The History of West Virginia, Old and New

Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,

Chicago and New York, Volume III,

pg. 366

Raleigh

JOHN B. CLIFTON. One of the youngest coal operatorsin Raleigh County,
John B. Clifton as a boy took up railroading, spent several years in growing
responsibilities in the railroad service, and had the expert qualifications
as a traffic man when he turned to the coal industry. It has been his fortune
to associate with prominent men, and

among them he is regarded as one of the coming leaders in the coal
industry of West Virginia.

Mr. Clifton was born at Ridgeway, Montgomery County, Virginia, July
27, 1891, son of James W. and Mary K.

(Kelley) Clifton, both natives of Virginia, and his father a farmer.
He is of English ancestry. John B. Clifton

attended the common schools of Montgomery County until he was sixteen
years of age, then learned telegraphy, and his first assignment of duty
was as an operator on the Norfolk & Western. He served with that road
from 1907 until 1910, and then became general operator for the Virginia
Railway, his duties taking him all over the line.  Beginning in 1912,
he acted as car distributor for the road, but resigned in 1915 to go into
the coal business on the Stone Coal Branch of the Chesapeake & Ohio. 
At that time he became part owner of the Beckley Smokeless Coal Company.
He sold his interest in that organization in 1919, and since then has helped
organize and has been active as a business representative and as a member
of producing and sales companies operating in the Raleigh County field.
These include the Raleigh Smokeless Coal Company, Guyan Collieries Company,
Wilton Smokeless Coal Company, Wood-Peck Fuel Company, Red Ash Coal Company.
Mr. Clifton also has interests in South America, the Raleigh Smokeless
Fuel Company maintaining an office at Rio Janeiro, Brazil.

Submitted by Valerie Crook

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CHARLES L. HEABERLIN

Biographical Sketches of Members of Congress, Members of the
Legislature, Officers of the State Governement and judges of
the Supreme Court of Appeals, West Virigina, 1917

Source:
West Virginia Legislative Hand Book and Manual and Official
Register, 1917,Compiled and Edited by John T. Harris, Clerk of
the Senate, The Tribune Printing Co., Charleston, West Va.
pgs. 719 – 770

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
pg. 738

HEABERLIN, CHARLES L. (Republican.) Address: Beckley,
West Va. Born in Hancock county, Tennessee,February 12,
1883. Shortly afterward his father moved to Wise county,
Virginia. The son was educated there in the free schools and
in the high school at Wise, the county seat; now engaged in
general insurance and is Vice President and General Manager
of the Home Insurance Agency at Beckley; has been a citizen
of West Virginia since 1900; worked several years in coal
mines; was elected as one of the delegates from Raleigh in
1916; committee assignments, 1917: Taxation and Finance,
Insurance, Forestry and Conservation.

Submitted by: Valerie Crook

Email: vfcrook@trellis.net

VICTOR E. SULLIVAN

Biographical Sketches of Members of Congress, Members of the
Legislature, Officers of the State Governement and judges of

the Supreme Court of Appeals, West Virigina, 1917.

Source:

West Virginia Legislative Hand Book and Manual and Official
Register, 1917, Compiled and Edited by John T. Harris, Clerk

of the Senate, The Tribune Printing Co., Charleston, West

Va. pgs. 719 – 770

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

748

SULLIVAN, VICTOR E. (Republican.) Address: Raleigh,

West Va. Born at Powellsville, Scioto county, Ohio,

August 15, 1854; educated in the public schools of

Scioto and Gallia counties; has been a resident of West

Virginia fourteen years, locating first in Fayette county

and later in Raleigh; is a mining superintendent,

receiving his occupational experience in Ohio and West

Virginia; has been Chairman of the Republican Committee of

Raleigh county for five years; elected to the House in

1914; re-elected in 1916; in 1917 had the following
committee assignments: Prohibition and Temperance, Counties,

Districts and Municipal Corporations and Printing and

Contingent Expenses.

Submitted by: Valerie Crook

Email: vfcrook@trellis.net

This article was reproduced with the punctuation
and
capitalization used by the original author.
Transcribed by Jo Alice Bradley
Heck

    

Obituary

        Rebecca Jane Clay, daughter
of Charles L. and Awry Clay, was born in Pike county Kentucky June 25, 1828.
When but a baby her parents left their Kentucky home, and came to Wyoming
county, W. Va., to make a new home in the Mountain State, and as this home
was being built, one by one, sisters and brothers were added to the family
until there were four boys and six girls.
        During this home life in Wyoming county,
the subject of this sketch, then a little girl of twelve years, at a camp
meeting held in their community, heard and heeded the call of Jesus Christ
to “Follow Me,” and then and there accepted and publicly confessed Him as
her Savior, and united with the Methodist church and began the christian life.
        After living in Wyoming county some
eighteen years, her parents sought a new home, coming to Raleigh county and
locating at Brackenridge. While living there another sister and brother came
into the home. Brackenridge was their home but four years when they moved
to Sand Lick where they made their home until death, August 1, 1852.
        While living at Brackenridge, the
subject of this sketch, Rebecca, the oldest daughter, was married to James
Cantley, and they spent the first two years of their married life at the
Cottle place, now better known as Saxon. While living here their first child,
Nettie J., was born. They next for a part of one year at what is now known
as the old flats, and during their brief stay there they were blessed with
the second baby Nancy Jane.
        From that place they moved to the
present home, where Mrs. Cantley spent the rest of her days. Two other children
came to live in this little family, Ellen and James. Ellen, however, after
four years, went to live with him Him who said, “Suffer the Little Children
to Come Unto Me.”
         When Lincoln issued the call
for 75,000 volunteers in 1861, James Cantley responded to that call, left
his faithful wife and beloved little ones to go out never to return for in
the battle of Cross Keys, Sheandoah Valley, Va., he received a wound that
soon proved fatal. He was taken to the Harrisburg hospital, and after ten
days started for home, getting as far as Cumberland, Md., where his strength
failed, and he departed this life and was buried at that place.
        Mrs. Cantley, now a widow with the
three little ones, took up the battle of life, with its toils and bravely
met the responsibilities, doing as best she could-trusting always in Him to
whom she had yielded her life as a child. Her friends and neighbors pay her
the splendid tribute of calling her a good, kind christian woman. She departed
this life “looking unto Jesus, the Beginner and Finisher of her faith,” on
May 26, 1910, aged 81 years, 11 months and 1 day, leaving to morn their loss,
two daughters, one son, sisters, brothers, twenty grand-children, thirty-one
great-grand-children, and many other relatives as well as a great host of
friends.

G. A. Reaugh     

MARTIN VAN BUREN GODBEY

Biographical Sketches of Members of Congress, Members of the
Legislature, Officers of the State Governement and judges of the

Supreme Court of Appeals, West Virigina, 1917

Source:

West Virginia Legislative Hand Book and Manual and Official
Register, 1917,Compiled and Edited by John T. Harris, Clerk of

the Senate, The Tribune Printing Co., Charleston, West Va.

pgs. 719 – 770

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

pg. 724

GODBEY, MARTIN VAN BUREN. (Republican.)
Born in Raleigh county, December 19,1879; educated in the public
schools, at Marshall College and at Grant University; a physician
and surgeon; received the degree of M. D. from Maryland Medical
College; elected to the House of Delegates from Boone county in
1908; a member of the State Board of Health 1909-13; elected to
the State Senate in 1914, from the Eighth District; in 1917 had
the following committee assignments: Forestry and Conservation
(Chairman); To Examine the Clerk’s Office (Chairman); Railroads,
Insurance, Mines and Mining, Medicine and Sanitation, Public
Printing, Rules, Virginia Debt. Appointed Chief Medical Examiner
of the Workmen’s Compensation Fund, May 1,1917.

Submitted by: Valerie Crook

Email: VFCROOK@TRELLIS.NET

The History of West Virginia, Old and New

Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,

Chicago and New York, Volume III,

pg. 365-366

Raleigh

WILLIAM N. MACTAGGART. Though he has been an American all these years
he can remember, William N. MacTaggart was born in Scotland, and he has
some of the pronounced Scotch characteristics. He is conservative, is a
man of forceful character, and his associates esteem his judgment and experience
as the last resort in practically every matter connected with coal operation
and mining engineering. Mr. MacTaggart is the local superintendent and
engineer in charge of the vast properties of the Beaver Coal Company, with
headquarters at Beckley in Raleigh County.

He was born in the City of Glasgow, January 29, 1868, son of John and
Mary (Neilson) MacTaggart. His parents came to the United States about
1870. His father while in Scotland was an accountant for coal mining companies,
but, in the United States he took up mining as a practical vocation, and
was a mine foreman and superintendent, spending one year at Sharon, Pennsylvania,
and then removed to the coal district around Jeansville, Pennsylvania. 
He was killed in a mine accident there in 1881.

William N. MacTaggart attended the common schools of Jeansville, and
was only eight years of age when he did

his first work at a coal mine, picking slate. This was night work,
and he continued to attend school during the day.  At the age of eleven
he was made trapper and driver, and then successively was employed as trackman,
dug coal as a practical miner, served as foreman and superintendent, and
with increasing experience in all phases of coal mining he felt the need
of a better education, and for two years he pursued an academic course
in Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania.  Following that he
secured a position as rodman with an engineering company, and after mastering
the fundamentals of engineering he was made chainman and then transit man.
For three years he was in the service of the Lehigh Valley Coal Company
as a mining engineer at Hazelton, Pennsylvania. In 1899 he came to West
Virginia as mining engineer for the Fairmont Coal Company, and was in the
service of this corporation four years.

During a period of almost twenty years since then, Mr. MacTaggart has
had his headquarters at Beckley, where he has been superintendent for the
Beaver Coal Company. He looks after the property of the company, comprising
50,000 acres of coal and timber lands, producing on the average 3,000,000
tons of coal annually, besides lumber. There are twenty coal companies
operating under lease from the Beaver Company.  These operating companies
are the Raleigh, the Beckley, the Slab Fork, the Sullivan, the E. E. White
Coal and Coke Company, the Gulf Smokeless Coal Company, the Bailey-Wood
Coal Company, the Pemberton, the McAlpin, the Gulf Coal Company, the Elkhorn
Piney Mining Company, Pemberton Fuel Company, Piney Creek Coal Company,
Douglas Coal Company, Bowyer Smokeless Coal Company, Ragland Coal Company,
Summit

Coal Company, Viacova Coal Company, Beard Coal and Coke Company and
Battleship Coal Company.

In 1896, at Jeansville, Pennsylvania. Mr. MacTaggart married Bertha
Hamer, daughter of William and Bertha

Hamer. Her father was in the coal business in Pennsylvania. The five
children of their marriage are Paul, Jean

(deceased), Isabel, Margaret and Bertha.

The Beaver Company donated the site at Beckley for the new hospital
known as the Kings Daughters Hos-

pital of Beckley. Mr. MacTaggart is a Presbyterian, is a member of
the Kiwanis Club and is president of the Beckley Club.

Submitted by Valerie Crook

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in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. 
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James Richmond

James Richmond was born at Sandstone, at Richmond Falls on
the New River on January 19, 1823.  His grandfather, William Richmond
(born in Pennsylvania, 1752, died in Fayette County, WV 1850) was a veteran
of the American Revolutionary War.  He was also the first settler
in the New River Gorge, just upstream from the present-day I-64 Bridge
at Sandstone.  His log cabin still stands on the west bank of the
river and is still occupied as a dwelling.

William was three times married. His first wife, Mary, bore him nine
children and died in 1807. He thereafter married Margaret Bragg and, in
1849, Rebecca Atkins. Among William’s nine children was the father of James,
also named William (1786 – 1860), who married Mary Christian Kayler (Koehler).
James Richmond married Lucinda Walker c. 1843. Lucinda probably was reared
on Lick Creek on the Greenbrier County side of the New River. To this union
11 children were born:

John (1845-1847); James C. (1848-1898); Harvey T. (1849-1916); Rachel
(1852-1862); Ballard (1854-1923); Ruthy (1858-1881); Silvira (1861-1938
); Robert (1864 –1873); William D. (1866-1867); Oliver (1859-1960); and
Lucinda Ellen (1872-1960).  Lucinda Ellen became the wife of George
W. Bair, Jr.  In 1850, James acquired a farm at Little Beaver in Raleigh
County and lived out his life there.

James died on Saturday, May 25, 1911. The Raleigh Register of
June 1, 1911 announced his death thusly:  “ One of the Oldest and
Best Know Citizens of Raleigh County…died at the home of his daughter
Mrs. George W. Bair [ N. Kanawha Street, Beckley].  Thirty-one grandchildren
and 35 great-grandchildren survived him. James served in the army of the
Confederacy throughout the Civil War.”  He was a Democrat and the
Register
reported “until recently had always taken part in party affairs, being
regarded as one of the ablest counselors of his party”.

He was buried at the Ewart Cemetery in Shady Springs District, Raleigh
County.

 

The History of West Virginia, Old and New

Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,

Chicago and New York, Volume III,

pg. 364-365

WILLIAM W. HUME, M. D. A physician who began his workin Raleigh County
twenty years ago, Doctor Hume in recent years has withdrawn from general
practice and is now a widely known and acknowledged specialist in eye,
ear, nose and throat diseases at Beckley, and in that field represents
some of the highest abilities available in this section of the state.

Doctor Hume was born in Orange County, Virginia, September 21, 1866.
He represents a long line of Virginia

ancestors, the first of the name coming to this country in 1617. Another
branch of the family included the famous

Scotch historian and philosopher, David Hume. The parents of Doctor
Hume were Dr. Charles E. and Mary E.

(Thompson) Hume, natives of Virginia. His father made for himself a
place of prominence in his profession. He

waa in the Confederate army during the Civil war, and he treated both
Union and Confederate soldiers in his professional capacity.  His
home was in the path of both armies, and the soldiers took everything valuable
from the place. After the war Dr. Charles Hume settled in Culpeper County,
and he and his wife are now deceased.

William W. Hume acquired his early education in the common schools of
Culpeper County, and he had to de-

pend on himself for his higher education. For seven years he was engaged
in the drug business at Hinton, West Virginia, and left there to begin
the study of medicine in the University of Virginia at Charlottesville,
where he graduated M. D. in 1901. For four years he did a general country
practice in Raleigh County, and then moved to Beckley, and a few years
later he began his preparation for his special line of work. During 1914
Doctor Hume was a student of diseases of the nose and throat in the Philadelphia
Polyclinic, and took eye and ear courses in the Wills Eye Hospital at Philadelphia.
After his return to Beckley he limited his practice to eye, ear, nose and
throat.  During the war he was a member of the Examining Board. 
Doctor Hume now has associated with him in practice Dr. J. H. Hoskins,
a nephew of Mrs. Hume.

Doctor Hoskins was born April 22, 1892, in Essex County, Virginia, son
of W. D. and Ella Hoskins, and during the World war he was commissioned
first lieutenant in the Medical Corps, April 10, 1918. He was on duty three
weeks at Port Oglethorpe, Georgia, and then transferred to the Base Hospital
at Camp Raritan, Metuchen, New Jersey, whore he received his honorable
discharge January 20, 1919. Doctor Hume and Doctor Hoskins are both members
of the surgical staff of the Kings Daughters Hospital of Beckley.

In 1903, in Essex County, Virginia, Doctor Hume married Gazelle Hundley,
daughter of John T. and Sallie (Garnett) Hundley, natives of Virginia.
Her father was an educator and a soldier in the Civil war. Doctor Hume
and wife have no children of their own, but for a number of years have
been deeply interested in the welfare and progress of her sister’s children,
including Doctor Hoskins.   They adopted two of the daughters,
Beverly Hoskins Hume and Mathilda Hoskins Hume. Doctor Hume is a member
of the Christian Church, is a Royal Arch and Knight Templar Mason and Shriner,
votes as a democrat, and is a member of the County and State Medical associations.
He and his family live in the finest home at Beckley.

Submitted by Valerie Crook

****************************************************************

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in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. 
Persons or organizations desiring to use this material,

must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative
of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof
of this consent. Files may be printed or copied for personal use only.

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