Wilbur L. Medill
Wilbur L. Medill, a prominent lawyer and representative citizen of Steubenville, O., who has been identified with the business interests of this section for the past twenty-three years, was born August 6, 1866, in Warren Township, Jefferson Comity, Ohio, and is a son of William Medill, who was one of the prominent farmers and leading citizens of Jefferson County.
The Medill family is one of the old established families of Jefferson County, Ohio, and was founded here about 1818 by Joseph Medill, a native of Ireland, who located in Warren Township. When he landed in Washington, Pa., he had but one dollar to his name, but went to work by the day and after accumulating sufficient capital purchased teams and wagons and engaged in general contracting, having been one of the contractors who built the National Pike from Washington, Pa., to Wheeling, W. Va. Joseph Medill purchased a farm in Warren Township, Jefferson County, Ohio, and at one time was the owner of 1,200 acres, but later went to Martin's Ferry, O., where he first operated a planing mill, then engaged in the wholesale grocery business, in which he continued until his death at the age of eighty-six years.
William Medill, father of our subject, was born in 1834, in Warren Township, Jefferson County, Ohio, was reared on his father's farm, and was for seven years, during and after the war, a United States marshal in Kansas, but subsequently returned to Jefferson County and purchased a farm in Warren Township, where he spent the remainder of his life engaged in agricultural pursuits. His death occurred in 1908 and he was one of the most successful farmers and influential citizens of Warren Township.
Wilbur L. Medill was reared in Jefferson County, and educated in the schools here and at Linsly Institute at Wheeling, W. Va., after which he read law with present Judge John M. Cook and was admitted to the bar at Columbus, O., in 1889, since which time he has followed his profession, practicing in the federal courts and the various courts of the state. Mr. Medill is a believer in the principles enunciated by the Republican party. He holds membership with the Hamline M. E. Church, is fraternally a thirty-second degree Mason, and a member of the Blue Lodge at Steubenville and the Consistory at Columbus. Mr. Medill is also extensively interested in the development of oil in Jefferson County.
On January 22, 1890, Mr. Medill married Anna C. Chapman, only daughter of Rev. A. R. Chapman, who for more than half a century has been prominently identified with, the ministry of the M. E. Church through eastern Ohio. To Mr. and Mrs. Medill have been born: Alva Leland, and Wilbur Chapman Medill, both students of the Steubenville high school.
From 20th Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio, by Joseph B. Doyle. Richmond-Arnold Publishing Co., Chicago, 1910