J. WALTER McCLYMONDS
James Walter McClymonds of Scotch and Irish descent was born September 18th, 1842, the fifth of nine children born to John and Elizabeth McClymonds, in New Lisbon, Ohio. After graduation from high school, he entered into military service, for the time was the early days of the Civil War. His first enlistment was for three months as a private; there followed a re-enlistment and promotion to Sergeant Major. With his regiment he participated in battles known to students of history; namely, Shiloh, Pittsburgh Landing, and the Siege of Corinth.
In July, 1862, he was commissioned Adjutant of the 104th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and was active in organizing a regiment in Massillon, Ohio. The regiment had an encampment in the area of the present Oak Knoll Park. Further service took him to the East Tennessee Campaign, Cumberland Gap, the Knoxville Siege, and the March on Atlanta with General Sherman’s Army. In 1864 another promotion commissioned him Captain.
At the close of the war, he received a commission as 1st Lieutenant in the Regular Army. However, after a few months he returned it, preferring a business to a military career. In 1866, he joined his family in Massillon, where they had moved during his absence. He first worked as a clerk in the manufacturing concern of the Russell Company and later as a teller in the Union National Bank.
In 1869, Mr. McClymonds moved with his family to Cleveland and served as assistant cashier in the Ohio National Bank, of which his father had been an organizer and later, a president. After three years he returned to Massillon and entered into partnership in the Russell Company in charge of financial management. It made horse-drawn farm machinery, traction engines, threshing machines, and saw mills, all of which were sold nationwide, as well as abroad. In time he became president of two companies that grew out of the original: The Russell Company and the Russell Engine Company. Other business interests were the German Deposit Bank, the Massillon Electric Company, and the Brown Lumber Company.
In 1890, Mr. McClymonds organized the Merchants’ National Bank, of which he was president until his death in 1912. To house his bank in 1909, he erected a five-story bank and office building on the Northwest corner of the Massillon Square. Known for many years as the McClymonds Building, it was Massillon’s first up-to-date office building. The bank went through a series of mergers until it is now a part of Society National Bank; the building was sold and is now known as the Massillon Building.
As previously noted, Mr. McClymonds had an early business connection with the Russell Company. In time, his connection became personal with the Russell family, for he married Flora Adele Russell on November 9th, 1870. Flora, born 1848, was the daughter of Nahum Russell, one of six Russell brothers who were all partners in the later Russell Company. Another Nahum Russell daughter was Anna Maria, who married Louis McClymonds, J. Walter’s brother, in 1876. As a consequence of the two sisters marrying two brothers, the two families were very close. When J. Walter and Flora’s daughters were teenagers, Aunt Annie was a frequent visitor at Five Oaks. The first bedroom at the top of the stairs came to be called Aunt Annie’s room.
In addition to being an industrialist and banker, Mr. McClymonds was a philanthropist, being naturally kindhearted. He was instrumental in establishing Massillon’s first public library. In 1897, Nahum Russell’s daughters, Flora and Anna, gave their parents’ home, directly across North Street from Five Oaks, for the purpose of a library. Also, in 1897, the will of George Harsh, a Massillon merchant, banker, and state senator, provided $10,000 for the same purpose. Thus, the first public library for Massillon came into being. It was called the McClymonds Public Library. Mr. McClymonds subsequently gave money for an endowment fund and for a building extension. He served as president of the Library Board of Trustees from its founding until his death. This library served the Massillon community until a new library was built in 1937 and was given the name Massillon Public Library.
Other philanthropies were gifts of two pieces of land to the city of Massillon. The larger became Sippo Park, and the smaller, Oak Knoll Park. Mr. McClymonds was an ardent Republican all of his life and was active in party affairs of government on both the state and national levels.
Mr. McClymonds was a sociable person, enjoying people. He was fun-loving and a prolific reader. The shelves in the cases in the library at Five Oaks still hold many of his books. One of his favorite authors was Shakespeare. The stone mantle above the main fireplace bears the last lines of “The Frost Spirit” by John Greenleaf Whittier. It reads:
“And gather closer the circle round
When the firelight dances high
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled fiend
As his sounding wings go by.”
The quotation on the mantel in the library is equally expressive. It comes from Longfellow’s “The Day Is Done,” one of several short poems in Songs. It reads:
“Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.”
Mr. McClymonds was injured in an automobile accident near Jamestown, New York, in 1909, and never fully recovered. He died October 5th, 1912. Mrs. McClymonds passed a couple of months later. They are buried in the Massillon Cemetery.
EDNA ELIZABETH McCLYMONDS
J. Walter and Flora McClymonds had three children: Russell, who died at birth; Edna Elizabeth, born August 5, 1879; and Ruth Esther, born May 3, 1884.
Edna attended Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, from 1895 until 1898, when she became engaged in November to Arvine Wales of Spring Hill Farm, Massillon. Their wedding took place October 25, 1900 at Five Oaks. Events of the wedding day are generally determined by the bride; Here things were different, for the bride had to hold off on the ceremony for none other than the President of the United States. William McKinley, and J. Walter McClymonds had been friends since their parents’ acquaintance in New Lisbon. The wedding was delayed for nearly an hour so that the President and Mrs. McKinley could witness the ceremony. The President and his Secretary of State Elihu Root had been in Mansfield, attending the funeral of John Sherman, a former U.S. Cabinet member. The Presidential train to Massillon was late in arriving.
The immediate wedding party, including the McKinleys, was served in the Billiard room. There is a photograph of the party with the bride groom that is always on display in this room.
The Wales family built a home on Spring Hill Farm 1903-1904, where they lived until 1923 when the house burned to the ground. In those years Edna with her husband made many important contributions to civic projects in Massillon. Their financial backing made way for two major building campaigns that provided construction of a YMCA facility and a new wing at the Massillon City Hospital. With more personal concern, Edna provided sewing machines to those women who lost machines in the 1913 flood and to others who could not afford one. She was instrumental in bringing to Massillon the first welfare service, known as “The Social Service League.” She served for a time on the league’s Board of Directors.
After the loss of their home to fire in 1923, the family bought a house in Ossining, New York. They already had a home at Saturday Cove, Northport Maine, where they spent their summers. In 1928 they built a home at Yeaman’s Hall, Charleston, South Carolina, as a place to spend the winters. They lived for a time in Washington, D.C. where Mr. Wales was in the Food Administration under Herbert Hoover. Later they lived in New York City; and it was there that Arvine died of a heart attack in 1935.
Subsequently Edna sold her Ossining and Charleston homes and lived in an apartment in New York City. She died February 3, 1955, at the home of her oldest daughter Mrs. Robert P. McLain in Massillon. Both She and her husband are buried in the Massillon Cemetery.
Besides Mrs. McLain, Edna’s children were Martha, Ruth McClymonds, Helen, Arvine Chafee, and Walter McClymonds. The latter son was killed in action in the invasion of Sicily in World War II.
Ruth McClymonds married Leslie Maitland in 1909 in Massillon. The Maitlands lived at different times in Chicago, Montana, and Colorado. Ruth had two children, Walter and Flora. She died September 15, 1958, in California.