from 1857 to
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1859 at Parkersburg; was made agent at Parkersburg to April, 1861, and then entered the Government service in the Quarter- master's and Pay Department. In 1862 till February, 1863, he was a wholesale grocer, then commissioned as additional Pay- master in the United States army, and remained in that service until April, 1869. At present he is a miller and manfacturer, and is interested in banking. He served as Mayor and Council- man in Parkersburg, and was elected to the Legislature of 1889 by about four hundred majority. He is a member of the Com- mittee of Privileges and Elections, and of Printing and Contin- tingent Expenses.
THOMAS SPENCER SPATES.
NE of Harrison's representative citizens faces opposite and is named above. He was born in Montgomery county, Maryland, October 15, 1831. In 1851 he was a railroad contract- or, in Taylor county, on the Valley river. Next year in Har- rison county on the Northwestern Virginia Railroad, then on the Baltimore and Ohio main stem, between Cumberland and Wheeling. From 1858 until the close of the war he was in the express office. After the war closed he began merchandising in Clarksburg, where, along with his two sons, he still continues the business on an extensive scale. He has served as Commissioner of the U. S. District Court, and as Mayor and member of the Clarksburg City Council. In 1887 he was Grand Master of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows for West Virginia. He is a Director in"the Merchants' National Bank of Clarksburg ; also in the Bank of West Virginia, at Clarksburg, which he helped to organize, and in which he was President from 1869 to 1886. He is Treasurer of the Harrison County Fair Association, and has added many improvements to Clarksburg. The Republicans elected him to the House of Delegates of 1872-'3, in which he ably served on the Committees of Finance and Public Improve- ments.
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A.LITTLE.
COL. T. S. SPATES.
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A. L. JORDAN.
HE Rev. A. L. Jordan was born on the banks of the Ohio river, in Mason county, Virginia, August 3, 1839, and grew up to manhood on a farm on the Great Kanawha river near Buffalo. At the age of eighteen years he made some prepara- tion to begin the study of law, but one year later was converted and at once decided to enter the Christian Ministry. He was married to Emily C. Fargo, October 20, 1859, and in November following was licensed to preach by the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Mason county, Virginia. After two uneventful years in the ministry, he discovered that his education was deficient, and ac- cordingly made arrangements to enter school at Gallipolis, Ohio. After some months of earnest study there, he entered Denison University at Granville, Ohio, taking the classical course up to the close of his Junior year, when he was called to the pastorate of the First Baptist Church at Newport, Kentucky. Owing to ill health while at school, he agreed to take the church and re- main out of school for one year; but a somewhat remarkable work of grace began in the church soon after he became its pastor, resulting in large additions to the church, and making it necessary to enlarge the building. This seemingly made it necessary for him to remain two years.
He then entered the Chicago University, taking the full class- ical course, graduating in 1871. He next entered the Baptist Union Theological Seminary at Chicago, and took its prescribed course, and at once settled with the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church of that city as pastor. After two years in that capacity his wife's health gave way and the physician advised a change of climate. The Newport Church re-called him and he remained with them two years, when his own health was so much enfeebled that he had to resign and go to the country for a brief season. He next became pastor of the Trinity Baptist Church, Spring- field, Ohio, where he remained nearly three years, and then took charge of the North Baptist Church, Columbus, Ohio, at the urgent solicitation of the Ohio Baptist Convention. He resigned his position there, after two years of labor, and took charge of the General Missionary Work under the Convention of the Baptist Church. He remained in missionary work until his health was completely prostrated. He was therefore compelled to retire from active work for a time. During this period he
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preached occasionally, as openings offered, until he settled as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Wheeling, W. Va. Upon leaving the State of Ohio and his mission work, "The Annual" of the Ohio Baptist Convention for 1886, in referring to his labors in general missionary work, said: "In Mr. Jordan's removal to another State, not only the churches he served but the Con- vention and the State suffers no ordinary loss. He has been for many years one of our most successful pastors. His labors as general missionary pastor at Groveport and Lancaster will be gratefully remembered by the Board and those for whom and among whom he has labored."
Mr. Jordan remained in Wheeling two years, rendering faith- ful and acceptable service in the pastorate. While in Wheel- ing he was called to the pastorate at Dayton, Kentucky, where he went in the early part of 1889, and where he now remains.
He is a man of broad culture, fluent in speech, full of energy, eloquent in pulpit ministrations, and always renders faithful and acceptable service to the churches he serves. As an all- round church worker, he has few superiors in his denomination. When A. L. Jordan left this State, West Virginia lost what Kentucky gained-a cultured, broad, brainy Christian man.
JAMES ADDISON MACAULEY.
NE of West Virginia's Irish-American citizens is this vet- eran one-armed Union soldier, James A. Macauley, who was born in Ireland, November 8, 1840. In his infancy his par- ents removed with him to Glasgow, Scotland, but finally joined the throng of liberty-loving home-seekers and emigrated to the " Home of the Free," and in 1850 landed on its soil. The fam- ily settled first in Jefferson county, Ohio, but in 1854 removed to the city of Wheeling, Virginia, where the subject of our sketch has since resided, except the period spent in the civil or military service of his adopted country.
He received his education in the public schools of Jefferson county, Ohio, and Wheeling, Virginia, to which he has added valuable and useful acquisition by his own " midnight lamp"- all supplemented by a thorough course of law studies, from 1865 to 1868-after he had come home from the war minus an arm, and was admitted to the Bar in 1868.
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True to his Irish instincts, when his adopted Government called for her citizen soldiery to rise up for the preservation of ยท the Union, he threw himself into the breach as a volunteer in Company E, First Virginia Volunteer Infantry, of which he was made sergeant. Those were three months' soldiers. At its ex- piration he re-enlisted in Company A, of the same regiment re- organized, and served faithfully under the stars and stripes un- til, in the fore-front of the hot Port Republic, June 9, 1862, he lost his left arm, and was taken prisoner; as a wounded pris- oner, he suffered with his Union comrades at Richmond's Libby and Belle Isle, when he was paroled, sent home, and was soon after honorably discharged on account of his disability. He was subsequently clerk in the Wheeling postoffice, then filled a like position in the State Treasurer's office, and finally was elected State Treasurer for West Virginia. At the expiration of his term he was made Examiner in the United States Pension Bu- reau, where he is now employed as the head of one of its Divi- sions.
SPENCER DAYTON.
S PENCER DAYTON is a native of Litchfield county, Con- necticut, born January 22, 1820. He had the benefit of about one-half the course of the Connecticut common schools. After laboring on a farm till he was sixteen years of age he learned the trade of a mill-wright. In 1837 the panic, and con- sequent hard times, destroyed the business of a mill-wright, so he learned the carpenter and joiner's trade, at which he contin- ued to work until 1843. Having studied Latin and Greek un- der a private instructor, in the fall of 1843, he began the study of law in the office of Nelson Brewster, a noted attorney of Litch- field county. In 1846 he was admitted to the Bar, and practiced in the courts of that section until June, 1847, when he moved to Barbour county, Virginia, where he has since resided, and has constantly kept up the practice of his profession. He served one term in the State Senate of West Virginia, having been elected to that office in the spring of 1869. He has filled the office of Prosecuting Attorney for Barbour, Randolph, Taylor and Tucker counties. His son, Alston Jordan Dayton, is his associate in the law at Philippi, and is considered one of the most promising young lawyers of the State.
MAJOR RANDOLPH STALNAKER.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
RANDOLPH STALNAKER.
HE subject of this sketch is one of the active, enterprising business men of the city of Wheeling. He was born at Lewisburg, Greenbrier county, Virginia, June 8, 1847. He re- ceived a more than ordinary education in the schools of that county, especially at the Lewisburg Academy, an institution of high grade in the sciences and classics. He also had the benefit of a few terms at the Academy at Union, Monroe county, taught by Col. Edgar and Rutherford Houston, both of whom were men of a high grade of scholarship. While yet at school, the war of 1861 broke out, and Mr. Stalnaker felt it to be his duty to enlist in the Southern Army. Being small of stature and youthful in appearance, the mustering officer rejected him, much to his dis- comfort and disgust. In 1863 he volunteered a second time, and was received without an objection of any kind. He was placed upon the staff of General A. W. Reynolds, one of the fighting soldiers of the Confederacy. Some months later he was made adjutant of Col. D. S. Honshell's battalion. The Colonel was also a noted fighter, so young Stalnaker did not want for oppor- tunities to draw his sword on the field of battle. He was in many hotly contested conflicts, the principal of which were Gettys- burg-the greatest battle of the war-Monocacy, Snicker's Gap, Vicksburg during the twenty-seven days bombardment by Gen- eral Grant, and Winchester, when Sheridan drove General Early out of the Valley of Virginia.
At the close of hostilities, Major Stalnaker returned to his home in Greenbrier county, and engaged in mercantile and other pursuits. When Governor H. M. Mathews entered upon the duties of his office as Governor, in the city of Wheeling, March 4, 1877, Major Stalnaker was made his Private Secretary, which position he filled in a most satisfactory manner during the full term of four years. His gentlemanly demeanor and courteous treatment of all who called at the Governor's office made him a general favorite.
His next official position was Secretary of State, which he held from March 4, 1881, to March 4, 1885, during the entire admin- istration of Governor Jacob B. Jackson. In this high official station, he met every responsibility in the most satisfactory man- ner. The secret of his success may be mainly attributed to two facts : First, competency and general fitness for public posi-
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tion ; and, second, the affable manner in which he meets men and dispatches business that comes before him. Such men while in public positions never fail to meet the demands that are made upon them by the people. At the expiration of his term as Sec- retary of State, he engaged in the manufacture of headings and bungs in Wheeling, under the firm name of Hale & Stalnaker. Meeting with heavy loss by the burning of their establishment, Major Stalnaker accepted the position of Secretary and Treas- urer of " The West Virginia China Company," a very large and prosperous pottery in North Wheeling, which position he now holds, and is filling with great acceptability to the stockholders of the establishment. In politics he has always advocated the principles of the Democratic party.
WILLIAM E. ARNOLD.
MONG the law-makers of the Old Commonwealth, who became legislators in the new, was the Hon. Wm. E. Ar- nold, a native of Culpeper county, Virginia, born April 10, 1819, After receiving a classical education he attended law school, and then settled in Weston, Lewis county, where he now re- sides. Admitted to the Bar in 1846, he has since continued in the profession, except when serving his people in State offices. Elected to the Virginia Legislature in 1857, he was active in the passage of the law locating the Hospital for the Insane at Weston. He remained in that Legislature by re-election until 1861, serving during the time on the Committees of Courts of Justice and Lunatic Asylums. A Union Democrat, believing that secession meant civil war, he espoused the cause of the whole Union and supported the Government. As a member of the West Virginia Legislature in 1877, he served on the Judici- ary Committee, on Claims and Grievances, and on Roads and Internal Navigation. He introduced a measure to raise by State aid "An Internal Improvement Fund to build roads throughout the Commonwealth." Retiring from official work, he has de- voted his attention to law practice, banking, farming and graz- ing, by which he has amassed a fortune which he is enjoying with his family.
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JOHN DUFFY ALDERSON.
NEW men in this State have seen as much of its legislative bodies as the subject of this sketch ; a native of Nicholas county, born November 29, 1854. When eighteen years of age he was a page in the 1872 Constitutional Convention of West Virginia; Senate Doorkeeper in 1872-'3; Sergeant-at-Arms for the Senates of 1875-'77-'79-'81; Senate Clerk in 1883-'85-'87- nine consecutive sessions in our legislative halls.
By persevering study, under difficulties incident to his part of the State, Mr. Alderson prepared himself for a course of legal studies, fitted himself for practice and opened office at Nicho- las Court House, January 1, 1876, and practiced with such marked ability as to secure, in the following April, the appoint- ment of Prosecuting Attorney for Nicholas and Webster counties, and then the election thereto, serving as such in 1876, 1880-'81.
Having been brought up on a farm, he has never lost the rel- ish for agricultural life, but has always lived and labored as a farmer, except when engaged in his profession or at the State Capitol.
By his own exertions and the exercise of strict integrity, Mr. Alderson has held the esteem of all with whom he came in con- tact since his boyhood. Mr. Alderson was the Democratic can- didate for Congress in the Third District in 1888, and conducted a vigorous and able campaign. The contest was very close, but Mr. Alderson received the certificate of election and was enrolled by the Clerk as a member of the Fifty-first Congress.
THOMAS ELMER DAVIS.
N the memorable session of the Legislature of 1889, from the counties composing the Tenth district, Barbour, Lewis, Ran- dolph, Taylor, Tucker and Upshur, was placed on the rolls the above named Republican Senator. He was born on November 9, 1844, at Simpson's, on the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Harrison county, Virginia. Received a fair English education. In 1863 enlisted in the Union army at the age of 18, as a Second Lieutenant, was promoted to a First Lieuten- ancy, and served till the close of the war. Has been for years, and still is engaged, at Grafton, in the mercantile and banking business. The voters of six counties sent him to the Senate for 38
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the term of four years ending December 31, 1893. He is unob- trusive in his activity on the floor and in committee work, and has the elements of popularity in his appearance and his dis- charge of publie duty. In the long contest for the election of a President of the Senate he was often voted for by his party adherents, and had he been chosen would have presided ably and with grace. He is serving on the Committees of Finance, Pub- lic and Humane Institutions, Federal Relations, Public Library and Chairman of Banks and Corporations.
ADAM C. SNYDER.
HE subject of this sketch and portrait was born in Highland county, Virginia, March 26, 1834. In 1852-'3 he attended Mossy Creek Academy, Augusta county, Virginia, and in 1834-'5 Tuscarora Academy, in Mifflin county, Pennsylvania; entered Dickinson College, at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1856, and from there he went to Washington College, now Washington-Lee University, at Lexington, Virginia, and remained through 1857 -'8, and then entered the Law School of Judge J. W. Brocken- brough, at Lexington, Virginia. In 1859 he was licensed, and commenced the practice of the law at Lewisburg, Greenbrier county, Virginia, where he still resides. In 1860 he was ap- pointed Deputy Marshal to take the census of that county.
When the State seceded in 1861 he volunteered in the Con- federate army, and was Adjutant of the Twenty-seventh Vir- ginia Regiment, in the celebrated "Stonewall Brigade," and served until he was captured, in 1863, and held a prisoner in the old Atheneum, at Wheeling, until 1864.
After the war he resumed the practice of law. In 1865 he was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Highland county, Virginia.
He practiced at Lewisburg and in the adjoining counties until April, 1882, when Governor Jackson appointed him to fill the unexpired term of Judge James F. Patton, deceased, on the Bench of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, and the people elected him to the same position in 1882 and again in 1884.
In 1869 he married Miss Henrietta H. Cary, of Lewisburg. They have five children, four boys and one girl, ranging in age from eight to sixteen years.
Judge Snyder is a lawyer of no ordinary attainments. He is a hard student, and his decisions are always clear, concise and able.
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HON. ADAM C. SNYDER.
6
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PROMINENT MEN OF
WILLIAM LEIGHTON.
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TILLIAM LEIGHTON, who has gained a well-deserved and
honored niche in the temple of American poesy, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 22, 1833. From his ances- try he inherits some of the sturdy blood of old England, whose legends he has so beautified with his poetic pen. He graduated from Harvard University in 1855. His father and grandfather had gained distinction as glass makers, and it was his lot to fol- low in their footsteps. He came to West Virginia in 1868, and became a partner in the well-known firm of Hobbs, Brockunier & Co., the enterprising glass manufacturers of Wheeling.
Like Morris, the poet-merchant of London, and Bloomfield, the poetic shoemaker, who composed verses while pounding his lapstone, so Mr. Leighton has demonstrated that the cares of business are not always incompatible with some attention to the cultivation of the mind, and literary studies. In early life he was fond of poetry and all kinds of literature. He is an especial ad- mirer of the works of Shakespeare, and was for many years the President of the Shakespeare Club of Wheeling.
In early youth he began to write verses, which were published in the Boston newspapers, sometimes over his own name, but oftener anonymously. Being naturally unpretentious, his mod- esty did not always endorse the favorable opinion of his friends, and he therefore preferred to await the maturity of manhood be- fore launching his first important poetic venture, in the "Sons of Godwin," which was published in 1876. It was a most singu- lar literary coincidence that, a few weeks after the appearance of this poem, Alfred Tennyson published a poem on the same theme, entitled " Harold." Mr. Leighton's production, however, stood well with its English compeer, and was most favorably noticed by competent critics at home and abroad. Indeed, it has been claimed by many that the American is the better of the two in all that goes to make up the true merit of poetic art.
In 1877 Mr. Leighton published another dramatic poem, en- titled, "At the Court of King Edwin," which has also received the high enconiums of the best critics and poets of the land. These two poems are of sufficient length to make good-sized vol- umes, and yet neither of them is at all prolix.
A third poem-" Change, the Whisper of the Sphinx "-ap peared in 1878 ; "A Sketch of Shakespeare," in 1879; " Shakes-
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peare's Dream," in 1880 ; and "The Subjection of Hamlet," in 1881. All these are works of no ordinary merit. I may say, in short, that all of Mr. Leighton's works evince not only poetic talent, but wide reading, versatility of knowledge and profound thought. They betoken remarkable and praiseworthy industry in one daily occupied with the cares and anxiety of business life. The historic deeds and heroes of the olden times shine with new lustre in the interesting pages of his dramatic poems, and the wonderful discoveries and truths of science are beautifully clothed in his philosophical productions.
Ex-President Thompson, of the West Virginia University, passed the following high eulogy upon one of Mr. Leighton's productions :
"'Change' is a great poem, and, therefore, we think it not hazardous to predict that it will be an enduring poem. It com- bines all the elements of a great work of the imagination. Ifwe mistake not, it is entirely original. We know of no other effort in the history of poetic literature to employ natural law and science as the means of exalting a poem into epic power. Yet this is an epic poem, instinct with true epic power, and made so by the employment, neither of the old mythological legends nor of the supernatural in Christian history, but of the manifold, in- tricate, stupendous phenomena of nature and history and man. It is written in a serious, elevated, majestic style. It does not droop, or flag, or give any evidence of exhaustion of power. Its gait is even, steady, strong, triumphant. In its striking origin- ality, in the sublimity of its style, in the grandeur of its scope, in the beauty and aptness of its illustrations, in the strikingly graphic power of its descriptions, in the tenderness of its pathos, in the wealth of its knowledge, in its splendid poetic revelation of the eager, daring, restless spirit of the age, in the fineness, the keenness, the suggestiveness of its philosophy, in its pure and reverent religious spirit, and in the largeness and magnificence of its hope for man, it has established its high claim as one of the immortal classics of the English language."
When Mr. Leighton's drama, " The Sons of Godwin," first ap- peared, the Philadelphia Bulletin critically examined it and com- pared it with Lord Tennyson's "Harold," which embraced the same thought. I can do no better than reproduce here a part of the Bulletin's learned critique :
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"A reader of the two plays, however, cannot help comparing the treatment of the story by the two artists ; for Mr. Leighton, although not a laureate, has fairly won the right to be regarded as an artist, and to have his work compared with that of the most popular of English poets. It is only in certain technical details of the blank verse, of which Tennyson is an acknowl- edged master, that his play is superior to Leighton's. For as a drama, either for acting or reading, Leighton's is much the bet- ter of the two. It has a better selection of the incidents of the story, and in those where the selection is the same with both authors, the American shows much more vigor than the English- man.
" There are a larger number of characters in ' The Sons of Godwin' than in 'Harold,' and they are conceived and devel- oped with much greater individuality. Harold himself, as pre- sented by Leighton, is a creation of distinctness, in which the weak and the strong traits are alike well expressed. Tostig, Morkar, Garth, Wolnoth, Edward, William, Aldred and Sti- gand (the two archbishops) and Edith, are all stronger portraits in the American than the English work. The Countess Gytha, Godwin's widow, whose mother-love makes a feature in Mr. Leighton's play, does not apper at all in Tennyson's. There is the faintest and vainest attempt in Tennyson's to lighten up the story with a little humor. But in Leighton's the character of Mollo, the minstrel or gleeman, serves to enliven many scenes, although he is not by any means the clown, or even the conven- tional court fool.
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