Preston County, West Virginia Biography of HON. JAMES W. FLYNN This biography 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 II, pg. 591-593 Preston HON. JAMES W. FLYNN as a banker and business man has been vitally identified with many lines of the fundamental industrial development of West Virginia. His home and many of his interests are centered at Kingwood, he is a native of Preston County, and at this writing represents the county in the legislature. Mr. Flynn was born in Lyon District of Preston County March 13, 1861. His grandfather, James Flynn, settled here in 1848, and, like many of the other early settlers, came out of old Virginia. The Flynns for several generations lived in Fauquier County, and more remotely the family came from Ireland. James Flynn on coming to Preston County bought some of the land now owned and operated by the Austen Coal & Coke Company, and the ten years he lived here were devoted to fanning. He was born in 1806 and died in 1858. His life was fitly and industriously spent, and represented a modest contribution, to the improvement of the community. He brought his family out of Virginia by wagon over the old Northwestern Turnpike through Winchester. He buried his first wife in Fauquier County, and his two sons and five daughters all reared their families and died in Fauquier County except Benjamin Flynn. Benjamin Flynn was born in Fauquier County, was edu- cated there, and as a young man left his family to enter the Confederate Army as a member of the 20th Virginia Infantry. He was a scout in the mountain sections of Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Following the war he became a furnace man in Lyon District, and at the time of his acci- dental death in 1883 was superintendent of the Irondale Furnace. Benjamin Flynn married Miss Lydia Buncutter, of Winchester, Virginia, daughter of George Buncutter, who spent his life in the Shenandoah Valley. Mrs. Lydia Flynn died in 1869, and the only one of her five children to grow to maturity is James W. Flynn. The second wife of Benjamin Flynn was Miss Mary Montgomery, and she and six of her nine children survive. James Willoughby Flynn was bom at the opening of the Civil war, and the first stories he heard of the world outside of his own home were incidents of the great conflict. He attended the common schools and finished his education in the Wheeling Business College. He had grown up around an iron furnace, and eventually became superintendent of the industry his father conducted at the time of his death. Mr. Flynn in 1889 left the iron business and for three succeed- ing years was a merchant at Kingwood, as a partner of Hon. C. M. Bishop. He left merchandising to become associated with the financial and industrial interests of the syndicate whose two principal figures were Stephen B. Elkins and Henry G. Davis, and he has been more or less associated with this group ever since. He was in their real estate depart- ment and was a cruiser over various coal properties of the Elkins-Davis Company, and gave his time to this and similar work until 1904. Since then he has rather concentrated his energies at Kingwood in the real estate business and banking. Mr. Flynn organized in 1903 the Kingwood National Bank, with a capital stock of twenty-five thousand dollars, and which now has surplus and capital of fifty thousand dollars. He was elected vice president and since 1914 has been pres- ident. The vice presidents are George A. Herring and C. A. Craig, and the cashier is Ivan Davis. Mr. Flynn is finan- cially interested in the Logan Developments of Logan County, in the Kingwood Stone Company, in the National Fuel Company of Morgantown, and the Deaker Hill Coal Company of Kingwood, and has some important private holdings of his own, which are not yet developed. Mr. Flynn cast his first presidential vote for James G. Blaine. For sixteen years he was chairman of the Preston County Republican Committee, has been a member of the Senatorial and Congressional Committees, and has served in both branches of the Legislature. In 1908 he was elected to the State Senate, then presided over by Hon. L. J. Fore- man, during the administration of Governor Dawson. His senatorial district comprised Preston, Tucker, Mineral, Grant and Hardy counties, and he was the unanimous choice of his party for the senatorial nomination. While in the Senate he was a member of the committees on banking, finance, Judiciary, and was chairman of the banking committee. His chief interests in the legislation of that session was prohibition and the income tax. He championed the former and was an opponent of the income tax law as then presented to the body, though he favored fifty per cent of the income going to the government of West Virginia. Mr. Flynn was one of the fifteen republican senators who left the state to keep the democrats from organizing the Senate. One of those fifteen senators has since been governor of the state and another one United States senator from West Virginia. After his senatorial term there followed a considerable interval before he was chosen, in 1920, to the Lower House of the Legislature. He entered the House in January, 1921, under Speaker E. M. Keatley, and'has been a member of the finance, banks and banking, mines and mining committees. A project in which he is deeply interested for the welfare of the state as a whole is the development of water power. Hardly second to water power development has been road improvement. He supported the general road measure pro- viding for the connection of all the county seats of the state with permanent highways, and favored the fifty million dollar bond issue as a revolving fund until the state highway system is completed. Mr. Flynn also sought to increase the efficiency of the state police force, and whether as a legislator or private citizen he is for law and order first of all. Improve- ment of the facilities and advancement of the welfare of locality or state are matters that enlist his co-operation with- out solicitation, and his contributions to the practical achieve- ments of such objects is commensurate with his ability to pay. Mr. Flynn has a wide personal acquaintance with eminent West Virginians, including Governor White, Governor Dawson and Governor Atkinson, with United States Senators Stephen B. Elkins and N. B. Scott, and he voted for Scott for United States senator, while he himself was a member of the State Senate, and also supported Davis Elkins to succeed to the unexpired term of his noted father. He knew Senator Goff, and these and other political leaders of the state met in many conventions. He was campaign manager for this district for Congressman Dayton and for George Bowers, who now represents the Second West Virginia District in Congress. Mr. Flynn is a Royal Arch Mason and a member of the Eastern Star. In Preston County March 6, 1886, he married Miss Annie V. Klauser. Both before and after her marriage her life was one of such service and influence as to require no mem- orial of the present generation of Preston County people. She was bom in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, August 1, 1861, and died February 9, 1919. She was granted the first four year certificate to teach ever issued in Preston County and was a valuable factor in the educational affairs of the county for eight years before her marriage. She was active in the Presbyterian Church and its various societies, and was deeply concerned in auxiliary war work, and at the time of her death some French orphan children were depend- ing upon her for support. Levi Klauser, father of Mrs. Flynn, was one of Preston County's best loved and most influential characters. He represented a branch of the Pennsylvania Dutch who settled in Pennsylvania in the seventeen hundreds and became founders of Churchtown, that state, where Levi Klauser was bom in 1818. He received the college education which was a matter of tradition in the family and his first calling was that of a civil engineer. From that he entered journalism, and one of his first ventures was at Pittsburgh, where he became editor and proprietor of the Pittsburgh Times, subse- quently consolidated with the Pittsburgh Gazette. On selling his interests in Pittsburgh Mr. Klauser removed to Kingwood, West Virginia, and about 1866 founded the Preston County Journal, and remained its proprietor until his death in 1871. He made this the leading paper of the county. His writings were characterized by a sound literary style, and were especially effective in influencing the develop- ment and social improvement of the county. Personally and through his paper he insisted that the people should show a proper civic pride in Kingwood, and that has been accounted as one of the imporant influences in making King- wood a good, clean place in which to live. Levi Klauser was bom in an environment of sound ideals, and in his active life he never departed therefrom. He was a republican in politics, was affiliated with the Odd Fellows and Masons, was a member of the Methodist Church, in physique was of medium size and though he lived in Preston County only a few years he enjoyed an immense popularity. He married Caroline Silkknitter, of German ancestry, a family still represented in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Levi Klauser and wife had two children, and they were reared in a printing office, an environment that gave a practical turn to their education. The son is John R. Klauser, a printer and newspaper man of Indianapolis. Mr. and Mrs. Flynn had three children, the oldest being Ben L., referred to in the following paragraph. The second, Charles Willoughby Flynn, is an electrical engineer in Logan County, West Virginia, and by his marriage to Miss Ellen Gore has a daughter Martha M. The daughter of Senator Flynn is Nellie M. now the wife of Russell C. Burnside, of Kingwood. Benjamin L. Flynn, who died of the influenza at Logan, West Virginia, November 1, 1918, was then thirty-two years of age, yet his efficiency in his profession and his talent for business had enabled him to create a modest fortune in less than a decade of activity. He was a civil and mining engineer, being a graduate of the Kingwood High School and the International Correspondence School of Scranton, and began his active career as a civil engineer during the construction of the Morgantown and Kingwood Railway. He became an engineer for the Elkins Coal & Coke Company, and subse- quently established himself in a general engineering practice. While so engaged he became superintendent for the Logan Mining Company at Logan, and was filling that position when he died. He was a young business man with a very magnetic personality, had a peculiar faculty for handling labor easily and without friction, attracted friends to him from all walks of life, and was a nature lover, fond of the woods and of all the life and things of natural creation. He served three years as a member of the West Virginia National Guard, and had few equals as a marksman. He stood high in Masonry and was a member of the Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Wheeling. Benjamin L. Flynn married Miss Mamie Dilworth, who survived him with three children, James W., Bernard E. and Donald J.