"Prominent Men of West Virginia"
George Wesley Atkinson, Alvaro Franklin Gibbens
Published by W. L. Callin, 1890 - West Virginia

CHARLES WELLS RUSSELL. 

HON. CHARLES W. RUSSELL was a distinguished man in 
Northwestern Virginia prior to the rebellion. He was a 
man of unusual brilliancy, as well as the possessor of
solid parts and great learning. He was distinguished both
in law and in politics, and possessed almost unlimited
influence among the people of his section of the State.
He died just as his sun had reached its noon, and left an
untarnished name as a heritage to his devoted family. 

Mr. Russell was born at Sistersville, Tyler county, Virginia, 
July 19, 1818. During his earlier years he received a common 
school education, and as he was growing into manhood he went 
to Wheeling and became a student at Linsly Institute, and later 
finished his general education by graduating from Jefferson 
College at Cannonsburgh, Pennsylvania. He subsequently 
studied law in the office of the late Z. Jacob, at Wheeling; and 
after being admitted to the Bar, practiced his profession in 
Wheeling, with unusual success, until the breaking out of the 
war in 1861. He then went South, and served two, if not three, 
terms in the Virginia Legislature. He was also a member of 
the House of Representatives in both the “Provisional” and the 
Permanent Congress of the Confederacy. In these Legislative 
and forensic bodies, as well as at the Bar, his great powers
as an orator and debater were demonstrated. In these particulars,
but few of the great Virginian’s of his time were his equal. 

At the end of the war he went to Canada, where he remained 
until the spring of 1866, when he settled in Baltimore, and re- 
sumed the practice of the law. He was becoming well estab- 
lished as a leading attorney at that distinguished Bar, when he 
died, November 22, 1867, leaving a widow and three sons. 

He married Margaret, daughter of the late Henry Moore, of 
Wheeling. 

Submitted by Linda Fluharty.