Ohio County, West Virginia  Biography of Rev. James H. McMechen.

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REV. JAMES H. McMECHEN

It is proposed to continue the record of the McMechen family, in the 
name of James H. McMechen, inasmuch as his life was one of a more 
public character, and therefore, more eventful, and full of incident, 
than that of any other member of his father's family.

He was born, January 18th, 1813, at the old homestead, and is now 
(1879) in the sixty-seventh year of his age.  He has resided in the 
city of Wheeling for the last thirty years, and his knowledge of 
events, connected with the history of his own locality, and of his 
native state, is very accurate, and extensive.  He spent his earlier 
years on the paternal farm, acquiring a rude mental knowledge of 
agricultural pursuits, and such a scholastic education as could be 
had from the Irish schoolmasters of that day.  In the summer of 1825 
he was sent to school in Wheeing, and in the summer of 1826 attended 
a select school, taught by Rev. C. Wheeler, a worthy Baptist 
minister, near the town of Washington, Pennsylvania.  In the 
following summer, of 1827, he went to school to Wm. S. Morgan, at 
Elizabethtown (now Moundsville, West Virginia), and in the 
intervening fall and winter sessions of those years, he attended the 
county schools on his father's place.  In September, 1828, he went to 
Madison college, then a new institution, under Methodist patronage, 
located at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Henry B. Bascom being president 
and Charles Elliott, John H. Fielding and others, professors.  This 
institution  did not continue in active operation more than five 
years, at the end of which time Mr. McMechen took his degree of A. 
B., receiving at the same time, the first honor in a class of six, 
all of whom, except himself, are now dead.  Hon. Waitman T. Willey, 
now of Morgantown, graduated at the same institution, the year 
previous. At the end of its fifth year, owing to jealousies in the M. 
E. Church against the "Radicals" -- so called -- or Protestant 
Methodists, the president and professors being suspected of leaning 
toward that party, the organization went down and the building passed 
into other hands.

Immediately after graduating, in 1832, Mr. McMechen entered the 
ministry of the M. E. Church, and joined the Pittsburgh Conference.  
He was then in the twentieth year of his age, and was very 
successful.  At the end of the fourth year of his ministry, Mr. 
McMechen was married to Miss Elizabeth A. Sehon, of Clarksburg, 
Virginia, he being then stationed at that place.  But Mrs. McMechen, 
feeling unequal to the hardships incident to the life of the 
itinerant Methodist minister, for the sake of her happiness and his 
own, and deemed it best that he should resume a more settled relation 
to the Christian work.  Knowing that the Church of England held a 
kind of maternal relation to the Methodist Church, he concluded to 
enter the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the United 
States, that church having derived its origin from the Church of 
England.  

The first year of his ministry, in his new relation, was spent in 
Parkersburg, Virginia, at the end of which he returned to Clarksburg, 
Virginia.

The residue of his life was devoted chiefly to secular pursuits, but 
particularly to the cause of education, as being most congenial to 
his ministerial profession.  He resided in Clarksburg until 1847.  In 
1840, being engaged in conducting a female seminary, he also took an 
active part in endeavoring to secure to the state of Virginia a 
system of free popular education;  with what success will be seen in 
another part of this work.  In what success will be seen in another 
part of this work.  In 1847, he removed to the city of Wheeling.  
Here, also, his life was chiefly secular, but mostly devoted to 
educational work.  Twenty years of his life were spent in the cause 
of popular education in Wheeling.

While engaged otherwise than in educational pursuits, in the year 
1852, under the new constitution of Virginia, Mr. McMechen served for 
three years as presiding justice of Ohio county; during his term of 
office, the license question was very much agitated, and Mr. McMechen 
took part with the public against the saloonists.  Although elected 
for four years, at the end of the third year, he resigned the office 
of presiding justice for the purpose of resuming the business of 
education.

In the year 1871, Mr. McMechen was elected by the Board of Regents of 
the University of West Virginia, to take charge of the preparatory 
department of that institution, and to the professorship of English 
literature, in the same.  But finding the labor too oppressive for 
him, at his advanced age, and his family disinclined to leave 
Wheeling, at the end of the fall term, he resigned and returned to 
his native place.  During an interval of sixteen months afterwards, 
his time was given chiefly to ministerial work in the Episcoplal 
parishes, and general missionary labors, but at the end of this 
period, he resumed his position as principal of the Fifth ward 
(centre) school.  Owing to advanced years, declining health, and the 
pressure of secular duties, he was compelled in 1876, to cease 
entirely from scholastic duties.

During the time that Mr. McMechen was connected with the public 
schools, he, with Mr. F. S. Williams, and others,  organized the 
Teachers' Association of the city of Wheeling.  The beginning was 
small; but the association grew, in time, to be a strong and 
influential agency in the school work, numbering, at the present, 
about eighty or ninety teachers, that being the entire number 
employed by the Board of Education.  He also assisted in the 
organization of the State Teachers' Association.  He delivered a 
lecture in connection therewith, on the "Socila Position of 
Teachers," and on "Our Mother Tongue."  He was nominated by the 
meeting at Fairmont, for the State Superintendency, but declined.  He 
also lectured before the Washington County (Pa.) Teachers' 
Association, on the Bible as a Power in our Public Schools. He also 
lectured frequently before the Wheeling association.  Nor was Mr. 
McMechen less popular and successful as a contributor, on various 
subjects, to our local newspaper press.

After separating himself from scholastic work, Mr. McMechen was 
induced to publish four small works, for the benefit of his youngest 
son, who had become a mute at four years of age, from an attack of 
scarlet fever, viz.:  "Three Hundred Choice maxims, or Apples of Gold 
in Pictures of Silver;" "Two Hundred and Fifty Common Sense Proverbs, 
or Arrows from the Qviver of Truth" -- these two works, containing 
five hundred and fifty maxims, or proverbs, in all, are valuable  for 
the regulation of conduct, both of youth and adults; "Ripe Thoughts 
on Worthy Subjects"  containing the author's mature views of theology 
and practical religion -- the best thoughts of his life; and "Legions 
of the Ohio Valley, or Thrilling Incidents of Indian Warfare." 

Mr. McMechen is the father of twelve children, the youngest of whom 
is now twenty-five years of age.  Two are dead, and ten are still 
living, six of whom are married.  Their names are:  Fannie 
(Campbell), Lee, Mary, Washington (dead), Meade, Sallie (Doddridge), 
Susan, Louisa (Dyer), Edmund (dead), Benson, Siddie (McClain), Hanson 
(mute).     

From HISTORY OF THE PAN-HANDLE, West Virginia, 1879, by J. H. Newton,
G. G. Nichols, and A. G. Sprankle.

Contributed by Linda Cunningham Fluharty.