WV-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 99 : Issue 167 Today's Topics: #1 BIO:Frank John Willfong;Fairmont,M [PTyler107@aol.com] #2 BIO:Charles Edward Bishop, PH.D.,M [PTyler107@aol.com] #3 BIO:Grady Veer Morgan M.D., Fairmo [PTyler107@aol.com] #4 BIO:Thomas King Jones, Fairmont, M [PTyler107@aol.com] #5 Bio:Daniel Clingingsmith Tabler,Ma [PTyler107@aol.com] Administrivia: To unsubscribe from WV-FOOTSTEPS-D, send a message to WV-FOOTSTEPS-D-request@rootsweb.com that contains in the body of the message the command unsubscribe and no other text. No subject line is necessary, but if your software requires one, just use unsubscribe in the subject, too. To contact the WV-FOOTSTEPS-D list administrator, send mail to WV-FOOTSTEPS-admin@rootsweb.com. ______________________________X-Message: #1 Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 12:51:51 EST From: PTyler107@aol.com To: WV-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0.88be31ae.25965e37@aol.com> Subject: BIO:Frank John Willfong;Fairmont,MarionCo.,WV Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc. Chicago and New York, Volume II, page 122-123 Frank John Willfong has shown much discrimination and resourcefulness in the work of his profession, that of civil engineer, has served as county surveyor of Marion County, and is at the present time the county road engineer of this most important county, with residence and official headquarters in the City of Fairmont. Mr. Willfong is a representative of one of the old and influential families of what is now the State of West Virginia. His paternal grandfather, George Willfong, was born in one of the Virginia counties east of the Allegheny Mountains and was a boy at the time of the family removal to the present Upshur County, West Virginia, where his father became a pioneer farmer and substantial citizen. The paternal grandfather of George Willfong was born and reared in Holland, and upon coming to America, became a member of one of the Dutch settlements in Virginia. George Willfong continued his residence in Upshur County until about the year 1855, when he removed his family to Opekiska District, Monongalia County, where he continued his association with farm enterprise and where both he and his wife remained until their deaths. Frank John Willfong was born at Opekiska in Clinton District, Monongalia County, February 12, 1885, and is a son of Charles and Margaret (Hildebrand) Willfong, the former of whom was born in Upshur County, in 1848, and the latter was born on the old Hildebrand homestead farm in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, across the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, the year of her nativity having been 1850 and her parents having been John and Mary (Wooster) Hildebrand. Both the Hildebrand and Wooster families were founded in America in the Colonial period of our national history, and representatives of the latter were patriot soldiers in the war of the Revolution, on which score the subject of this review is eligible for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution. The original progenitors of the Hildebrand family settled in New England, and members of the family later removed from Plymouth, New Hampshire, and became pioneer settlers in Western Pennsylvania, on land across the river from the present City of Pittsburgh. It is interesting to record that near Plymouth, New Hampshire, there is an old homestead that is still known as the Hildebrand place. Mrs. Margaret (Hildebrand) Willfong was seven years old when her parents came from Pennsylvania and settled in Monongalia County, West Virginia, as now constituted, her father having there become the owner of 500 acres of land, in Opekiska District, at the head of White Day Creek, he having been compelled to retire from the work of his trade, that of glassblower, on account of impaired eyesight. Charles Willfong was a lad of seven years at the time of the family removal from Upshur County to Monongalia County, in which latter he was reared on the home farm, the while he duly profited by the advantages of the common schools of the locality. He became a successful exponent of farm industry in that county, and was also in the employ of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company at Opekiska until 1918, since which year he has been living retired at Fairmont, both he and his wife being well-known and highly esteemed citizens of this city. Frank J. Willfong gained his early education principally in the public schools of Opekiska, and as a youth he manifested a distinct predilection for civil engineering, his interest in which was such that he determined to prepare himself for the profession. He procured textbooks and devoted himself earnestly to the study of the technical details of his chosen vocation, the while he gained coincident experience of practical order by serving as a rodman in connection with surveying work for Davis Coal Company of Thomas, Kanawha County. By this fortunate combination he was enabled to make substantial progress in civil engineering, and he continued in the employ of Davis Coal Company for two years. He then entered the employ of the Fairmont Traction Company as chain man and instrument man in engineering work, and after continuing the connection six years he served two years as assistant city engineer of Fairmont under S. B. Miller. In 1913 he was elected county surveyor of Marion County, and upon assuming his official duties he was also made county road engineer through appointment by the County Court. He continued his efficient services as county surveyor until the expiration of his term, on the 1st of January, 1921, and has since retained the post of county road engineer, an office in which he has been able and still continues to give valuable service, as the construction and maintenance of good roads is one of the most important phases of progressive enterprise in any section or community. In 1909 Mr. Willfong wedded Miss Audra Louise Kennedy, who was born and reared in Monongalia County and who is a daughter of Coleman and Susan Kennedy. Mr. and Mrs. Willfong became the parents of three children: Albert Kennedy, aged eleven years (1922); Alfred Lee, who died in 1918, aged two years; and Anna Lee, three years of age in 1922. ______________________________X-Message: #2 Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 12:51:56 EST From: PTyler107@aol.com To: WV-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0.7b0f14df.25965e3c@aol.com> Subject: BIO:Charles Edward Bishop, PH.D.,Morgantown,WVU Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc. Chicago and New York, Volume II, page 123 Charles Edward Bishop, Ph.D., head of the department of Greek at West Virginia University, has been a prominent figure in American classical scholarship for many years, and has guided many successive generations of college and university classes so as to inspire in them an enduring affection for the language and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Doctor Bishop was born May 19, 1861, at Petersburg, Virginia. His father was Carter R. Bishop, a business man and banker of Petersburg, and for many years a citizen who enjoyed leadership because his character and integrity commanded it. As a banker he held the unqualified confidence of his fellow citizens, a confidence that was repaid by him during the great panic of 1873, when his bank was the only one in Petersburg to weather that disastrous financial storm. He was too old for active military duty during the Civil war, but became a member of the Reserves. He was born in the James River in Virginia in 1820, of the old Carter family of that state. He died in 1875. His wife, Mary Elizabeth Head, was a native of Rhode Island and of New England ancestry. She died in 1863. Charles Edward Bishop was only fourteen years old when his father died. However, he was accorded the advantages of the best schools of his native state, attending the McCabe School at Petersburg, spent two years in the University of Virginia, where he was appointed instructor in Greek for the second year, and for two years was a teacher in the McGuire School at Richmond. In 1855 Doctor Bishop went abroad and for four years was a student of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit at Leipsic University, where he was offered the post of Famulus in Sanskrit. As was the custom among classical students there, the spoken language in all class work was Latin. Doctor Bishop received his Ph.D. degree from Leipsic University in 1889. In that year, on his return to the United States, he became a professor of Latin at Emory and Henry College in Virginia, where he remained three years. In 1892, he took the chair of Greek and modern languages at William and Mary College in Virginia. Doctor Bishop was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1900 and is now a member of the Grafton Presbytery of West Virginia. He has been professor of Greek at West Virginia University at Morgantown since 1912. Doctor Bishop is a noted authority on many subjects of the Greek Syntax. His Doctor's thesis in Germany was on the Greek Verbal in Teos in Aeschylos. He prepared a paper on "Greek Verbal in Teos in Sophocles" for the American Journal of Philology, and is also author of a series of contributions on "the Verbal in Teos from Homer to Aristotle." He is a member of the American Philological Association, and of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, having been appointed vice president of the same for West Virginia, a member of the Pittsburgh Philological Association, and is a charter member of the Phi Beta Kappa honorary scholarship fraternity, his membership dating from the reorganization or revival of that fraternity. He is also a member of the American Archeological Society. In 1892, in England, Doctor Bishop married Alice M. Hensley, of London, daughter of a London physician. Her uncle, Sir Robert Hensley, was knighted by King Edward. Doctor and Mrs. Bishop have three children: Charles Eric, now a business man of New York City; Ernest Edward, M.D., a practicing physician at Cincinnati; and Carter Richard, who is a teacher in West Virginia. ______________________________X-Message: #3 Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 18:49:07 EST From: PTyler107@aol.com To: WV-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0.51b76998.2596b1f3@aol.com> Subject: BIO:Grady Veer Morgan M.D., Fairmont,Marion Co.,WV Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, page 123 Grady Veer Morgan, M. D., who is engaged in the practicing of his profession in the City of Fairmont, Marion County, is a representative of a family whose name has been one of distinctive prominence in the history of Northern West Virginia, the City of Morgantown here perpetuating the family name and prestige. Doctor Morgan was born at Downs, Marion County, December 26, 1893, a son of Lloyd E. and Virginia (Parish) Morgan, both likewise natives of this county, where the former was born in 1854, and the latter in 1860, a daughter of the late Edward Parish. Lloyd E. Morgan was engaged in mercantile business at various points in his native county until 1910, and he and his wife now reside at Fairmont, where he is living retired. After having attended the high school at Mannington, Doctor Morgan entered the preparatory department of the State Normal School at Fairmont, and in this institution he continued his studies until his graduation, in 1912, in the academic course and his completion of the normal course in 1913. In 1918 he was graduated from celebrated Eclectic Medical College in the City of Cincinnati, one of the oldest Eclectic institutions in the West, and after thus receiving his degree of Doctor of Medicine he was given charge of the Government Emergency Hospital, located between Metuchen and New Brunswick, New Jersey, where the Government has several hundred men at work in the building of an arsenal in connection with the nation's preparations for participation in the World war. Doctor Morgan has been engaged in active general practice at Fairmont since 1919, and his ability and personal popularity are attested by the scope and representative character of his clientage. He is a member of the Marion County Medical Society and the West Virginia State Medical Society. July 1, 1916, recorded the marriage of Doctor Morgan and Anna Lulu Thomas, who was born at Grafton, this state, February 10, 1894, a daughter of Garrett E. and Lavara (McGill) Thomas, and a grandson of Garrett Thomas and James McGill, early settlers at Grafton. Mr. Thomas taught school several years and thereafter was for twenty-three years in the employ of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company. In 1912-13 he served as city collector of Grafton, and he and his wife have been residents of Fairmont since 1914. Dr. and Mrs. Morgan have two sons: Grady Thomas, born March 22, 1917, and William Richard, born December 3, 1919. ______________________________X-Message: #4 Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 18:49:58 EST From: PTyler107@aol.com To: WV-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0.9c706edc.2596b226@aol.com> Subject: BIO:Thomas King Jones, Fairmont, Marion Co., WV Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, page 123-124 Thomas King Jones, secretary of the Farmers Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Fairmont, one of the leading insurance concerns of the state, has been a substantial farmer as well as a business man, and the environment and experience of his life have given him every qualification for handling problems of business incident to agriculture. He was born at Dent's Run, Grant District, Monongalia County, August 31, 1866, son of John L. and Maria J. (Morris) Jones, natives of the same county. His grandparents were Henry and Mary (Lough) Jones, and the former was born in Monongalia County in 1800, spending all his active lifetime on a farm in that county, where he died in 1876. John L. Jones rendered his active service in the vocation of agriculture. He was born on Little Indian Creek in Monongalia County in 1831, and his wife, Maria J. Morris, was born March 3, 1835, and died August 6, 1917. She was the daughter of Barton and Comfort (King) Morris, natives of Monongalia County. Of the four children of John L. Jones and wife, Thomas King is the only survivor. The oldest, Barton M. Jones, was born in Monongalia County, August 18,1853, acquired his education in the free schools and the University of West Virginia, and for ten years was a farmer and teacher in the county schools and for a term of eight years was assessor of the Western District in Monongalia County. For one term he was a sheriff of the county. He died in 1893, being survived by a widow and five sons. The second child, H. Clark Jones, was born in Monongalia County, September 14, 1858, had a public school education, attended the State University, and devoted his active years to farming. He died in 1917, and is survived by his widow and ten children. The only daughter of the family, Mollie E. Jones, was born April 30, 1856, finished her education in the Fairmont Normal School, and was a successful teacher for a number of terms. She died October 2, 1893. Thomas K. Jones acquired a free school education in Monongalia County, and as a youth went to work on his father's farm. From that he progressed to the ownership of a farm of his own, which he extended in acreage and in this property for forty-five years. He only left the farm in 1912, when he moved to Fairmont to assume the office of secretary of the Farmers Mutual Fire Insurance Company. March 15, 1888, Mr. Jones married Miss Emma Bowers. She was born October 26, 1867, in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, daughter of Peter and Rachel Bowers. Her father was also a native of Indiana County, where he spent his active life as a farmer, and during the civil war he was a Union soldier. His death occurred in 1896. Mr. and Mrs. Jones have two daughters: Ollie Maria Fairchild, who was born December 7, 1888, was married September 30, 1916, to M. L. Fortney, of Preston County, West Virginia, and they have one child, Rachel Fairchild, born May 6, 1918. Martha Laura Cordelia, the second daughter, was born January 28, 1891. She is the wife of Robert M. Morgan, of Fairmont, manager of the Fairmont Motor Car Company. They have a daughter, Emma Belle, born April 19, 1914. ______________________________X-Message: #5 Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 20:18:37 EST From: PTyler107@aol.com To: WV-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0.15d6f23b.2596c6ed@aol.com> Subject: Bio:Daniel Clingingsmith Tabler,Mannington Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, page 124-125 Daniel Clingingsmith Tabler is one of West Virginia's best known school principals and superintendents, sue to an active service of more than thirty years. Mr. Tabler is now superintendent of the Mannington public schools. He was born July 18, 1864, at Orion in Richland County, Wisconsin, son of William and Elizabeth Ann (Barnes) Tabler, the former a native of Maryland and the latter of Ohio. William Tabler in his early life was a teacher, teaching in Wisconsin for a time, and from that state he removed with his family to Ohio and finally to West Virginia, where for a number of years he was engaged in the tobacco packing business. He finally went back to Ohio, where he died. Daniel C. Tabler acquired his early education in the public schools of Ohio and West Virginia, and received his Master of Arts Degree from Ohio University at Athens. When he was about twenty-one, in 1885, he received his first teacher's certificate in Ritchie County. It was in that county that he gained his first laurels as an educator. he remained there five years, the last two years as principal of Ellensboro School. Mr. Tabler in 1890 went to Noble County, Ohio, taught for a year at Dexter City, and in 1891, on returning to West Virginia, located at Parkersburg and for two years taught an out of town school. In 1894 he was elected supervising principal of the old Park School at Parkersburg, and was a factor in the educational life of that city for the following thirteen years. In 1906 he was elected superintendent of the Parkersburg schools, a post of duty he held for two years. Following that he was principal of the Ravenswood High School in Jackson County, spent one year as superintendent of city schools at Davis, and at the end of that year he was reelected superintendent and at the sane time was elected superintendent of the Spencer schools, and in the meantime had received a call as principal of the McKinley School at Parkersburg. After some consideration he resigned from the Davis schools, declined to call the Spencer, and returned to Parkersburg and for the following ten years was principal of the McKinley School. From Parkersburg Mr. Tabler came to Mannington as superintendent of the city schools, an office to which he was elected in 1919. For about ten years Mr. Tabler was widely known over the state through his services as an instructor in teachers' institutes. He cancelled all engagements for this kind of work when he assumed charge of the Mannington schools. He is a member of the West Virginia State and National Educational Associations, and of the Monongahela Valley Round Table. Mr. Tabler is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, an Odd Fellow, a member of the Modern Woodmen of America, and belongs to the Mannington Kiwanis Club. Mr. Tabler married Miss Ella Hall Core, of Ellensboro, Ritchie County, daughter of the late Gen. Andrew S. Core, who was a Federal officer in the Civil war. Mr. and Mrs. Tabler became the parents of four children, all of whom graduated from the Parkersburg High School. William Ray, the oldest, born in 1891, is now in the auditing department of the Gulf Refining Company at Pittsburgh. The two younger children are Robert Allen, born in 1897, and Maude Isabella, who is a student in the West Virginia Wesleyan College at Buckhannon. A special paragraph should stand as a brief memorial to the son Kramer Core, who was born in 1894. After finishing high school he entered Marietta College in Ohio and when the World war came on he joined the French army and for six months was a camion driver in France. When America entered the war he secured a discharge from the French army and enlisted in the aviation service. He was promoted to first lieutenant at the Somme. He continued on duty until after the signing of the armistice, and on May 16, 1919, he met his death when his ship crashed.