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 72
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He married Mary Patterson in 1838, by whom he had one son-Robert-who, at the time of his death in 1877, was a Major in the regular army. His wife departed this life in 1843, and in October, 1854, he married Elizabeth C. Updegraff. They had six children, four of whom are still living. His son Andrew U. Wilson is the Secretary and Treasurer of the Wheeling Steel
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Company, and is a young man of sterling worth and high busi- ness standing. Captain Wilson died at his home in Wheeling, April 2, 1883, and is buried in Greenwood cemetery.
HENRY SCHMULBACH.
T HE subject of this brief sketch is a man of wealth and high business standing in the City of Wheeling. He was born in Germany in 1844, and came to Wheeling in 1852. When but seventeen years of age he became a merchant in Wheeling, and industriously pursued that calling until 1882. . By square dealing and close attention to his business he amassed a considerable estate. In January 1882 he purchased a controll- ing interest in the Nail City Brewery, re-organized the same and established the Schmulbach Brewing Company, of which he is the president and manager. It has grown to be one of the large and successful breweries of the Ohio Valley. Mr. Schmulbach is one of Wheeling's most enterprising, public spirited citizens. He has many times been urged by his Re- publican associates to enter politics, but he has always refused. He possesses many elements of solid popularity. The only office he would ever accept is a member of the Board of Public Works of the City of Wheeling, in which position he is now serving a second term. He is a Free Mason of high rank.
ALVA TETER.
A BOUT the year 1781 the ancestors of the above named leg- islator and farmer came to this country, and settled in the woods, aided to drive out the Indian, and clear out the forests. Alva Teter was born October 18, 1822, in the district now. known as Upshur county, upon a farm on Peck's Run. In his early life, from necessity, he received only a limited education in country schools. He was married at the age of 22, has reared ten children, and donated to each 200 acres of land ; is a Dem- ocrat, as his ancestors were. In 1860 he voted for the Douglas Presidential ticket; was a Union man during the war. In 1864 voted for Lincoln, and in 1868 for Grant, and in 1872 for Greeley. He is interested more in stock raising than in politics. He served his district as magistrate and school director, his county as sheriff, the State in the Legislature of 1864.
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JOHN WILSON BROWN.
J OHN W. BROWN was born on a farm in Ohio county, Virginia, November 25, 1829. The homestead, near Elm Grove, was also the birth place of his father, and has been in possession of the family since the Patent was issued by the United States in 1785. His early education was received in a log school house, with hewn slabs for seats and desks. After- wards he attended the select schools of the county, long before the State had any system of free schools. He spent one year in Franklin College, New Athens, Ohio. Prior to the Civil War he was a Whig in politics. He was opposed to secession and aided in nominating Dr. Thos. H. Logan to represent his county in the famous Richmond Convention of 1861. When the party in power in the new State adopted restrictive legislation he affiliated with the Democratic party, and on that issue was elected to the House of Delegates for the session of 1867; also served in the Legislature of 1870; says he still is a Democrat. but favors the prohibition of the liquor traffic; and while he voted for Grover Cleveland in 1888, he will vote in the future according to his best judgment.
THOMAS THORNBURG.
THOMAS THORNBURG was born October 6, 1818, in Bar- boursville, Cabell county, Virginia, where he has resided all his life long. He received a common school education, and his main occupation has been farming and merchandising. In his county he has been selected to fill the offices of Constable, Jus- tice of the Peace, President of the County Court, Commissioner of Revenue, and in Chancery. He represented the voters as a member of the General Assembly of Virginia before the forma- tion of the new State west of the Blue Ridge in 1857-8; was county Supervisor in West Virginia in 1866 to 1870. President Andrew Johnson appointed him in the United States Internal Revenue service for the Third District of West Virginia in May 1865, in which responsible position he served four years. In 1872 he served as a member of the convention to revise the constitution of the State from Cabell and Lincoln counties, and was County Commissioner from 1881 to 1887.
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HON. JOHN KNOTE.
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JOHN KNOTE.
J OHN KNOTE, of German parentage, was born February 28, 1807, in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. His father was a farmer. John grew to manhood on a farm, engaged in such labor as was required of those who tilled the soil at that early day. His father was an energetic, upright man, but John inherited many of his best traits from his mother who was a woman of good old German Lutheran stock with strength of character; amiable disposition and domestic tastes. When he was grown he learned the saddlers' and harness makers' trade, working first in Berlin, Pa., with Robert Hutchisson (whose son was subsequently associated with him for years) and later in Burlington, Philadelphia, New York and Hartford, Ct. In 1832 he journeyed westward seeking a location, stopped in Wheeling for a season, then went on to the Mississippi; but there had been floods in the rivers and the extensive swamps were not attractive, so he returned to the east, where he was happily married to Evalina, a daughter of Noah and Mary Dwight Morgan of Northfield, Mass. She was a discreet, amiable lady who proved to be a help-meet indeed. .
By a slight incident, which people of his faith call a special providence, he was led to return to Wheeling, in September 1833, where having bought the extensive manufacturing estab- lishment of Samuel McClellan, he began business for himself by selling a whip lash for a "fip," (a five penny bit) or a "fipenny bit," 64 cents.
Passengers to and from the east rode in stage coaches over the National road; freight was carried in four-horse wagons. Saddles and harness were in demand. The west was then a new country to be supplied by manufactured goods from the east. Mr. Knote manufactured largely (all his work was then done by hand) and shipped saddles and harness to the merchants on the Wabash, Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and later sent to Arkansas, New Orleans and to the Choctaws, Creeks and other Indian tribes. Being a sufferer from dyspepsia, and with weak lungs, a change in the business was made in 1855 for the sake of his health, when the manufacturing was discontin- ued and saddlers' hardware and coach makers' goods were sold to the surrounding country.
In his younger years Mr. Knote was active in the duties of a
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good citizen, being connected with the volunteer fire depart- ment, military companies, and with temperance work. From his youth to the close of his honorable life John Knote was a strict construction Democrat and an old school Presbyterian.
He revered the constitution of our country, he respected the rights of others, he looked to the 'law and the testimony ' for guidance, he was a man of the people, and a servant of God. He was long a teacher and Superintendent in the Sunday school, and for many years he was a trustee and a Deacon in the First Presbyterian Church of Wheeling. The children and the poor remember him with affection and gratitude for his cordial interest in them and his gentle, kindly deeds. Never an office seeker he sometimes consented to be a candidate for office and often was voted for when not a candidate. He was a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1851-2, in which the famous 'White Basis' subject was agitated and settled. Having been an unswerving Democrat to his fifty-second year, he was in 1859 elected to the Virginia Legislature, being the first Democrat ever elected to the Legislature from Ohio county, that being formerly an old Whig stronghold. In pub- lic life he won the respect and friendship of the leading men of the State. For a long time he was prominent in the affairs of Wheeling, being a member of the City Council, first President of the Peoples' Bank and a director in the Wheeling and Bel- mont Bridge Co. during the troublous years when it by suits in the Supreme Court of the U. S. and efforts in Congress fought the way for all other bridges that have since been constructed across our navigable streams.
Mr. Knote had an attack of pneumonia during the winter of 1860-61. When the Civil War began he was much out of health, and his sympathies being with the South, he went to the country for rest and quiet, and afterwards to the City of Rich- mond where he remained until the close of the war, when he resumed business at his old stand in Wheeling.
Mr. Knote was a man of sound judgment, calm, careful and methodical; one who gave attention to details, industrious, en- terprising, brave, patient, cheerful and benevolent. No children were born to his home. The daughter of his brother Samuel was a member of his family for a time. He became attached to her, and her father dying early, he adopted her.
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In 1883 Mr. Knote retired from business for the sake of his wife who was ill and had been greatly afflicted for years. He found it impossible to be with her as constantly as he desired when occupied with out-door cares. From that time he devoted himself to the tender ministry of the sick room, until Novem- ber 1885, when he suffered from congestion of the lungs. He was sick four months when his wife died, March 28, 1886. Though he recovered somewhat he was never well again. His strength failed until August 27, 1886, he fell asleep, sincerely mourned by all who were privileged to know him. As was justly said of him, Humanity never lost a better friend, the State a better citizen, nor the church a better Christian. It is a pity for the world that such men must grow old and leave it. This modest, unassuming man had few peers and no superiors in all his walks in life.
GEORGE W. FEIDT.
G EO. W. FEIDT is a native of Washington county, Mary- land, and is descended from Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors. In his youthful days he worked on the farm in the summer and attended subscription school in the winter. Maryland had no free schools in those days. At that early day he manifested a great interest in the education of the colored people in the neighborhood, and organized and conducted a night school for their instruction. He completed his education at Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio, from which institution he was grad- uated in June, 1862. He enlisted as a private soldier that month and year in the Union army and, was afterwards tendered a commission, but declined it, preferring to serve in the ranks. Returning to his native State in 1864, he engaged in farming and teaching school, until the spring of 1868, when he went to Missouri and spent two years there and in Illinois, working on a farm, teaching school and clerking in a railroad office. In 1870 he returned to his native State and engaged in teaching school and reading law ; went to Martinsburg in the spring of 1873, finished the law course with H. H. Blackburn and was admitted to the Bar in 1875.
Mr. Feidt was appointed Register in Bankruptcy in 1877 for the District of West Virginia on the recommendation of Chief Justice Waite. In 1886 he was elected Prosecuting Attorney for
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ALITTLE.
GEO. W. FEIDT.
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Berkeley county to fill an unexpired term, and was re-elected in 1888 for a term of four years. He was elected an alternate del- egate to the Republican National Convention the same year. Although educated from youth in the Democratic faith, on be- coming of age Mr. Feidt identified himself with the Republi- can party, casting his first vote for President for Abraham Lin- coln in 1864. He has been an active worker for the party since then, deserving richly the recognition he has received and more at the hands of his co-workers.
R. H. BOONE.
R. H. BOONE was born in Fayette county, January 18, 1853, son of Wm. H. and Sarah E. (McDowell) Boone, of the same county. He was reared on a farm, went to Lewisburg Academy, then entered Eastman's Business College at Pough- keepsie, N. Y., and graduated. He engaged in merchandising at Caperton, Fayette county, at the same time managed his farm and stock business in the adjoining county of Greenbrier. He afterwards commenced merchandising at Fayetteville, the county seat of Fayette, and continued it until elected Sheriff of that county in November 1888. Mr. Boone married, November 29, 1883, Miss Sarah R. Patton, of Greenbrier county, West Virginia. He has never sought political office, and his present position is simply the result of the recognition by his fellow- citizens of his business ability.
THOMAS SWEENEY.
OR more than a half century no man was better known or more highly respected in the city of Wheeling than Col. Thomas Sweeney. He was born in Ireland in 1806; learned the business of a moulder in Pittsburgh; moved to Wheeling, Virginia, in 1830, and engaged in the iron and glass business; was a leading spirit in almost every enterprise in and around Wheeling for two generations; was an immense man in stature and strength; was three times married, and left a large family in Wheeling who like the father, are good citizens and are highly respected by all the people. Col. Sweeney served ac- ceptably in both Houses of the Virginia Legislature from 1852 to 1860. He died at his home in Wheeling in 1890, in the 84th year of his age.
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HON. P. M. HALE.
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P. M. HALE.
M R. HALE was born within three miles of Morgantown, Va., August 25, 1826. His father with his family moved to Henry county, Indiana, about 1834, where they remained some twelve years, when the son came back to Virginia and lo- cated in Fairmont, living there and at Brownsville, Pa., until 1849, when he was married to Miss Lena Shore. He then moved to Weston, Va., where he has ever since resided. His wife died in 1856, and in 1858 he married Miss Eliza Butcher. The greater part of the time from 1849 to 1861 he was engaged in merchandising. At the beginning of the Civil War he promptly declared in favor of the preservation of the Union, and called a meeting of the loyal citizens of Weston to meet at his store for the purpose of mutual protection and the defense of the Union, having previously framed resolutions looking to that end. The meeting was regarded by a number of loyal men as premature and ill advised, and their opposition greatly retarded its success. A few days thereafter he met the venera- ble Judge Robert Ervin, who was enthusiastically patriotic, and he remarked, "Hale, you were right, I have armed myself." Soon after, in response to a call for a mass meeting at Wheel- ing, he assembled with a number of the loyal citizens of the State to take steps for the organization. of a State government in opposition to secession, which resulted in the memorable convention in June 1861. Mr. Hale had the honor of being the chosen delegate from Lewis county. He was elected to fill the unexpired term of. Hon. Geo. J. Arnold in 1861, and was re- elected to the first Legislature of West Virginia, and with Prof. Ross and others worked actively for the present free school sys- tem of the State.
By a personal appeal to Gen. Geo. B. McClellan at Grafton he succeeded in having him send the first Government troops to Lewis county-Col. E. B. Tyler's regiment of the 7th O. V. I., which command he piloted from Clarksburg to Weston after night just in the nick of time to save the deposits in the Ex- change Bank there, which were $28,000 in gold, for the con- struction of the Hospital for the Insane, together with all the books, etc., which were all taken by Mr. List to Wheeling for safe keeping. The next morning about daybreak the troops 68
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filled the Bailey Hotel with the leading Confederates of the town. For his fidelity to the flag he was victimized and robbed of about $25,000 by marauding Confederates under Generals Jenkins, Jones, Imboden and Witcher commands. Mr. Hale was for a number of years one of the Directors of the Hospital for the Insane at Weston.
Since the war he has been a contractor and builder and has erected at least three fourths of the best class of residences and business houses in Weston, including the new court house, jail and a large addition to the Hospital for the Insane.
From his youth to the present time he has been an earnest and sincere advocate of universal salvation, and has done all in his power to liberalize the sentiment of free thought and to rid the minds of the people of what he terms " the pagan supersti- tion of endless misery."
ANDREW JAMES SWEENEY.
OR a generation no man has had a more intimate connection with the industrial and official history of Wheeling than Andrew J. Sweeney. He was a son of Hon. Thomas Sweeney and was born in the City of Pittsburg, January 1, 1827. He moved with his father to Wheeling in 1830, and up to 1848 spent a large part of his time in school. The latter year he joined with his father in the iron, glass and other business en- terprises, and when his father retired from active work in 1875 he shouldered their large interests, subsequently taking his son John M. as a partner - hence the firm name of A. J. Sweeney & Son, which still exists and is engaged in engine and steamboat building on a large scale. Both father and son are masters in most every field of mechanics, and are accordingly men of great usefulness to the community in which they live.
The subject of this sketch has for more than a quarter of a century possessed unusual popularity in the city of his adop- tion. He was elected Mayor of Wheeling first in 1855, and was subsequently chosen by a vote of his fellow citizens to the same high office in 1861, 2, 5, 6, and '67; also in 1875, 7 and '79-in all, nine times that he filled the chief city office. He has always taken an active part in municipal improvements, and in 1862 was a projector of the Citizens' Street Railway and for years was one of its directors. He was also instru- mental in organizing the fire department and fire alarm tele-
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graph system now in force. His prominence as a representative citizen of the State was recognized in 1876 by his appointment as a Commissioner of West Virginia to the Centennial Exposi- tion at Philadelphia. He was also a Commissioner to the Vienna Exposition in 1873 and to the one at Paris in 1878, serving acceptably in all of them. He was appointed in 1863 colonel of a regiment of militia, and during the war was on duty in the Morgan and Jones raids through the north-western portion of the State. Col. Sweeney is a Free Mason of high rank, and has filled many responsible positions in that Order. He has been twice married.
LEDREW MORRIS WADE.
[T the county seat of Braxton the subject of this sketch re- sides, and successfully practices law. He was born Feb- ruary 14, 1854, in Cass district, Monongalia county, Virginia. His father, Josephus Wade, moved in 1859 to a farm on the waters of Dent's Run, in Grant district, where the son labored in agricultural diversions and duties till the age of 21, when he began a three years' course of study under Dr. Jas. G. Blair, in the State Normal School, at Fairmont. At the end of this period he read law under Hon. J. Marshall Hagans, of Morgantown.
As a farmer he claims the ability to cut by cradle more grain in a day than any other one in his neighborhood. While pur- suing law studies, in the winter of 1875-6, he taught school at McCurdysville, Monongalia county, then a home school in 1877-8, at Laurel point, and a third, thereafter, at Brandonville, Preston county. He was admitted to the Bar in 1880.
June 23, 1880, he married Miss Sarah J. Hagans, daughter of A. D. Hagans, of Brandonville, Preston county. In November of that year he was appointed United States Storekeeper, which position he resigned in 1882, and moved to Braxton Court House, and began the practice of law. He was largely instru- mental in establishing a Republican newspaper at Sutton, May 1883. In November of the same year he was, by General Duval, appointed a Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue, which office he held till the National Administration changed. In January 1887 he was elected a member of the town Council and re-elected in '88. He is an active adherent to his party, and influential in his section of the State, opposes the unit rule and the instruction of delegates, and believes in their individual freedom and responsibility in every political convention. He is tall of stature, liberal in his views, and social in his nature. He was an alternate delegate to the Republican National Con- vention in 1888, which met at Chicago.
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REV. H. W. TORRENCE.
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HUGH WALLACE TORRENCE.
N the early years of this century-by the record March 14, I 1819, but in service three years previous, 1816-was formally organized the Kanawha Presbyterian Church, of Charleston, Virginia, under the care and supervision of Rev. Henry Ruff- ner D.D., LL.D.
Upon the election, in 1820, of this pioneer of Presbyterian faith to a professorship in Washington College, Virginia, Rev. Calvin Chaddock, Congregationalist, succeeded till 1825. Then from 1826 to 1835, Rev. Nathaniel Calhoun had ministerial' charge over the twenty members. From 1837 to 1862, a quar- ter of a century, Rev. James Brown, D.D., was the able and loved pastor, largely increasing its membership and widely ex- tending its usefulness.
In September, 1869, Rev. John C. Barr, then principal of the Charleston Female Institute, began pulpit duties over the con- gregation, which, being divided in the political sympathies of its membership, from 1865 to 1872, stood aloof from Presbyter- ial connection. This voluntary isolation continued until April of the latter year, when the church property was divided, and under the title of First Presbyterian Church, a portion of the membership in the old house of worship identified themselves with the Greenbrier Presbytery. The remainder attached themselves to the West Virginia Presbytery, continued adher- ence to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and retaining the historic name, Kanawha Presbyterian, began June, 1872, regular services in the Senate Chamber of the State House, under Rev. James Richards, D.D., as pastor. This ministry resulted in the begin- ning, and years afterwards, in the completion of a stone edifice- the first in the Valley-as their house of worship on the Vir- ginia street front of the parsonage lot.
The next ordained minister, after the sudden death of Dr. Richards, in London, in July, 1875, was Rev. Lyman Whiting, D.D., in March, 1878, followed by Frederick J. Stanley in 1884, and then by the present pastor, whose name heads this sketch.
Rev. H. Wallace Torrence, as his name indicates, is of Scotch and Scotch-Irish ancestry. His grandfather, William Wallace, was the first white man to cross the Ohio river and settle on the .
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north side in Beaver county, Pennsylvania, just back of the town of Rochester. His father, John, and mother, Mary Torrence, moved to New Brighton, where February 28, 1842, was born the only son, who at an early age entered Beaver Academy, and was therein prepared for the junior class of his literary course, graduating from Westminster College in 1863, at twenty years of age.
Three years were spent in the Theological Seminary of Princeton, New Jersey. He was then called to the Sixth U. P. Church, ordained and installed its pastor by the Presbytery of Philadelphia. For four years he there remained, when he accepted a call to the Presbyterian Church, of Ovid, New York. In this pulpit he served acceptably for sixteen years, during which time there were three powerful revivals, in one year ninety members were added to the church, and he baptized forty-seven adults on one Sabbath morning. The Sabbath morning before coming to Charleston he received into the church twenty-eight members, two of whom were children of parents he had married sixteen years before. Under a sense of duty, and with the regrets of an entire appreciative member- ship, he resigned, and February 20, 1867, took charge of the Kanawha Presbyterian Church, the oldest religious organiza- tion at the State Capital of West Virginia.
He has received calls at various times, to churches in Phila- delphia, New York, Oswego, Pittsburg, and smaller towns in the States of New York and Connecticut. Always interested in the cause of education, he was, when he came to his present charge, President of the Board of Education, a Director of Auburn Theological Seminary, and a member of the Board of Elmira Female College.
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