U.S. Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page: --------------------------------------------------------------------- Arnett, William Willey (b.1843) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: Bench and Bar of West Virginia Author: Geo Wesley Atkinson, LL.B., LL. D. Virginia Law Book Company; Charleston, W.Va.; 1919 Pages 336-337, Col. William Willey Arnett In the front rank of criminal lawyers at the Wheeling Bar, probably unequaled in his knowledge of criminal law, certainly unexcelled in its presentation to the jury, stands the subject of this sketch. This is manifested by his successful defense in some of the most noted causa celebre in West Virginia and at the St. Louis Bar. Not so much as an orator, not because of rhetorical finish or grandiloquent sentences, but in his deliberate, methodical presentation of the statutes, his singular power of explaining away damaging testimony, or handling the testifier, his convincing manner of arraying facts and law points as a general masses his heavy and light soldiery for a victorious charge — herein was his strength and the secret of his almost universal success. Col. W. W. Arnett was the son of Ulysses N. and Elizabeth (nee Cunningham) Arnett, both natives of that part of Monongalia, which later became Marion, County, Virginia. In the latter county he was born October 23, 1843; prepared at Fairmont Academy for Allegheny College at Meadville, Pennsylvania, whence he graduated in 1860. He studied law, before and after his college term, under A. F. Haymond, Ex-Judge of the West Virginia Supreme Bench, and was admitted to practice in 1860 at Fairmont, but closed his office to enlist as a private in Company A, Thirty-first Virginia Infantry; directly after his enlistment he was appointed by Governor Letcher Lieutenant- Colonel of a battalion, which was afterwards merged into the Twenty- fifth Virginia. He resigned his commission, returned to the ranks of his old company and was soon elected its Captain, and so served until 1863, when he was elected Colonel of the Twentieth Virginia Cavalry, the command of which he continued until the close of the war. Twice during the war he was elected by the "refugees and camp voters" to represent Marion County in the Virginia Legislature. In 1865, because of the "Test Oath" in West Virginia, he resumed practice in Berryville, Clarke County, Virginia; in 1868 he was nominated for the State Senate from that district, but declined, and was immediately after nominated and elected to the Legislature of Virginia from that county. In 1872 he removed to St. Louis, Missouri, and soon established himself in a remunerative and important practice, his reputation as a successful criminal lawyer having preceded him. One of his first cases there, the defense and acquittal of J. H. Fore on a charge of murder, was the subject of complimentary comment in public journals throughout the United States, the St. Louis papers describing his effort as "the most masterly in that Court since Blennerhassett's day." Like encomiums were passed upon his successful defense of Madame Julia Fortmeyer in the celebrated abortion case, and others. In 1875 he returned to his native State and located at Wheeling, at once becoming one of the prominent attorneys of West Virginia. In the injunction case, Wheeling vs. Charleston, against the removal of the State archives from the latter to the former city, he succeeded before the Supreme Court in having the Capital removed to Wheeling. He was also employed to defend State Auditor E. L. Bennett and Treasurer John S. Burdett in their celebrated impeachment case. He was engaged in practice at Wheeling, as also in different counties throughout the State and before the Supreme Court of West Virginia until his death. After his resumption of practice in West Virginia he was retained on the defense or prosecution of almost every important criminal case before the courts in his section. It is universally conceded that Colonel Arnett was one of the greatest natural lawyers that West Virginia ever produced. ---------------------------------------------------------------------