Barbour County, West Virginia Biography of Samuel V. WOODS This biography was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: The submitter does not have a connection to the subject of this sketch. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm 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.