Marshall County, West Virginia - Biography of John W. Picket

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Submitted by Valerie Crook.

The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II,
pg. 548
Marshall

JOHN W. PICKET, M. D., stands forth as a dean of his pro-
fession in Marshall County, where he has been established in
active practice as a skilled physician at Moundsville for
nineteen years. He has practiced his profession for a period
of virtually fifty years. He was born at Harveys, Greene
County, Pennsylvania, April 14,1842, and is a son of Abraham
A. C. Rickey, who was born in the State of New Jersey in
1804, of Scotch parentage, and who was a young man at the
time of the family removal to Western Pennsylvania, where
he became a prosperous farmer and where he continued to
reside until his death, at the age of seventy-six years. His
father died in middle life, while his great-grandfather attained
to the patriarchal age of 103 years.

Dr. Rickey is one of two survivors in a family of ten chil-
dren, of whom he was the ninth in order of birth. Two of his
sisters died at the age of ninety-two years, one brother at
the age of eighty-one, and another brother at the age of
eighty-three. It thus becomes evident that the family is one
of marked longevity, and the Doctor himself has the physical
and mental poise of a man many years his junior. Dr. Rickey
gained his early experience in connection with the activities
of the home farm, and he supplemented the discipline of the
common schools by attending Waynesburg College at Waynes-
burg, Pennsylvania. Thereafter he prepared himself for the
medical profession, and he has been continuously engaged in
practice since the year 1873. He was established in practice
at Glen-Easton, Marshall County, West Virginia, until 1902,
when he removed to Moundsville, which city has since been
the central stage of his earnest and effective professional
service. He took a course of lectures in a leading medical
college in the City of Cleveland. Ohio, and has continued a
close student of medicine, in which his skill has been aug-
mented by many years of successful practice. He is identified
with the Marshall County Medical Society, the West Virginia
State Medical Society and the American Medical Association,
and he served several years as a member of the United States
Board of Pension Examiners for Marshall County. He has
secure place in the confidence and esteem of his professional
confreres and is frequently called into consultation on critical
cases. In the autumn of 1861, within a short time after the
inception of the Civil war, Dr. Rickey, then nineteen years of
age, was preparing to join neighbor boys in enlisting for
service as a soldier of the Union, but his parents refused con-
sent to his enlistment. Within a short time thereafter he was
so injured by being caught in the mechanism of a threshing
machine that it became necessary to amputate his right leg.
It was largely due to this infirmity that he was led to prepare
himself for the profession which he has honored by his able
and earnest service. He has been affiliated with the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows since the late '60s and is still a
member of his original lodge, at Cameron, West Virginia,
where he had established his residence in 1865 and where he
passed the various chairs in his lodge. The Doctor is an
earnest member of the Presbyterian Church, as was also his
wife, who died in 1910, after their marital companionship bad
continued forty-two years.

At Cameron, this state, in 1868, Dr. Rickey wedded Miss
Clara B. Williams, who was born in Virginia, in 1852. a
daughter of Uriah Williams, who was among the first locomo-
tive engineers on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and who
continued his service in this capacity many years, his death
having occurred at Cameron, West Virginia. Of the children
of Dr. and Mrs. Rickey the eldest is Willis M., who is a train
dispatcher for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company at
Cumberland, Maryland. Mayes B. and John E. are train
dispatchers for the same railroad at Wheeling, West Virginia,
and both reside at Moundsville. It is worthy of note that a
maternal uncle of these sons, U. B. Williams, was a train dis-
patcher at Cameron in their boyhood days, and thus they
early became interested in telegraphy. Nellie, the only
daughter of Dr. Rickey, is the wife of A. E. Drew, of Indian-
apolis, Indiana. They are the parents of two daughters,
Pauline and Dorothy.