Roane County, West Virginia Biography of CLERC ALEXANDER PARRISH 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 III, pg. 447 Roane CLERC ALEXANDER PARRISH is manager and one of the proprietors of the industry and business at Spencer that supplies the principal service in building materials and lum- ber manufacture for Roane County. Members of the fam- ily have been in the timber and lumber business for a num- ber of years, and Mr. Parrish is one of the most substan- tial figures in the community. He comes of pioneer and frontier stock of old West Vir- ginia. His great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather were frontiersmen in the real sense, living in West Vir- ginia when Indians and big game both flourished here. Both these ancestors were named William Parrish, and were born in England, and were pioneers in the vicinity of Fair- mont. They were family connections of the noted Morgan family of that region. The grandfather, also named Will- iam Parrish, was born at Fairmont in 1804, moved out of that locality to the vicinity of Mannington and in 1855 to Elizabeth in Wirt County, and in 1868 established his home at Ripley. He spent all his life engaged in agricultural pursuits, and was a very successful and influential citizen. He was a democrat in polities, and died at Ripley in 1886. William Parrish married Elizabeth Hamilton, who was born near Fairmont in 1804, and died at Ripley in 1896. Calder H. Parrish, father of Clerc A. Parrish, was born at Mannington in Marion County in 1848, and lived there until he was seven years of age, when his parents moved to Elizabeth, where he remained until he was twenty, and since then has been a resident of Ripley, Jackson County. Farming is his business, and he is still active in the grow- ing and feeding of cattle and other livestock. He is a democrat, and a member of the Methodist Protestant Church, doing much to keep up the work of this denomina- tion. Calder H. Parrish married Mary Frances Parsons, who was born at Middleport, Ohio, in 1856. Their family consists of the following children: Delia, of Spencer, widow of William Huddleston, who was a lumber dealer; Libbie D., wife of Benjamin D. Shatto, a baker at Spen- cer; Homer Clinton, a grocer and clothing merchant at Spencer; Grace Elizabeth, wife of Allie B. Gainer, owner and operator of the Spencer meat market; Clerc Alexander; Okla, wife of Iden M. McWhorter, a merchant at Me- Whorter in Harrison County; Marie E., wife of Everett M. Sinnett, assistant cashier of the Roane County Bank of Spencer; Isabelle, wife of Henry D. Goff, and both are now pursuing advanced studies in the University of Michi- gan at Ann Arbor; and John C., assistant manager of the Spencer Planing Mills. Clerc Alexander Parrish was born at Ripley in Jackson County December 5, 1884, and acquired his early education in the public schools there. In 1907 he graduated from Branniger's Business College at Parkersburg, and for two years he studied law in the office of his cousin, Oscar Par- sons, at Ripley. He abandoned his ambition in the law to become a practical business man. From 1909 to 1913 Mr. Parrish was a merchant at Spencer. He then bought the planing mill and lumber yard of his brother-in-law, William Huddleston, deceased, and he and his sister, Mrs. William Huddleston, are now partners and sole proprietors of this successful industry. The firm deals in lumber and build- ing supplies, and works up a great deal of native timber in the planing mill. Mr. Parrish is a democrat, a member of the Methodist Protestant Church, is affiliated with Ripley Lodge No. 16, F. and A. M., is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, a member of West Virginia Consistory No. 1 at Wheeling, is a member of Nemesis Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Parkersburg, and belongs to the Spencer Rotary Club. His business interests include, besides the lumber and planing mill, a large amount of valuable property in Roane County. He has three tracts, each containing eight acres of valuable land, one a mile west of Spencer, one a mile south and one a mile north. He also has 335 acres on Mill Creek in Jackson County. In 1921 he put up two dwelling houses at Spencer, and his own home is a modern residence on the Arnoldsburg Pike, a mile east of Spencer, where his home is surrounded by five acres of ground. In 1916, at Spencer, Mr. Parrish married Miss Virginia Louise Godfrey, daughter of Albert and Elizabeth (Bireley) Godfrey, the latter a resident of Spencer. Her father, who died at Parkersburg, was an oil operator. Mrs. Par- rish is a graduate of the Parkersburg High School and fin- ished her education in an art school in Tennessee. The two children born to their marriage are Robert Godfrey, born October 5, 1917, and Jackson Clerc, born June 3, 1920.