Roane County, West Virginia Biography of AMOS E. KENNEY 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. 620 Roane AMOS E. KENNEY, attorney at law at Spencer, is a member of a family that has given a number of success- ful men to the profession in West Virginia. Mr. Kenney was born at McConnellsville, Ohio, Septem- ber 13, 1865, but has spent most of his life in West Virginia. His father, Martin Kenney, was born near McConnellsville, Ohio, in 1841, grew up in Morgan County, was a flour miller at McConnellsville, and about 1869 removed to Burning Springs, Wirt County, West Virginia, attracted hither by the newly opened oil fields, the first important oil operations in the state. He finally retired to Parkersburg, where he died in 1916. He was a democrat and a devout Catholic. His wife, Mary Hosey, was born near Pittsburgh in 1836, and died at Parkersburg in 1916, two weeks after the death of her husband. Amos E., the Spencer attorney, was the first of their children. Alfred, who graduated in law from Georgetown University at Washington, is practicing his profession at Parkersburg. Arthur was a gold prospector in Alaska and died during a temporary sojourn at Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1906. Hose and Lillie are Sisters in the Visitation Academy at Park- ersburg, West Virginia, their convent names being Sister Mary Baptista and Sister Mary Angela. Frank, who graduated from the University of Maryland, Medical De- partment, is a physician and surgeon at Martinsburg, West Virginia. Miss Evelyn lives with her brother Alfred. Elizabeth is a teacher in a Young Ladies Seminary at Buffalo, New York. George, who graduated in medicine from the University of Maryland, is now practicing in New York City. Amos E. Kenney was about four years of age when the family moved to Burning Springs, and he finished his education in the high school there and later entered the University of West Virginia, where he took his law course. He graduated in 1898, and was the first to be awarded by the State University the degree Master of Laws. Mr. Kenney practiced two years in Calhoun County, and since then for over twenty years has been one of the active and successful members of the bar in Eoane County. Besides his private practice he is secretary of the Eoane County Building & Loan Association and a director in the Traders Trust & Banking Company of Spencer, West Virginia, and was for a number of years engaged in the newspaper business. Mr. Kenney is a democrat, a mem- ber of the Catholic Church, a fourth degree Knight of Columbus, affiliated with Parkersburg Council No. 694, a member of Parkersburg Lodge No. 198, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Spencer Rotary Club and the Eoane County Bar Association. He has acquired con- siderable property in Roane County, including a farm near Spencer, his modern home on Locust Avenue and a business building on Main Street. During the war he did committee work for the Red Cross, Liberty Loan and other drives. In 1885, at Elizabeth, West Virginia, he married Elyetta Wise, daughter of John and Harriet (Hoffman) Wise, now deceased. Her father for many years was an active lumberman on the Little Kanawha Eiver. Mrs. Kenney, who graduated from Broaddus College, died in 1903 at Spencer. She is survived by two children: Mary Tracy is a graduate of the D'Youville College at Buffalo, New York, with the A. B. degree, and is now teacher of Latin and English in the City High schools at Lockport, New York. The son, Patrick, is completing his education in a Trades School at Arlington, New Jersey.