Greenbrier County, West Virginia         Biography of HOWARD CLEMONS SKAGGS

This biography was submitted by Sandy Spradling,
E-mail address:  <SSpradling@aol.com>

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


History of Greenbrier County 
J. R. Cole 
Lewisburg, WV 1917 
p. 217-219

HOWARD CLEMONS SKAGGS.

The Skaggs of Greenbrier have been noted for capable business qualities, 
inherited probably from their father, Alexander Sanford Skaggs, who was one 
of the most successful merchants of the county. Accuracy, dispatch and 
neatness characterized A. S. Skaggs' business relations with the public for a 
period of about fifty years, during which time he owned and operated a 
general store on the old James River and Kanawha turnpike, about eleven miles 
west.of Lewisburg. It was in the days when the four-horse stage coach, with 
its relays of every ten miles, brought passengers and the wares for trade 
every night to Clintonville, then a village consisting of one store, a 
blacksmith shop and a post office. Practically this store had all the trade 
of the western part of the county.

Alexander Sanford Skaggs, son of Henry Skaggs and Matilda Skaggs, was married 
to Mary Catherine, daughter of Joseph and Hannah Remley, February 18, 1836. 
He was born March 23, 1812, and died September 15, 1880. Ilis wife was born 
October 12, 1820, and died December 9, 1864. The children born to this union 
were as follow: Virginia S., now Mrs. Fell, October 26, 1837; Matilda J., 
April 25, 1839; Henry Alexander, November 24, 1840, died October 1, 1901; 
James Monroe, September 4, 1842; Laura Ann, August 2, 1844, died July 3, 
1913; Edward Clowny, April 18, 1846, died July 24, 1911; Florence Estaline,
January 3, 1849; Hannah Mary, now Mrs. Bryan, November 27,  1851; Sanford 
Remley, May 25, 1853; Howard Clemons, May 15, 1855; Ethel Adelia, April 10, 
1857; Richard Rector, March 18, 1861, died December 27, 1881.

During the Civil war Henry and James M. Skaggs (Polk) fought in the 
Confederate ranks for four years and F. C. Skaggs for two years and 
experienced some of the horrors of prisQn life at Camp Point Lookout, 
Maryland. James M. Skaggs, now living at Hubart, is one of the leading 
business men of the county. He has just been elected president of the Bank of 
Greenbrier to succeed A. E. Johnson, deceased.

Howard Clemons Skaggs was educated in the public schools of the county, 
closing with a three years' course of study in the Frankford High School. 
Following came a three years' clerkship in the store of his brother-in-law, 
J. P. Fell, and then, when just past the age of twenty-one, he left home and 
friends for a fortune in prospect in the State of Texas. During the first few 
years of his stay there he labored as a farm hand. By close application to 
business principles he won a reputation for honesty and integrity,