Ohio County, West Virginia  Biography of James W. Paxton.

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JAMES W. PAXTON

James W. Paxton son of William Paxton, was born at Wheeling, August 
6th, 1821. He was sent to Jefferson College, at Cannonsburgh, 
Pennsylvania, and afterwards to Bacon College at Georgetown, 
Kentucky, to study civil engineering, which was made a specialty at 
that institution. He qualified himself as a civil engineer, but never 
practiced the calling, and shortly after leaving college, was in the 
year 1839, (at the early age of eighteen,) his father in the 
wholesale grocery businessm the firm being  Wm. Paxton & Son.  After 
a few years his father retired and J. W. Paxton associated his cousin, 
E. W. Paxton, with himself, and continued the business sucessfully as 
J. W. Paxton & Company, until 1854, when at the age of thiry-three he 
retired from active business.  He devoted himself  for the succeeding 
two or three years to settling up the  large iron estate of his 
father-in-law, Archibald Paull, then deceased,  in Greenup county, 
Kentucky. During this time he became a director in the Northwestern 
Bank of Virginia, and a member of the city council, and was one of 
the commissioners who compromised the railroad debt of the city at 
that time. 

He spent the summer of 1857 traveling in Europe. Was elected 
president of the North Western Bank of Virginia in 1860 and  
organized its conversion (in 1863) into the present National Bank of 
West Virginia, under the national banking law, and was elected 
president of it also. He continued to hold that position until in the 
spring of 1867, when impaired health decided him to seek a change of 
residence, and he resigned to move with his family to Philadelphia. 
Though a native Virginian and a slaveholder, he was an ardent Union 
man, and actively opposed the secession of Virginia in 1861. When his 
state seceded, he aided in organizing the Union element of western 
Virginia to uphold the authority of the United States, and resist the 
seceded authorities of Virginia. Was one of the Committee of Safety 
appointed by the mass meeting of the Union men of north-west 
Virginia, which assembled in Wheeling in May, 1861.  Was a member of 
the convention which afterward re-organized the state government of 
Virginia, and one of the Council of Five appointed to aid and advise 
Governor Pierpoint then just elected Governor of Virginia under the 
re-organized government. Was an ardent new state and a free state 
man, and took an active part in setting up and separating the new 
state of West Virginia from the old state. He was a member of the 
constitutional convention which framed the first constitution for 
West Virginia, and was chairman of the Committee on Finance and 
Taxation in that body, and was one of the commissioners appointed by 
the convention to go to Washington city and present the constitution 
to Congress for its approval, and urge the admission of the new state 
of West Virginia into the Union -- which was accomplished. He 
returned from Philadelphia to take up his residence in Wheeling in 
1872, where he now remains. In a communication to the city councils 
of Wheeling on the 10th of September, 1878, he presented the city 
with the fountain located on Capitol square, and known as the Paxton 
Fountain; which was formally unveiled and accepted by the city, with 
imposing ceremonies, November the 9th, following. Mr. Paxton has been 
twice married-- first in 1845 to Catharine Mason Paull, third 
daughter of Archibald Paull, then living in Wheeling, but formerly of 
Greenup county, Kentucky, by whom he had seven children, all now 
dead. His present vife, to whom he was married in 1872, at 
Philadelphia, her then residence, is Frances Joan, second daughter of 
Samuel Logan, deceased, of Washington county, Pennsylvania. They have 
three children, two sons and a daughter. 

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.