Wood County, West Virginia Biography of JOSEPH ROGER PARK 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. 578 Wood JOSEPH ROGER PARK, known everywhere among his busi- ness and social companions in Parkersburg as Joe Park, has lived in that city more than forty years, and his active man- hood has been devoted to business with success and honor. He is a son of Thomas R. Park, prominently known in Parkersburg, and one of the surviving members of the State Constitutional Convention of 1871. Joseph R. Park was born on a farm in Jackson County, West Virginia, November 4, 1864. The first twelve years of his life his home was at Ravenswood, and for two years at Burning Springs. He attended school there, and in the fall of 1878 came to Parkers- burg, where his father became superintendent of the local cooperage interests of the Standard Oil Company. Here he completed his public school education and subsequently attended night school. Mr. Park at the age of sixteen became an employe of the Standard Oil Company. He left that service to become shipping clerk in a wholesale grocery house, and for fourteen years was identified with the wholesale grocery business. Since then he has conducted a profitable enterprise as a merchandise broker, and is also first vice president of the Wood County Bank. For ten years he was a director of the Traders Building Association. Mr. Park served a time as a member of the Parkersburg Board of Education, is a stanch democrat, and a member of the Board of Stewards of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In Masonry he is a Knight Templar and thirty-second degree Scottish Rite and a member of the Mystic Shrine. In 1903 he married Ora Cornelia Poland, daughter of John T. Poland, of Parkersburg. Their two children are Lucretia Virginia, born April 3, 1909, and Joseph Roger, Jr., born September 7, 1913.