“Samuel Phillips McCormick (1841-1889), a native of Washington County, Pennsylvania, attended the Fairmont Academy. He worked for two years as a brick mason before teaching school in Marion and Monongalia counties in West Virginia from 1858 to the outbreak of the Civil War. Beginning July 1861, he served for approximately a year in General Bank’s Division of the Army of the Potomac. He was honorably discharged because of a chronic illness. After studying law under the direction of Judge Ralph L.B. Berkshire at Morgantown, he located at Harrisville, Ritchie County. He moved to West Union in 1865, and the following year he was elected prosecuting attorney. He located at Grafton in 1873, and beginning in 1876 served a four-year term as prosecuting attorney of Taylor County. In 1880 he was elected as a delegate-at-large from West Virginia to the Republican National Convention, and was one of three delegates who created a national sensation by refusing to vote for Senator Roscoe Conkling’s resoluction binding delegates in advance of a nomination to support the party candidates. He served for eight years as a member of the Republican State Executive Committee. In 1885 he was appointed collector of internal revenue for West Virginia by President Chester Arthur.”
Plummer, K.M. (1965) A history of West Virginia Wesleyan College 1890-1965. [electronic] Retrieved from Internet Archive. Buckhannon, WV: West Virginia Wesleyan College.
PLM 9/1/2019