Jackson County, West Virginia Biography of HON. EDGAR R. STAATS 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 II, pg. 536-537 Jackson HON. EDGAR R. STAATS, member of the State Senate, repre- senting the Third District, is a lawyer by profession, a resident of Parkersburg, and was born in Jackson County, where the family of Staats has been one of prominence for a great many years. Senator Staats was born in Jackson County, January 27, 1878, son of George W. and Diana (Waugh) Staats. His father was a Union soldier in the Civil war. Edgar Staats acquired a common school education, attended Marshall College, and spent five years in West Virginia University, paying his own expenses while there. He graduated in law in 1903 and in 1905 began his practice at Spencer. He was elected in 1907 prosecuting attorney for Roane County, hold- ing that office until 1912. In 1913 he was sergeant-at-arms in the House of Delegates, and in the same year removed to Parkersburg, where a favorable reputation having preceded him, he at once entered into a law practice that has grown in volume and importance in successive years. The Third District, comprising the counties of Pleasants, Ritchie, Wirt and Wood. elected him to the Senate in 1917. His record of service in the Senate was one of more than routine importance. He was chairman of the committee on privileges and elections and a member of the judiciary and good roads committees. He has always been a student of the good roads problem, and has contributed perhaps the most constructive measure in recent times to the good roads program. In the session of 1919 he introduced the proposal for a Constitutional Amendment taking the Class A roads, that is, those leading from county seat to county seat, out of the hands of the County Court and placing them under the charge of the state. The measure carried by a majority of 118,000, and in the session of 1921, following the Constitu- tional Amendment, the Legislature gave unanimous approval in both Houses of the bill creating a State Road Commission, which was a thing unprecedented in the annals of state legis- lation. Mr. Staats is a republican. He is a member of the Elks and the Parkersburg Chamber of Commerce. April 16, 1921, he married Mrs. Edith (Jones) Rosser.