Mineral County, West Virginia Biography of William Columbus GRIMES 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. 214 WILLIAM COLUMBUS GRIMES, who is established in the practice of his profession at Keyser, judicial center of Mineral County, has to his credit a record that places him among the representative members of the bar of his native state and that marks him as one of the progressive and pub- lic-spirited citizens of this commonwealth. Mr. Grimes was born in Tyler County, West Virginia, December 5, 1876, and is a son of Jacob C. and Cora V. (Haines) Grimes, the former of whom was born in Bel- mont County, Ohio, December 6, 1852, and the latter of whom was born in what is now Tyler County, West Vir- ginia, where their marriage was solemnized and where they still reside on their farm near Sistersville. Of their chil- dren William C., of this review, is the eldest; Samuel A. resides at Sistersville and is a rural mail carrier, as is also his next younger brother, John R.; Agatha is the wife of Brice Welling, of Tyler County; and James R. remains at the parental home. Jacob C. Grimes is a republican, is a loyal and public-spirited citizen, and he and his wife hold membership in the Christian Church. He is a son of John C. and Nancy (Bishop) Grimes the former a native of Chillicothe, Ohio, and the latter of Pennsylvania, the death of both having occurred near Barnesville, Ohio. Their chil- dren were six in number: Isaac (a loyal soldier of the Union in the Civil war), George W., Jacob C., Henry, Alonzo and Julia (Mrs. Dallas Baer). Reared on the home farm and afforded the advantages of the public schools of his native county, William C. Grimes advanced his education by a course in the Ohio Northern University at Ada, Ohio. At the age of nineteen years he engaged in teaching school in Tyler County, West Vir- ginia, and he had successfully taught for six or more terms prior to completing his course in the university at Ada, Ohio. Thereafter he did effective post-graduate work in the University of West Virginia, and after thoroughly fortifying himself for the legal profession he was admit- ted to the bar and in 1904 engaged in the practice of law at Cameron, Marshall County. He tried there his first ease in the Circuit Court, at Moundsville, and there he built up a substantial and important law business. In 1912 he re- moved to Keyser, and here his practice has been of broad scope and representative order, extending into adjoining counties and also into the courts of Maryland. He has presented a number of important cases in the West Vir- ginia Supreme Court as well as in the Federal Courts of the state. Among leading causes with which he has been associated as counsel in presentation before the Supreme Court may be noted the prosecution of Weisengoff for the killing of the sheriff of Mineral County; the State of West Virginia versus Payne, indicted for criminal libel, in which he represented the defendant and secured his acquittal; a case which originated in Grant County and in which he rep- resented the plaintiff in a civil suit for damages for the abduction of a child—the first suit of the kind in the state —this case having been carried to the Supreme Court, where the case was remanded for trial. Mr. Grimes has never faltered in his allegiance to the republican party from the time of casting his first presiden- tial vote. His first public office was that of mayor of Cam- eron. In 1908 he was elected state senator from the Sec- ond District, comprising Marshall, Wetzel and Tyier coun- ties. In the Senate he was made chairman of the commit- tee on public buildings and humane institutions, and a member of the judiciary and other important committees. He was the author of the first bill presented to regulate automobile traffic on the public highways of the state, championed the primary-election law, the employers' lia- bility act, the depletion tax on natural resources, and se- cured an appropriation for the purchase of the historic mound at Moundsville, to be developed as a state park. In his term of four years he was active and influential on the floor of the Senate and in the deliberations of the com- mittee room. He was also one of the first in the state to champion equal civil rights for women and men. Mr. Grimes was chairman of the Republican Executive Commit- tee of Mineral County from 1914 to 1920, and he served consecutively as chairman of the Republican Committee of the Second Congressional District from 1916 until January 1, 1922, when he resigned. While he was chairman of these committees he did not lose a single political battle. He has been repeatedly a delegate to the West Virginia state conventions of his party, and in the convention of 1920 he was a member of the committee on resolutions, as repre- sentative of his senatorial district. A well merited prefer- ment and distinction came to Mr. Grimes when, December 30, 1921, he was appointed assistant United States district attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, the duties of which office he assumed January 1, 1922. In the World war period Mr. Grimes was chairman of the Mineral County Draft Board, chairman of the Fuel Committee of Mineral County, and chairman of the com- mittee in charge of the drive in the sale of War Savings Stamps. He was one of the leading "Four-Minute Men" who made speeches in promotion of the various local move- ments of patriotic order, was a member of the Red Cross Executive Committee of Mineral County, as is he still, and was registered personally for the last draft, the war hav- ing closed, however, ere he had been classified. Mr. Grimes is a stockholder in the Echo Printing Com- pany, the Mineral County Coal Company and was one of the organizers and a director of the Cameron Orchard Com- pany and the Mineral County Orchard Company. He is af- filiated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the loyal Order of Moose, and he and his wife hold membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church. At Mannington, this state, on the 5th of December, 1912, Mr. Grimes wedded Miss Zola Park Gump, the accomplished and charming daughter of James and Luverna (Park) Gump, natives of Monongalia County, this state. Mrs. Grimes was graduated at the Mannington High School in 1905, and her higher education was received in the West Virginia Wesleyan College. Mr. and Mrs. Grimes have no children.