Marion-Ohio County WV Archives Biographies.....Arnett, William Willey October 23, 1843 - 
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Connie Burkett marionwvusgwarch@gmail.com October 13, 2009, 2:43 am

Source: Bench and Bar of West Virginia
Author: Geo Wesley Atkinson, LL.B., LL. D.

Virginia Law Book Company; Charleston, W.Va.; 1919
Pages 336-337, Col. William Willey Arnett

In the front rank of criminal lawyers at the Wheeling Bar, probably unequaled in
his knowledge of criminal law, certainly unexcelled in its presentation to the
jury, stands the subject of this sketch. This is manifested by his successful
defense in some of the most noted causa celebre in West Virginia and at the St.
Louis Bar. Not so much as an orator, not because of rhetorical finish or
grandiloquent sentences, but in his deliberate, methodical presentation of the
statutes, his singular power of explaining away damaging testimony, or handling
the testifier, his convincing manner of arraying facts and law points as a
general masses his heavy and light soldiery for a victorious charge — herein was
his strength and the secret of his almost universal success.

Col. W. W. Arnett was the son of Ulysses N. and Elizabeth (nee Cunningham)
Arnett, both natives of that part of Monongalia, which later became Marion,
County, Virginia. In the latter county he was born October 23, 1843; prepared at
Fairmont Academy for Allegheny College at Meadville, Pennsylvania, whence he
graduated in 1860. He studied law, before and after his college term, under A.
F. Haymond, Ex-Judge of the West Virginia Supreme Bench, and was admitted to
practice in 1860 at Fairmont, but closed his office to enlist as a private in
Company A, Thirty-first Virginia Infantry; directly after his enlistment he was
appointed by Governor Letcher Lieutenant-Colonel of a battalion, which was
afterwards merged into the Twenty-fifth Virginia. He resigned his commission,
returned to the ranks of his old company and was soon elected its Captain, and
so served until 1863, when he was elected Colonel of the Twentieth Virginia
Cavalry, the command of which he continued until the close of the war. Twice
during the war he was elected by the "refugees and camp voters" to represent
Marion County in the Virginia Legislature.

In 1865, because of the "Test Oath" in West Virginia, he resumed practice in
Berryville, Clarke County, Virginia; in 1868 he was nominated for the State
Senate from that district, but declined, and was immediately after nominated and
elected to the Legislature of Virginia from that county. In 1872 he removed to
St. Louis, Missouri, and soon established himself in a remunerative and
important practice, his reputation as a successful criminal lawyer having
preceded him. One of his first cases there, the defense and acquittal of J. H.
Fore on a charge of murder, was the subject of complimentary comment in public
journals throughout the United States, the St. Louis papers describing his
effort as "the most masterly in that Court since Blennerhassett's day." Like
encomiums were passed upon his successful defense of Madame Julia Fortmeyer in
the celebrated abortion case, and others.

In 1875 he returned to his native State and located at Wheeling, at once
becoming one of the prominent attorneys of West Virginia. In the injunction
case, Wheeling vs. Charleston, against the removal of the State archives from
the latter to the former city, he succeeded before the Supreme Court in having
the Capital removed to Wheeling. He was also employed to defend State Auditor E.
L. Bennett and Treasurer John S. Burdett in their celebrated impeachment case.
He was engaged in practice at Wheeling, as also in different counties throughout
the State and before the Supreme Court of West Virginia until his death. After
his resumption of practice in West Virginia he was retained on the defense or
prosecution of almost every important criminal case before the courts in his
section. It is universally conceded that Colonel Arnett was one of the greatest
natural lawyers that West Virginia ever produced.



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