UPSHUR COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA 
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook 
vfcrook@earthlink.net
July 17, 2000
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 502
Upshur

WILLIAM B. CUTRIGHT is not only one of the able and
representative members of the bar of Upshur County, where
he is established in the practice of his profession at Buck-
hannon, the judicial center of the county, but he is also
a scion of one of the old, honored and influential families
of this section of the state. Mr. Cutright was born on
his father's farm in this county. May 3, 1869, and is a son
of Granville S. and Elizabeth H. (Hinkle) Cutright; a
grandson of Elmore and Sarah (Wolfe) Cutright; a great-
grandson of Jacob and Elizabeth (Westfall) Cutright, the
former of whom was a son of John and Rebecca (Truby)
Cutright.  John Cutright came to what is now Upshur
County, West Virginia, in 1769, and the family name has
been prominently and worthily identified with civic and
material development and progress in this county during
the long intervening period. Mrs. Elizabeth H. Cutright,
mother of him whose name introduces this review, was a
daughter of Abraham and Mary Ann (Anderson) Hinkle,
the former a son of Jonas and Mary (Cooper) Hinkle and
a grandson of Leonard Hinkle, who came from Germantown,
Pennsylvania, to what is now West Virginia and lived in
turn in Hardy and Pendleton counties.

William B. Cutright so thoroughly utilized the advantages
of the public schools of his native county that as a youth
he proved himself eligible for pedagogic honors and became
a successful and popular teacher in the public schools, his
service in which thus continued from 1884 to 1889, in which
latter year he was elected county superintendent of schools
of his native county. After giving an effective administra-
tion for the term of his election he attended the normal and
classical-preparatory school at Buckhannon, in which he
completed both a commercial and a normal course, and in
1891 he received from the West Virginia Conference Semi-
nary, now the West Virginia Wesleyan College, the degree
of Bachelor of Pedagogy. He thereafter did post-graduate
work in this institution through the remainder of the year
1891, and then entered the University of West Virginia,
from which he received in 1895 the degree of Bachelor of
Arts. For two years thereafter he was a member of the
faculty of the preparatory department of the university, and
he then entered Columbia University, New York City, in
which institution he had received a Fellowship in eco-
nomics and history. He pursued his studies along these
lines for one year and then entered the law school of
Columbian University of Washington, D. C., in which he
completed his course and received his degree of Bachelor
of Laws. He was soon afterward admitted to the West
Virginia bar, but prior to this he was elected representative
of Upshur County in the Lower House of the West Virginia
Legislature, in which he served two years, with character-
istic loyalty and efficiency. Thereafter he served one year
as president of the State Normal School at West Liberty.
He resigned this position in June, 1899, and then engaged
in the practice of law at Buckhannon, where he also became
editor of the Buckhannon Delta, with which he thus con-
tinued his connection five years. He has been continuously
identified with stock-farming enterprise in his native county,
and is one of the vitally loyal citizens who are doing all in
their power to further the civic and material prosperity and
advancement of Upshur County. Mr. Cutright has had the
consideration to give from the exactions of his representa-
tive law business and his other interests the time to pre-
pare the history of Upshur County that appears in this pub-
lication, and to no other person in the county could this
assignment have been more consistently made. He is a
stalwart in the ranks of the republican party, and he and
his wife are zealous members of the Methodist Episcopal
Church in their home city.

On December 25, 1888, in Washington, D. C., Mr. Cut-
right wedded Miss Carrie C. Carper, no children being born
of this union. On the 27th of July, 1919, was solemnized
his marriage with Miss Mary L. Wilson, daughter of Gideon
H. and Lydia (Curry) Wilson. Mrs. Cutright was a suc-
cessful and popular teacher in the public schools for twenty-
three years prior to her marriage, and was graduated in
what is now the West Virginia Wesleyan College.