Ohio County, West Virginia Biography of Rev. James H. McMechen. ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal represen- ative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. ************************************************************************ REV. JAMES H. McMECHEN It is proposed to continue the record of the McMechen family, in the name of James H. McMechen, inasmuch as his life was one of a more public character, and therefore, more eventful, and full of incident, than that of any other member of his father's family. He was born, January 18th, 1813, at the old homestead, and is now (1879) in the sixty-seventh year of his age. He has resided in the city of Wheeling for the last thirty years, and his knowledge of events, connected with the history of his own locality, and of his native state, is very accurate, and extensive. He spent his earlier years on the paternal farm, acquiring a rude mental knowledge of agricultural pursuits, and such a scholastic education as could be had from the Irish schoolmasters of that day. In the summer of 1825 he was sent to school in Wheeing, and in the summer of 1826 attended a select school, taught by Rev. C. Wheeler, a worthy Baptist minister, near the town of Washington, Pennsylvania. In the following summer, of 1827, he went to school to Wm. S. Morgan, at Elizabethtown (now Moundsville, West Virginia), and in the intervening fall and winter sessions of those years, he attended the county schools on his father's place. In September, 1828, he went to Madison college, then a new institution, under Methodist patronage, located at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Henry B. Bascom being president and Charles Elliott, John H. Fielding and others, professors. This institution did not continue in active operation more than five years, at the end of which time Mr. McMechen took his degree of A. B., receiving at the same time, the first honor in a class of six, all of whom, except himself, are now dead. Hon. Waitman T. Willey, now of Morgantown, graduated at the same institution, the year previous. At the end of its fifth year, owing to jealousies in the M. E. Church against the "Radicals" -- so called -- or Protestant Methodists, the president and professors being suspected of leaning toward that party, the organization went down and the building passed into other hands. Immediately after graduating, in 1832, Mr. McMechen entered the ministry of the M. E. Church, and joined the Pittsburgh Conference. He was then in the twentieth year of his age, and was very successful. At the end of the fourth year of his ministry, Mr. McMechen was married to Miss Elizabeth A. Sehon, of Clarksburg, Virginia, he being then stationed at that place. But Mrs. McMechen, feeling unequal to the hardships incident to the life of the itinerant Methodist minister, for the sake of her happiness and his own, and deemed it best that he should resume a more settled relation to the Christian work. Knowing that the Church of England held a kind of maternal relation to the Methodist Church, he concluded to enter the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the United States, that church having derived its origin from the Church of England. The first year of his ministry, in his new relation, was spent in Parkersburg, Virginia, at the end of which he returned to Clarksburg, Virginia. The residue of his life was devoted chiefly to secular pursuits, but particularly to the cause of education, as being most congenial to his ministerial profession. He resided in Clarksburg until 1847. In 1840, being engaged in conducting a female seminary, he also took an active part in endeavoring to secure to the state of Virginia a system of free popular education; with what success will be seen in another part of this work. In what success will be seen in another part of this work. In 1847, he removed to the city of Wheeling. Here, also, his life was chiefly secular, but mostly devoted to educational work. Twenty years of his life were spent in the cause of popular education in Wheeling. While engaged otherwise than in educational pursuits, in the year 1852, under the new constitution of Virginia, Mr. McMechen served for three years as presiding justice of Ohio county; during his term of office, the license question was very much agitated, and Mr. McMechen took part with the public against the saloonists. Although elected for four years, at the end of the third year, he resigned the office of presiding justice for the purpose of resuming the business of education. In the year 1871, Mr. McMechen was elected by the Board of Regents of the University of West Virginia, to take charge of the preparatory department of that institution, and to the professorship of English literature, in the same. But finding the labor too oppressive for him, at his advanced age, and his family disinclined to leave Wheeling, at the end of the fall term, he resigned and returned to his native place. During an interval of sixteen months afterwards, his time was given chiefly to ministerial work in the Episcoplal parishes, and general missionary labors, but at the end of this period, he resumed his position as principal of the Fifth ward (centre) school. Owing to advanced years, declining health, and the pressure of secular duties, he was compelled in 1876, to cease entirely from scholastic duties. During the time that Mr. McMechen was connected with the public schools, he, with Mr. F. S. Williams, and others, organized the Teachers' Association of the city of Wheeling. The beginning was small; but the association grew, in time, to be a strong and influential agency in the school work, numbering, at the present, about eighty or ninety teachers, that being the entire number employed by the Board of Education. He also assisted in the organization of the State Teachers' Association. He delivered a lecture in connection therewith, on the "Socila Position of Teachers," and on "Our Mother Tongue." He was nominated by the meeting at Fairmont, for the State Superintendency, but declined. He also lectured before the Washington County (Pa.) Teachers' Association, on the Bible as a Power in our Public Schools. He also lectured frequently before the Wheeling association. Nor was Mr. McMechen less popular and successful as a contributor, on various subjects, to our local newspaper press. After separating himself from scholastic work, Mr. McMechen was induced to publish four small works, for the benefit of his youngest son, who had become a mute at four years of age, from an attack of scarlet fever, viz.: "Three Hundred Choice maxims, or Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver;" "Two Hundred and Fifty Common Sense Proverbs, or Arrows from the Qviver of Truth" -- these two works, containing five hundred and fifty maxims, or proverbs, in all, are valuable for the regulation of conduct, both of youth and adults; "Ripe Thoughts on Worthy Subjects" containing the author's mature views of theology and practical religion -- the best thoughts of his life; and "Legions of the Ohio Valley, or Thrilling Incidents of Indian Warfare." Mr. McMechen is the father of twelve children, the youngest of whom is now twenty-five years of age. Two are dead, and ten are still living, six of whom are married. Their names are: Fannie (Campbell), Lee, Mary, Washington (dead), Meade, Sallie (Doddridge), Susan, Louisa (Dyer), Edmund (dead), Benson, Siddie (McClain), Hanson (mute). From HISTORY OF THE PAN-HANDLE, West Virginia, 1879, by J. H. Newton, G. G. Nichols, and A. G. Sprankle. Contributed by Linda Cunningham Fluharty.