Dr. John Cox Hupp: Physician, Abolitionist, Educator, and Civic Reformer
Part One of a series examining the life and legacy of one of nineteenth-century Wheeling’s most influential citizens
Dr. John Cox Hupp occupied an extraordinary place in the history of Wheeling and West Virginia.
He was a respected physician, surgeon, medical writer, public-health official, abolitionist, Union supporter, civic leader, historian, and advocate for broader access to education. His career connected medicine with public service and placed him near the center of Wheeling’s transformation during the Civil War, West Virginia statehood, Reconstruction, and the growth of the city’s public institutions.
Hupp’s life deserves careful attention—and more than one article.
This first installment introduces the man, his education, medical career, public service, and reform work. Later installments will examine particular chapters of his legacy, including his advocacy for Black education, his leadership of Wheeling’s public-school system, and his contributions to medicine and public health.
Before beginning that story, however, one frequently repeated claim must be addressed.
Correcting the founding story without diminishing the man
A historical sketch published for the dedication of the new Lincoln High School in 1943 stated that the school had been founded in 1866 by Dr. Hupp and John Jackson. That statement was repeated in official Lincoln yearbooks and appears today in secondary accounts, including the Ohio County Public Library’s transcription of the 1943 souvenir program.
The library has accurately reproduced what the 1943 program said. The problem lies in treating that retrospective statement—written seventy-seven years after the school opened—as if it were a contemporary record of the founding. John Jackson is also credited with the founding of this school and this is also inaccurate.
The surviving evidence from 1866 and 1867 establishes a different institutional history.
Wheeling’s school for Black children was created by the Wheeling Board of Education as a municipal public school. The Board secured the building, employed the teachers, and supported the school through public taxation in the same governmental manner used to operate the city’s other schools.
A May 1, 1867, Freedmen’s Bureau report recorded that Wheeling possessed “a good School House well fitted up” and “a good School, taught by Mr. West a colored man.” It then explained exactly how the school had been financed:
“Money arising from their city school tax which is fairly divided with the colored people, has built the house and now pays the expenses of the school.”
The teacher was John W. West, whose own April 10, 1867, letter to Freedmen’s Bureau education superintendent John Kimball survives in the Smithsonian’s collection. Later that year, the Wheeling Board of Education also hired John’s brother, Robert West. The two brothers taught together in the public school that would eventually become Lincoln School.
These contemporary sources leave no doubt about the institutional founder: the school was established by the Wheeling Board of Education and supported with public tax revenue.
No presently identified contemporary record demonstrates that Dr. Hupp personally founded it.
That does not mean Hupp was unimportant to Black education. On the contrary, his later leadership and advocacy were consequential and deserve to be documented on their own evidence. He should be remembered as a champion and reformer without assigning him a founding role that belongs to the public Board of Education—and without overlooking the Black educators who actually opened and operated the school.
Correcting the record does not diminish Dr. Hupp.
It allows us to recognize what he truly accomplished.
From a Pennsylvania farm to the medical profession
John Cox Hupp was born on November 24, 1819, on his family’s farm near West Alexander, Pennsylvania. He was one of four sons of John Hupp Jr. and Ann Cox Hupp.
His family had deep roots in the borderlands of Pennsylvania and western Virginia. Members of the Hupp and Cox families had participated in the region’s settlement, frontier conflicts, and the American Revolution.
The prosperous family farm allowed the young Hupp to pursue an education at a time when advanced schooling remained unavailable to most Americans. He attended West Alexander Academy, a private school for boys, and then Washington College, now Washington & Jefferson College. He graduated in 1844.
Hupp subsequently studied medicine under Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne of Washington, Pennsylvania, before attending Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He received his medical degree in 1847 and earned a Master of Arts degree from Washington College the following year.
His education was unusually extensive for the period. He possessed bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees and later became multilingual.
Just as importantly, his medical apprenticeship exposed him to a philosophy of service that would shape his public life.
The influence of Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne
Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne was more than Hupp’s medical instructor.
LeMoyne was an abolitionist, reformer, philanthropist, and advocate for oppressed people. He supported educational opportunities for Black citizens, contributed to public libraries and colleges, and participated in the national antislavery movement.
The two physicians remained friends and professional colleagues throughout their lives.
According to the biographical account published in the Upper Ohio Valley Historical Review, LeMoyne’s values strongly influenced Hupp’s later commitment to education and equal opportunity.
That influence offers important context for understanding Hupp’s civic work. His concern for education did not suddenly appear when he joined Wheeling’s school board. It developed through his own experience as a highly educated man and through his relationship with a physician who viewed medicine, learning, and social reform as connected responsibilities.
LeMoyne demonstrated that a doctor’s obligation could extend beyond treating individual patients. A physician could also confront the social conditions that limited health, knowledge, freedom, and opportunity.
Hupp carried elements of that example to Wheeling.
A young physician arrives in Wheeling
Dr. Hupp began practicing medicine in Wheeling on December 16, 1847.
Wheeling was then still part of Virginia and had a population of only a few thousand residents. During Hupp’s lifetime, it would grow into one of the region’s most important industrial, commercial, political, and transportation centers.
On March 1, 1853, Hupp married Carolene Louise Todd at First Presbyterian Church. She was the eldest daughter of Dr. Archibald S. Todd, one of Wheeling’s pioneer physicians.
The couple lived for approximately forty years in a house at Fifth and Quincy streets, now identified as 61 Fourteenth Street. They had six children, one of whom died in infancy. Their surviving children entered medicine, business, and prominent regional families.
Their son Francis LeMoyne Hupp followed his father into medicine and surgery. He later established the Hupp Medical Library and helped organize the West Virginia division of the American Cancer Society.
Medicine and public service became enduring parts of the Hupp family legacy.
A physician with a national reputation
Dr. Hupp built a successful regional medical practice while also contributing to the professional development of medicine.
He wrote for medical journals, published surgical papers, studied vaccines, and discussed the use of chloral hydrate as a sedative in the treatment of mania. He became known not only as a practicing physician but also as a medical scholar.
His professional responsibilities extended far beyond private patients. He served as physician for:
The Ohio County Almshouse and Jail
The United States District Court
The Children’s Home of Wheeling
He was appointed a United States examining surgeon and served for approximately fifteen years as West Virginia’s state vaccine agent. He also became treasurer of both the state and Ohio County medical societies.
When Wheeling’s new City Hospital opened in 1890, Hupp served on its first consulting staff. The institution later became known as Ohio Valley Medical Center.
His work with the almshouse, jail, Children’s Home, vaccination program, and public hospital demonstrates the breadth of his medical service. Hupp practiced in private homes and professional offices, but his responsibilities also brought him into institutions serving children, prisoners, impoverished residents, and the wider public.
That record places access to medicine near the center of his legacy.
Building West Virginia’s medical profession
In 1867, Dr. Hupp and his father-in-law, Dr. Archibald S. Todd, were among the founders of the West Virginia State Medical Association.
The organization helped create a professional network for physicians in the young state and encouraged the exchange of medical knowledge.
Hupp also held offices in the American Medical Association. In 1875, he represented the United States at a European medical gathering in Brussels. The following year, he served on the Executive Committee of the International Medical Congress in Philadelphia.
Through his practice, publications, professional offices, and participation in national and international medical meetings, Hupp became one of West Virginia’s most prominent nineteenth-century physicians.
His career also reflected a broader vision: medical knowledge should circulate, professional standards should improve, and public institutions should apply scientific learning for the benefit of communities.
Unionism, abolitionism, and West Virginia statehood
Dr. Hupp and his wife were strong Unionists during the Civil War. They supported Abraham Lincoln, joined the emerging Republican Party, and opposed slavery.
Those commitments were particularly important in Wheeling.
The city became the seat of the Restored Government of Virginia and played a central role in the movement that produced West Virginia statehood in 1863. Wheeling briefly served as the new state’s capital and became a laboratory for building public institutions that western Virginians believed had been neglected under the government at Richmond.
Although Hupp was not primarily a politician, he was elected president of the Ohio County Board of Supervisors and served from 1863 through 1866.
These were foundational years for West Virginia and for Wheeling’s local government. Roads, bridges, schools, jails, and other public services required organization and investment. Citizens were attempting to create what the historical review described as a better and more democratic “new commonwealth.”
Hupp participated in that work while continuing his medical career.
After completing his service with the Board of Supervisors, he returned to medical practice full time in 1866.
A lifelong commitment to education
Hupp’s interest in education reflected both his personal experience and his reform principles.
He had benefited from a level of education unavailable to most people of his generation. He also understood that Virginia’s older educational system had largely favored the children of affluent families who could afford private instruction.
Public education promised something fundamentally different: education supported by the community and made available as a public responsibility.
In 1873, Hupp was elected president of the board governing the Wheeling Independent School District. He served in that position until 1879.
This is where his documented educational leadership becomes especially important.
During his tenure, Wheeling’s school system pursued several notable reforms:
Improvements to elementary education for Black children
Free evening instruction for adults and immigrants
Permission for women teachers and principals to receive equal pay and professional rank
German-language instruction
Industrial-drawing courses designed to support Wheeling’s manufacturing economy
These reforms reveal a broad conception of educational access.
Hupp’s school-board leadership addressed children and adults, Black students, immigrants learning English, women educators seeking professional equality, and workers preparing for an industrial economy.
This is a more meaningful and supportable legacy than the unsupported claim that he personally founded the Black school in 1866.
He did not need to be its founder to become one of its influential advocates.
Hupp and Black education
By the time Hupp became president of the school board in 1873, Wheeling’s Black public school had been operating for approximately seven years.
John and Robert West had taught there. The school had been inspected by federal and state officials. Municipal school-tax revenue had paid its expenses. Its pupils had attracted favorable attention for their behavior and scholarship.
Hupp inherited responsibility for an existing public institution.
The Upper Ohio Valley Historical Review credits his 1873 administration with improving elementary education for Black children. That role is historically plausible and consistent with his documented leadership of the school system.
The distinction is essential:
Founding means creating and establishing the institution.
Advocacy and improvement mean strengthening an institution that already exists.
The Wheeling Board of Education performed the first role in 1866.
Hupp’s significance lies in the second.
Future installments in this series will examine what Hupp did during his school-board presidency, what changes can be traced directly to his leadership, and how his actions affected Black students and educators within a system that remained segregated.
A historian as well as a physician
Hupp also understood the importance of preserving history.
He belonged to the West Virginia Historical Society and wrote frequently about the early history of the western Virginia and Pennsylvania border region. His work appeared in local newspapers and in historical publications.
On behalf of the American Medical Association, he wrote biographies of prominent deceased West Virginia physicians. Many of those accounts were subsequently reproduced in local and national newspapers.
That work makes the correction of his own biography especially appropriate.
Hupp believed historical lives should be documented. Honoring that principle requires us to distinguish evidence from commemoration and fact from tradition—even when correcting a story repeated in respected institutions.
A more accurate biography does not leave him with a smaller legacy.
It reveals a more complex and consequential one.
His final years and legacy
Dr. Hupp retired in 1893 and moved into a new residence at 59 Fourteenth Street, next to the home in which his family had lived for four decades.
His son Francis assumed the medical practice.
John Cox Hupp died on November 19, 1908, five days before what would have been his eighty-ninth birthday. At the time of his death, he was reportedly West Virginia’s oldest living Freemason and was remembered as one of Wheeling’s most respected physicians and citizens.
His long life had encompassed remarkable change.
When he began practicing in Wheeling, the city remained part of Virginia and slavery was still legal. By the time he died, West Virginia had existed for forty-five years, Wheeling possessed an extensive public-school system, medicine had become increasingly professionalized, and the city had grown into a major industrial center.
Hupp had participated in many of those transformations.
Remembering the real Dr. Hupp
Historical figures do not need legends to make them important.
Dr. John Cox Hupp’s documented life provides more than enough reason to remember him.
He was:
A distinguished physician and surgeon
A medical writer and scholar
A founder of West Virginia’s statewide medical association
A public-health official and longtime state vaccine agent
A physician serving children, prisoners, and impoverished residents
A Unionist and abolitionist
A participant in the civic work surrounding West Virginia statehood
A public-school leader
An advocate for educational opportunity
A supporter of reforms benefiting Black children, adult learners, immigrants, and women educators
A historian who helped preserve the stories of his region and profession
The claim that he founded Wheeling’s Black school should be treated as commemorative lore, not established fact. Its repetition in the 1943 Lincoln dedication program and subsequent yearbooks demonstrates how institutional memory can preserve a story without supplying contemporary evidence for it.
The actual founding belongs to the Wheeling Board of Education, which established and financed the school as a public institution. The first classroom leadership belongs to John W. West, later joined by his brother Robert.
Dr. Hupp’s rightful place comes afterward—but it remains important.
He became a powerful public-school leader and a documented advocate for improving educational access. His broader career connected medicine, public health, education, abolitionism, and civic responsibility.
That is the Dr. Hupp this series will explore.
Not a figure enlarged by an unsupported founding story, but a consequential man whose real achievements are more compelling than the legend.
-T
Sources and research notes
Principal biographical source: Archibald Todd Hupp IV, “Dr. John Hupp, M.D.,” Upper Ohio Valley Historical Review 29, no. 2 (2006), pp. 3–8. The article originated as part of a monograph prepared for a Hupp family exhibition at West Virginia Independence Hall in June 2006. As a family-authored secondary account, it is valuable for biographical detail but should be checked against contemporary records when making specific institutional claims.
Source of the traditional founding account: “Historical Sketch of Lincoln School,” originally published in the Souvenir Program, Dedication of the New Lincoln High School, Wheeling, W. Va., December 5, 1943, and transcribed by the Ohio County Public Library. The 1943 program states that Dr. Hupp and John Jackson founded the school in 1866. Later Lincoln yearbooks repeated this tradition. These retrospective sources document the existence of the tradition but do not independently establish its historical accuracy.
Contemporary federal evidence: Monthly report concerning schools for Black children, Washington, May 1, 1867, Freedmen’s Bureau records. The report states that Wheeling’s city school tax built the Black schoolhouse and continued to pay its expenses. It identifies the teacher as “Mr. West.” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal.
John W. West correspondence: John W. West to John Kimball, Wheeling, April 10, 1867, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands education records, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, image NMAAHC-007675727_00732.
The Foundation’s conclusion distinguishes between the institution’s establishment by the Wheeling Board of Education in 1866 and Hupp’s later, documented leadership of the school system beginning in 1873. Evidence that Hupp advocated informally for Black education before joining the school board would be historically valuable if discovered, but advocacy should not be equated with institutional founding without contemporary documentation.
The historical term “colored school” is retained only when identifying the institution by its period designation or quoting a source. Elsewhere, this article uses Black or African American.
