USA > Virginia > Encyclopedia of Virginia biography, Volume V > Part 102
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ful merchant were in his case engrafted upon a character rooted deep in the integrity and justice which were his both by inheritance and breeding. His mother was one of that gentle-mannered type of women, tender and sympathetic, indulgently yielding in non- essentials, but like adamant in matters of right and wrong. A really wonderful woman she was, sweet and brave and strong of spirit. Though physically frail, she met so well the heavy responsibilities thrust upon her by her husband's death that her influence over her seven fatherless boys held them to sober and upright lives, and her ex- ample was a force for good in a circle wide beyond her family. Her sons went from her armored in sound principles of justice and honor from which they never departed.
Mr. Jones spent six years with Mr. Jor- dan in Luray, developing his business talents in an excellent school. The close confine- ment and irregular hours finally proved too much for a boy accustomed to the freedom and comforts of a well ordered home. At twenty-one he had hoped to take his patri- mony, which had been accumulating during his minority, and launch out into business for himself, but ill health changed all his plans and deferred his hopes. Life in the open was prescribed for him and, with his characteristic energy, he decided upon a leisurely horseback trip to Missouri. For six months or more he, with his brother Isaac as his companion, wandered through the then undeveloped Middle West, touch- ing here and there to greet old friends and kindred who had left Virginia to follow the western trail, and stopping at the various watering places in Virginia-loitering along as the spirit moved them. His description of the White Sulphur Springs of 1845 offers striking contrast to its present-day luxuries. Though at that time a favorite resort of people of wealth and fashion, it made little provision for the passing traveler, who was forced to be content with crude lodgings, bad service and indifferent food. The peo- ple who gave charm to the place had their own cabins, brought their own horses and servants, and provided for their own com- fort.
The good results from this trip were not immediately apparent. He reached home too spent in strength to even dismount un- aided from his horse. Utterly discouraged, he gave himself over to the care of his dearly-
beloved mother and to the luxury of her ministrations. He was unfit for work of any sort, but his pent-up energies made idle- ness an agony. He grew so restless that in desperation his mother taught him to knit. Interest in overcoming the difficulties pre- sented by bungling fingers, refractory needles, tangled threads and dropped stitches, sooth- ed his jangling nerves and enabled him to rest quietly where he best loved to be-at his mother's side. Under her careful atten- tion to his food, rest and recreation, he soon began to grow stronger and continued stead- ily to improve until he recovered sufficiently to undertake business again. Those months of companionship with his mother, while he was convalescing in his childhood home, were among his happiest memories, out of which grew his conception of what a true home should mean to its family.
Not yet feeling very sure of his health, his first venture was confined to a country store at Peaksville, Bedford county, where there was no need of close confinement, and where a partner shared the responsibility. Upon the fuller restoration of his health, he established himself alone in the hardware business in Bedford City (then Liberty), a venture so successful from the start as to bring quick recognition of his ability as a merchant. In 1855, thinking he saw wider opportunities in Salisbury, North Carolina, he transferred his hardware interests there, and conducted a most successful business until the beginning of the civil war.
He was opposed to secession, and had no military ambitions, no love for the excite- ment of a soldier's life, but true to the tra- ditions of his people, he was ready to quietly do his part in the struggle, at whatever cost. He closed out his business in Salisbury and returned to Virginia to follow the fortunes of his native State. When Virginia seceded, he enlisted as a private in the Second Vir- ginia Cavalry and served in the commissary department through the four years to Appo- mattox with the same stern adherence to duty, as he saw it. however harsh, that always characterized him. For him there was no glamour or romance in war, no appeal to ambition through military dis- tinction ; just plain hard duty demanded of his manhood, so faithfully performed that in spite of his modest place, it won from his commanding officers recognition of his ster- ling worth. General T. T. Munford writes
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of him: "He was a modest, unpretending soldier who did his whole duty and never thought it necessary to parade it. He was a man of broad business capacity, ready to do his duty and always in a pleasant way. He knew how to do things! He never sought place nor shirked duty. He never complained and was never complained of. He stood at his post and did his best and was a true Confederate soldier with a clean record, commanding respect by winning it." Lieutenant-Colonel W. F. Graves says of him, "He was a soldier who never shirked, a man that you could rely on in every way."
When the war was over, he turned his back upon that chapter of his life, honorably though he had lived it, and courageously faced the future. It is characteristic of him that in a country where time was marked by the "War," he rarely mentioned it, and his own brave drudgery in ranks he looked upon so as a matter of course that he felt no claim to place among Confederate heroes. He would be unable to recognize himself in the belligerent bronze twins, masquerading in soldier garb and accoutrements under his name, in the city where he sought so earn- estly to place at the service of the people the fruits of his success as a business man.
After Lee's surrender in April, 1865, until December of that year, he remained on his farm in Bedford county, gathering up the loose ends of his business and piecing to- gether the fragments the war had left of his capital. In December he formed a partner- ship with his two brothers-in-law, and they immediately began business as wholesale and retail hardware merchants in Lynch- burg. The foundation of his fortune thus laid was built up steadily and rapidly as the city recovered from the ravages of war and developed to an important business centre. The firm prospered greatly. The industry of its members, their fearless undertaking of the hardest physical labor, their careful conservation of every cent of their resources, made the name of Jones, Watts & Co. a synonym for hard work and close counting of cost. They had all just emerged from the hard school of the Confederate army, where they had known need of the simplest com- forts of life. They brought to their busi- ness a keen realization of the commercial truths that dollars at work are the most profitable of servants, and that dollars are made up of cents. They counted every
penny and demanded its full equivalent in every business transaction. The hardware business in Virginia is controlled to-day by men who learned it in their hard school of close economy and grilling work. Many are the stories told of the strict discipline main- tained among their employes, but in all ac- counts given of life in their establishment, of the stern demand for every hour of labor paid for, of the intolerance of waste and shirking of any sort, there stands out the voluntary and undisputed testimony that Mr. Jones was always just and fair. He de- manded what he paid for, but no more, and rendered with exactness all that was due from him. His was the recognized brain that made the fortunes of the firm. "Ask Brother George" was so invariably the answer to every business problem submitted to his partners that the expression became a fixed one in local parlance. Until his clear mind and cool judgment could be brought to bear upon a question, it remained un- answered. He recognized commercial life as a cruel game played with money as coun- ters and he played it without quarter to the incompetent, but he played it according to the rules laid down in good conscience, wherein honesty is the only policy and trick- ery and misrepresentation and unfair ad- vantage have no place. He played on a fair field and asked no favor. He was a mer- chant with a merchant's mind and a mer- chant's talent, but he dignified his occupa- tion of tradesman with an ethical perception of that exact and honest distribution of com- modities essential to the development of a complex community life for the greatest good of the greatest number.
As his business methods brought repu- tation to the firm of Jones Watts & Co., their trade stretched out through the State and made profitable the establishment of branch houses in Danville, Bedford City and Salem. His prominence in the mercantile world created many demands upon him out- side of his hardware business, and all that was conducive to the material welfare and prosperity of Lynchburg had his earnest support. The twenty years he was presi- dent of the National Exchange Bank were the years of its greatest growth. He was the first president of the Lynchburg Board of Trade, and connected with all the general business activities of the town, as well as the more important ventures of Lynchburg
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capital in other places. He was largely in- terested in the development of the Virginia coal mining industry, and one of the con- tributing sources of strength to that and many other industries of the State.
Mr. Jones was essentially a domestic man, and in the home circle he manifested an in- dulgent tenderness and a generosity in spending that proved his family to be the main-spring of his business energies. He was married, September 14, 1848, to Mary Frances Watts, of Bedford county, who in 1915 still survives him. The children of this marriage were: Nannie Isabelle Jones, born July 28, 1858, died July 25, 1859 ; Georgie Lee Jones, born October 8, 1864, died unmarried, January 5, 1884; Lily Frances Jones, born June 5, 1869, died unmarried, August 12, 1885.
His whole life and interest were bound up in these two daughters. It was for them he worked, that every opportunity might be given them, and their every reasonable wish gratified. For their sake he bravely bore his disappointment and tried to make up by double tenderness and sympathy for the want of true home atmosphere he so earn- estly desired for them. He guarded with a chivalry worthy a better cause the secret of the shadow that darkened his vision of a happy home and bore in silence the pain of knowing this vision would never brighten to realization.
With the sudden death of his eldest daugh- ter, Georgie, in 1884, his spirit began to- break. She was the "understanding" one, temperamentally in close accord with him, whose sympathy was his greatest comfort. Bereft of her, he poured the wealth of his starved affection upon the remaining daugh- ter. Soon after her sister's death her health gave way, and her father subordinated every- thing to the effort to restore her strength and save her life. One year and a half later she, too, died, at Carlsbad, Germany, where, as a last resort, they had taken her.
This blow blotted out all joy left in life for him. He was literally bowed down by his sorrow and the alert, erect, well-dressed business man so familiar on the streets of Lynchburg was gone, and in his place an old man passed, stooped and tragic-eyed. It was not only that his children were dead ; his incentive for living had died with them. The fruit of his hard years of business strug- gle for financial success was as chaff be-
cause it could never give happiness to those for whom he had toiled. His suffering was increased by his intense reserve and his sensitiveness to touch upon personalities. His early entrance into business had stopped his schooling at fifteen years of age. He lacked the self-confidence and ease of inter- course that come from standardized com- petition with youthful contemporaries in the formative years belonging to school and col- lege training, and the power of expression that cultural education gives. He was in- articulate except in the terse terms of busi- ness. All the finer spirit of him was im- prisoned thus within him except as express- ed in his unselfish devotion to his children.
He tried to move on in the old grooves, but the zest was gone with the inspiration of it. In June, 1887, less than two years after the death of his youngest daughter, the business of Jones, Watts & Co. was sold to associates, and the founders retired from active work. The depressing sense of failure weighed heavily upon Mr. Jones. He felt that his labor had been in vain, but his nervous energy and habits of close applica- tion to business pushed him out toward activity of some sort. His interest had been absorbed between business and liome, at a period when the South was so engrossed in building up its waste places that to the churches was left the administration of the people's philanthropy, through missionary societies and poor funds. The ideal of serv- ice in its broad application to community welfare had not then caught the South as it has to-day. Mr. Jones had had no train- ing or experience in the work of establish- ing great eleemosynary institutions, but within him there now stirred the desire for constructive community service-not hand to mouth help for the shiftless, offensive to his trained business sense that demanded exchange of values.
He first became interested in the question of employment for the idle woman-labor on the impoverished farms of the South, and turned his energies and capital to the estab- lishment of the Lynchburg Cotton Mills. of which he was the first president. After he accepted the presidency and undertook the active supervision of the organization and building, his residence was moved to the suburb of Lynchburg farthest from the mill to gratify his wife's feeling that she could no longer endure city noises. The roads were
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unpaved, there was none but horse-power available for transportation, and by the end of two years, the exposure incident to the daily horse-back ride so often made through miles of mud and cold had brought on severe trouble from rheumatism, which made him a cripple for the rest of his life. Notwith- standing the difficulties under which he lab- ored to establish this mill-perhaps because of them-he always regarded it with deep interest as representing a self-sustaining plant for the increase of thrift among the people, an enterprise profitable for both labor and capital. Considered by the attitude of the labor agitators of the present day toward labor conditions of women and chil- dren in the Southern cotton mills, it is diffi- cult to catch his view of the mill as a phil- anthropic enterprise. Yet it is true that his interest in it had its root in his desire to help people help themselves. Forced by his rheu- matism to give up active participation in the affairs of the mill, he resigned its presidency, but he always regarded it with affectionate interest as the first-born of his altruistic spirit.
He next became interested in the Ran- dolph-Macon system of schools and colleges. The neglect of his own possibilities for a cul- tural education, impressed upon him by the deep need he now felt for the consolations of a mind enriched by familiarity with the thought and lives of the world's great men of literature and history, turned his atten- tion to the educational needs of his city. His astute business mind saw the economic ad- vantage of a system which provided aca- demic and college training for both boys and girls, by a central college for each sex, and feeder preparatory schools scattered through the State. He is credited with having orig- inated the plan that resulted in the estab- lishment of the Randolph-Macon Woman's College at Lynchburg, and he was the first and one of the largest contributors to it. He later built the library room at the college and gave generous donations for books from time to time.
These things did not satisfy him, however. He had accumulated a large estate by his own efforts, guided by a brain of uncom- mon business acumen. He saw no logic in scattering it abroad again. In the days that now came to him, when his lameness forced him to inaction, he was haunted by his dead hopes in a life which seemed to him empty of all achievement that would live after him.
He grew to feel a responsibility to the money for which he had given the strength of his youth and manhood, an obligation to make it serve a good purpose, to represent in the place where he had made it the life of service he had now come to know was the only life that satisfies. The careful busi- ness habits of thrift and saving which had made possible his fortune forbade his fritter- ing it in small beneficences. He believed in the character-building value of individual effort and was little inclined to lavish gifts here and there. Out of this chaos of mind and spirit there gradually formed the fixed philosophy that the responsibility of confer- ring great public benefits rested upon men of means who, like himself, had no direct descendants. He determined to keep his estate intact to abundantly meet some need of the city where he had made his money.
The more time he had for introspection, the more keenly he realized his own depriva- tion of the pleasures to be found in the world of books when entered through the doors of school and college. Lynchburg now had the college for women he had helped to estab- lish, with tender thought of his own girls. The city's public schools were then boasted the best in the State. All this work was handicapped by need of a good library.
Thus was provided the "George Morgan Jones Memorial Library" of Lynchburg, a mere shell of his intended benefaction, strip- ped of all its riches. Had his will prevailed, every educational interest in Virginia would have been advanced by the establishment of a public library unequalled south of Wash- ington.
For his great conception of public serv- ice, for the sense of personal obligation back of it and for the struggle he made to meet it, he is due as much honor and more sym- pathy than if his great institution stood to- day giving tangible proof of his philan- thropic spirit through its active power for good in the educational development of his State. He must be honored as is the brave soldier, who, fighting against heavy odds, is fatally wounded before the battle is won.
William Carlyle Herbert. William Carlyle Herbert, an active and successful business man in New York, was born September 18, 1878, in Alexandria, Virginia, and is descended from forbears who have been long identified with the state of Virginia. The name ap- pears very early in the records of the Old
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Dominion, Richard Herbert having been sworn as a vestryman of Bristol Parish, No- vember 10, 1726. William Herbert, of a family located at Muchross Abbey on Lake Kilarney, Ireland, came to America in an early day, and located at Alexandria, Vir- ginia, where he was president of a bank and served as mayor. He married a daughter of John and Sarah ( Fairfax) Carlyle, and had children : John Carlyle, William, Margaret, who married Thomas, ninth Lord Fairfax ; Sarah, married Rev. Oliver Norris; Ann, died unmarried ; Eliza P., died unmarried ; Lucinda, died in childhood.
William (2) Herbert, second son of Wil- liam Herbert, resided at Shooter's Hill, in Fairfax Parish of Alexandria, and was a vestryman of the parish, whose book of rec- ords begins 1765. He was an attorney and an active Episcopalian. He married a sister of John P. Delaney, of Loudoun county, Virginia.
William W. Herbert, son of William (2) Herbert, was born 1823 at Shooter's Hill, and died November 3, 1901, at Alexandria. He was a wholesale grain dealer in Alex- andria, and served as postmaster of the city during President Cleveland's first adminis- tration, after which he retired from active business. He was a member of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church of Alexandria, and an ardent supporter of Democratic principles. He married Susan Munson Scott, a native of Warrenton, Virginia, who survived him, and is now living in Alexan- dria. Children : Ann Morson, Fanny Scott, Ellen Whiting, Sue Scott, wife of George Brook, a division engineer of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad ; William C., mentioned below ; Arthur, employed in a bank at Alexandria.
William Carlyle Herbert was educated in private schools and Blackburn's Academy. He graduated at George Washington Uni- versity (now called Columbian), in Wash- ington, D. C., with the degree of Bachelor of Laws, in 1900. Desiring to enter a field where opportunities were wide, he removed to New York City, and entered the office of Alexander & Colby, later joining the firm of Rollins & Rollins, leading attorneys of New York City, where he continued until 1909. In that year he was employed in a very im- portant diplomatic mission, being sent by the Windsor Trust Company and certain bankers of New York to negotiate a loan to the government of Guatemala, Central America. He had power of attorney, and
after remaining two and one-half years in the Central American republic, completed his mission successfully and returned to New York. He then established a general brokerage business in that city, which has continued to the present time under the style of Herbert, Robertson & Company, which now occupies handsome and spacious offices on Forty-sixth street. In August, 1913, Mr. Herbert visited London, England, in the interests of large undertakings, and returned to New York in March, 1914, hav- ing successfully accomplished his purpose. These excursions establish clearly the con- fidence in which he is held by many inves- tors and his ability as a business man. He is a member of the Virginia Society of New York, and of the City Club. He is an at- tendant of St. Thomas' Protestant Episco- pal Church, New York, presided over by Dr. Ernest Stires, and is a constant Repub- lican in political action. Mr. Herbert is un- married.
F. Graham Cootes. F. Graham Cootes, the well known artist, is one of those men whose works will live in the memories of their fellow men. His busy life is full of achieve- mients, and has awakened genuine admira- tion. While an artist to his very finger tips, Mr. Cootes has not neglected the business opportunities which have come to him, and may be considered a very successful man in every phase of life. He is of Scotch-Irish descent. The family from which he is de- scended settled in Rockingham county, Vir- ginia many years ago. His grandfather Samuel Cootes, was a well known politician and member of the state legislature, and his grandfather, Graham, descended from the Grahams of Scotland. of which the Earl of Montrose was the head-played a leading part in the social life of his day.
Benjamin Franklin, son of Samuel and Margaret (Graham) Cootes, was born at "Cootes' Store," Rockingham county, Vir- ginia, in 1830, and died in 1880. He read law in Virginia, and in Cumberland, Maryland, and was in active practice as an attorney prior to the outbreak of the Civil war. He enlisted in the Second Regiment, Virginia Volunteer Infantry, was advanced to the rank of adjutant, and then to that of captain. He was wounded at the battle of Mondcacy River, Maryland. After the war had been concluded he accepted a position with Hodges Brothers, a wholesale dry goods
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firm of Baltimore, Maryland. He was known to a host of friends as a model type of Christian gentleman. Mr. Cootes mar- ried Mary Elizabeth (born in Greenville, Virginia, April 19, 1843, died January 21, 1897), a daughter of John and Amanda (Tate) Newton, of Greenville, Virginia. They had two daughters, Emma Newton and Lillie Graham, who died in infancy, and two sons, F. Graham, whose name heads this sketch, and Captain Harry New- ton Cootes, of the Thirteenth United States Cavalry, who was born at Saunton, Vir- ginia, April 2, 1874. He was educated at the Staunton Military Academy and the Virginia Military Institute. At the out- break of the Spanish-American war he en- listed as a volunteer, and was assigned to the Fourth Regiment, Immunes. He was later commissioned second lieutenant in the same regiment, and when mustered out at the close of the war, enlisted in the volunteer service of the United States. He was assigned to the Thirty-fifth Regi- ment. Volunteer Infantry, and served with distinction in the Philippines for about two years with the rank of captain. He then re-enlisted in the United States regular army, being assigned to service in the Twelfth Cavalry, as first lieutenant, and after several years service was promoted to a captaincy. He served later as aide-de- camp to Governor-General Forbes, of the Philippines, to the Secretary of War, J. M. Dickenson, and to President Tucker and General Frederick Dent Grant at the James- town Exposition. Captain Cootes married, May 26, 1908, Mary Lou, daughter of Merritt T. and Elizabeth (Dickson) Cooke, of Nor- folk, Virginia.
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