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UPSHUR COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook
vfcrook@trellis.net
April 13, 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. 410-411
REV. RICHARD ASPINALL, A. M., B. D., is an honored
and valued member of the faculty of the West Virginia
Wesleyan College at Buckhannon, Upshur County, where
he holds the chair of Bible and Philosophy, and where he
has the distinction of being the first incumbent of this
professorship.
Mr. Aspinall was born at Bolton, England, December 1,
1881, and is a son of Archibald and Catherine (Barlow)
Aspinall, the father having been a successful contracting
stone mason and having passed his entire life in England.
In his native city Rev. Richard Aspinall acquired the equiva-
lent of a high school education, and he was twenty-four
years of age when, in 1905, he came to the United States
and became pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
at Charleston, West Virginia, his ordination to the min-
istry having occurred after his immigration to the United
States and after a course of preliminary study and other
preparatory work. He continued in his pastoral charge at
Charleston until the autumn of 1907, when he became a
student in the West Virginia Wesleyan College, in which
he was graduated with honors and from which he received
the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He received from the
New York University the supplemental degree of Master
of Arts, and the degree of Bachelor of Divinity was con-
ferred upon him by Drew Theological Seminary. For one
year he held a pastoral charge at Philippi, Barbour County,
West Virginia, and he then, in the autumn of 1915, was
elected the first professor of the chair of Bible and Philos-
ophy in the West Virginia Wesleyan College, in which ca-
pacity he has since continued his earnest and efficient serv-
ice, the while he is known as a man of fine scholarship
and of high ideals, which he is able to translate into ob-
jective helpfulness. He is an honored member of the West
Virginia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
he having been ordained a deacon in 1909 and an elder
in 1911.
Professor Aspinall is essentially broad-minded and pro
gressive as a citizen and takes loyal interest in community
affairs. In 1919-20 he was president of the Rotary Club
of Buckhannon, and he was made district governor of the
International Association of Rotary Clubs for the district
comprising Western Maryland, Western Pennsylvania and
West Virginia. When he assumed this position there were
only twenty-seven Rotary Clubs in the district, and upon
his retirement the district had forty-two thriving clubs.
He is a member of the National Economic League, the
headquarters of which are maintained in the City of Bos-
ton, Massachusetts, and he is actively identified also with
the Religious Association of America. Professor Aspinall
is a director of the People's Bank of Buckhannon, is a di-
rector also of a local building and loan association, and
in politics he is a republican. In 1921 he made a trip
to Europe, where he carried out a course of special study
of post-graduate order at Oxford University, England.
On the llth of June, 1912, wag solemnized, the marriage
of Professor Aspinall and Miss Maude Rusmisell, who is
a graduate of the West Virginia Conference Seminary and
of the vocal department of the Peabody School of Music
in the City of Baltimore, Maryland. Mrs. Aspinall is in-
fluential and popular in both the cultural life and social
circles of her home city, and is a specially talented musician.
Professor and Mrs. Aspinall have two children, Catherine
V., who was born August 10, 1913, and Samuel R., who
was born June 27, 1915.
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