BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, BELMONT COUNTY, OHIO

"History of the Upper Ohio Valley" Vol. II, 1890.

Presented by Linda Fluharty from hard copies provided
by Mary Staley & Phyllis Slater.


Page 701.

WILLIAM WARNOCK, SR., one of the oldest residents of Belmont county, is a son
of John Warnock, a notable pioneer, who was born in 1767, near Winchester, Va.,
the son of a native of Ireland, who served in the British army seven years.
John Warnock was married about 1796, to Isabella Gilkison, of Virginia, and
in 1804, with his wife and four children, he came to Belmont county, and
settled on section II, Smith township, one-half mile below Warnock's Station.
There they made their home in a little log cabin, and began the work of clearing.
He was successful in business and amassed a comfortable property and built
himself, in 1831, a good brick house. In 1806 he built the first saw-mill on
McMahan creek, and established a fulling mill on the creek in 1814 or 1815,
in which he subsequently put carding and spinning and weaving machines, and
these were in operation until a recent period. He died in 1840, and his wife
in 1847. They reared a family of ten children. William Warnock, born in West
Virginia, September 25, 1801, was three years old when the family came to Ohio,
and he was reared among the hardships and deprivations of a pioneer life. At
the age of fifteen he became engaged in his father's woolen mill, and remained
in that occupation until 1832. He was then in mercantile business two years,
and then purchased the grist-mill and farm at Warnock, which he operated many
years. He has been one of the township's prominent men, has served as trustee
eight or ten years, and has been selected in eleven instances to settle up
estates of decedents, some of which are quite complicated. His career has been
a successful one, and he now owns 260 acres of valuable land, including part
of the village of Warnock. He is a member of the United Presbyterian church,
which his father established at that place. Mr. Warnock was married in 1828,
to Jane Poak, of West Virginia, by whom he had ten children, of whom John,
William, Sarah, Lucy and Frances are living. Their mother died in 1871, and
on March 24, 1874, he was married to Nancy, daughter of Robert and Ann (Ferguson)
Dunn, born in county Derry, Ireland, in 1819.