. . . The Pruntys are of Irish stock. They came to America in Colonial times and settled in Virginia where John Prunty, the progenitor of the Ritchie county family, was born.
John Prunty was the founder of Pruntytown, in Taylor county, he having broken the primitive wilderness there at a very early day, and left this little "dot" on the map of West Virginia, which serves as fitting memorial to a prominent career.
Mr. Prunty served the people of his section in the Legislature at Richmond for Twenty consecutive years, and was a candidate for re-election, but was defeated by the small majority of but two or three votes. During his last candidacy, he told his opponent that he purposed to hang his hat on that one peg (which he had already used for twenty) for Twenty-one years; and when he was defeated, he went back to Richmond, and served as Seargant-at-Arms in the Legislature, thus occupying the same "hat-peg" for the twenty-one years as he had avowed.
The maiden name of his wife has been lost somewhere in the hazy past, but he was the father of six sons and one daughter, Roanna, who married George Arnold, an old land surveyor of Lewis, Braxton, and Gilmer counties, who patented the large tract of land now owned by Lewis Bennett, and also the tract that Mr. Bennett sold to the "Standard Oil Company."145