Roane County, West Virginia Biography of JACOB MILTON HARPER 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. 627-628 Roane JACOB MILTON HARPER, has been a member of the Roane County bar twenty years, and is a gifted lawyer, senior member of the law firm of Harper & Baker at Spencer. He was born in Roane County January 25, 1875. His family has been in this section of West Virginia almost a century. His grandfather, Henderson Harper, was born in old Virginia in 1818, and was a child when his father, Arm- sted Harper, brought his family out of Eastern Virginia and settled in Roane County. Both Armsted and Hender- son Harper were fine examples of the early frontiersmen, both noted hunters, and their lives were lived in the country and their serious occupation was farming. Henderson Harper owned several thousand acres of land in Roane County, and lived there until his death in 1910, at the advanced age of ninety-two. He married Deborah West- fall, who was born in Roane County in 1826 and died in 1896. Rev. John L. Harper, father of the Spencer attorney, was born in Roane County February 22, 1851, and devoted his active life to the ministry of the Methodist Protestant Church. He was eloquent, devout and able, and exercised a wide influence through his preachings in Roane, Jackson, Mason, Ritchie and Pleasant counties. When he retired from the ministry in 1912 he located at Spencer, where he died Sep- tember 2, 1920. He was a democrat in politics. His wife, Melissa Jane Hopkins, was born in Roane County in 1854, and is still living at Spencer. Their children were: Mary, wife of Silas G. Ferrell, a farmer at Dunbar, Kanawha County; Robert H., a blacksmith at Spencer; Jacob Milton; John M., in the oil and gas and real estate business at Parkersburg; Martha E., wife of Dr. William W. Noyes, of Dunbar; Emma, who died when seventeen years of age; Alda, wife of William E. Griffith, a real estate and insur- ance man at Dunbar; Eliza, wife of Theodore Ryerson, a merchant tailor at South Charleston, West Virginia; Lillie, wife of George Walker, an employe of the United Fuel Gas Company at Gay in Jackson County; and Virgil L., the tenth and youngest of this large family, associated with his brother John in the real estate and insurance business at Parkers- burg. Jacob Milton Harper, was educated in rural schools, spent two years in the Glenville State Normal School, leaving in 1896, and in the meantime, at the age of twenty, had begun teaching in the rural districts of his native county. Altogether his exertions and abilities were devoted to school work ten years. In November. 1898. he was elected county superintendent of schools of Roane County, filling that office four years, 1899-1902. Mr. Harper attended the law school of the University of West Virginia and in June, 1901, was admitted to the bar. and now for fully twenty years has been busied with the affairs of his profession, embracing both the civil and criminal branches. He has been practic- ing in partnership with John M. Baker since December, 1909. As a firm they own their office building, and other real estate and oil royalties. Mr. Harper was for two terms a member of the City Council of Spencer, and has been on the Board of Educa- tion. He is a stockholder in the Ravenswood Wholesale Grocery Company and vice president of the Traders Trust & Banking Company. Mr. Harper is a democrat, is affiliated with the Masons and Odd Fellows and Parkersburg Lodge No. 198 Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Roane County Bar Association, and the Spencer Country Club. He gave his time and means freely to the Government at the time of the World war, and was especially helpful in filling out questionnaires for recruited men. September 12, 1900, in Pleasants County, Mr. Harper married Miss Bessie Kester, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Wil- liam Kester, now deceased. Her father was a fanner at Belmont in Pleasants County. Mrs. Harper finished her education in the West Liberty State Normal School, and taught seven years in Pleasants County before her marriage. They have two interesting young daughters: Camille, born December 26. 1901, is in the sophomore class of the Uni- versity of West Virginia. Frances, born December 22, 1904, is a student in the Spencer High School.