Ohio County, West Virginia Biography of David A. BURT This file was submitted by CJ Towery, 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 II, page 230 DAVID A. BURT As president of the LaBelle Iron Works David A. Burt has one of the most distinctive posts in the industrial affairs of the Upper Ohio Valley. The LaBelle Iron Works was one of the pioneer iron and steel industries of the Wheeling District, has been in business seventy years, and is now a great corporation with thou-sands of employees and owning and controlling not only two great manufacturing plants, but iron ore mines and coal and coke resources. The Burt family has been in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia considerably more than a century. The great-grandfather of David A. Burt was William Burt, who was born near Philadelphia and at the beginning of the nineteenth century entered the district around Wellsburg in Brooke County, Virginia, where he lived out his life as a practical farmer and business man. The grandfather of David A. Burt was David Burt, a lifelong resident of Wellsburg, where he died when little past thirty years. He was an Ohio River pilot. John L. Burt, father of the Wheeling industrial lender, was born at Wellsburg in 1839, was reared and educated there, and as a youth ran away from home to enlist in a Pennsylvania regiment. He served all through the Peninsular campaign, was severely wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks, and after several months in hospital was discharged for physical disability and did not entirely recover for several years. About 1866 he located at Wheeling, where he married and where be entered the iron industry with the LaBelle Iron Works as sales manager. Later, in a similar capacity, be was with the Benwood Iron Works, and continued in the service of that industry until his death in 1887. He was a democrat and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1875 John L. Burt married Martha MeKelvey, who was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1850, and is still living at Wheeling. David A. is the oldest of their children. Jeannette is the wife of Arthur L. Irwin, of the firm Lippincott & Irwin, real estate and investments, at Cleveland, Ohio; Wjlliam T. is comptroller of the Wheeling Steel Corporation and is unmarried; Helen, twin sister of William, is the wife of Raymond S. Clark, partner in William Skinner & Sons, silk importers and manufacturers of New York, their home being at Great Neck, Long Island. David A. Burt was born at Wheeling, December 25, 1876. He graduated from the Wheeling High School in 1892, when be was sixteen, and soon afterward became an office boy in the Whitaker Iron Works under Senator Nelson E. Whitaker. That employment was practically an apprenticeship in the iron and steel industry. He worked in the mill and office, was paymaster, and in 1898 went with the Aetna-Standard Iron & Steel Company at Bridge-port, Ohio, as shipper. He remained in the service of this corporation five years, and in 1903 joined the LaBelle Iron Works in the Steubenville, Ohio, plant as general bookkeeper. He was successively promoted to auditor, treasurer and vice president, and since the spring of 1920 has been president and director of the LaBelle Iron Works, comprising all the plants and industries of this corporation. The corporation offices are in the Steel Corporation Building at Wheeling. The oldest plant is the Wheeling plant on Thirty-first Street, manufacturing steel cut nails and steel plates. Normally 400 hands are employed in the Wheeling plant. A still larger plant is that at Steubenville, which employs 3,500 hands. The corporation also owns and operates iron ore mines in Minnesota, employing 350 hands, and its coal mines and coke ovens in Pennsylvania furnish employment to approximately four hundred. In addition to being executive head of this business Mr. Burt is vice president, treasurer and director of the Wheeling Steel Corporation; director of the Woodward Iron Company at Woodward, Alabama; director of the Dollar Savings & Trust Company of Wheeling; director of the Wheeling Bank & Trust Company; director of the Fidelty Investment Association of Wheeling; director of the Farmers State Bank of Wellsburg; treasurer and manager of the W. T. Burt Company of Wheeling; and is interested in a number of other business undertakings. Mr. Burt has one of the fine homes of the suburban district of Wheeling at Echo Point, and also a country home near Wellsburg in Brooke County. In polities he is a republican, but has been too busy for politics. He is a trustee of the Presbyterian Church, a member of Wellsburg Lodge No. 2, A. F. and A. M., is a fourteenth degree Scottish Rite Mason in West Virginia Consistory No. 1 at Wheeling, and is a member of the Duquesne Club of Pittsburgh, Fort Henry Club, Wheeling Country Club, Steubenville Country Club, Twilight Club of Wheeling, and belongs to the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the American Academy of Political Science, and is a director of the Ohio Manufacturers Association and of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association. Mr. Burt concerned himself chiefly with war activities in his native county of Brooke. He was on the War Board of the county, which had control of all war drives for the county, and was chairman of the Liberty Loan work and also active in the Red Cross drives. In 1901, at Wheeling, Mr. Burt married Miss Elizabeth MeLain, daughter of Thomas B. and Sidney (McMechen) MeLain, residents of Wheeling. Her father is now practically retired, but still owns what is known as the McLain Dental and Surgical Depot, doing a state wide business in dental and surgical supplies. Mr. and Mrs. Burt are the parents of four children: David A., Jr., born February 22, 1903, now a student in Yale University at New Haven, Connecticut; Martha S., born February 11, 1907, a student in the Triadelphia High School District of Wheeling; Elizabeth M., born in December, 1908, and died November 7, 1921; and William L., born in June, 1910.