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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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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George W. Bair

Written by George E. Honts, III (Fincastle, VA)

George W. Bair, Jr. was born November 10, 1875 at Washington College,
Tennessee, the son of George Bair and Mary Hinkle Beard. He came to Raleigh
County as a young man, with 50 cents in his pocket, that, in his words
“was all the money I had in this world”.  He worked, accumulated some
savings and acquired with his brother, Robert T. Bair, a sawmill and a
tract of fallen timber near the site of the present Beckley Civic Center. 
From these inconspicuous beginnings grew a thriving lumber business. 
The lumber business was conducted on the site of the present-day offices
of the Beckley Newspapers.  On December 20, 1897, he married Lucinda
Ellen Richmond of Raleigh County.

After the turn of the 20th Century, George Bair, again in partnership
with his brother, R.T., became the first Ford automobile dealers in southern
West Virginia.  Henry Ford shipped disassembled Model T Fords to Beckley
by rail where the Bair Brothers completed the assembly of the vehicles.
Later the Bair Brothers also sold Lincoln automobiles. The story is told
that Henry Ford once complained that the Bair brothers were not selling
enough Lincolns.  Upon receiving that word, George canvassed his neighbors
On North Kanawha Street, starting with Ashton File who lived across the
street, and by the end of the evening had sold six Lincolns.

In 1911 he built his home at 219 North Kanawha Street.  The house
still stands and presently houses an extension of Concord College. 
In 1922 the Bair Brothers completed the Bair building on North Kanawha.

George Bair served an unexpired term as mayor of Beckley, 1928-1929,
when Joe L. Smith was elected to Congress.  He chose not to stand
for re-election. He served as a director of the Raleigh County Bank and
president of the Cooperative Building and Loan Association. George and
Ellen had no children, but in 1911 adopted her twin nieces, Dora Louise
(1911-1947) and Nora Ellen (1911 – 1957), whose mother had died in childbirth.
Louise married George Edward Honts, Jr. of Botetourt County, Virginia and
was survived by him and one son.  Ethel did not marry.  George
Bair was a life-long Presbyterian: Ellen remained a member of the Christian
Church.  George Bair died in 1939.  He and Ellen are buried at
the mausoleum at Sunset cemetery. Beckley.

 

 

The History of West Virginia, Old and New

Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,

Chicago and New York, Volume III,

pg. 365

ROBERT M. FRENCH has earned real distinction in the financial life of
Raleigh County. Throughout his active

manhood he has been in the service of the oldest bank of the county,
the Bank of Raleigh, and is now cashier of

that institution, which ranks among the strongest banks in this section
of the state.

Mr. French was born at Logan, West Virginia, December 17. 1888, son
of Millard F. and Ellen (Wilburn) French, both natives of Virginia. His
ancestors were soldiers in the Revolution, and his grandfather was Henderson
French, a farmer and blacksmith. Millard F. French was a physician, and
practiced a number of years at Logan and later at Beckley, where he died
in 1908. He was an elder in the Christian Church and a member of the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows. The mother is still living at Beckley.

Robert M. French as a boy attended the common schools at Logan, graduated
in 1907 from the State Normal School at Athens, and also spent two years
in West Virginia University at Morgantown. About the close of his university
career Mr. French entered the Bank of Raleigh as bookkeeper.  Two
years later he was advanced to assistant cashier, a post he held six years,
and since then has been cashier, and for eight years has been one of the
bank directors. The Bank of Raleigh was established in 1899, and its stockholders
and directors have included many of the most substantial men of Raleigh
County. During the World war Mr. French was connected with all the bond
drives in Raleigh County.

At Athens, West Virginia, in 1912, he married Hattie L. Vermillion,
daughter of S. I. and Rhoda (Bird) Vermil-

lion, natives of West Virginia. Her mother is now deceased. Her father
is a surviving Confederate veteran who

served with the Virginia Regiment of Cavalry, and among other battles
was at Gettysburg. He followed farming as his active vocation. Mr. and
Mrs. French have two children, Robert M., Jr., and Elizabeth Ann. The family
are members of the Christian Church, and he is a Royal Arch Mason, a Knight
of Pythias and a member of the Rotary Club.

Submitted by Valerie Crook

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

USGENWEB NOTICE:  These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced
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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