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MONONGALIA COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
PJSTON@aol.com
December 7, 1999
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II
pg 99
Clement Condon Hildebrand had made a promising start in a business career
when he joined the aviation service in the World war, and since leaving that
has resumed his citizenship in Monongalia County, where he is actively
identified with business in Morgantown and also in the town of Hildebrand, a
little community named for his father.
Hildebrand is in Grant District of Monongalia County, and Mr. Hildebrand was
born there December 4, 1891, son of John Marshall and Eliza Jane (Schafer)
Hildebrand. The Hildebrands, though of German ancestry, have been in America
since Colonial times. The ancestor was Henry Hildebrand, who settled in
Massachusetts and was a Minute Man in the days of the Revolution. He married
a Miss Coulter. Five generations intervened between him and Clement C.
Hildebrand. His son, Henry Hildebrand (II), was born in Massachusetts,
married Margaret Launtz, moved to Maryland, later to the vicinity of
Richmond, Virginia, and finally to Greene County, Pennsylvania. When he went
to Pennsylvania he was accompanied by his sisters, Charlotte and Barbara.
Charlotte married a Mr. Lucas, and the Morgantown branch of the Lucas family
is descended from her. Louis Launtz Hildebrand, of the third generation of
the family in America, was born in Greene County, Pennsylvania, in 1814. He
married in that county Maria Catherine Maheney, and in 1847 they removed to
White Day, Clinton District, Monongalia County, West Virginia. L. L.
Hildebrand died at the age of eighty-four and his wife at ninety-four. A
brief record is entered concerning their twelve children: Samantha, who
became the wife of J. W. Stevens and was the mother of eleven children;
Margaret married John H. Smallwood and had six children; Jane who died in
infancy; John Marshall; Sarah Ellen; who had nine children by her marriage to
Elias Keener; Hannah Louisa, whose husband was James Smallwood, by whom she
had six children; Clark, who married Anna Ellis and had a family of two
children; Miranda, wife of John C. Schafer and the mother of two children;
Mary, who was the wife of J. Smallwood; Anna, who had one child by her
marriage to Orril Holland; Thomas, who was the father of one child by his
first wife, Margaret Thorp, had six children by his second marriage, to
Margaret Steele; and Ida L., who became the wife of John Price and the mother
of one child.
John Marshall Hildebrand was born in Greene County, Pennsylvania, in 1845,
and has been one of the well known and effective citizens of this locality.
For many years he has been active in the general mercantile business he
established at Hildebrand, where the little community has grown up. In a
public way he has been justice of the peace, deputy sheriff, constable, road
commissioner and school trustee. He married Eliza Jane Schafer, who was born
near Laurel Point in Monongalia County in 1849. To their marriage were born
nine children: Carrie Anna, widow of Dr. E. M. Henry, of Laurel Point, and
of her three children one is living, Otto H. Henry, a graduate of West
Virginia University and now a professor in the New York Polytechnic School of
Engineering; Benton M., who married Lela Hess and is manager of the Standard
Oil Pumping Station at Summerville, New Jersey; Ella M. wife of Charles Henry
and mother of Mifflin, Marie and Wilford; Nora F., who died in 1920,
unmarried; Grace G., wife of J. F. Dugan, Greensboro, Pennsylvania, and
mother of Donovan, Doran and Dorothea; Bert B., who married Nettie Jolliffe
and has two sons, Chester and Louis; Louis Launtz, who married Margaret
Lambert and has a son, Allan Bryce; John, who died in infancy; and Clement
Condon, ninth and youngest of the family.
Clement C. Hildebrand attended common schools, graduated from the Morgantown
High School in 1914 and in the same year entered the accounting department of
the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company at Morgantown. In 1916 he was
transferred to the Gary, Indiana plant of that corporation. The following
year, when America entered the war, he enlisted in the air department, and
received his training at Indianapolis, at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, and
subsequently was transferred to the balloon service at Fort Omaha, Nebraska.
He was top sergeant of his company and received his honorable discharge at
Camp Grant, Illinois, February 29, 1919.
While his old position with the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company was held
open for him he decided to return home to be near his parents, both growing
old, and accordingly took charge of the office work of the Delmar Coal
Company at Hildebrand and is also junior member of the firm of Hildebrand &
Son, merchants, at Hildebrand. March 1, 1921, E. Reece Baker, a Morgantown
contractor, became associated with Mr. Hildebrand as accountant, draftsman
and general assistant. Mr. Hildebrand is affiliated with Morgantown Union
Lodge No. 4, A. F. and A. M., and has taken fourteen degrees in the Scottish
Rite. He is affiliated with the Woodmen of the World, the American Legion
and the Methodist Episcopal Church.
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