Wood County, West Virginia Biography of CHARLES A. KREPS 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 II, pg. 534 Wood CHARLES A. KREPS is one of the able lawyers of West Virginia and has had a busy practice at Parkersburg since 1903. He has also gained prominence in the republican party of the state and is treasurer of the West Virginia Bar Association. Mr. Kreps was born January 22, 1875, at Greenville, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, son of Adam T. and Alice (Hamblin) Kreps. His great-great-grandfather, Michael Krebs, as the name was spelled in several generations, was a Revolutionary soldier, having been a corporal in Captain Baltzer Ortha Company, Second Battalion, Lancaster County Militia, and a private in Captain David Krause's Fourth Company, Second Battalion, Lancaster County Militia. He was a hatter by trade and lived at Lebanon, Pennsylvania. His son, Jacob Krebs, was born at Lebanon in 1772, married Catherine Hetterick in 1794, also became a hatter, and about 1798 established his home in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, where he built up an extensive and prosperous industry. His son, Jacob F. Kreps, was born in Franklin County in 1806 and died in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1888. He acquired a good education, learned his father's trade, and for some years traveled over the Ohio Valley as salesman for his father's product. In subsequent years his business interests became widely extended, including merchandising, the foundry industry and railroading. He was a member of the Legislature after the war, held a number of local offices, and was a leader in arousing his community to action at the beginning of the Civil war, and five of his sons were volun- teers. He was a local minister of the Methodist Church. Jacob P. Kreps married Eliza Turney in 1831. She was born in 1811 and died in 1887. The sixth of their ten children was Adam Turney Kreps, who was born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, December 31, 1842. He was for three and a half years in the Civil war, being with the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry, known as the Anderson Cavalry, 145th Regiment, Pennsylvania volunteers, and for about a year and a half was a first lieutenant of the 67th and 92nd Regiment, U. S. C. I. After the war he be- came a manufacturer of engines and saw mills at Greenville in Mercer County, and subsequently removed to West Vir- ginia, where he was in the timber and lumber business and oil and gas production. He married Alice Hamblin, who was born in Mercer County in 1849. Her father, John K. Hamb- lin, was a son of Samuel and a grandson of John Hamblin, and was born at Washington, New York, in 1809, lived for several years in Ohio, and in 1838 settled at Greenville, Pennsylvania, where he established the first foundry, and conducted that business for nearly half a century, Charles Albert Kreps, oldest living son of Adam T. Kreps and wife, came with his parents to Parkersburg in 1894, when he was nineteen years of age. He had graduated from the high school of Greenville, Pennsylvania, in 1892, and in 1899 received his A. B. degree from Marietta College in Ohio. He then entered George Washington University in the City of Washington, where he received his law degree in 1903, and in November of that year began his professional practice at Parkersburg. Mr. Kreps was a member of the local draft board during the World war. He served five years as chairman of the Repub- lican County Central Committee, and has held the post of treasurer of the West Virginia Bar Association fifteen years. He is also a member of the American Bar Association. Mr. Kreps is unmarried and has found time to cultivate a number of social and civic interests, though his legal practice has always been heavy. He is a Knight Templar and thirty- second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, and is a past master of Mount Olive Lodge No. 3, A. F. and A. M., past high priest of Jerusalem Chapter No. 3, R. A. M., past eminent commander of Calvary Commandery No. 3, K. T.