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This biography was submitted by Sandy
Spradling, E-mail address: <SSpradling@aol.com>
History of Greenbrier County
J. R. Cole
Lewisburg, WV 1917
p. 246-248
JAMES FRANKLIN McCLUNG.
John McClung, who emigrated from Scotland to Ireland about 1690, and from
there to Virginia, finally, was the ancestor of James F. McClung. (See sketch
of John McClung and family.)
Of the seven sons of John, Samuel McClung (Devil Sam) before mentioned had a
son, Stuart, born December 24, 1836, died September 12, 1901. He was the
father of James F. McClung. On March 29, 1860, Stuart McClung married Mary
George, born at Dawson (see sketch of George family). Their children were
Joseph Albert, born March ,5, i86i Sarah Elizabeth, December 4, 1862; Margaret Rebecca, wife of W. B. Hayes (see sketch)
James Franklin, June, 1867; Samuel, October 17, 1869; Callie Jane, January
30, 1872, married August 31, 1892, to John Cook; Mary M., May 12, 1874, married June 27, '900, to W. F. Mc-Dowell; Louise Alice, December 22, 1876,
married Dexter Spangler; Spencer Hill, September 22, 1879; Lelia Ruth, February 8, 1882, married James H. Jarrett.
James Franklin McClung was reared a farmer. He and his brother, Samuel, own
and operate a seven-hundred-and-fifty-acre tract of land, on one-half of
which stands the old house. It is on the part belonging to James F. Here is
the homestead of the Stuart McClung family and the place where the children
roamed at will in childhood.
After the subject of our sketch had received his education, the best his
district school could give him, he became a traveling agent for the next
twenty years of his life, first for Abney Barnes & Company, dry goods
merchants of Charleston, W. Va., and finally for Hutcheson-Stephenson Hat
Co., of the same city. He was with each firm for ten years, and probably no
man in the State knows more about the people and country of the twenty-five
counties through which he traveled during that time than does James F. McClung.
Without an accident or a day of sickness he went to and from the Jackson
river back to Big Sandy, on the Kentucky border, and from the Little Kanawha
to the Virginia mountains on the north, unarmed, but always welcomed, though
his route took him everywhere among the feuds of the McCoys and Hatfields of
the State.
James F. McClung was married to Miss Ella V. Gunter, of Charleston, Kanaw~a
county, West Virginia, October 26. 1911. Her father, John Gunter, was born
and reared on a farm in Augusta county, Virginia, near Staunton; came to
Kanawha county after the close of the Civil war and settled on a farm and
engaged in the coal business at Big Chimney, on the Elk river. At that time
there was a lock and dam in Elk river and steamboats plied the river, by
which means Mr. Gunter shipped his coal to Charleston, where he supplied the
leading factories with coal. Miss Ella Gunter was born on Elk river, August
27, 1880, and was educated in the Charleston schools. John Gunter married
Miss Katherine Seafler, of Beaver county, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Her
parents emigrated from Germany about 1834, landing at Baltimore, after which
they settled on a farm in Beaver county, Pennsylvania. Three sons and a daughter are living in Pittsburgh. |
