History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 163

Author:
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages:

USA > West Virginia > History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3 > Part 163

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

During the World war the Thornhill home played its part in the burden of financing the war and its auxiliary efforts, taking large amounts of bonds and contributing to the Red Cross, and doing some of the practical work, such as knitting for the soldiers at the front.

THOMAS S. RICHARDSON, joint agent for the freight of- fices of the Baltimore & Ohio, the Kanawha & Michigan aud the Kanawha & West Virginia railroads at Charleston, is an old-timer in the transportation business, and has been in railroad work at Charleston for over twenty years. He is one of the city 's best liked men, and his personal popu- larity has brought a great deal of business to the companies he represents.

He began railroad work at Charleston in 1900 as night bill clerk under O. E. Payne, then agent for the Kanawha & Michigan. Two years later he was promoted to bill clerk, then to cashier, then to chief clerk and in 1910 was made agent. He is now in general charge of a large office and warehouse force, comprising thirty-five office clerks and a similar number in the warehouses. This force handles on the average forty cars of outbound freight daily, besides thirty-five inbound merchandise cars and a similar number distributed among the local industries. In 1900 twenty men were sufficient to handle all the business of the office, and there were about forty in 1910, when Mr. Richardson became agent. In May, 1918, all the warehouse and office buildings were destroyed by fire, and the new ones were constructed with all the modern facilities for perfect dispatch of busi- ness, so that few cities anywhere have superior buildings of the kind.

Mr. Richardson was born in Scotland, April 17, 1868, and is a man who has been the architect of his own destiny. When he was about twelve years of age he was taken to the mountain region of Pennsylvania, and he earned his living in the mines for several years. About the time he became of age he entered the office of a coal and iron company at Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where he remained two years. Then coming to West Virginia, he was in the New River coal field as outside foreman in the opening of mines and in the operation of coke ovens, and left there to come to Charleston to get better educational advantages. He left a job worth $150 a month to start at railroading at $45.

Mr. Richardson is a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner. He married at Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, Miss Jean Scott. Of their four children only one is now living, Thomas A. Richardson, who is assistant chief clerk in his father's office. One son, Arthur, was a time-keeper with the Kan- awha & Michigan, and died at Phoenix, Arizona, at the age of twenty-six. Another son was drowned in the Kanawha River when only five years of age.

COYLE & RICHARDSON. A good example of "the survival of the fittest" is the honored establishment of Coyle & Richardson, the oldest department store in the southern part of the state and a business whose growth has been

494

HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

typical of its home city of Charleston, a town of wide reputation for good taste in dress, to the demands of whose exclusive set this concern has largely catered.

Starting in a modest way in 1884, in a small building on the river front, a high standard of business ethics was laid down as a sure foundation for sound, enduring growth, and during the successive changes brought about by increas- ing need of space the firm has been a pioneer in the develop- ment of Charleston's retail business section as well as in the leadership of movements for shorter hours and the ini- provement of working conditions. From a one-story, twenty foot frontage, the store has grown to a six-story and base- ment fire-proof building 50 by 115 feet, the larger part of which it occupies, doing a business of well over half a million dollars a year. The concern has under contempla- tion for 1923 a new building that will double its present facilities.

George F. Coyle was born in Berkeley County, West Vir- ginia, and J. Lynn Richardson, in Frederick County, Mary- land. They became associated through clerkships in Staun- ton, Virginia, later forming a partnership in a small store in Winchester, Virginia, which they sold in 1880, renewing their firm name in Charleston four years later. The business was incorporated in 1913 with a capital stock of $80,000, which was increased in 1921 to $225,000. Mr. Richardson died May 11, 1915. He was for many years a vestryman in St. John's Episcopal Church, a republican in politics, and one of the original stockholders in the Kanawha Na- tional Bank, as was Mr. Coyle. He was a polished gentle- man of the old business school that characterized the com- mercial world of the '80s, yet kept ever abreast of the progress of the times.

Mr. Coyle, the present head of the business, is an elder in the First Presbyterian Church, an officer in the Rotary Club of Charleston, and takes a prominent part in the charitable and civic affairs of the community. He married in 1884, and has two children, a married daughter and a son, George Lacy Coyle, who is actively associated with his father in the management of the business.

ADAM ROBERT SHEPHERD. Members of the Shepherd family have played a prominent part in the affairs of Kanawha County for many years. The father of the pres- ent generation was instrumental in providing Charleston with its first public school, and also maintained a school of the highest class for the special training of young men. In lines of business the name has been hardly less con- spicuous. In public service A. R. Shepherd has an unusual record in the Legislature, in the fiscal management of county affairs, and he is now county assessor.

A. R. Shepherd was born at Charleston, April 7, 1868. His father, John Shepherd, was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, and finished his education in Hampden Sidney College. He came to Charleston to establish a high class private school, and that school trained the sons of many of the leading families of that day. As a member of the Board of Education he built the first school in Charleston, the old Union School Building. After that he taught a private school. About 1878 John Shepherd estab- lished a nursery eight miles out, in Union District. Ten years later he bought land in what is now South Charleston, and continued the nursery business there until 1905. After that he lived retired until his death in 1911, at the age of seventy-eight. He lived to see a considerable part of his old farm improved by buildings, marking the progress in the development of the important industrial suburb of South Charleston. His sons succeeded to his nursery business, and continued it until the growth of South Charleston made it necessary for them to abandon the land for that purpose. John Shepherd married Louise Aultz. Her father, Adam Aultz, came when a young man from Rockbridge County, Virginia, and acquired some 1,100 acres of land nine miles out of Charleston. He was a slave owner, conducted farm- ing operations on an extensive scale, and was one of the most influential men in that section of the state. He died in 1868, at the age of seventy-eight. Louise Aultz was born on the farm in Kanawha County, and spent all her life there. She died in 1909, at the age of sixty-eight. Her

five children are still living: Dr. C. W., of Spring Hil Kanawha County; L. Ella, who was a teacher for twenty five years in Kanawha County, and now lives on part of th old homestead; A. R. Shepherd; John King, living on par of the old home in South Charleston; and Mattie, wife o J. L. Paulley, of Raleigh County, West Virginia.

A. R. Shepherd had a common school education, and fo ten years, beginning at the age of twenty-one, he was asso ciated with his father and brothers on the farm and in th nursery business. For sixteen years he conducted th Spring Hill General Mercantile establishment at Spring Hil in Kanawha County. He was made postmaster of tha village in 1896, under Mckinley's administration. Mr Shepherd sold out his business at Spring Hill in 1915. Fo the following four years he was chief inspector under the State Public Service Commission. In 1920 he was repub lican candidate for assessor, was elected and took over tha office on January 1, 1921.

He is now administering the assessor's office for the larg est county in the state, and the business of the office requires ten assistants. Kanawha County has 40,000 sepa rate parcels of real estate property and 36,000 persona. property entries. The county is the largest in total valua tion in the state, the total being $200,000,000 more thai any other county. The great concentration of wealth il Kanawha County is due not only to the City of Charleston but also to the oil, gas, coal and other mineral resources here. The business of the assessor's office is greatly in creased by the necessity of inspection of every piece of property so as to avoid inequalities in placing the assess ments. Mr. Shepherd recently read a paper on this sub ject before the State Board of Assessors, and his view resulted in a new rule being made governing the assessment of coal and oil lands.

His experience in the handling of public office begai in 1907, when he was a member of the State Legislature and when the true valuation law was adopted. He served six years as county commissioner. Three years of this tern he was president of the board. When he went into office the county had a floating debt of $235,000, and the county paper was worth only 80 cents on the dollar. While he war on the board the indebtedness was paid and a balance of about $100,000 was left in the treasury, and at the same time the tax rate was lower than ever before. Those in & position to judge, and in fact all property owners in Kan awha County, recognize the fact that Mr. Shepherd in public office handles the business as he would a business of his own. He has been a prominent republican, a delegate to a number of conventions and was chairman of the senatoria committee and a member of the county committee. He har always been opposed to the liqnor traffic, and while county commissioner refused to grant saloon licenses.

Mr. Shepherd married Elizabeth Ellett, of Richmond Virginia. Her brother-in-law, B. N. Burruss, was the business partner of Mr. Shepherd at Spring Hill. Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd have one son, Ellett N., who graduated fron the Charleston High School in 1922. Mr. Shepherd is a Mason.

GEORGE W. JENKINS, JR. Among the school men of West Virginia perhaps none have heavier responsibilities thai George W. Jenkins, county superintendent of the largest county in the state-Kanawha, with upwards of 800 teach ers under his supervision. He is now in his second term having been first elected to the office in 1914, so that al the extraordinary burdens and problems arising from and incident to the war period were added to the regular routine

Superintendent Jenkins has been in school work nearly all his life since boyhood. He is a native of Kanawha County, boru on a farm six miles west of Charleston, at Guthrie, on May 25, 1887, son of George W. and Martha (Lynn) Jenkins. His father was born in the same house ir 1848, only a short time after his parents, Mr. and Mrs Thomas Jenkins, came to this locality from old Virginia Thomas Jenkins settled in the woods, cleared away the timber to get a space for cultivating erops, and for a number of years operated a cooper shop on his farm. He died at the age of eighty-five. He was a leader in the local

a . f. mulling

495

HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

Methodist Episcopal Church. George W. Jenkins, Sr., is still living at the old homestead where he was born, and to it most of his active labors were devoted. He has been prominent in local affairs, serving as justice of the peace, for twenty years as Overseer of the poor for Union District, and he has acted as local crier in the United States District Court, being first appointed to that office by the late Judge Benjamin Keeler, and after his death was reappointed by Judge MeClintie. He is a republican in politics. George W. Jenkins, Sr., was only thirteen years of age when the Civil war broke out, but subsequently he enlisted in Com- pany A of the Seventh Virginia Cavalry, and was the "baby" of his regiment and in serviee until the close of the war. His wife, Martha Lynn, was a neighbor girl, born on Sugar Creek, and she died about three years ago. There were nine children born to George W., Sr., and Martha Jenkins: Stacia, Mrs. Phil Stalnaker, of Charleston; Walter, a farmer; Ora, Mrs. George Hendrick, of Charles- ton; Mollie and Mattie, twins, the former the wife of Jo Eith, and the latter Mrs. Baseom Young; Eli, a farmer at Guthrie; Minnie, wife of Howard Casdorph; George W., Jr .; and Bessie, wife of Oscar Thaxton, of Charleston.

George W. Jenkins, Jr., was educated in the country schools, in the Charleston High School, and had a com- mercial course. He taught ten years in the rural and graded schools of Kanawha County and for a time was principal of the Sugar Creek School. In 1914 he received the republican nomination for county superintendent of schools, was elected, and in 1918 re-elected. Mr. Jenkins is managing editor of the West Virginia School Journal and Educator, the state school paper.

He married Miss Elsa Riley, of Ripley, Jackson County. She was educated in Marshall College at Huntington and West Virginia University, and was formerly a teacher in Kanawha County. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins have three chil- dren : Frances Lynn, Ernestine and Helen Irene. Mr. Jenkins is a member of the Knights of Pythias and Mrs. Jenkins is a Pythian Sister, and both are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

ANDREW J. MULLINS. The first settlers of a new county or city, independent of any intrinsic qualities which they possess, are objects of peculiar interest in succeeding generations. Men delight to read their names and treas- ure in memory the slightest incident connected with their persons and their settlement. Each consecutive step in the settlement of the country, as adventurers pushed out from the populous centers into the rapidly receding wilderness has brought to notice enterprising men who have connected their names indissolubly with rising states and embryo cities. In this connection mention is made of Andrew J. Mullins, the "father" of the town of Mullens, which was named in his honor, but which missed giving him that honor when those who drew up the charter of the city misspelled his name.

Mr. Mullins was born February 21, 1857 in Tazewell County, Virginia, and is a son of William and Rachael (Cannady) Mullins. William Mullins was born on Shelby Creek in Pike County, and was engaged in agrienltural pur- suits until the outbreak of the war between the states, at which time he enlisted in the Thirty-ninth Regiment, Ken- tucky Volunteer Infantry, in the Union Army, and met a soldier's death during the last year of the war. His widow survived him for nearly thirty years, dying in 1894, at Keystone, McDowell County, this state. All of their four sons and four daughters are still living, four in West Vir- ginia: William Harrison, living on Twelve Pole Creek in Wayne County, who was named for his grandfather; Win- nie, the widow of John T. Belcher, of Keystone; Lucinda, is the widow of Philip Lambert, of Iaeger, McDowell County ; and Andrew J., of this notice.

Andrew J. Mullins went to school in McDowell and Logan counties, just across Tug River from his Kentucky home and hunting bears was not only a pastime with him but a business for a number of years. From Ken- tucky he moved to McDowell County, in the present neigh- borhood of Roderfield, and in 1890, to Keystone, where he served as deputy sheriff for three years or until moving to

his present home. Keystone at that time had the reputa- tion of being a very "tough" locality. Mr. Mullins as- sisted to clear the brush in the woods for a preliminary survey for the Norfolk & Western Railroad, and while thus engaged became convinced that coal was to be found at the present site of Mullens. Accordingly he moved to this locality in February, 1896, settling in the woods, where he had two log pens built out of small logs and these covered with split boards, puncheon floors being installed. This was his home for eight years, or until the arrival of a sawmill made it possible for him to build a plank house. Later he built his present home, one of the finest in the neighborhood. The nearest place on the railroad at the time of his arrival was Keystone, on the Norfolk & Western, thirty miles from Mullens, but he was sure that the railroad would be built through. He opened the first store at Mul- lens, located on the present site of the new Santon Build- ing, and for three years condneted a general merchandise establishment, buying produce, etc., and hauling his goods over rough mountain roads from Keystone.

Mr. Mullins was in business during the years 1904, 1905 and 1906. He was justice of the peace when the railroad was being built, and in this connection it may be said that he has seen all of the railroad track laid in this locality. After the lapse of several years he was again justice of the peace, and also served as Mullen's first mayor. He was then sent for four years to the State Legislature, and served with much ability, being, among others, on the committees of agrienlture, prohibition and emigration, and on his return was again elected mayor. He has assisted in the organiza- tion of three banks, and is viee president and a director of the Bank of Wyoming, of Mullens and a director of the Wyoming County Bank of Pineville. Ile was also connected with the Citizens Bank of Pineville, which was wrecked by a dishonest official. Of recent years Mr. Mullins has been engaged in building houses on his land and selling them to newcomers. He has likewise been interested in coal devel- opment from the time when, with Peter Minor, he saw the first coal mine opened at Elkhorn. In politics he is a stanch republican, and his religious connection is with the Primitive Baptist Church, of which he has been a member for forty years, and for the past ten years an ordained minister. He has recently built a church, which he has donated to the Mullens congregation. Mr. Mullins has al- ways been greatly fond of hunting, and has killed wild turkeys within sight of the present City of Mullens. Dur- ing his younger days he was exceptionally strong and active, and numerous stories are told of his prowess as a hunter and woodsman. On one occasion, while on a hunting trip, he killed one bear and wounded another, and when the latter attacked him he was forced to fight and kill it with a elub. On another day, discovering a bear in a hole in a cliff, he took a hasty shot but suceceded only in shooting the animal's nose off, after which he was forced to engaged in a desperate contest with bruin, whom he finally dispatched with a knife.

At the age of twenty-one years Mr. Mullins was united in marriage with Miss Harriet Trent, of MeDowell County, daughter of Fred Trent, and of the children born to this union seven are still living: V. B., who is engaged in agricultural operations near Pineville, Wyoming County ; W. F., who is engaged in extensive contracting and build- ing transactions at and near Mullens; Susie, the wife of Floyd Workman, a Cabin Creek farmer in Wyoming County ; H. F., who is engaged in mercantile pursuits at Mullens; Mary, the wife of John W. Phillips, on a farm near Pine- ville; Nora, the wife of H. E. Lilly, who owns a restaurant at Mullens; and Eliza, the wife of D. S. Nichols, store man- ager for the Trace Fork Coal Company.

PHELPS & HOLLORAN are a firm of Charleston brick con- tractors, representing technical skill and experience, thorough business capacity, and a service of prompt and reliable fulfillment. This firm has handled some very large and important contracts in and around Charleston.

The best statement of the quality of their work is refer- ence to some of the completed contracts themselves. At Charleston they built the Schwamb Memorial Church, the

496

HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA

Soloff Hotel, the Tennessee Avenue Garage, the nine apart- ment building of Simon Cohen, the Union Mission Nursery Building, the Knights of Pythias Hall and the Security Bank Building, to mention only a few among a larger. number. They were also contractors for the Alderson Bap- tist Academy at Alderson, West Virginia, one of the finest and most modern educational plants in the state. They built the Clendenin High School at Clendenin.

Jess W. Holloran, of this firm, was born in Appomat- tox County, Virginia, but when he was a year old his par- ents removed to Lynchburg, that state, where he was reared and educated. In that city he learned the trade of brick mason, and he knows the trade and business from the stand- point of practical experience in every detail. He worked as a journeyman at Lynchburg and in other cities, and sub- sequently became a brick contractor. In 1918 he removed his home to Charleston, West Virginia, where he formed his partnership with S. H. Phelps, under the name Phelps & Holloran. Mr. Holloran is secretary of the Mason Con- tractors Association of Charleston.

S. H. Phelps is a native of Lynchburg, Virginia. As a youth he learned the brick mason's trade under Mr. Hol- loran, his present partner. They have been more or less closely associated ever since. Mr. Phelps, however, moved to Charleston in 1912, and his work has attracted con- siderable attention, so as to give an extensive business to the firm as soon as Phelps & Holloran constituted their partnership in 1918. They have since had a prominent part in the great growth and expansion of Charleston.

EDWIN MINER KEATLEY, of Charleston, has been a West Virginian thirty years, and his versatile activities and broad interests give his carcer a most unusual permanence among citizens who are entitled to state-wide recognition. Mr. Keatley for many years was a mining engineer, asso- ciated with some of the early developments in the West Virginia coal fields, has been both a State and Federal official, is now speaker of the House of Delegates in the West Virginia Legislature, and is also president of the American Constitutional Association of West Virginia.

Mr. Keatley was born in Barton, Tioga County, New York, May 12, 1868, son of Rev. William and Elizabeth (Swallow) Keatley. Rev. William Keatley was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, son of an Episcopalian minister, while his mother was a Gordon of Scotland, of close kin to Chinese Gordon. William Keatley came to the United States at the age of twenty-two, in 1851, studied for the ministry in the Wyoming Seminary at Kingston, Pennsyl- vania, and practically his entire career as a minister was devoted to service in the Wyoming Conference at Pennsyl- vania. In that section he married Elizabeth Swallow, mem- ber of an historic family of the Wyoming Valley. The Swallow family settled in Wyoming Valley from Con- necticut, and the grandfather of Elizabeth Swallow entered the Revolutionary army from that section. The maternal grandfather of Elizabeth Swallow was John Cooper, a famous Indian fighter, who participated in the Wyoming Valley massacre. A cousin of Elizabeth Swallow was Rev. Silas Swallow, of the Wyoming Valley, who was twice a candidate of the prohibition party for President.

Edwin M. Keatley was educated in the public schools of Pennsylvania, in the Wyoming Seminary at Kingston, and gained a thorough technical training for his profession of mining engineering, which he followed for nineteen years. For two years he was topographer in the employ of the State Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, and left that work to go with the banking house of J. P. Morgan & Company of New York as a mining engineer. It was the Morgan interests that sent him to West Virginia in 1891, as chief engineer to look after the coal lands belonging to what is known as the Beaver Coal Company, a subsidiary of the Morgan interests in Raleigh County. That was the be- ginning of Mr. Keatley's thirty years' residence in West Virginia. His subsequent connection was with the John Cooper & Company coal mining interests, owning mines on the Norfolk & Western Railway. He served as engineer for this company about five years, with headquarters at Bramwell in Mercer County.

In the meantime Mr. Keatley had been turning his ver- satile talents to the study of law, and in 1897 he went to the State University at Morgantown and took the examina- tion for admission to the bar and was licensed to practice. In the same year he removed to Charleston, having been appointed assistant attorney general of the state under Attorney General Edgar P. Rucker. He continued in this work during Mr. Rucker's administration, and then engaged in private practice at Charleston. When the United States Circuit and District courts for the Southern District of West Virginia were established in Charleston Judge Goff, at the solicitation of the Kanawha County bar, appointed Mr. Keatley clerk of the Circuit Court for the new district, and a year later Judge Keller appointed him clerk of the United States District Court. He was clerk of both courts until the Circuit Court was abolished, and continued to serve as clerk of the United States District Court from July 1, 1901, to July 1, 1918, when, after seventeen years in the office, he resigned to give his attention to his business affairs.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of West Virginia old and new, Volume 3, Part 163

Author: Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author:
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: