Tucker County, West Virginia          Biography of DAVID WALLACE THURSTON

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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 535
Tucker

DAVID WALLACE THURSTON, editor and publisher of the
Parsons Advocate at Parsons, judicial center of Tucker
County, was born at Waverly, New York, March 12, 1885,
and was eight years of age at the time of the family
removal to West Virginia, where the home was shortly
afterward established at Parsons, he having here profited
fully by the advantages afforded in the public schools, in-
cluding the high school. In his school vacations Mr. Thurs-
ton gained his initial experience in the "art preservative
of all arts" by service in the office of the Mountain State
Patriot. Later he was employed as a compositor and gen-
eral workman in the office of the Mountain State Patriot,
and in September, 1907, he became identified with the paper
of which he is now editor and publisher. On the 1st of
July, 1913, he leased the plant and business of the Parsons
Advocate, and under this lease he continued the publication
until November, 1919, when he became owner of the prop-
erty. The Advocate was founded in 1896 by A. A. Dorsey,
who in 1907 sold it to the Cheat Valley Publishing Com-
pany, from which Mr. Thurston acquired it in 1919, as
above noted. The paper has continuously been an influential
local advocate of the principles and policies of the repub-
lican party, and under the present control is an specially
effective exponent of local and community interests, with
an excellent corps of correspondents throughout Tucker
County, of which county it is the official paper. The ex-
cellence of the paper as a news vehicle and as a director
of popular thought and action is shown in the fact that its
circulation has been extended largely outside the limits of
Tucker County. Mr. Thurston is secretary of the Republican
Central Committee of Tucker County and chairman of the
Parsons City Committee of the party. He has been influ-
ential in the local councils and campaign activities of the
"Grand Old Party," and cast his first presidential vote for
Col. Theodore Roosevelt, in 1904.

Mr. Thurston is a stockholder in the Philippi Blanket
Mill, the Dr. O. A. Miller Chemical Company, and with
the local company engaged in development work in the oil
and gas fields of Oklahoma. He has passed the official
chairs in the Parsons Council of the Junior Order United
American Mechanics, and in their home city he and his
wife are active and valued members of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, Mrs. Thurston having charge of the
cradle work of its Sunday school.

April 27, 1912, recorded the marriage of Mr. Thurston
and Miss Vesta S. Kryder, who was born at Jersey Shore,
Pennsylvania, the fourth in order of birth of the nine
children of Amos and Blanche (Moran) Kryder, who came
to West Virginia when Mrs. Thurston was a child, she hav-
ing been educated in the schools of Davis and Parsons, this
state. Mr. and Mrs. Thurston became the parents of three
daughters, Gladys and Grace, twins, the former of whom
died March 26, 1920, and Lila Pet.

Mr. Thurston is a son of Daniel Wallace Thurston and
Clarissa L. (Wiggins) Thnrston, whose marriage was
solemnized at Williamsport, Pennsylvania.  Daniel W.
Thurston, who died at Parsons, West Virginia, November
18, 1920, at the age of seventy-nine years, was born and
reared in the State of New York and represented the same
as a gallant young soldier of the Union in the Civil war,
he having been a member of Company I, One Hundred and
Ninth New York Volunteer Infantry, which was assigned to
the Army of the Potomac, and with which he served until
the close of the war. He took part in many engagements,
including the battles of Petersburg and Antietam, and
having been once wounded in the hip. He was one of the
honored comrades of the post of the Grand Army of the
Republic at Parsons at the time of his death. His widow,
aged seventy-one years (1922), still resides at Parsons.
She is a native of New York State, a daughter of the late
John Wiggins. Alta R., eldest of the children, is the wife
of E. D. Shuck, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; LaPette
LaFay is a valued assistant of her brother in the office of
the Parsons Advocate, and this brother, the only son, is the
immediate subject of this review.