Preston County, West Virginia Biography of James A. LENHART 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 224 JAMES A. LENHART. The name James A. Lenhart is one that bulks large in the affairs of Preston County, where during his active life he has been a merchant so long that he is now dean of the Preston County merchants, is a banker at Kingwood, is a former sheriff and in the republican party at least has a state-wide prominence. Mr. Lenhart was one of the members of the commission for the settlement of the West Virginia-Virginia debt controversy. He was born near Valley Point in Pleasant District of Preston County, March 15, 1860, son of Aaron and Catherine (Metzler) Lenhart, natives of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, whence they removed about 1840 to Preston County, West Virginia. Aaron Lenhart depended upon honest industry as a means of providing for his family and achieving a home. He was a veteran of the Civil war, enlisting in Company B of the Fourteenth West Virginia Infantry, and for three years fought for the flag of the Union. He was a private, was in many battles, but always escaped wounds and capture. He died in 1890. He and his wife had the following children: Henry, of Portland District, Preston County; Mary, who died as the wife of Sam Nedrow; Amanda, who died in Preston County, wife of Lewis Cale; James Albert; William L., of Kingwood; Frederick, a farmer in Preston County; and Etta Jane, wife of P. 5. King, of Kingwood. James A. Lenhart was thirteen years of age when his mother died, and he soon afterward left home and lived at Albright, where he continued to attend school until he was eighteen. He was then qualified for teaching a country district and for some time taught and then attended a term in the Fairmont Normal School. That closed his schooling. One of his chief ambitions as a boy was to secure a college education, but failing to achieve that through lack of money he changed his plans and at Albright became clerk in a mercantile establishment. He was there two years, and then for ten years conducted a business of his own at Valley Point. On leaving Valley Point he removed to Kingwood, and is still active as a merchant of that city, and altogether has devoted forty years of his life to mercantile business, a longer time than any of his contemporaries. Mr. Lenhart for twenty-five years has been a director and is now the active vice president of the Bank of Kingwood. He was elected sheriff of the county in 1900, as successor of L. C. Shaffer. He served in that office four years. As a young man becoming interested in political factions he gave his allegiance to the republican party, and his first vote for president went for James G. Blame. In 1904 he was presidential elector at large, and east his ballot at Charleston for Roosevelt. Governor Hatfield chose Mr. Lenhart as one of the commissioners to negotiate the long standing questions involved in the Virginia debt with the commissioners of Old Virginia. This commission was organized at Charleston, where preliminary sessions were held and plans formulated for the general conference between the commissions of the two states held in the Willard Hotel at Washington. In the preliminary conferences there developed a great difference of opinion as to West Virginia's just share of the state debt before the separation of West Virginia. Some contended that West Virginia owed the mother state nothing at all, while Mr. Lenhart was the first to announce as his conviction that West Virginia should pay substantially the amount previously found by the Master of the United States Supreme Court. Only one other member of the commission shared in Mr. Lenhart's convictions. He announced that he preferred to pay the whole debt rather than prolong the struggle and pay the interest accumulations which would have amounted to $6,000,000 more. Later it developed that the attorneys for the state in making up their briefs for West Virginia had failed to include items of expense that the state had incurred, all of which might properly serve as an offset to the obligations, and when this angle of the situation was taken before the Supreme Court it was reopened and the result was that the offset was allowed, representing a saving to West Virginia of $7,000,000 or $8,000,000. In all these negotiations Mr. Lenhart took an active and useful part, and his colleagues came to respect not only his integrity and impartial sense of justice, but also the sound business ability that prompted all his suggestions. For some sixteen years Mr. Lenhart was a member of the Preston County Executive Committee, and during that time the republican majority in the county increased from 1,800 to 2,700. For twenty years he was a member of all the West Virginia State conventions, and in them he helped nominate among others Governors Dawson, White, Swisher and Hatfield. In Preston County in 1880 Mr. Lenhart married Miss Ella King. Her father was Col. William H. King, a California forty-niner who crossed the plains and returned by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and spent the latter part of his life in the milling business. During the Civil war he was a colonel of the State Militia. Colonel King represented one of the old and prominent families of this section of West Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Lenhart have four daughters: Nina; Mrs. Mabel Jackson, a widow with a son, Leslie; Miss Bernice; and Helen, wife of Professor F. H. Yoke, of Piedmont, West Virginia.