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 49
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lished in the Transactions of the Association and many of them copied into the local newspapers. He was elected Treasurer of the Medical Society of the State of West Virginia at its forma- tion in 1867, and re-elected annually, serving during ten con- secutive years; was in like manner, at its formation in 1868, elected Treasurer of the Medical Society of the City of Wheel- ing, and for ten consecutive years re-elected annually ; is a mem- ber of the Historical Society of West Virginia; a corresponding member of the Gynæcol Society of Boston, and a life member of the same, and was for a series of years Vice-President for West Virginia, of the Alumni Association of Jefferson Medical Col- lege.
Among other contributions to medical literature, he is the author of papers on "Placenta Previa," 1863; "Salivary Cal- culus," 1863; "Vaccination and Its Protective Powers," 1870; " Chloral in Puerperal Insanity," 1870, copied into medical jour- nals from the Transactions of the State Medical Society ; " Con- genital Phymosis and Stone in the Urethra," 1870; "Opium Poisoning Treated by Belladona," 1872; "Ruptured Uterus," 1874, copied into medical journals from Transactions of the State medical Society ; and "Encephaloid Abdominal Tumor," 1875; a "Biographical Sketch of Joseph Thoburn, M.D.," prepared by request of the medical profession of Wheeling, 1865; a memo- rial to the Legislature of West Virginia on the appointment of a State Geologist, 1870, and a memorial to the same body on the establishment of a State Board of Health, 1877; cases of "Phy- mosis and Adherent Prepuce," 1877, and the "Diagnostic Im- portance of Symptoms," 1878. He also has furnished various articles for the Medical and Surgical Reporter, and frequent com- munications to the local press of Wheeling, many of them de- scriptive of thrilling scenes in the early history of the region of his childhood, a species of writing for which his facile pen seems peculiarly adapted. Some of which appeared in "Creigh's Histo- ry of Washington County." An additional mark of his qualifica- tion in this respect is found in the fact that by the voice of his college class-mates he was chosen to prepare the quarter-century historical sketch of his class at the re-union held at Washing- ton, Pennsylvania, Wednesday, August 4, 1869.
In 1850 he was physician to the Ohio county Alms-house and Ohio county Jail; has been physician in ordinary to the prison- ers of the United States District Court from 1863 to the present
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time; was physician and Secretary of the City Board of Health in 1864; is one of the physicians to the Children's Home of Wheeling, as he has been since 1873; was commissioned by Gov- ernor Pierpont State Vaccine Agent, January 1, 1863, and suc- cessively re-appointed by Governors Boreman, Stevenson and Jacob, making a service of nearly fifteen years; was President of the Board of Supervisors of the county of Ohio from 1863 to 1866; was a member of the Board of Education of the Inde- pendent School District of Wheeling from 1873 to 1879, inclu- sive; was President for many years of the United States Board of Examining Surgeons for Pensions, at the city of Wheeling.
At the formation, in 1863, of the State of West Virginia, includ- ing the establishment of its county organizations, he was elected a member of the Board of Supervisors of the county of Ohio, serving for three consecutive terms, during all of which time he was President of the Board. He was urged, subsequently, to become a candidate for the City Council, and also for the State Senate, but declined, for the reason that the period of civil war and governmental transitions, which impelled him to accept public office as a duty, had passed away.
In March, 1853, he married Caroline Louisa, daughter of the late Dr. A. S. Todd, of Wheeling. In appearance Dr. Hupp is large, portly, and of commanding presence. He has long been a leading physician in the city of Wheeling.
JESSE ROACH.
N what is now Roane, then Jackson county, Virginia, Janu- ary 11, 1843, was born delegate Jesse Roach. His education was that of a farmer boy, limited to the ordinary schools of the locality. Early in the war, June 15, 1861, he volunteered into Co. G, Tenth Regiment Virginia Cavalry, upon the Confederate side. He participated in and was wounded at the Scary skir- mish below Charleston; was in the seven day battles before Richmond; and also in those of the Wilderness, Gettysburg, second Manassas, and with Lee and Stewart in all their cam- paigns. He served his county two terms as Justice of the Peace, and was then elected as a Democrat, in 1884, to the House of Delegates from the District of Roane and Clay counties. He was re-elected to the pending Legislature, and took part in the Goff-Fleming contest.
46
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A. LITTLE.
JEFFERSON GIBBENS.
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JEFFERSON GIBBENS.
J
EFFERSON GIBBENS was one in the oldest families that settled along the banks of the Little Kanawha, in Wood county, Virginia. His father, John, came west from the East Branch of the Potomac, in the days when the Indian tents shadowed the thicket-fringed stream. The ancestry was Eng- lish, Irish and German, John and James being leading names in the family till the tracing is lost on the farthest ocean shore. The original spelling in Ireland was Givens, in England Gibbon, in America Gibbons and Gibbens.
Jefferson, whose face fronts this sketch, was born on a farm, twelve miles east from the settlement of Parker, at the mouth of the Kanawha river, October 2, 1802, and died in Parkers- burg, March 21, 1875. When very young his father died, leav- ing him to the care of a widowed mother, who subsequently married Anthony Buckner, a name of antiquity and esteem. The step-father was a slave owner, and austere in manner, and no one, white or black, upon the estate was exempt from severe labor. In the farmer's leisure season, late fall, deep winter and early spring, he grasped every opportunity for school and study. He became an expert penman, in the round Washingtonian style, an excellent arithmetician, and was soon enabled to emi- grate to Jackson county, Ohio, where he taught school, and thereby saved enough to purchase a tract of land. At the death of his step-father, however, he sold out, returned to Vir- ginia and took his place in farm work and supervision, till he was over twenty-seven years of age, when, April 30, 1831, he married Hannah, daughter of Thomas and Susan Butcher, who was born in Randolph county, January 7, 1813, and died August 21, 1872. She was of English descent, a Scotch Presbyterian in her religious faith, and after their removal to Parkersburg, their home was always open to Christian workers of all denom- inations.
He engaged first in tavern-keeping, then in mercantile life. " Sober, industrious and economical he soon owned his own home and store house. With an education above the average, and a growing reputation for strict integrity, he was first made Cons- table, an important trust in village affairs, then Magistrate, and served for almost a generation in that capacity. He was a Justice of the Peace by commission and partiality of the Gov-
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ernor of Virginia, when the office paid in honors, not fees, the ultimate reward being High Sheriffalty, in proper time as the oldest living magistrate. He so served until 1850, when under the Revised Constitution the office was made elective, and he was chosen one of twenty, and by them Presiding Justice of the County Court of Wood county, and served for eight con- secutive years, when he declined re-election. He was alternate- ly member of the City Council, Recorder, and Mayor, serving in each capacity with fidelity, integrity and popular esteem. He was one of the most progressive citizens of his section, aid- ing in many valuable ways as well as by the liberal stock subscrip- tions to public enterprises, among them the building of the North- western branch of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad from Grafton to the Ohio river, and of the Marietta and Ohio line from Par- kersburg westward. In politics he was a Whig, but in 1860 voted for Lincoln and Hamlin, and when the war opened its fury in the land, and it was essential to cross with troops onto southern soil, he was almost the first native to meet them at the water's edge and extend an earnest welcome. In 1864 he was, upon the unasked recommendation of Governor Boreman, appointed Provost Marshal. Brave to do the right, but with little self-assertion or confidence, he often declined nominations for legislative and higher positions.
The latter years of his life were those of suffering with forti- tude and without murmur, and he passed over into the un- known, leaving as the best heritage of his four children a spot- less name, over whose official and social memory hangs not the shadow of suspicion.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
JOHN MORGAN COLLINS.
JOHN M. COLLINS, one of the present Board of Directors of the State Penitentiary, was born May 10, 1857, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is of Irish ancestry. In 1853 his father, Thomas Collins, moved to Madison, Indiana. There John re- ceived a common school education, and spent some years, as a boy, in the tobacco factory of Walter B. Brooks, when, in 1868, his employer returned to the management of the Daniel Boone salt furnace, below Malden, Kanawha county, West Virginia. There Mr. Collins removed with him, and for the next ten years was clerk, bookkeeper and assistant manager in the store at the furnace. He has filled a number of local offices, among them School Commissioner. June 15, 1881, he wedded Addie A., daughter of Alexander Clark, of Charleston, Kanawha county. He was elected as a Democrat to the House of Delegates, session of 1883, in which he served upon the Committees of Mines and Mining, and Claims and Grievances. He was active in urging the passage of a bill in the interests of the miners and for the appointment of an Inspector of Mines for the State. In April, 1884, he was appointed a member of the Penitentiary Directory, and still continues to fill the position.
FRANK BECKWITH.
RANK BECKWITH is a native of Middleway, Jefferson county, Virginia; was born July 26, 1848 and has remained a resident of that county. He was educated in country schools and at the Catholic College of "Our Lady of Angels," in Niag- ara county, New York; studied law under Hon. T. C. Green, who was afterwards Judge of the Court of Appeals of West Vir- ginia. Having been admitted to the Bar in 1872, he became the law partner of Judge Green in 1873. He represented his county in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1881-'2, and was again elected and took his seat in the special session of 1877 to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Hon. D. B. Lu- cas. He was appointed Judge of the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit to fill the unexpired term of Hon. C. J. Faulkner, elected United States Senator. At the conclusion of the term he resumed his law practice in Charlestown, Jefferson county.
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LGER CIN
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ODELL S. LONG, ESQ.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
ODELL SQUIER LONG.
€ VERY attorney, whether of this or other States, who has, since 1874, or in expectation, a case before the highest Ju- dicial tribunal of West Virginia, will recognize in the portrait fronting this sketch the accommodating, urbane and competent clerk now on duty. He was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, the 16th of October, 1836. He was the second son of Rev. Warner Long, who was for more than half a century an active member of the Pittsburgh Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was educated at Allegheny College, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he was graduated with honor in the class of 1856. After leaving college he taught for several years in Ohio and in Pennslyvania; studied law in Beaver, Penn- sylvania, and was admitted to the Bar in 1862, but about the same time engaged in editorial work and did not enter upon the practice of the profession of law.
In February, 1864, Mr. Long came to Wheeling and assumed editorial charge of the Wheeling Daily Register, then recently established. His ability, pungent and graceful editorials, aided in bringing it to the front as the leading exponent of Democracy in the State.
In 1866 he was appointed by President Johnson to be Post- master at Wheeling, when his connection with the newspaper was severed. The appointment as Postmaster not being con- firmed by the Senate, Mr. Long held the office only six months, and in 1867 engaged in the business of life insurance, but in 1870 returned to the editorship of the Daily Register and so remained until August 1874, when he was appointed by the Court to be Clerk of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, a po- sition which he still holds.
In Freemasonry Mr. Long has been widely known, having held the highest and most important offices in each of the. Grand bodies. He was for fourteen years Secretary of the Grand Lodge, and he compiled the Text-book still in use in the Ma- sonic Lodges of West Virginia, and has recently put forth a man- ual of Masonic law for the government of the craft in this State. He was largely instrumental in the organization of the Grand Chapter and of the Grand Commandery, and is, in the Scottish Rite, an active member of the Supreme Council for the South- ern Jurisdiction of the United States.
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Mr. Long lives in Charleston, Kanawha county, where he has a pleasant home and a choice library of the best books, and he devotes to literary pursuits and recreation whatever leisure his clerical duties permit. He enjoys the fullest confidence and es- teem of all the Judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals, and is very highly respected by all of the members of the Bar with whom his official duties bring him into close relation.
PHILIP HENRY MOORE.
OL. PHILIP HENRY MOORE is in appearance a typical Welshman, although he is all American. He is short, stout, strong, with greyish hair and moustache, and is always amiable and pleasant to his friends wherever one may meet him. He is a model writer of model English. In the judgment of the writer, but few men are his equal in diction and expression. He has the magazine style. Every production of his pen shows both thoughtfulness and polish. His paper-The Ohio Valley Manufacturer-is remarkable for the ability and culture dis- played in its editorial management and for its neatness and general make-up.
Mr. Moore was born in Wheeling, Virginia, November 22, 1837. His parents were Henry and Ann (McGovran) Moore. His father came to Wheeling early in 1800, and for more than a generation was a leading iron manufacturer. He was also a member of the noted stage line firm of Neill, Moore & Co., that ran a line of stage-coaches over the National road from Colum- bus to Cumberland.
Philip Henry was educated at Georgetown, D. C., University, graduating in 1855. Returning to Wheeling, he spent one year as a clerk at the Belmont mill. In 1859 he established the Wheeling Daily Union and edited it until June, 1861, when he entered the Confederate army as Major of the Thirty-sixth Virginia Regiment, commanded by Colonel, afterwards General John Macausland. He remained with his regiment in the field about a+ year, when he was transferred to the Engineer Depart- ment, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, where he continued in active service until the close of the war.
He returned to Wheeling and remained in the employ of the Belmont Iron Works, in which corporation he was a stockhold-
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er, up to 1879. He then traveled for the Board of Trade of Chicago for five years, gathering industrial statistics. He was one year editor of the Dallas (Texas) Herald. In 1866 he was employed by the St. Louis Age of Steel as manager and corre- spondent of the Upper Ohio Valley, and remained with that paper until December, 1887, when he established the Ohio Val- ley Manufacturer, a newspaper of great value to the industries of the upper Ohio section. It is a large paper and is published weekly at Wheeling.
Col. Moore, in politics, may be termed an "Old Line Whig." He believes in the doctrine of protection for American indus- tries, and is in no sense a politician.
WILLIAM MARMADUKE DENT
W I AS born March 6th, 1831, at Granville, Monongalia coun- ty, Virginia. He is a son of Dr. Marmaduke and Sarah Dent. He was educated at the Monongalia Academy, at Mor- gantown, and received the appointment of cadet at West Point Military Academy from the Hon. Wm. G. Brown, member of Congress, in 1847, where he remained two years, resigning on account of ill health in the fall of 1849. Returning home he re- sumed the study of medicine in his father's office, and completed his medical education at Starling Medical College, Columbus, Ohio.
Settling first in his native town, he practiced eight years in partnership with his father. In 1863 he removed to Newburg, Preston county, West Virginia, his present residence, where he enjoys a large and lucrative practice. He is a member of the State Medical Society of West Virginia, and served as its Secre- tary, first Vice-President and President. He is a member of the American Medical Association, and at its meeting in Washing- ton City, in May, 1884, was elected a delegate to Copenhagen and to all other foreign Medical Societies for the year 1884. He has served the political party with which he is affiliated eight years, on the State Executive Committee; has twice been the nominee of his party for State Senator, and served two terms as Mayor of the town of Newburg. He is a self-made man, of good business qualifications, alive to all questions of public in- terest that agitate the mind of the people, and stands in the front rank of his profession in his section of the State.
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PROMINENT MEN OF
MAJOR W. P. RUCKER, M. D.
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WEST VIRGINIA.
WILLIAM PARKS RUCKER,
W HOSE portrait faces this sketch, was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, November 9th, 1831. His parents were Clifton Hedley and Mary Jane Starke (nee Staples) Rucker, born, re- spectively, in Amherst and Appomattox counties, Virginia. His father moved to Lynchburg at an early day, and became one of the leading business men of the place. Col. Ambrose Rucker and Capt. William Parks, officers of the Revolutionary War, were his great-grandfathers on the paternal side, and Gen. John Starke, also an officer of the Revolutionary War, and Gov. ernor Spottswood, first Colonial Governor of Virginia, were his great-granduncles on the maternal side. His grandmother on the paternal side and Mrs. Rucker's grandmother on the mater- nal side were sisters-Elizabeth and Margaret Parks-daughters of Capt. William Parks. A warm friendship always existed between the Parks and Washington families, which was ce- mented by the marriage of Capt. Parks' youngest brother and Gen. Washington's niece and protege. Moreover, Dr. Rucker is blood kin, on the maternal side, through the Lewises, to Gen. Washington.
October 28th, 1852, he married Margaret Ann, the second daughter of Thomas Hazlewood and Margaret Parks (nee Burks) Scott, of Campbell county, Virginia. Capt. William Scott, an officer of the Revolution, and a lineal descendant of the first King of the Scots, was the grandfather of Mrs. Rucker. The Roys and McGreggors, of the Highlands of Scotland, are among her ancestors also.
He was principally educated at Laurel Hill Academy in Am- herst county ; the Valley Union Seminary, now Hollin's Insti- tute, in Botetourt county, Virginia; the University of Virginia; and Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. After gradua- ting in medicine, he first practiced his profession at Alvon, Greenbrier county, West Virginia, for a time, and then at Cov- ington, Alleghany county, Virginia, from 1855 up to February, 1862, when he left home and made his way into the Federal lines. He was made Provost Marshal of Gen. Crook's brigade ; was captured on the 25th of July, 1862, and remained a prisoner for more than a year; was indicted in the Circuit Court of Al- leghany county for treason to the State of Virginia; escaped from prison on the 18th of October, 1863, and was commissioned
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Major of the 13th West Virginia Infantry, and detailed on staff duty with Generals Crook, Siegel and Fremont; served until nearly the close of the war; resigned and went into the timber, oil and coal land business; also handled cattle, horses and sheep on his Nicholas county plantation. After five years he sold out to the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company; began the practice of law, having read law previously to his medical course; moved to Lewisburg in 1870, where he remains, and enjoys a good practice. He was Prosecuting Attorney for Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties for the years 1871 and 1872. He practices in the Court of Appeals; was selected by the Chairman of the Republican State Committee to conduct the contested election cases of November 8th, 1888, in several counties.
He and his wife comfortably and happily reside on one of his farms a mile east of Lewisburg, and all four of his boys are suc- cessful lawyers and happy husbands.
Soon after President Harrison was inaugurated, he appointed Major Rucker, Postmaster at Lewisburg.
THOMAS CONDIT MILLER.
HOMAS C. MILLER was born in Barnsville, Marion county, Virginia, July 19, 1848; attended Fairmont Sem- inary; in the early part of '65 (prevented by his youth from en- listing before) he joined the Union 7th West Virginia Cavalry, and served until the war closed. He graduated from the Fair- mont Normal School in '73; was in Adrian College, (Michigan,) '75-'6, but ill health forced him away at the beginning of the senior year; Principal of Fairmont Schools '76 to '89, which po- sition he is filling at the time of writing this sketch. Mr. Mil- ler has been Township Clerk, a member of the Board of Teach- ers' Examiners, and is Assistant Quartermaster-General, De- partment of West Virginia, G. A. R. During his superintend- ency, nearly a hundred young men and women have graduated from his high school, and are in high social and official standing in this and other States. Mr. Miller is a popular and efficient Institute Instructor, having visited nearly one-half of our coun- ties in this capacity. He is also a frequent contributor to edu- cational publications, and literary magazines for young people ;
a
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also, has been sixteen years Superintendent of the Fairmont M. P. Sunday School, and an earnest temperance worker. It is to its educators the State owes its material progress and moral and intellectual advancement of the last twenty years, and that reaching out for still greater development so characteristic of its people. Of those educators, and one of the best among them, we give Mr. Miller a place among the Prominent Men of West Virginia, having taught in the State almost a quarter of a century. He is a man of true merit, and has a bright future before him. The West Virginia University, in June, 1889, con- ferred upon Mr. Miller the degree of A. M. pro honore.
JOHN BERNARD PEYTON.
J. BERNARD PEYTON, who was the popular, courteous and competent Clerk of the West Virginia House of Del- egates for seventeen continuous years, was born near Charlottes- ville, Albemarle county, Virginia, August 30, 1836. He is the son of Henry Peyton, who was a native of Stafford county. His mother was a Farish, also a native of tide-water Virginia. He was educated at White and Nelson's Preparatory School in Charlottesville; at Ridgway Preparatory, conducted by Frank- lin Minor, and in the Academic Department of the Virginia University, and subsequently in the Law School thereof. He was admitted to the Bar in 1859, and practiced law until 1861, when, 'at the opening of the war, he entered, and served to its close in the Confederate Army. He was Assistant Clerk of the General Assembly, House of Delegates, of Virginia. From 1865 to 1871 he was assistant to his brother, Col. George L. Peyton, in the conduct of the celebrated Saratoga of the South, the White Sulphur Springs of Greenbrier county. Thence he came to Charleston, Kanawha county, and was Assist- ant Clerk of the House of Delegates in the January session of 1871. The next session, in 1872, he was promoted to be Clerk thereof, and continued to be re-elected each session and to serve till 1889. With an impressive personal, courteous demeanor, deep sonorous voice, distinct utterance, and systematic clerical methods, he is well fitted for the Chief Clerk of State or Na- tional Legislature.
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SAMUEL C. BURDETT.
HE subject of this sketch is a native of Ohio, having been born in Wheelersburg, Scioto county, September 23, 1845. He was educated at the common schools of Ironton. Immedi- ately after the war closed he went South, where he remained about five years, and married in northern Louisiana in 1869. He removed to Charleston in 1870, where he has continued to reside. He was a house and sign painter until 1878, when, hav- ing thoroughly prepared himself therefor, he began the practice of law, in which profession he attained honorable distinction. He was Assistant Prosecuting Attorney for Kanawha county twenty months prior to 1884, in which year he was elected to that office, as principal, and served the term to January 1, 1889. On the 2d of April, of the latter year, he received the appoint- ment of Assistant United States District Attorney under Hon. George C. Sturgiss. His legal attainments and status are due to his own exertions as a student and practitioner.
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