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CABELL COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook
vfcrook@earthlink.net
July 22, 2000
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 528
Cabell
CLAUDE FREDERICK CUNNINGHAM is an engineer by pro-
fession, was associated with railroad and other construction
work for a number of years, and since locating at Hunting-
ton has carried on a large business with his private capital
in the buying and selling of timber and mineral lands. He
is also the present county surveyor of Cabell County.
Mr. Cunningham, who was born at Wallace in Harrison
County, West Virginia, represents a branch of the Cunning-
ham family that came out of Ireland to Virginia in Colonial
times. His great-great-grandfather was a soldier in the
Revolutionary war. His grandfather, Walter J. Cunning-
ham, was born in old Virginia in 1832, and spent the greater
part of his life as a farmer in Marion County, West Virginia,
where he died at Peoria in 1903. He was a Union soldier
in the Civil war. He married a Miss Walker, a native of
old Virginia, who died in Marion County.
Ekana F. Cunningham, father of the Huntington business
man, was born in Marion County, November 9, 1848, and as a
young man removed to Harrison County, where he married
and where he followed the trade and business of carpenter in
the vicinity of Clarksburg. In 1911 he moved his family
to Clarksburg, and died in that city November 6. 1921.
He was a republican, a member of the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows, and in 1865 he enlisted and served during
the few remaining months of the Civil war. Ekana F.
Cunningham married Selana Hannah, who was born in Har-
rison County in 1844 and died at Bulltown in Braxton
County in 1900. Their children were: Mattie, who
died when one year old; Claude Frederick, who was born
June 30, 1883; Clyde, who died at the age of four years;
Clint, who died when nine years old; and Maude, wife of
Charles Gaines, dispatcher for the Street Electric Railway
Company at Clarksburg.
Claude Frederick Cunningham spent his younger life in
a county district of Harrison County, attending school there
and later, as his practical work and experience showed
the need of it, he took correspondence courses and civil en-
gineering with the American Correspondence School of
Chicago and the International Correspondence School of
Scranton. In the meantime, in 1903, at the age of twenty,
he went to work in the engineer corps of the Wabash
Railway, serving 1 1/2 years in the capacity of rodman, for
one year was instrument man with the C. C. & C. Railroad,
for two years was transit man with the Chesapeake
and Ohio Railroad, and was then promoted and for four
years was stationed at Barboursville, West Virginia, as
resident engineer. In the meantime he had studied diligently
in the general field of engineering, and had completed his
correspondence courses in 1908.
When Mr. Cunningham resigned from the Chesapeake and
Ohio service in 1912 he took work as assistant engineer
with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad at Birmingham,
Alabama for three months, but in August of the same year
came to Huntington, where he had an extensive business in
the general practice of civil engineering until 1915. Since
that year he has devoted his chief time and his capital to
the real estate business, buying farms, coal lands and
timber lands, handling all such transactions on his own
account and doing no brokerage business. His offices are in
the Stevenson Building at 1123-27 Fourth Avenue.
Mr. Cunningham was elected county surveyor of Cabell
County in November, 1920, beginning his term of four
years on January 1, 1921. He is a republican, and in the
order of Masonry is affiliated with Minerva Lodge No. 13,
A. F. and A. M., at Barboursville, Lodge of Perfection No.
4, and Knights of Rose Croix No. 4 of the Scottish Bite
at Huntington, West Virginia Consistory No. 1 at Wheeling,
and ia a member of the Masonic Club of Wheeling, and
Huntington Lodge No. 313, Benevolent and Protective Order
of Elks.
On October 14, 1911, at Huntington, Mr. Cunningham
married Miss Beulah Thompson, daughter of Robert T. and
Ada (Burns) Thompson, residents of Cincinnati, where
her father is a passenger conductor with the Chesapeake
and Ohio Railroad. Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham have one
son, Jack, born April 4, 1918.
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