Cabell County, West Virginia Biography of Hon. Lee Daniel NEWMAN ************************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: Material may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material, AND permission is obtained from the contributor of the file. These pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for non-commercial purposes, MUST obtain the written consent of the contributor. Submitted by Valerie Crook, , May 1999 ************************************************************************** The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 144 HON. LEE DANIEL NEWMAN. Some individuals seem destined from the start to leave a strong impress upon their age and community and to become responsible for much that tends toward the highest possible form of general locality interests. Such men, of necessity, possess dominant per- sonalities and trenchant characteristics, and through them guide others along paths of usefulness and successful and constructive operations. In this class undoubtedly stands Hon. Lee Daniel Newman, police judge of Huntington and city commissioner of health and charity, whose entire self- made career has been one well worthy of emulation. Judge Newman was born February 14, 1882, at Sao Paulo, Brazil, South America, a son of Junius E. and Eugenia (Daniels) Newman. Isaac T. Newman, the grand- father of Judge Newman, was born in England, and in young manhood immigrated to the United States, settling in Mason County, West Virginia, where he became a success- ful agriculturist and extensive land owner, he and two others at one time owning practically the entire county. He died there prior to the birth of his grandson. In Mason County he married Mary Elizabeth Elliott, who was born in England and died in Mason County. Junius E. Newman was born in 1819, in Mason County, Virginia (now West Virginia), where he was reared and educated, and where he early became a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil war he served as a chaplain in the Confederate army, and following the close of that struggle he became a missionary and as such went to Brazil. There he met Eugenia Daniels, who was born in 1849, at Birmingham, Alabama, but whose parents, losing all they had in the great struggle between the North and South, had moved to Brazil. Because of failing health and advancing years Reverend Newman gave up his mission- ary labors in 1891 and returned to Point Pleasant, Mason County, West Virginia, where his death occurred in 1892. His widow survived him until November 25, 1921, when she passed away at Huntington. Reverend Newman was a democrat in politics and a member of the Masonic frater- nity. He and his worthy wife were the parents of four children: Alfred E., a construction engineer of San Fran- cisco, California; Lee Daniel, of this notice; Junius E., a newspaper publisher of Dayton, Ohio; and Kate, the wife of Frank McDoney, a train dispatcher at Huntington for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. Lee Daniel Newman received his early education in the rural schools of Mason County, West Virginia, and this was later supplemented by a correspondence course in civil en- gineering in the International Correspondence School of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a course in law with Putnam & Sons of New York City. In the meantime, at the tender age of eleven years, he had commenced to work on a farm in Mason County, and when he was seventeen years old secured employment with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company at Huntington, in the service of which he worked his way up to the position of supervisor of electrical equip- ment. He resigned his position in 1916 and from January of that year until June, 1918, was the representative of organized labor for thirteen railroads in the southeastern part of the United States, his work necessitating the spend- ing of much of his time at Washington, D. C. In May, 1918, Mr. Newman was elected commissioner of health and charity and police judge of Huntington, the duties of which positions he assumed in the following month. His offices are situated in the City Hall. Judge Newman has brought to the discharge of his duties a conscientious effort to bring about movements for the general welfare, and his sincerity, zeal and energy have won him countless supporters and admirers. Politically Judge Newman is a democrat, and his religious connection is with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He is a member of Marshall Lodge No. 121, I. O. O. F., of Huntington; Huntington Lodge No. 313, B. P. O. E., and the Guyan Country Club of Huntington. He has a business interest in the Enterprise Garage of this city. Judge New- man's modern home is situated at No. 1619 Tenth Avenue, in one of the desirable residential districts of the city.