From HISTORY OF THE PAN-HANDLE, West Virginia, 1879, by J. H. Newton, 
G. G. Nichols, and A. G. Sprankle. Page 270.  

Contributed by Linda Cunningham Fluharty.


WM. LEIGHTON, of the firm of J. H. Hobbs, Brockunier & Co., is a native of 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was born in 1833. He is the oldest son of William 
Leighton, a glass manufacturer, and a native of Belfast, Ireland, born 1808, who 
was a son of Thomas and Ann Leighton, nee Turnbull, of Newcastle, England. The 
grandfather of our subject was born in 1786, and died in 1850, coming to this 
country in 1826. The old gentleman came to this country to manage the New 
England Glass Factory at Cambridge and remained there to his death. The father 
to our subject was engaged, originally under his own father, at whose death he 
succeeded to the position of superintendent till 1858, and then went into 
farming in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1863 he came to Wheeling and was for six 
years a partner and practical manager in the house of J. H. Hobbs, Brockunier & 
Co., when he was succeeded by his son, the present subject of our sketch. The 
latter first gained an insight to the practical working of tho glass business 
under his father at the New England works, and then went to Harvard College 
where he graduated in the scientific department, about 1856. He then took his 
father's place in the New England Glass factory, remaining in the chemical 
department some eight or nine years. He came here in 1868 and again succeeding 
his father took an interest in the firm. He was married in 1850, to Mary Jane, 
only daughter of Joel Reed, then residing at Cambridge, by whom he has an 
interesting family of one son and daughter. Mr. Leighton, we should add, is a 
gentleman of superior literary and poetical attainments - alike excelling as an 
author and elocutionist. He retains the presidency of a very interesting and 
successful Shakesperian club held in our city (referred to at length elsewhere), 
and is the author of "The Sons of Godwin," and "At the Court of King Edwin," as 
also "Change; or the Whisper of the Sphinx." Still further has he contributed 
quite a number of excellent poems to the local press as also to metropolitan 
publications of accredited eminence.