PERRY FRENCH MARKS, M. D. While he has very heavy responsibilities as the only physician and surgeon at Walton, Doctor Marks is also a leading farmer in that part of Roane County and is a prominent young man whose activities have earned him the highest esteem.
Doctor Marks was born at Burning Springs, Wirt County, West Virginia, May 10, 1879. He comes of frontier stock. His great-grandfather, named Thomas Marks, was a native of France, and was a follower of General Lafayette in the expedition to the American Colonies in their straggle for independence. When the war was over he remained in America and ultimately settled in Gilmer County, West Virginia, where he spent the rest of his life on the frontier. His son, Morgan, was born near Glenville and spent most of his career in Gilmer County, where he owned and conducted a large farm. He died near Arnoldsburg in Calhoun County in 1890. His wife, Sarah Jones, was also a native of Gilmer County, and died at Gandeeville in 1890.
Cornelius J. Marks, father of Doctor Marks, was lorn near Glenville in Gilmer County in 1845, grew up there, and as a young man removed to Gandeeville in Roane County, where he married and where he owned and operated a large and valuable farm. He was a Union soldier at the time of the Civil war, enlisting in 1862 in Company B, of the 9th West Virginia Infantry. In the battle of Cloyd Mountain he was struck four times by enemy bullets, being wounded in the shoulder and in the chin. He voted as a republican, and was a member of the Masonic fraternity.
Cornelius J. Marks, who died at Gandeeville in 1912, married Louise Hays, still living at Gandeeville. She was born near Richardson in Calhoun County in 1844. Her children were: Howard, who operates the homestead farm and lives with his mother; Roanna, who died at Richardson in 1910, wife of Frank Connolly, a farmer in that section; Floyd, who died at the age of three years; Chessie, who is the wife of Dr. W. C. Camp, a prominent physician at Spencer; Perry French; Harry, a barber at Blue Creek in Kanawha County; George, an attorney by profession and now doing the work of an oil company in Louisiana; William, a farmer near Walton; Walter, who died at Colorado Springs in 1911, was a teacher in Mingo and Roane counties; Nellie died at the age of twenty-one and MeKinley, at the age of fifteen.
Doctor Marks showed a studious disposition as a boy, and his inclinations were for a profession rather than the career of a farmer. He grew up in the country, attended the rural schools, and at the age of nineteen began teaching. This work he continued in Roane County for six years. He then entered the medical department of the University of Louisville, where he graduated M. D. in 1907, and took another general medical course at Louisville in 1910. Doctor Marks for a brief time in 1907 was contract physician for the Gauley Consolidated and Bell Creek Coal Company at Belva in Nicholas County, and during the same year removed to Walton, where now for fifteen years he has been the doctor for the community, the only member of his profession in that locality. His modern home and offices are on Cunningham Street, and he also has 140 acres of land there and eighty acres near Gandeeville. In farming he makes a specialty of fine stock, raising Hampshire sheep and Hereford and thoroughbred Jersey cattle.
Doctor Marks has served as president of the Board of Education of Walton for six years, and has represented his district in the county, state and senatorial conventions of the republican party. He is affiliated with Walton Lodge No. 150, F. and A. M., Spencer Chapter No. 42, R. A. M, Kanawha Commandery No 4, K. T., West Virginia consistory No. 1 of the Scottish Bite at Wheeling, Beni-Kedem Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Charleston. He is also an Odd Fellow, and is a member of the Roane County Medical Society. Doctor Marks is a stockholder in the Poca Valley Bank of Walton and the first National Bank of Spencer. During the war he was an active worker in behalf of the various patriotic drives, and was himself in the draft, but could not respond to the call to the colors because of influenza which he had contracted during the fall of 1918.
At Point Pleasant in Mason County July 17, 1907, Doctor Marks married Miss Josephine Byrd. Mrs. Marks is a graduate of the Mountain State Business College at Parkers- burg, and for eighteen months before her marriage was a stenographer at the Spencer State Hospital for the Insane. She now performs the duties of postmistress at Walton. Doctor and Mrs. Marks have two children: Perry F., Jr., born December 31, 1911; and Cornelius F., born April 5, 1915.
The History of West Virginia, Old and New, Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 541-542
Submitter: Valerie & Tommy Crook, July 17, 2000
