Marion County, West Virginia Biography of MILLARD FILLMORE HAMILTON, M. D. This file 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. 440-441 MILLARD FILLMORE HAMILTON, M. D., of Mannington, graduated in medicine and quialified himself for the practice of that profession forty years ago. Except for brief in- tervals his professional work has all been in Mannington. Doctor Hamilton is more than a capable physician and surgeon, is a citizen known for his progressiveness and leadership in many movements, is a former mayor of Man- nington and has also to his credit a record of service in the Legislature. He was born near Mannington February 22, 1860, son of Ulysses and Malissa (Yost) Hamilton. He is a de- scendant of Henry Hamilton, who came to America in Colonial times from the north of Ireland, where his ancestry, a branch of the great Hamilton family of Scotland, had been established in earlier generations. Henry Hamilton first located at Winchester, Virginia, where he married Elizabeth Tryand. Subsequently he removed to the vicinity of Morgantown, West Virginia, and in 1818 he left Monon- galia County and settled on Plum Run in Marion County. His son, Boaz Fleming, was born in Morgantown in 1798, and was ten years of age when the family settled in Marion County, where he became a widely known and in- fluential citizen. He was a stanch democrat. He was de- feated as a candidate for county clerk of courts in 1852, but in 1858 was elected to that office and served three years. October 26, 1828, he married Maria Parish. Their son, James Ulysses Hamilton, was born at Fair- mont January 12, 1839. In 1843 the family established their home at Salt Lick in Marion County, where James U. Hamilton grew up and lived his active life as a prosperous farmer and influential citizen. He died on his farm there in 1915. He married Malissa Yost, daughter of Nicholas Yost, of Fairview and member of the old and prominent family of that name in Marion County. Malissa Hamilton died January 1, 1916, in her seventy-ninth year. Millard Fillmore Hamilton spent his early life on his father's farm, attended common schools, the Fairmont Normal School, and began the study of medicine under the preceptorship of his uncle, Dr. P. D. Yost, of St. Louis, Missouri. Doctor Hamilton in 1883 graduated from the American Eclectic Medical College of St. Louis. He began practice in Mercer County, Missouri, but in 1883 returned to West Virginia, and has been a leading physician and surgeon at Mannington since that date, except for a period of six months during 1885-86 when he was on the Pacific Coast in practice at Fort Ross, California. Doctor Hamil- ton has held the post of district surgeon for the Baltimore & Ohio Railway for thirty-eight years, and for the past twenty-five years had been a member of the United States Board of Examining Surgeons for Pensions, and president of the board during the last five years. He is a member of the Marion County, West Virginia and American Medical Associations, has served as vice president of the West Vir- ginia Eclectic Medical Association, and is a member of the Baltimore & Ohio Railway Association of Surgeons. He was one of the organizers and incorporators of the Opera House Company, and helped organize and was presi- dent during its existence of the Mannington Development Company. He was one of the promoters of the Mannington Glass Company, and has always taken a deep civic pride in all matters pertaining to the welfare of Mannington and vicinity. For sixteen years he was president of the Bank of Mannington. He is owner of a number of houses in Man- nington, several farms, and on one of these at Salt Lick he built a beautiful home, where he and his family spend the summer months. In 1921 at their bungalow in the country were entertained the members and their wives of the Marion County Medical Society. This place is one of the notable horticultural projects of the county, Doctor Hamilton having developed an orchard of between 1,800 and 2,000 fruit trees. Doctor Hamilton has been a member of the City Council of Mannington, and in the spring of 1918 was elected mayor. He was in the office during the World war. In that time the streets were filled with thousands of drafted men and their relatives and friends, Mannington being the drafting center for Marion County outside of Fairmont. Under such conditions the city was so well policed that there was not a single accident, tragic or otherwise. In 1918 Doctor Hamilton was elected a member of the West Virginia Legis- lature. In the session of 1921 he introduced a joint resolu- tion, adopted, requesting the Federal Government to select Berkeley Springs in Morgan County as the site for one of the five soldier sanitariums which the Government con- templated building in different parts of the country. This subject is still pending, only one of the sites having been selected to date. Doctor Hamilton was appointed a member of the Board of Trustees of Berkeley Springs by Governor Morgan. In August, 1888, Doctor Hamilton married Miss Bessie L. Basnett, daughter of Festus D. Basnett, of Mannington. Doctor and Mrs. Hamilton have two sons. Dale H., born August 25, 1894, is a graduate of agriculture and horti- culture from West Virginia University and now has charge of his father's fruit farm. During the World war he was in the Government's Spruce Division on the Pacific Coast, where he had charge of eight hundred men in getting out spruce timber for airplane building. Dale H. Hamilton married Carla Lee Yorgersen, of the State of Washington, and they have one daughter, Phyllis Jean, born October 19, 1921. Dewey Dallas, born March 17, 1898, is now a student in the Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati. He took two years of preparatory work for his medical course in West Virginia University, and was there during the war, and had volunteered and entered the Officers Training Camp at Camp Taylor, Kentucky, but the armistice was signed before a commission was issued.