Rev. Samuel K. Arbuthnot was born June 21, 1864 in Wheeling, W.Va. He was the son of Samuel and Jane McCracken Arbuthnot, both of whom were of Scotch-Irish descent. He married Mary G. Calvert of Monongalia County. They had two daughters.
He received his early education in the public schools of Wheeling, then became an apprentice printer with the “Wheeling intelligencer” and became a school teacher. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University where he was a classmate of Bishop Edwin H. Hughes in 1889. He then entered the theological seminary of Boston University, graduating with the degree of S.T.B. in 1892. While in the seminary he was a student pastor at Yarmouth, located on Cape Cod, Mass.
Upon his return to West Virginia, he was appointed pastor at Weston, then to St. Paul’s church, Oakland, Md., then to First Church, Huntington. While there he was appointed by Gov. G.W. Atkinson chaplin of the first Regiment, West Virginia Infantry, United State Volunteers and served the entire period of the Spanish-American War. Upon his return, he was appointed secretary of the Twentieth Century Thank Offering Commission. He served efficiently until the fall of 1901 when he was appointed to Goff Memorial (later First Church of Clarksburg). There he supervised the building of that great church. He was superintendent of the Wheeling District from 1907 to 1912, when he went to First church, Parkersburg for four years. He was made secretaryof the West Virginia Conference Claimants Permanent Fund where he served for six years. At the Annual Conference of 1922, he was assigned to Sutton and in 1926 to McMechen, coming back to the district of which he had once been superintendent. He was apparently in the best of health when he was suddenly taken ill.
Doctor Arbuthnot was a member of the General Conference of 1908, and in 1921 was a member of the Ecumenical Conference of World Methodism which met in London, England. He was honored with the degree of doctor of divinity by his alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University and also by Mt. Union College. For many years he was a trustee of Ohio Wesleyan and of West Virginia Wesleyan College from its beginning. For years he was a trustee of the Anti-Saloon League and only a short time before his death met with the State Board as one of its counselors.
He died March 10, 1928 at the Ohio Valley General Hospital in wheeling. He was susvived by two daughers, Mary Jane Farion and Virginia Eleanor Hanz and a brother and a sister. His wife died only a few weeks after his death.
[West Virginia Conference Journal, ME, 1928]
Note: My records had him as a trustee from 1906-1928, and I will check to see about the discrepancy from this entry from the 1928 Journal. (PLM)