U.S. Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Vandiver, Jerome A. (b. 1833) ------------------------------------------------------------------- History of Ritchie County by Minnie Kendall Lowther Wheeling News Litho. Co., Wheeling W.Va., 1911 Page 545 Jerome A. Vandiver was the pioneer clerk of the village [Smithville]. He was born in Wood county on March 30, 1833, and in 1846, when but a lad of thirteen years, was sent here by his father to clerk in Mr. Sleeth's store and to learn the tanner's trade; and in this capacity, he served until 1852, when he and J. H. Rexroad formed a mercantile firm under the name of "Rexroad and Vandiver," and sold goods for one year; at the end of which time, Mr. Vandiver went to Harrisville where he clerked in a store, and worked in the Circuit clerk's office for his cousin, Amos Culp, until 1856. After spending the next three years as clerk at Parkersburg, and as traveling salesman for a Baltimore firm, he went to Petroleum, in 1859, where he was identified with the mercantile firm of Vandiver and Rutherford, until 1865, when, shortly after his marriage to Miss Jane Rutherford, daughter of Richard Rutherford, he went to Louisville, Kentucky, where he continued in the mercantile business until 1873, and where he still survives. There Mrs. Vandiver found a resting place in 1894. They were the parents of three sons and one daughter: Wm. Knox is in business at St. Louis, Missouri; and Richard Rutherford, and Lawrence Jerome, at Louisville, and Eleanore Frances is the daughter. ------------------------------------------------------------------- If you've reached this file through a SEARCH, you can access other biographies for Ritchie County, WV by going to the following URL: http://www.us-data.org/wv/ritchie/bios.html -------------------------------------------------------------------