History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 2, Part 93

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"Jim" Evans, as everyone among his friends knows him, has been identified with business of one kind or another in Preston County since early manhood. He was born in Allegheny City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, January 4, 1880, son of Owen and Mary A. (Evans) Evans, both natives of Wales, but not related. They were married in Pittsburgh, where Owen Evans was a puddler in the steel mills. He left that work, and when his son Jim was seven years of age settled on a farm at Glade Farms in Preston County, where he died in January, 1893, at the age of forty. His widow is now living at the home of her son Erasmus at Terra Alta, he being the second of her four children. The others are: Mayross R., who died at Pittsburgh; Anna, wife of Isaiah Umble, of Terra Alta; and Owen C., a farmer at the old homestead at Glade Farms.

Jim Evans grew up on that homestead from the year 1887. There were country schools in the vicinity, but the few days he attended them did not greatly influence his intellectual growth or future career. He reached manhood with the ability hardly to write his name legibly. Up to the age of twenty-two he remained with his mother. In the meantime he had acquired some practical skill in more lines than one, was able to do blacksmith and carpenter work, and several winter seasons he spent in the woods, logging, hauling props and ties. He also dug the stone and burned it and scattered the resulting product of ten thousand bushels of lime over the home farm.

His first experience away from home was at Markleysburg, Pennsylvania, where he engaged in the buggy, harness and farm implement business. The capital for this enterprise he had acquired as a logger and as a teamster for Lloyd Lininger. That arduous work ended with a siege of pneu- monia, and in the early stages of his convalescence he weighed seventy-five pounds and had the encouraging assurance of three doctors that he would never get well. He took six hun- dred dollars to Markleysburg and with it bought a small stock of buggies, implements and harness, and borrowed two hundred dollars in cash to erect a business house on a lot he leased from a church. At Markleysburg he remained twenty-one months. He left there with twenty-eight hun- dred dollars and a good pair of horses, and for six months following he was on the road selling harness and hardware for the Floyd & Bohr Company of Louisville. He covered thirty-five counties of West Virginia on horseback. The third stage of his business adventure was returning to his first love, lumbering. With Lloyd Lininger as a partner he engaged in the sawmill business near Fearer in the Hazelton locality. The firm took a contract from Cupp & Lakle to chop, log, saw and deliver on the car at Friendsville, Mary- land, 5,000 feet of lumber of various grades and dimensions. After ninety days the firm had put in $1,500.00 without prospect of any return. At this juncture Mr. Evans bought out his partner, and, going it alone, in three months he cleared two thousand dollars. He sold out the timber he had acquired, also the mill, and had about twenty-five hundred dollars as working capital to connect with his next enterprise.

Perhaps it is only due justice to say that Mr. Evans had a natural talent for business. As a youth he learned the art of auctioneer, and while at Markleysburg he cried many sales all over that section of country, including the auction- ing of ladies' boxes at all church and other entertainments. It was a business into which he naturally fitted, and he has never given it up entirely, even now officiating on the auction block. Twice a year he holds a large auction of commodities acquired through nis business deals, and these sales account for thousands of dollars in the volume of gross profits of the firm.

incidentally Mr. Evans began trading horses when a boy. There was a period of time, following his lumber enterprise above noted, when he made horse trading his chief business. He traveled from town to town, taking in all the county fairs, and followed the National Pike from Wheeling to Baltimore, traded horses from Barbour County, West Vir-

ginia, to Pittsburgh, selling them at auction. Once wle attending the Tunnelton camp meeting he made thirty-to trades in a single day, though not making a profit in evy transaction. The year of his horse trading he cleared fifin hundred dollars, and then abandoned it as a settled busin's, though it has reappeared as a diversion from time to tie. · At about this stage in his fortunes he went back to vit his mother, whom he found alone on the farm burdened vh the duty of milking four cows. She had saved up cren enough to keep her son Jim churning with an old fashio d churn for four days. Becoming disgusted, he asked 18 mother why she kept so many cows, and the reply was tit they and their care afforded her her chief pleasures. e could not understand this philosophy, and while she is not looking he put his feet behind the churn and shod it off the high porch into the yard, and a few hours ler was leaving home to find problems that were not so perplex.3.

About that time he decided he needed an education. 18

first recourse was to Morgantown, seat of the univers .. He knew of the institution there because he had spent fift a hundred dollars of the money he had made at logging o send his brother through school. While aware of his ca ignorance, he did not reveal it to the professor in char;, when he paid his tuition, and he was assigned courses involv g textbooks and Greek history, mathematics and Engla grammar. None of his varied previous experiences furnisld him a key to these books, and telling the professor to kyo his tuition he sought educational opportunities elsewho. Profiting by this experience, when he presented himself o the head of the Mountain State Business College at Parke burg he made a complete confession of a profundity of 1g .- rance and humbly requested that he be given an opportuny to learn what children at the beginning of their schoot e were taught. While he could not arrange to enter regular, in the absence of a common school education, Mr. Men the commercial teacher, permitted him to sit near his du and come to Lim with his problems when other pupils we away, so as not to be aware of the mistakes and crudite of the new pupil. Following that suggestion he reman! in the school four months, and at the end his teacher com] mented him by saying that he had made more advancemt than any other pupil in the school.

Almost twenty-eight years of age when he left busing college, Mr. Evans returned to the road for the Woodwa Manufacturing Company of Parkersburg, selling harne, hardware, buggies and wagons. He covered more than bl of the counties of the state by rail and team and work! for the company from March 1, 1909. He then changed 3 business, engaging with H. J. Speicher & Company of Ad dent, Maryland, organizing a stock company and selling pu bred stallions. It was a proposition testing his selling abil? to the utmost, but from the time he started, on October } 1909, he sold and delivered twelve head of horses, represent; a total valu of $30,000.00, by S ptember 13, 1.10. WE with the Woodward Company his salary was seventy-t! dollars a month and expenses. Mr. Speicher doubled th; salary with expenses, and the first month he was raised two hundred dollars, the second month was given anotl fifty dollars, and the third month he worked at three hundr dollars and expenses, getting his salary whether he sold. horse or not.

Leaving Mr. Speicher Mr. Evans came to Terra Alta October 17, 1910, and put in a stock of horses, buggies a harness, operated a livery service until July, 1911, and a. bought, sold and traded horses, harness, buggies and wago). finally selling out to C. W. Johnson after clearing $2,20 Then followed a period of trading and trafficking, and got rid of everything he had but a set of heavy team harne which he traded for a horse, the horse for a blacksmith shc and thirty days later exchanged it for a buggy, harness al implement business at Bruceton Mills, and this in turn traded to Mr. Thomas for his farm, and that for part of t farm he now owns near Terra Alt .

All these adventures and experiences led Mr. Evans in what seems to be his permanent field. In January, 1912, . signed a Ford contract giving him the agency of Prest County. After selling seven cars he had a disagreeme with the company. But in the fall of 1912 he made a ne

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HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

ntract, purchasing fifty Ford ears, but instead he sold zhty-seven and also taught the owners how to drive them, .pt his . wn books, and with the assistance of one mechanic berated the garage which he had established in 1912 in a aning mill condueted by Mr. Freeland. With this initial ceess he has never lost the complete confidence of the Ford bmpany, and this is a big business at Terra Alta, dealing in le Ford car and truek. Ile built the Evans Garage at brra Alta in 1914, a structure of briek and hollow tile with frontage of fifty feet and a depth of ninety feet, and almost ree stories high. In 1917 he built an addition 25×90 feet, ·o stories high, and his varied enterprise has required still her building space in Terra Alta. In 1916 he opened a rage in Oakland, taking the Ford ageney for Garrett bounty, Maryland. He remodeled a building for a garage, Id it two years later, and is now planning the erection of a lendid big garage there.

The measure of his business success can only be briefly "tlined. In 1920 the volume of business amounted to $5,000.00. During 1921 six hundred Ford cars were sold rough his ageney and fifty-two Fordson Tractors, besides ·er seven hundred horses and a thousand cattle, the total lume of this business amounting to fully a million dollars. ver forty people are on his pay roll, and it requires five ousand dollars a month to meet salaries and expenses.

Mr. Evans has been too busy for interests outside these iefly described herein. He is a layman in the orders of e Knights of Pythias, the D. O. K. K., the Independent rder of Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World. hile at Markleysburg, Pennsylvania, in March, 1904, he et Miss Emma B. Thomas. Twelve years later, on April 15, '16, they were happily married. In the meantime Miss homas, who had completed her education in the Pennsyl . nia Normal School at California, had taught in the rural hools in Uniontown and five years in Homestead, Pennsyl- nia. She is a daughter of Isaac and Elvira (Frazee) homas, whose other surviving children are Charles Thomas d Mrs. Effie Bender. The first child of Mr. and Mrs. vans was Georgie Marie, who was born May 19, 1918, d died May 3, 1919. On October 23, 1921, twin babies, y and Ruth, were born.

HARRY WALTERS GEE was an enthusiastic student of verything connected with electricity, and soon after leaving ;heel and before reaching his majority he opened the nall shop which by subsequent development has become a Gea Electric Company, a manufacturing and jobbing oncera that now does business over half a dozen states.

Mr. Gee, who is secretary and general manager of this mpany, was born at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, April 12, 880. The grandfather, George Gee, was a native of Not- ngham, England, and as a young man came to America nd settled near New Richmond in Clermont County, Ohio. a later years he became one of the large farm owners of at section, and lived there on his farm until his death. le married Anna Gregg, a native of Pennsylvania, and of ennsylvania Dutch ancestry. She also died on the home- ead at New Richmond. These grandparents had five chil- ren: Raymond, who was a Washington wheat farmer and ied near Spokane in 1913, at the age of sixty-eight; Maria, ife of Andrew Castlen, still in business as a general mer- ant at New Richmond; Charles E .; Annie, of New Rich- ond, whose first husband was Benjamin Reece, a farmer, nd she is now the wife of George Ebaugh, also a farmer; ud Horace, a farmer near New Richmond.

Charlea E. Gee was born on the farm near New Richmond 1848, was reared there, and as a young man went to ittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and entered tha service of the inger Manufacturing Company. Later he was in the serv- e of the sama company at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and 1 1885 was transferred to Wheeling as his headquarters, here ha continued as general superintendent of the Singer [anufacturing Company for thirty-five years. During his ist years he was connected with the Gee Electric Company, nd died at Columbus, Ohio, in November, 1916. He was a publican, but outside of his home and business his un- agging interest was in the First Presbyterian Church of Wheeling. It was largely through his work and support

that tha Eighteenth Street Mission of that church enjoyed ita prestige as an instrument for good in the city. Ilo way connected with the mission thirty five years and was super intendent fifteen years. Charles E. Gee married Lueida MeFarland, who was born at New Richmond in Clermont County, Ohio, in 1847, and is still living at Wheeling. Of her five children the oldest, a daughter, and the youngest, a son, died at birth. The other three nre: Eugene C., who was a first-class sergeant in the Signal Corps in the Porto Riean campaign in the Spanish.American war, and is now an electrical engineer with the Pacific States Telephone Company at San Francisco; Minnie Ellsworth is the wife of Dr. Charles F. Bowen, an X-Ray specialist at Columbus. Ohio; and Harry Walters is the youngest.

Harry Walters Gee was about five years of age when the family removed to Wheeling, and he received his eduentinn in the city schoola, graduating from high achool in ]-96. The following two years he was employed by the George K. MeMechen Company of Wheeling. Then, at the age of eighteen, he opened a very small shop for electrical supplies at 1124 Market Street. At the beginning he did practically all the work of the business, but his enterprise had the promise of great development in it, and before long his. shop was crowded and he removed to 1126 Market Street. later to 1215 Main Street, where he took over an adjoining storeroom at 1217, and in 1910 established the business nt its present location on Main and Fourteenth streets. The Gre Eleetrie Company was incorporated March 3, 1909. The officers are: Otto Schenk, president; Henry G. Stifel. vice president; while Mr. Gee is aeeretary and general man- ager and A. A. Wheat is treasurer. In its manufacturing and other departments the company employs seventy five men, and as jobbers and manufacturers the products are shipped throughout Pennsylvania. West Virginia. Ohin, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland.

Besides the responsibility of directing this businesa Mr. Gee is a director in the Fidelity Investment Association of Wheeling. He is a director of the West Virginia State Fair Association, of the Wheeling Country Club, and is vice president and director of the Industrial Relations As sociation. He is a member of the Fort Henry Club and the Old Colony Club. of the First Presbyterian Church and in politie is a republican. Ile was a leader in war movements in Wheeling. being a member of the Pershing Limit Club, and helped in all the drives for funds for Liberty Loan. Red Cross and other causes. He received a medal of honor for selling Liberty Bonds.

Mr. Gre owns a fine modern home, with well-kept grounds. on Stamm's Lane, National Road. Wheeling. He married at Wheeling in 1906 Miss Elizabeth A. Stifel, daughter of Louis C. and Elizabeth (Stamm) Stifel, both representing old and prominent families in this section. Her father was a partner in J. L. Stifel & Sons, calice manufacturers, one of the big industries of Wheeling. Mrs. Gee is n grad- uate of the Pennsylvania College for Women at Pittsburgh. Five children were horn to their marringe; the first, a daughter, dying at birth; Charles Louis died at the age of sixteen months; Eleanor was horn August 24, 1915; William Stifel on August 26, 1917; and Harry W., Jr., on October 8, 1919.

DANIEL HOWARD COPPOCK is a stock and hond broker, with headquarters st Columbus, Ohio, but now has a branch office and is completely identified with the business life of Wheeling.

Mr. Coppoek, who was a first lieutenant of envalry during the World war, was born at Dayton, Ohio, February 1. 157s. His grandfather, Joseph Coppoek, spent all his life nt Ludlow, Ohio, where he owned and operated stone quarries. Isaae Coppock, father of the Wheeling business man, was born at Ludlow in 1835, was renred and married there, became a farmer, and from about 1858 for half a century continued farming and the operation of stone quarries at Dayton. After 1908 he lived retired at Ludlow, where he died in 1918. Ha was a republican, and a very faithful member of the Church of the Friends. Isaac Coppock mar- riad Martha Ellen Hutchins, who was born in Dayton in 1845, and died at Liverpool, Ohio, in 1905.

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HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

Daniel Howard Coppock, only child of his parents, was educated in the public schools of Dayton and prepared for college in the high school at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he graduated in 1898, and then continued in the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, through the Sophomore year. Mr. Coppock for a number of years was a very successful hotel man. Beginning in 1900, he was clerk in the Cadillac Hotel at Detroit. For two years, beginning in 1905, he was proprietor of the Cook House at Ann Arbor, for six years conducted the Wagner Hotel at Sidney, Ohio, and from 1913 to 1916 was proprietor of the Jefferson Hotel at Portland, Oregon. Then returning to Ohio, he was pro- prietor of the Park Hotel at Coshocton from 1916 to 1918.

Mr. Coppock joined the colors in August, 1918, was trained at Camp Sherman, Ohio, for six months, was com- missioned a first lieutenant in cavalry, then transferred South, spending two days at Camp Gordon, Georgia, six months at Camp Mcclellan, Alabama, three months at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, one month at Fort Riley, Kansas, and was then returned to Camp Mcclellan, where he received his honorable discharge August 3, 1919. He is still a first lieutenant of cavalry in the Reserve Corps.

From November 1, 1919, Mr. Coppock was engaged in business with main offices at Columbus, Ohio, until March 1, 1921, when he opened a branch office at Wheeling in the Board of Trade Building. He is associated with Claud Meeker, and they do a general stock and bond brokerage business.

Mr. Coppock is a republican, a member of the Episcopal Church, and in Masonry is affiliated with the Lodge at Jacksonville, Alabama, and the Knights Templar Com- mandery at Piedmont, Alabama, and also the Scottish Rite Consistory of Alabama. He is a member of Coshocton Lodge of Elks.

In 1900, at Detroit, Mr. Coppock married Dorothy M. Burke, who was born at Ada, Michigan, and finished her education at St. Mary's Academy at Monroe, that state. Mr. and Mrs. Coppock have one son, John B., born June 25, 1903, now in the senior class of the high school at Columbus, Ohio.

CHARLES H. WATKINS, JR. Many industries and com- mercial establishments have contributed to the growing prestige of Wheeling as one of the leading business cities of the Ohio Basin, and among them is Watkins & Com- pany, proprietors of the largest furniture store between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. The president of this company is C. H. Watkins, Jr., who has been in business at Wheeling ever since he left school.

The present company is successor to and includes the history of eight successive retail stores at Wheeling. The oldest of these was the Palace Furniture Company, Incor- porated, in 1896, while in the same year three employes of House & Hermann organized a partnership under the name White, Handley & Foster. C. H. Watkins, Jr., became in- terested in this partnership in 1900, at which time the firm became Foster & Watkins. The following year he acquired Mr. Foster's interests and incorporated C. H. Watkins, Jr., & Company. This in turn in 1903 consolidated with the Palace Furniture Company, under the management of Mr. Watkins. The Palace Furniture Company in 1917 ac- quired the furniture business of W. F. Sharbaugh & Sons Company. Another important department was added in 1917 with the purchase of the clothing store of Walker Allen & Son. In 1918 the Palace Furniture Company ac- quired the business of House & Herrmann, an old Wheeling business firm which then ceased to exist. The new combina- tion was known as Watkins, House & Herrmann, and more recently, to avoid confusion, the corporate name of Watkins & Company was adopted. This is now not only the out- standing furniture business in the state, but is a complete department store, occupying a large frontage at 1302-1308 Main Street. The official personnel of the company are: C. H. Watkins, Jr., president; Marsh Watkins, vice presi- dent; J. Wilson White, secretary-treasurer.

Charles Hamilton Watkins, Jr., was born on Wheeling Island, March 7, 1871. Watkins is a very old American family of Welsh ancestry. There were three brothers, named

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego Watkins, who came fr Wales and settled in the colonies of Delaware and Mai land, whence their descendants have scattered to all pa. of the country. The great-great-grandfather of the Whe ing business man was Peter Watkins, who was born Delaware, December 30, 1712. During the Revolutiona war he held letters of marque from the Continental Congre He was killed on board a United States Man o' War, Ap 12, 1788. His son, Thomas Watkins, was born March 1771, and was an early pioneer of Southern Ohio, locati in Guernsey County, where he followed farming until 1 death on August 7, 1844. On November 2, 1802, he marri Elizabeth Worley, who was born in Belmont County, Oh October 12, 1786, and died in Guernsey County, March ] 1831. Their son, John Watkins, grandfather of C. ; Watkins, Jr., was born in Guernsey County, Ohio, Novemb 11, 1804, and as a young man settled on Wheeling Islan thus having a home convenient to his business as a stear boat engineer and river pilot. The last years of his life ] was toll taker at the old bridge between Bridgeport a Wheeling Island. He died at the age of seventy-two. D cember 12, 1828, John Watkins married Sarah Dillo Hunter, who was born December 12, 1800, and died ( Wheeling Island in 1866.

Charles H. Watkins, Sr., was born ou Wheeling Islar March 21, 1841, and spent all his life in Wheeling. He wi an accountant, and for a number of years was manager ( M. Marsh & Son. He died at Forest View, Elm Grov Wheeling, in October, 1908. He had a record as a soldie of the Union Army in the Civil war, having enlisted in 186 in Carlin's Battery D, First West Virginia Light Artillery He was taken prisoner at the battle of Lexington, an was in Libby Prison until he and a companion, William Pebler, made their escape from that famous warehous prison. As a result of his stay there he was incapacitate for further duty, and after 1864 was not in the army. H served three years as city clerk of Wheeling, but after re signing would never seek another political office. He was on of the founders of the Thompson Methodist Episcopal Church of Wheeling and very active in its affairs. C. H. Watkins Sr., married Rachel Ann Marsh, who was born at Eas Wheeling in 1844, and died in 1906. A record of thei' children is: Mifflin Marsh and William Brown, both o whom died iu infancy; Charles H., Jr .; John Wagner, wh died at the age of twenty years; Harry Adams, owning and operating a ranch near Fruita, Colorado; Edna Rachel, wif of French D. Walton, former city editor of the Wheeling Intelligencer and now conducting a successful publicity business at Wheeling; Joseph Jacobs, a dealer in automo bile accessories at Clarksburg, West Virginia; Roy Naylor who died at the age of four years; and Wilbur Whally who was associated with his brother, Charles, in business and died of the influenza, January 30, 1919.

Charles H. Watkins, Jr., attended the public schools of Wheeling, but at the age of sixteen left school to go to work in a retail store. For a short time he was assistant bookkeeper of L. S. Delaplain Son & Company, and then kept books for J. W. Hunter until 1896. His first inde. pendent effort in a business was as member of the firm Exley, Watkins & Company, operating a preserving plant, and Mr. Watkins retained his financial interest in this busi- ness until 1907. However, after 1900 he was not active in the management, having, as noted above, acquired the interests of his partner in the firm Foster & Watkins, with which he had been previously associated as a silent partner. Then the firm Foster & Watkins was changed to C. H. Watkins, Jr., & Company, and Mr. Watkins has been the leading spirit in the successive changes and increases in this great mercantile and department store. He has direct personal charge of the undertaking department of the busi- ness. There are seven departments altogether.

Mr. Watkins is a republican in politics, and for four years was a member of the West Virginia Republican State Committee. He was for ten years a member of the Wheel- ing City Council, serving in the second branch six years and in the first branch four years. He is on the Official Board of the Thompson Methodist Episcopal Church, served for some time as president of the Men's Bible Class, and is

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History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 2, Part 93

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