|
BARBOUR COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
******************************************************************
Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook
vfcrook@trellis.net
November 26, 1999
******************************************************************
The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 317-318
SAMUEL V. WOODS. In the forty-one years since his ad-
mission to the bar Samuel V. Woods has proved himself the
possessor of many of the distinctive abilities of his honored
father, the late Judge Samuel Woods, whose career is briefly
given in sketch following.
In the broad field of general practice, particularly in
chancery, and as a trial lawyer Samuel V. Woods has few
equals.
He possesses a generous and abundant equipment and
knowledge of the law, and his personal character, which
is of the highest order, has combined to make his career a
source of genuine public service, though comparatively little
of his time has been spent in public office.
He was born in Barbour County on the 31st of Angust,
1856, and was educated by private tutors, in the public
schools, and at the West Virginia University.
He studied law under his distinguished father, Judge
Samuel Woods, and was examined before and admitted to
practice by the Supreme Court of Appeals in 1881, upon
the motion of William L. Wilson. Since that time he has
been a steady practitioner in the County of Barbour, where
he has resided, and in other counties in that section of
the state, and before the Supreme Court of Appeals.
He has handled a great volume of business covering an
immense range in the practice of his profession. For many
years in Barbour County nearly every important trial found
him engaged therein on one side or the other, and he always
acquitted himself with great credit and with a high degree
of satisfaction to his clients.
A brief professional opinion of his work is as follows:
"In his court work he has always been distinguished for
the thoroughness of his preparation, the tact of his exam-
ination of witnesses, is accurate knowledge of all the de-
tails of pleading and practice, and coolness and self poise,
which he exhibits under circumstances of the most ad-
verse and trying nature. As an advocate he is gifted with
logical powers and a faculty of expression remarkably
simple and lucid. His diction is clear and correct, his
language forceful and pointed, and on all occasions he
shows the power of an able public speaker and debater,
and is an honorable, upright and reliable attorney."
Men who have been so fortunate as to come within
the friendship or professional association of Samuel V.
Woods pronounce him as one of the most genial men in all
their acquaintance. He possesses and exhibits the courtesy
of the old school gentleman, and his personal character
and attainments give special force to this disposition.
He has always been interested in the discussion of
political questions, and is an unusually forceful and eloquent
platform speaker in the discussion of political questions
and questions of public policy, and he has always been an
earnest independent democrat. And while he has lived
in a strongly republican county and republican senatorial
and congressional district, he was elected to the State
Senate in 1910, and for four years represented the Thir-
teenth Senatorial District. While a member of the Senate,
which was equally divided politically, he was unanimously
elected president of the Senate, and under the constitution
of this state he thereby became in effect lieutenant gov-
ernor of West Virginia.
He was twice the democratic nominee for Congress in
the Second Congressional District. He was a delegate to
the National Democratic Convention in 1900.
Mr. Woods has been a life long member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, and in 1916 was elected as a delegate
to the General Conference, which is the law making body
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1920 he again
served in the General Conference of the church.
Since 1903 Mr. Woods has been a member of the Board
of Trustees of the West Virginia Wesleyan College at Buck-
hannon, and has been consistently one of the most generous
supporters of that institution, of which his distinguished
father, Judge Samuel Woods, was one of the founders and
for many years president of its Board of Trustees. He has
from that College the degree of LL. D.
For the past fourteen years Mr. Woods has been the
president of the Citizens National Bank of Phillppi, the
strongest and one of the oldest banking Institutions in
Barbour County, of which he was one of the founders and
organizers.
Mr. Woods married on the 9th day of March, 1893, Miss
Mollie Strickler, and they have had one child, Ruth Neeson
Woods, who is now the wife of Arthur S. Dayton, a dis-
tinguished member of the Philippi bar, and the only son of
the late Judge Alston G. Dayton.
|
