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 59
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In commercial life he is sagacious, far-seeing and tenacious, with remarkable powers of organization and combination. He is a cogent reasoner, and his writings are clear, concise and graceful. One of his marked characteristics is the perfect fair-
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ness with which he treats all questions, never seeking any small advantages or attempting to secure a gain by the inadvertence or errors of others. In private life he is genial, frank and courteous. His charities are numerous and well chosen. In politics he is an earnest Democrat, but almost without the feel- ing of partisanship. To a rare degree he possesses those quali- ties which solidly attach friends and associates.
JOHN T. PEERCE.
S INCE the formation of the State, John T. Peerce has lived within the limits of West Virginia. He was born, De- cember 15, 1818, at Patterson Creek, Hampshire county, Vir- ginia. His early education was at home under a selected tutor. At sixteen he attended the Academy at Martinsburg, Berkeley county. From 17 to 18 he was instructed at the Academy in Romney, after which he lived on the farm with his father until the war of 1861, when he volunteered into Company F., Seventh Virginia Cavalry. He continued in such military service until the close of the war, when he resumed the peaceful avocation of farming and grazing cattle. From 1850 to almost the opening of the civil conflict he was a Justice of the Peace. In the 1872 convention to revise the constitution of West Virginia he was a member from the Tenth Senatorial District, and served his constituency and the State upon the Committee of Taxation and Finance. He was one of the Board of Regents for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind Institution under appointment by both Governors Mathews and Jackson. His residence is near Bur- lington, Mineral county.
WILLIS JACOB JOHN DRUMMOND.
J. J. DRUMMOND was born January 14, 1842, in Fau- , quier county, Virginia. He served a time at the Car- penter and Joiner's trade ; was educated in the common schools. In the fall of 1859 he settled in Beverly, Randolph county, Vir- ginia and engaged in the mercantile business ; was Justice of the Peace, Commissioner in Chancery, and Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue. He was admitted to the Bar in 1865, but never engaged in active practice. In 1867 he was elected to
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represent the Sixth Senatorial District of West Virginia, com- posed of the counties of Randolph, Tucker, Barbour, Upshur, Lewis and Braxton counties ; served one term and declined a renomination. In 1871 he was appointed clerk in the General Land Office at Washington ; was chief of the Railroad Division several years, until the Cleveland administration succeeded him by Gen. Wilcox, when he was made Assistant Chief, which of- fice he still holds. His home is near Bridgeport, in Harrison county, West Virginia, where he pays taxes and votes the Re- publican ticket; is strictly temperate, in robust health, and unmarried, and a member of the Universalist Church.
ROBERT McELDOWNEY.
R OBERT McELDOWNEY, soldier, legislator and editor, is the subject of this sketch. He was born, November 6, 1837, in Wetzel county, Virginia, where he still sits enthroned on the tripod of his paper, the Democrat, and cares little for office and the invitations of place hunters. He received a common school education, and then attended Marietta, Ohio, College, till the Junior year, when, at the outbreak of the Civil War, he went South, and joined the Twenty-Seventh Regiment, Virginia In- fantry, "Stonewall Brigade," and remained with it till the end. He entered the service as private, and was promoted to First Sergeant, and Captain. He commanded this regiment the last six months of the war, and was the only commissioned officer with it at Petersburg on the 25th of March, 1864, when wounded. He was also wounded at Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Fort Stead- man. From 1865 to 1868, he was salesman and clerk in a wholesale house at Philadelphia, then ticket agent and clerk for two years in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad office at Wheeling. He was elected from his county as a member of the House of Delegates for the session of 1875, and proved to be, as editors necessarily do, a valuable and active representative. He is a lawyer, practices in Wetzel and adjacent counties, and is one of the most companionable and sprightly members of the Editorial Association of West Virginia.
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HON. ROBT. M'ELDOWNEY.
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ARTHUR OKEY BAKER.
T HIRTY-SEVEN years of official life in his native county, is the record of Arthur Okey Baker, born at Round Bottom. Marshall county, Virginia, June 11, 1828. His father, John Baker, was born in the same county in 1789, and died there in 1831. An uncle took Arthur to Cincinnati, Ohio, to educate ; he returned to Marshall in '49 and married in '51. His eldest daughter married Orlando, son of Ex-Governor Stevenson. Mr. Baker was a Moundsville merchant in 1854, when he was appointed Deputy Sheriff for two years; 1856-'58, he was Deputy County Clerk ; then Deputy Sheriff to '62; elected Sheriff for '63; Union Provost Marshal to August, '64; Cap- tain Company A. Seventeenth West Virginia Infantry, until close of war; commissary of the West Virginia penitentiary to '71. He represented Marshall in the House of Delegates of '72 and '73; has since served three terms as Circuit Court Clerk of his native county, his present term expiring in '91. He was also at one time Mayor of Moundsville, and Commissioner of the In- dependent School district of that city. Captain Baker has al- ways been a Republican. His record shows his popularity.
JOSEPH SHIELDS.
A LONG about the year 1850 there wandered into Charleston, Kanawha county, a poverty-stricken boy, as short of friends as he was of funds. He was a tinner by trade, and once worked in Cruger Smith's shop at Clarksburg. In Charleston, ' after a little time of industry and economy, he had means enough to open a little store. Rung after rung of the commer- cial ladder he climbed, until he became one of the leading mer- chants of Charleston. He was elected a City Councilman ; was appointed by Governor Stevenson a member of the Board of Public Works for the improvement of the Kanawha river ; President Grant made him Collector of Internal Revenue for the Third district in 1867-'68. He moved from Charleston in 1874 to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he is still merchandizing. That wandering boy, that successful merchant and official was Joseph Shields, a native of Lubeck, in Westphalia, Germany, where he was born, October 19, 1834. But few men have won to marked success in business undertakings.
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HON. JOSEPH SHIELDS.
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CORNELIUS CLARKSON WATTS.
H I ON. C. C. WATTS, late United States Attorney for the District of West Virginia, and formerly Attorney General of the State, is a native of Amherst, Virginia, where he was born April 23, 1848.
His parents, James D. and Lucy A. (Simms) Watts, lived in Amherst till the beginning of the war, when they removed to Albemarle county. At the age of sixteen years he entered the Confederate Army and served as a private soldier in Mosby's Command until the close of the war. He studied law and was educated at the University of Virginia. In 1870 he became a citizen of West Virginia, and began the practice of his profes- sion at Oceana, Wyoming county ; was elected Prosecuting At- torney for that county in 1872, and held the office until 1875, when he removed to Charleston, and became a member of the law firm of Kenna & Watts. In his new home he at once rose into prominent notice and profitable practice.
He was nominated and elected by the Democratic party, in 1880, as Attorney General for West Virginia, and served his term of four years with success that occasioned the kindliest and most flattering comments of the press throughout the State. While Attorney General, he argued many important cases for the State, and with Maj. O. D. Cook, his faithful assistant, got out nine volumes of Supreme Court reports. The now famous tax case of Miller, Auditor vs. the Chesapeake and Ohio Rail- way Company was argued by him, March 22nd, 1885, in the United States Supreme Court at Washington, as Attorney for the State under the employment and appointment of Governor Jacob B. Jackson, after his term of office as Attorney General had expired-while the Railway Company was represented by those eminent lawyers, Judge George F. Edmunds of Vermont and Judge William J. Robertson, of Virginia. In this litigation the State was successful, and besides gaining tor itself and the counties through which the road runs, some $200,000, it estab- lished the right to forever tax, not only this railway, but all railroads now or hereafter to be built in this State. The ability displayed by him in the preparation and presentation of this case called forth many high tributes from members of the pro- fession. Senator Edmunds himself addressed Gen. Watts a
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FOLGER
HON. C. C. WATTS.
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personal letter, expressing in the highest terms, his admiratio cipal of the skill and ability displayed in the conduct of this case.
In August, 1886, President Cleveland sent to the United State Senate the name of Cornelius C. Watts, to be Attorney of th Az 0, 1 The G Furve f H United States for the District of West Virginia. That augus body, with exceptional promptness, confirmed the appointment and he was, on the 3rd of August, 1886, commissioned by Presi dent Cleveland as United States Attorney for the term of four years. But after the election of 1888, which resulted in Mr whic Cleveland's defeat, General Watts began such a vigorous par prosecution of what are now known as the "Election Fraudgran Cases," that on the 9th day of March, 1889, the Attorney for General, by direction of President Harrison, telegraphed General litiz Watts requesting his resignation. Whereupon he immediately Den replied by telegram : "Your telegram of this date, by direction of the President, requesting my resignation of the office of United States Attorney for the District of West Virginia, has been received. I know of no act of mine, either official or otherwise, which, in the absence of cause being assigned, would, under existing circumstances, justify me in tendering my resig- nation. I therefore respectfully decline to make such resigna- tion. If the President wants me to vacate the office of United States Attorney, without cause being assigned therefor, let him assert his prerogative." On the 4th day of April, 1889, he was notified by the President of his removal.
General Watts is influential in his party, prominent at the Bar, and a speaker and writer of force and clearness. He now resides in an elevated and pleasant suburban home overlooking the City of Charleston, the capital of the State.
AZEL FORD.
IT was natural to place Delegate Ford upon the Finance | Committee in the House of 1889. The man who discreetly manages his own finances is sure to do the same for the State. No more jealous watch over the people's money was to be found on that committee; none more careful for the State's credit. And what he was in the committee room on the same subject he was on the floor of the House. He was also a mem- ber of the following committees : Counties, Districts and Muni-
Comp
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sev Pe na no li it tu H pr ti
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ipal Corporations, Private Corporations and Private Stock Companies, Forfeited and Unappropriated Lands, Arts, Sciences nd General Improvement, Mines and Mining.
Azel Ford was born in Livingston county, New York, April 0, 1854, and came to this State in 1879. He was educated at he Genesee State Normal School, and afterwards employed in urveying and civil engineering. He is President of the Bank f Hinton and a real estate dealer, at Raleigh C. H., in all of which he has been eminently successful, and his career has been narked in each by advanced views, high appreciation of the grand possibilities of his adopted State, and determined effort for the development of her resources. These facts led his fellow- citizens to elect him to the House of Delegates of 1889, as a Democrat, by a majority of 239.
BENTON C. BLAND.
D R. B. C. BLAND was born at Blandville, Doddridge county, Virginia, July 14, 1852. He worked on a farm until he was seventeen years of age, when he entered California Academy, Pennsylvania, where he remained a short time, and then matriculated as a student of the State Normal School at Fair- mont, West Virginia, from which he graduated in 1873. For three years he taught graded schools, and at the same time was diligently pursuing the study of medicine. He attended lectures at Louisville, Kentucky, and graduated M. D. from the Ken- tucky School of Medicine in 1877, taking the honors of his class. He located at West Union, Doddridge county, and has since practiced his profession. He has filled many responsible posi- tions of trust in his county, and maintains a creditable rank as a physician.
WILLIAM EDWIN CHILTON.
NE of the native born Kanawha county citizens, and a life- long resident, is the subject of this sketch, who was born at St. Albans, March 17, 1858. After the common course at the Free schools, he attended Shelton College at St. Albans in 1873, '74 and '75. He worked on the farm in summer and taught school in winter-meantime reading and preparing for the pro-
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fession of law-until at the age of 21 he was licensed, and in 1881 began practice. He was Prosecuting Attorney of Kanawha county from May 10, 1883, to January 1, 1885. He was the Democratic candidate for State Senate in 1886, but was defeated by only eighty-four votes, the former Republican mojority being 500, and in 1888, 700. In 1885 he was elected by the Lincoln Bar to hold their spring term of that Court, which he did to their expressed satisfaction. He has been a useful counselor for his party and one of its efficient speakers ; but says he does not wish office, as he is devoting himself assiduously to his pro- fession, in which he has already achieved enviable success.
GRANVILLE PARKER.
HIS fearless writer and friend to the new State was born in Chelsmford, Massachusetts, January 18, 1809, and died in Wellsburg, West Virginia, May 10th, 1881. He received a com- mon school education, and like many young men of New Eng- land, learned other advantages by teaching. He studied law in vacation hours, and began practice in Lowell, Massachusetts, and afterwards located in Worcester.
At the dawn of the civil war in 1861, he came to Guyandotte, Cabell county, Virginia, having in charge extensive tracts of land throughout the Southwestern counties. Quick in im- pulses, ardent in temperament, frank and genial in manners, and devoted to the Union of the States, he warmly advocated the restoration of the Virginia government under the Wheeling movement. His versatile and able pen, as well as the eloquence of his tongue, were used in support of his views. He was sent from Cabell county, a delegate to the convention of November 26, 1861, to frame the first constitution of the proposed State. In this important assembly he was a valuable member, largely influencing the fundamental legislation there enacted.
In 1840 he married Eliza A., daughter of Philip True, of Portland, Maine. Upon the death of his daughter, Lizzie G., he published a collection of her poems, which were the inspira- tion of rare talent and patriotism. Another daughter, Emily T., survives, who now resides in New York City.
In 1875 he collected together many of his articles, contributed during the war to the metropolitan journals of the East, and ad-
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LOFF
HON. GRANVILLE PARKER.
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dressed to prominent leaders in and out of Congress, upon the principles involved in the conduct of the war and subsequent legislation in the South, and published them in a volume of nearly 500 pages, entitled, "The Formation of West Virgina, and Other Incidents of the Late Civil War." In this collection he embraced articles carefully prepared and well-worded upon a wide range of subjects, displaying in their treatment a clear per- ception of the duties of a citizen, and a mind active, cultured, and devoted to the land he loved and the elevation of his fel- low men.
JAMES M. EWING.
J AMES M. EWING was born in Wheeling, December 30 1814, where he resided during his whole life, and died, Oc- tober 20, 1889. His father John, and his grandfather, Henry, were among the early settlers of the city-having located there before the close of the last century. They were a Scotch-Irish family from County Tyrone, Ireland. John was for many years a prominent and well-known citizen of the city, and both are buried in its vicinity.
James M. Ewing, the subject of this sketch, was for many years, one of the leading business men of Wheeling, engaged in the job printing and book-binding establishment, which he car- ried on from 1863 to 1884, when he retired from business. In May, 1845, he married Mary, daughter of Abraham Lukens, of Philadelphia, a descendent of William Penn. His widow still survives, with his four children, as, follows: John H., Annie, William L. and Edwin C. Ewing.
He was closely identified with the business interests of the city during his entire life time, and took a lively interest in all that partained to its happiness or prosperity. He was for many years an active and useful member of Council, and an efficient member of the Board of Education, and was also for quite a number of years a faithful member of the Board of County Com- missioners. In all these stations he acquitted himself with ability and honor and gained the esteem of his fellow citizens. He was a Presbyterian, and died surrounded by his family, comforted and happy in the consolations of the religion he pro- fessed. During his whole life he rigidly kept the moral law, and taught his children to walk by the light that guided his feet.
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WILLIAM SHERRARD CAMPBELL.
LTHOUGH serving the government at Washington in the Third Auditor's office since August 7, 1884, W. S. Camp- bell has continued to hold his residence in Hancock county, West Virginia, where he was born March 27, 1862. He spent his early years on a farm with his parents; at the age of 17 en- tered the Collegiate Institute at Paris, Pennsylvania, and in 1881 entered Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, going from there in January, 1883, to Lafayette College, at Eas- ton, Pennsylvania, he graduated in June, 1884. August 7, of the same year he received his appointment under Civil Service rules to a clerkship in the office of the Third Auditor of the Treasury, where he has been twice promoted for efficiency. While in Washington City he took a three year's course in the Law Department of the Columbian University, graduating in June, 1887. Also, there, he was elected Treasurer of the Wash- ton Petroleum Fuel and Gas Company. It is hoped the State will not permanently lose so trusty and accomplished a citizen.
JAMES LEWIS WILSON.
T C HIS must necessarily be the record of a soldier, and very probably the youngest one in the Rebellion. Born in Philippi, Virginia, December 3, 1848; enlisted (when 14 years and two days old) December 1, 1862, in Second Virginia Infan- try, afterwards Fifth and Sixth West Virginia Cavalry ; had served three years before he was yet 17 years old-with Generals Averill in West Virginia, Crook at Cloyd Mountain and Hun- ter in the Lynchburg raid. He was captured in action, March, 1864; prisoner at Richmond three months, exchanged, and ordered with his regiment to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, June, 1865 ; thence to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, Fort Laramie and to Fort Casper, Wyoming Territory, to serve against the Indians. Entered West Point in 1870, graduated in 1874, joined the Fourth Artillery in California ; took part in the Sioux campaign in 1876; Nez Percez, in 1877 ; Bannocks, in 1878, and Apache, in 1881. Professor of Military Science and Tactics, and Pro- fessor of Mathematics in West Virginia University, in 1884 to 1888. He is still a faithful officer in the U. S. Army.
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1
CIN
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JOHN FREW.
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JOHN FREW.
1
N the memoirs of Martin Van Buren, seventh President of the United States, there occurs an interesting speculation on the part of his biographer upon the point as to whether Mr. Van- Buren would have ever attained the remarkable success which he achieved had he not been compelled to undergo a severe struggle in his youth for a limited education, whereby the native resources of the man were developed and disciplined, and whereby he was enabled to far excel his more favored professional and political competitors.
The late Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, than whom no man of his day exercised a more decided personal influence or attained a more absolute sway over a larger personal following, was ac- customed to attribute a large measure of his success to what he styled the " the advantages of deprivation in his youth," and he often humorously remarked that his son, who succeeded him in the United States Senate, was unfortunate in not having enjoyed the same advantages.
A great deal has been written by way of lament over the fate of those who have gone through life " unknowing and unknown" because of the hardships of their early surroundings-of youths " to fortune and to fame unknown," whose hands " the rod of em- pire might have swayed " had " knowledge to their eyes her am- ple page unrolled." But notwithstanding all that orators have said and poets sung on this subject, the fact remains that the men who do the most of all that is useful in the work of life, and who set the best examples of wholesome and well-ordered careers, are not, as a rule, the favored children of so-called good fortune; but, on the contrary, the inheritors of toil, arduous struggle and rigorous self-denial.
There must indeed be something-yea, very much-in a man who rises strongly and steadily from the midst of early difficulties and achieves of himself and by himself honorable and enviable success in life. He must have an inheritance of sturdy qual- ities that other men may faintly imitate but never acquire. It is in his blood and bone; in his mental, moral and physical make-up; and comes out all the more strikingly, like the enduring qualities of metal, by the severest tests.
A weak man naturally is always weak whether good or ill-for- tune betides him at his birth. The thin veneer of propitious cir-
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cumstances may do something for him, but the experienced and discerning eye of the world always distinguishes the veneer from the substance underneath.
It is of a solid, substantial and genuine man we write in this biographical sketch of Mr. John Frew, the senior member of the firm of Frew, Campbell & Hart, proprietors of the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer newspaper and book and job office establishment. These are the qualities for which he has been known since his boyhood days in that establishment, for he has been connected with it as employe and employer from his youth up to the present time. Such men are not apt to change places or employments. The material that is in them is discerned early, and they are ap- preciated and in demand, and all the more in demand because they are not a numerous class. On their part, such men are, as a rule, patient and sagacious, content to "labor and to wait," recognizing that their opportunity will come. "All things come to him who waits." Patience, energy, good judgment, system, punctuality, and reliability, what a world of work they can per- form and what a grand measure of personal success they can achieve. And every man and boy who has gone in and out of the Intelligencer establishment for a generation past knows full well that these are the stereotyped qualities of the man who stands at the helm in the business department of that paper. To begin at the beginning of Mr. Frew's life, he was born in a locality in Europe which, according to historian Bancroft, has furnished to this country a class of citizens who have more decidedly and beneficially impressed themselves on its history than any other class of immigrants. What there is in the soil or climate of the north of Ireland to produce this type of people may be a matter of speculative opinion, but it is a matter of history that they gave the impulse that resulted in American independence. They form- ulated in North Carolina the celebrated Mecklenberg declaration that paved the way for the later declaration at Philadelphia, on July 4, 1776. Tenacity of purpose, energy, thrift and good citizenship have been among their marked characteristics, as also loyalty and fidelity to all the obligations of life. Tennyson spoke of the "long enduring blood" of a native of that region who made a great name for himself, and perhaps no better phrase could be used to designate the stamina of the North of Ireland people as a class. At all events, it is applicable enough to the
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