This file was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: <vfcrook@trellis.net>
The submitter does not have a connection to the subject of this sketch.
The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 217-218
HERBERT DEWITT McCLINTOCK, a popular citizen and representative business man of the City of Huntington,
has developed an important industrial enterprise in the manufacturing of lumber and cooperage stock, and
conducts the thriving business under the title of the H. D. MeClintock Lumber Company, with offices at 420 Tenth Street.
In addition to being sole proprietor of this business he is also president of the Tri-State Lumber & Stave Company.
Mr. McClintock was born at Dempseytown, Venango
County, Pennsylvania, on the 16th of June, 1873. His paternal grandfather, Gen. James R. McClintock, was a
successful farmer in the vicinity of Dempseytown and served as a brigadier general in the Pennsylvania State Militia.
He was beyond the age limit for service in the Civil war, but he recruited and trained companies that went to the
front and made gallant records in defense of the Union. He married Jerusha Tennant, of New London, Connecticut,
a member of a family that was founded in New England in the Colonial days. The original American progenitors
of the McClintock family came from Scotland to this country in the early Colonial period of our national history.
Charles A. McClintock, father of the subject of this
review, was born on the old homestead near Dempseytown, Pennsylvania, December 7, 1846, and died at Huntington,
West Virginia, August 19, 1914. He was reared in his native county, and there his initial enterprise of
independent order was in connection with farm industry. Later he engaged in the manufacturing of lumber and barrel staves,
and in 1889 he engaged in this line of manufacturing enterprise at Huntington, where he passed the remainder of his
life, a successful business man and highly esteemed citizen. He was a democrat in politics, was affiliated with the
Masonic fraternity and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and both he and his wife were zealous members of
the Presbyterian Church. In his native county he married on October 6, 1870, Miss Adeline Richey, who was the
daughter of William and Angeline Givon Richey. She was born in the year 1847, and died in the same year as did
her husband, on July 21, 1914. James Pliny, eldest of their children, is living retired at Los Angeles, California,
he being a veteran of the Spanish-American war; the subject of this sketch was next in order of birth; William R.,
who likewise served in the Spanish-American war, resides at Arcola, Mississippi, and is the manager of a plantation
near that place; Miss Emma is a popular teacher in the public schools of Huntington; Mabel is the wife of C.
Lloyd Ritter, a prominent lumber manufacturer and financier, and they reside at Huntington; Laura is the wife of
Henry C. Walburn, of this city, he being state agent for the Bankers Life Insurance Company of Lincoln, Nebraska,
and president of the Huntington Board of Education.
Among the teachers who gave effective instruction to Herbert D. McClintock in the public schools at
Dempseytown, Pennsylvania, were Martin Carey, who is now vice president of the Standard Oil Company, and P. M. Spears,
who is now chief counsel for that great corporation. After the family removal to Huntington Mr. McClintock here
attended the high school until he had partially completed the work of his senior year. Thereafter he was for somewhat
more than three years a student in Central University at Richmond, Kentucky, from which he withdrew in his
senior year to become instructor in Greek and military tactics and science in Jackson College, in Breathitt County, that
state, where he remained one year. Within this period in that tempestuous county he had for a time active charge
of county affairs, in command of a force of 100 men for one week, and the aggressive work which he thus
accomplished resulted in the hanging of Tom Smith, a leader in the
French-Eversole feud.
In 1896 Mr. McClintock returned to Huntington, and
shortly afterward assumed active management of his father's lumber mill in Mingo County. In April, 1898, he
entered the nation's service, at the inception of the Spanish-American war, and was sent to Chattanooga, Tennessee,
where he was made a sergeant, his honorable discharge having been given on the 4th of February, 1899. He had
previously gained wide experience in military affairs. In 1889 he was captain of the Huntington High School Cadets;
while attending Central University he was senior captain of its Cadet Corps; in 1895 he was promoted to the rank
of major, and his name was placed on the honor roll of the war department of the United States. On the
11th of November, 1889, he enlisted in the West Virginia National Guard, in which he served thirteen consecutive years and
was a member of the staff of every colonel that has commanded the Second Regiment. In the World war period
he was commanding officer of the Hnntington Militia Reserves.
From the spring of 1899 until 1910 Mr. Clintock [sic] was
actively identified with lumbering operations in the State of Mississippi, and he then returned to Huntington, where
he has since been successfully engaged in the manufacturing of lumber and cooperage stock, under the title of the
H. D. McClintock Lumber Company.
Mr. McClintock is a democrat, is a member of the
Huntington Chamber of Commerce, the West Side Country Club and the local lodge of Elks, and he and his wife hold
membership in the Presbyterian Church.
The year 1900 recorded the marriage of Mr. McClintock
and Miss Ada Stewart, who was born in Huntington, and in their home resides her father, Isaac Foster Stewart, a
retired brick manufacturer, his wife being deceased. Mrs. McClintock graduated from the Wesleyan Female Institute
at Staunton, Virginia, this being one of the patrician educational institutions of Virginia. Of the four children born
to Mr. and Mrs. McClintock the first, Mary, died at the age of nine years; Mabel is, in 1922, a student in the
Enslow School at Huntington; Grace died in early childhood; and Charles is attending the Guyandotte school. These
children are the sixth generation of an early settler of Huntington on the Stewart side. |