EDWARD CLARK COLCORD, JR.

The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 521
Kanawha

EDWARD CLARK COLCORD, JR., is a civil engineer by pro-
fession, but for several years past his time and abilities have
been expended with the Bowman Lumber Company of St.
Albans, of which he is manager. His father, E. C. Colcord,
Sr., is also prominently connected with that and allied in-
dustries at St. Albans, and a separate article gives the
details of his career.

E. C. Colcord, Jr., is the oldest in a family of seven
children, and was born at Williamsport, Pennsylvania,
January 15, 1885. He has lived in West Virginia since
childhood, and he secured a liberal education in the schools
of this state. In 1907 he graduated in the civil engineering
course from West Virginia University, and during the next
four years he carried on a general practice as a civil en-
gineer. For two years he was at work on Ohio River im-
provement. Since then he has been general manager of the
Bowman Lumber Company at St. Albans. Mr. Colcord
married Gertrude Bocke, daughter of Capt. A. A. and Julia
Doddrige-Lackey Bocke, of St. Albans. They have one son,
E. C. Colcord, III. Mr. Colcord is a republican, and has
spent four years in the council of St. Albans and is a
Master Mason.

The Bowman Lumber Company is a West Virginia Cor-
poration organized and capitalized chiefly by men from
Baltimore and Williamsport. It was organized about 1880,
and its operations as a lumber mill have been conducted
steadily at St. Albans. The first plant had a capacity of
about 35,000 feet per day and an average annual output of
between 8,000,000 and 9,000,000 feet. It cut great quan-
tities of timber along the Coal River, and those cut-over
lands are now leased for coal purposes. In former years it
drew much of its lumber from Boone County and later
from Raleigh. The company has about 125 men on its pay
roll, fifty of them living at St. Albans, while the others
are in the woods. Up to about sixteen years ago their
plant manufactured only poplar lumber, but it now handles
red and white oak, chestnut and maple, and it supplies
large quantities of wood used for the high class product in
furniture, interior work and automobiles.

The same interests who own the Bowman Lumber Com-
pany also comprise the Rowland Land Company, which owns
coal and timber lands in Raleigh County to an extent of
50,000 acres. These lands are leased for coal operations,
and there are seven different mines that have been started
during the last fifteen years, known as the Long Branch
Coal Company, the Marsh Fork Coal Company, the Birch
Fork Coal Company, Colcord Coal Company, Glogora Coal
Company, Hazy Eagle Collieries Company and Raleigh
Wyoming Coal Company. 

Submitted by:  vfcrook@trellis.net (Valerie F. Crook) 

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