Webster County, West Virginia    Biography of DRAPER C. HOOVER

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Submitted by Valerie Crook, <vfcrook@trellis.net>, March 1999
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., 
Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 88

DRAPER C. HOOVER is, in 1922, serving his third consecu-
tive term as a deputy sheriff of Webster County, main-
tains his residence at Webster Springs, the county seat,
and is the owner of a well improved farm in the county.
Mr. Hoover was born on a farm in this county, August
30, 1873, and is a son of William H. and Jerusha (Mc-
Elvaine) Hoover, both natives of what is now West Vir-
ginia, the father having been born in Braxton County, on
the 14th of March, 1845, and the latter having been born
in Webster County, in 1842, and here her death oc-
curred in 1909. William H. Hoover was reared on the
old home farm of his parents in Braxton County, and
gained his youthful education in the subscription schools
of the locality and period and by ambitious application to
study at home. He read much and with discrimination,
gained broad information and was a specially apprecia-
tive student of history during the entire course of his life.
After their marriage he and his wife lived on a farm in
Braxton County about two years, and then came to Web-
ster County, where he purchased the excellent farm which
continued the stage of his productive enterprise until the
close of his life, in 1890. He was a man of mature judg-
ment, and thus wielded no little influence in community
affairs of public order. His political faith was that of
the democratic party, and he was at one time a candidate
for the State Senate, his defeat being compassed by the
political exigencies implied in the large republican major-
ity given normally in the district at that time. He served
under Sheriff P. F. Duffy as a deputy sheriff of Webster
County and was also a member of the board of education
of his district, both he and his wife having been zealous
members of the Methodist Protestant Church. Of the thir-
teen children two died in infancy and eight are living in
1922.

Draper C. Hoover has reason to congratulate himself
for having received in his boyhood and youth the sturdy
discipline of the farm, for he was seventeen years of age
at the time of his father's death, and his training had for-
tified him for the responsibilities which thus fell upon him
in the management of the home farm for his widowed
mother, with whom he remained until he had attained to
the age of twenty-seven years and who was the object of
his deep filial solicitude until her death. He has never
severed his allegiance to the great basic industries of ag-
riculture and stock-growing, and still maintains a general
supervision of his valuable farm near Cowen, Webster
County, besides which he is a director of the First Na-
tional Bank of Cowen, of which he was formerly vice presi-
dent. He is unwavering in support of the principles of
the democratic party, and is affiliated with Cowen Lodge
No. 176, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, of which he
is a past noble grand and which he represented in the
Grand Lodge of the state in 1898.

In January, 1900, Mr. Hoover wedded Miss Ella Payne,
of Webster Springs, in which village she was reared and
educated, she having been a popular teacher in the schools
of her native county prior to her marriage. Mr. and
Mrs. Hoover became the parents of four children, of whom
the first-born, Fred C., died at the age of five years;
Leo F. graduated in the Webster Springs High School
and is now a successful teacher in the public schools of
this village; Wealthy is attending the home high school
and Lillian, the autocrat of the parental home, is three years
old.