Valentine B. Horton, who died at Pomeroy, January, 1888, at the age of 86 years, was a native of Windsor, Vt. He was educated for the law, practised two years in Cincinnati, and then came to Pomeroy, where he engaged for the remainder of his life in mining and manufacturing. He did probably more than any other person to develop the coal, salt and iron industries of this region. He was a member of the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1850; represented the Republicans in Congress two terms, and in the last (the Thirty-seventh) was on the Committee of Ways and Means; was a delegate in 1861 to the Peace Congress in Washington; for over forty years was a trustee of the State University, and five times a member of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States. Financial reverses marred his declining years, much to the regret of people in this entire region of Ohio, wherein no man that ever lived was more beloved and respected. His name was a synonym for uprightness and humanity.
One of his daughters is the wife of Gen. John Pope, another of Gen. M. F. Force, while a son, Samuel Dana Horton, born at Pomeroy, January 16, 1844, educated at Harvard and Berlin, has attained a world-wide reputation by his monetary works. In 1876 he published a treatise on "Silver and Gold, and their Relation to the Problem of Resumption," the first of a series of works advocating the settlement of the silver question by a joint action of nations. This policy was adopted by Congress, and he has been identified with its advancement in Europe as delegate to the International Monetary Conferences of 1878 and 1881, as an author.