Logan County, West Virginia Biography of J. CARY ALDERSON 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. 572-573 Logan J. CARY ALDERSON. The oldest bank in the length and breadth of the Guyan Valley is known as the Guyan Valley Bank of Logan. It has performed all the service expected of an institution of this character for over twenty years, and its resources as well have steadily improved. The chief personal factor in its prosperity hag been J. Cary Alderson, who organized it, became its first cashier, and since 1912 has served as its president. In his capacity as a banker and business man of Logan County Mr. Alderson has contributed additional dignity to a name that has been one of historical distinctions in West Virginia for more than a century and a half. He is a descendant in the sixth generation of an old Yorkshire Eng- lish family. The Aldersons for several generations were prominent ministers. His Yorkshire ancestor was Eev. John Alderson, a minister. A second generation was also represented by a John Alderson, who in time also took up the profession of the ministry. He was born in 1699. As a youth he formed a romantic attachment which was not favored by his father, and his father as a means of break- ing up the match gave the son £200 to enjoy a period of travel. In the course of his journeys he reached Liverpool, and by that time had expended all his capital. He was induced to accept passage on a ship then starting for Amer- ica, and the first record of him in this country finds him in New Jersey in 1719. He became a Baptist preacher, preach- ing in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and finally moving to Virginia, where he bought a farm adjoining one owned by the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. On his farm there John Alderson built a Baptist Church. His last days were spent at Fincastle, Virginia, where he died in 1780. He married Jane Curtis, of New Jersey, and they were the parents of seven sons and one daughter. The third generation of the family was also represented by a Rev. John Alderson, who was born in New Jersey in 1738, and was the pioneer of the family in West Virginia. He had all the enterprise and the fondness for adventure that characterize the pioneer, and he turned this disposition to the advantage of the Baptist Church, of which he was one of the most honored pioneer missionaries. He explored the Greenbrier and Kanawha valleys during 1760-75, and in one trip went as far as the Ohio River. He was probably the first preacher in the Kanawha Valley. During 1774-75 he laid out the first road to Jarretts Ford on Wolf Creek, now in Monroe County. Soon afterward he removed his family to the Greenbrier River, at what is now the town of Alderson, and here he set out the first orchard and built the first church west of the Alleghany Mountains. The community became known as Alderson's Ferry and neigh- borhood. He carried the gospel to many isolated commu- nities in the mountain district. The church he and his followers built on the Greenbrier River recently celebrated its 150th anniversary. The present church is the third edi- fice to stand on the same foundation. At the anniversary just mentioned the father of Cary Alderson read a paper of reminiscences. Rev. John Alderson frequently preached to the Indians, and it is literally true that in going about on his duties as a minister he carried a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other. He died at what is now Alderson in 1821. He married in 1759 Mary Carroll, a relative of Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Of his three sons one was George Alderson, who became distinguished in the pioneer affairs of the Kanawha Valley and whose son, James O., was at one time pastor of the Greenbrier Church. The second son, Joseph, was the father of Lewis A. Alderson, who was a pioneer in the Baptist ministry in Kansas, and founded Ottawa University in that state. John Alderson, the fourth to bear that name in as many generations, was born at Alderson in Monroe County and was a business man. Among his various enterprises he was associated with the pioneer salt manufacturing industry of the state. This John Alderson was the grandfather of the Logan banker. George Alderson, father of Cary Alderson, was born at Alderson November 13, 1833, a date which old timers al- ways recalled as the night the stars fell. He married Vir- ginia Stevens, who was born in Monroe County in 1842, daughter of a Yankee schoolmaster. George Alderson and wife have been married fifty-four years, and both of them are still living. He has been an official in the old Green- brier Baptist Church. At the time of the Civil war he en- tered the Confederate Army and served with the rank of captain on the staff of General William C. Wickham. He has always been a loyal democrat, has represented his county in the State Legislature, and for forty years he was a justice of the peace, until he declined to serve longer. For many years he was master of Alderson Lodge of Masons, and was a director of the First National Bank of Alder- son. George Alderson and wife had a family of five sons and one daughter, and of these only J. Gary survives. Of those deceased Bernard C., who died at the age of forty, was a graduate of West Virginia University, was a teacher and founded the Alderson Baptist College of Alderson. William W. Alderson graduated from the College of Phy- sicians and Surgeons in Baltimore, practiced in Alderson and later in Texas, to which state he removed for his health and where he died at the age of thirty. George Alderson was a farmer on the old homestead, a member of the State Legislature. Cabell died in childhood. The only daughter, Virginia, died at the age of thirty-five and was the wife of C. B. Rowe, of Alderson. John Cary Alderson was born at Alderson in Monroe County September 29, 1868. He gained a liberal education before beginning his business career, attended schools in his native county, and in 1883 entered Hampden-Sidney College in Virginia, where he graduated A. B. in 1887. He took his law course in the University of Virginia, graduating LL. B. in 1890. Prior to graduating from law school he was for a time assistant professor of Latin and Greek in the prepara- tory department of Hampden-Sidney College. Later he taught a private preparatory school of his own at Green- brier, five miles from Lewisburg, West Virginia. After graduating from law school in 1890 his choice of a place for his professional career was Aracoma, now the town of Logan and county seat of Logan County. He is one of the oldest residents of this community, and in thirty years has not only witnessed but has been an influential factor in the development of the town and surrounding country. For five years he was associated in the practice of law with H. K. Shumate, and after that was alone in practice until 1900, when he organized the Guyan Valley Bank and be- came its cashier. For six years he was deputy clerk of the County Court under his father-in-law, S. S. Altizer. While in law practice Mr. Alderson gave his special at- tention to civil and chancery cases. Outside of his business as a banker he has been interested in the development of the coal fields of this section, and has been president and otherwise officially identified with several coal land and coal operating companies. On May 16, 1893, Mr. Alderson married Julia Altizer, daughter of S. S. Altizer. Her father, who was a candi- date for Congress in 1906, died in Cabell County, West Vir- ginia, in 1907. Mr. Alderson has been a deacon of the Baptist Church for many years, is a past master of the Lodge of Masons, a member of Logan Chapter, R. A. M., and the Knight Templar Commandery at Charleston. In polities he is a democrat, and was chairman of the demo- cratic county committee for eight years.