Tucker County, West Virginia Biography of JOHN RAESE This file 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. 481-482 Tucker JOHN RAESE. The town of Davis in Tucker County has been a center of lumber and timber, mining and tanning industries for nearly forty years. No one business man or citizen perhaps has had a closer connection with and par- ticipation in the varied life and affairs of the community than John Raese, the veteran merchant who has sold goods there longer than any of his present contemporaries. The record of his own activities and the witness he bears to that of others comprises an important chapter in the his- tory of the locality. Mr. Raese was born at Frostburg, Allegany County, Maryland, April 14, 1857. His father, also named John Raese, was born in Hesse Cassel, Germany, and came to the United States in 1851, settling at Frostburg, Mary- land. During .the greater part of his active life he fol- lowed his trade as a carpenter, and was a very skilled and competent workman. However, for many years he lived on a farm. His last days were spent at Davis, in the home of his son John, but he died at Romney, West Virginia, with his daughter, Mrs. Louis Beckman, in May, 1903, when almost eighty-two years of age. He married in Ger- many, Ann Alizabeth Knease, and she died at the age of fifty-one. Their children were: Mary, who married Louis Beckman, of Romney, West Virginia; Louis, of Davis; John; Mrs. Sophia King, who died at Paw Paw, West Virginia; Kate, Mrs. Thomas Durst, of Hampshire County; and Lizzie, wife of L. D. Fowler, of Gormania, West Virginia. Mr. John Raese for the first twelve years of his life lived in the town of Frostburg, and then for eleven years was in the country with his parents. He learned farming as his vocation, though he followed it very little after leaving home. He had only the advantages of the coun- try schools. On leaving Maryland he went to Pennsyl- vania, and being without capital he sought an opportunity to earn a living by manual labor. For a time he worked in a saw-mill near Myersdale, then became a team driver in the woods for the company, and subsequently bought the team and began in a small way as a contractor in the logging district of Pennsylvania. Afterward he did simi- lar work in Maryland, and this experience eventually brought him to West Virginia and to Tucker County. In 1885 he arrived at Davis, when the townsite was covered with logs and stumps and standing timber. He helped to clean off and log and stump the site. Mr. Raese has some interesting memories of the pioneers whom he found active in the community at that time. One of them was Col. Bob Eastham, one of General Mosby's men. Gus Finely was agent of the railroad. F. S. Lanstreet when a young man was working at the station. Doctor J. W. Johnson was just beginning his career as a physician. Mr. W. E. Weimer accompanied Mr. Raese to Davis, and is one of the men who witnessed the pioneer efforts of the citizenship and is still among those who do things for Davis and Tucker County. There were also a few miners in the locality, a little mine having been opened just be- low Davis. A lumber mill was built soon after Mr. Raese came by a Mr. J. L. Bomberger. For two or three years this mill confined its cut to wild cherry timber. The woods was then full of deer, and plenty of bear and other game abounded. Colonel Eastham spent some of his time enter- taining people from the city, furnishing them with wild meat and fine trout taken from the waters of the valley. While Mr. Raese came here with teams and some other equipment for continuing his business as a contractor, and his first work was logging off the site for the tannery. He also did the town hauling, handled coal and feed, and moved people in and out of the locality. This was his regular work for about five years. In that way he accumu- lated a capital that started him in business as a merchant. His first store was on the same street where he is located today, but diagonally across from his business house. In his pioneer venture he was associated with C. W. Sutton, and their combined investment was hardly more than $2,000. A year later Mr. Raese bought out his partner and became sole owner. He improved his present store site in 1890, a year the first newspaper, the Davis City Times, was published, edited by J. P. Minear. On this site Mr. Raese has now been carrying on business success- fully for over thirty years. In addition to merchandising and for limited periods he has been a farmer, has bought and sold properties and has developed local real estate, was one of the first stock- holders in the Peoples Bank of Davis and is still on its Board of Directors, and has twice been a member of the Town Council and one term was mayor. He was reared a democrat, but has always voted as a republican. Both he and his wife are active members of the Presbyterian Church, Mrs. Raese being a charter member. He has served as an elder for many years. At Cumberland, Maryland, December 8, 1886, Mr. Raese married Miss Minnie LaRue, a native of Allegany County, Maryland, and daughter of Henry and Rebecca (Chrisner) LaRue. Her father was born on the National Pike near Frostburg, of French ancestry. For many years he was a watchman with the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, and he served a.s a Union soldier until the close of the war. For a dozen years or more he has been a resident of Davis and is now past eighty. Mrs. Raese was born in Septem- ber, 1865, the oldest child of her parents, the others be- ing James H., John and Albert, of Davis, and Mrs. L. D. Thomas, of Elkins. Mrs. Raese acquired her early edu- cation in Hampshire County. Mr. and Mrs. Raese have been married over thirty-five years, and they became the parents and reared a family of six sons and five daughters, and they also have eleven grandchildren at this writing. Their oldest child is Cleon W., associated with his father in merchandising. He gradu- ated from Davis and Elkins College. He had established himself in business at Davis before the World war, but had to sell it when he entered the army. He was on duty at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, and later was commissioned second lieutenant of Light Artillery and was on duty at Camp Zachary Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky, until dis- charged in November, 1918. The second child of the fam- ily is Lela, wife of C. M. Shannon, of Mount Jackson, Virginia. The second son, Curtis, also connected with his father's business, is an ex-service man, entering the Med- ical Department and serving chiefly in the Base Hospital at Camp Sevier at Greenville, South Carolina. From there he was sent to the Yale Armory Laboratory School at New Haven, Connecticut, and finally to the Army Museum at Washington, where he was discharged in August, 1920. The other children of the family are: Mary, who married Edgar Bane, of Harmony, Pennsylvania; Reba, in her father's store; Virginia, wife of Harry Parsons, of Fay- ette City, Pennsylvania; Elizabeth, Robert, Walter, Rich- ard and Firman.