Logan County, West Virginia          Biography of Harry S. GAY, Jr.

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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II,
page 236-237

HARRY S. GAY, Jr. Some of the most extensive opera-tions in the Logan County
field are conducted by the Gay Coal & Coke Company, whose headquarters are
known as Mount Gay, near Logan. The active manager of this industry for
several years has been Harry S. Gay, Jr., himself a mining engineer with
a successful experience in all the technical phases of coal mining here
and elsewhere. The company is in an important degree a result of the
cumulative efforts and enterprise of three generations of this family.

The founder of the family in America was Samuel Gay, grandfather of
Henry S. Gay. He was born in England, and from an early age worked in
the coal fields of his native country. Coming to America, he became a
miner in the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. In the early days of
the coal development in Southern West Virginia he was attracted to this
field with William McQuail. For a time they conducted operations under
the name of the Turkey Gay Coal Company in the Pocahontas District.
Samuel Gay, served as mine inspector of the Eighth Anthracite District
for fifteen years, holding this position until the time of his death.
Finally he returned to Pennsylvania. He possessed the physical strength
of an English coal miner, was a man of resolute will, had little
education himself, and his greatest ambition apparently was to train
his own children by the best advantages obtainable so that they might
be in a position to continue his line of work but on a higher plane,
though his own success was by no means negligible. He, therefore, sent
his sons through the best technical schools.

H. S. Gay, Sr., a son of the pioneer and one of the founders of the Gay
Coal and Coke Company in Logan County, was born at Mount Carmel,
Pennsylvania. He finished his higher education and technical training
in Lafayette College, and as a mining engineer he has handled some of
the most complicated technical problems in his profession. Most of
his professional work was done in the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania.
For a time he was general manager for J. Landon & Company of Elmira,
New York, and also general manager of the Thomas A. Edison Iron Ore
Mines in New Jersey. He was coasulting engineer for several mining
corporations at Shamokin, Pennsylvania. He paid his first visit to
the coal fields in Logan County in 1903 as an engineer to report on
coal lands for some Shamokin people. While here he located the
Monitor-Yuma Land lease and incidentally acquired for himself a lease
of eight hundred acres, land on which the mines of the Gay Coal and
Coke Company are situated.

H. S. Gay, Sr., deserves the record of history as one of the pioneers
in the development of this district. He shipped the first car load of
coal from the district on Thanksgiving day, 1904. This coal was hauled
in wagons from the mine to Logan and there loaded on a car and sent out
over the recently completed railroad into the valley. The mine of the
Gay Coal and Coke Company is the only one in this field of any consequence
that has remained under the same management from its opening, a period of
eighteen years. In 1921 the company shipped two million tons of coal from
their operations. Another feature of the record for that year is that not
a single man was killed in the operations. This company has maintained a
splendid record in the handling and treatment of their employees, and this
has contributed in no small measure to the success and continued prosperity
of the company. In the early years they gave preference to local men in
their mines, until the period of the war made it necessary to bring in
miners from other fields.

H. S. Gay, Sr., while still vice president and general manager of the Gay
Coal & Coke Company, has spent little time at the mines since 1912. He is
now virtually retired and lives at Baltimore. When he made his first trip
to the Logan field there was no railroad, and he left the train at Dingess
on the Norfolk and Western, and the rest of the journey of about thirty
miles he made by horseback over the mountains. As an operator and as a
mining engineer H. S. Gay, Sr., has been associated with operations in
every field in West Virginia, including the New River, Pocahontas, Paint
Creek and Cabin Creek districts. There is nothing in the mining industry
with which he has not come in contact by practical experience. The first
work he ever did around the mine was running a pump in the anthracite
field of Pennsylvania. At one time he had charge of the deepest mine
in the United States, located at Shamokin, Pennsylvania, and owned by
the Nielson Colliery Company. This mine was 2,000 feet deep.

H. S. Gay, Sr., married Lallia J. Batdorf, a native of Tremont, Pennsylvania.
Their family consisted of two sons and two daughters. The other son, Leslie N.,
is a physician at Baltimore, and was a first lieutenant in the Medical Corps
during the World war.

Harry S. Gay, Jr, who is the active representative of the third generation
in this notable family of miners and mine operators in America, was born at
Lykens, Pennsylvania, April 7, 1889. He was of age for active military duty
during the great war, and it was his sin-cerest desire to get overseas with
the troops, but the authorities would not permit him to leave his essential
duties in the mining field. Mr. Gay is a graduate of the Shamokin High School
with the class of 1906. That school, located in a great industrial district,
offered unsurpassed facilities for technical training and gave him the
foundation of his technical training as an engineer. From high school he
entered Lehigh University without examination, and graduated in 1910 with
the degree of Mining Engineer. For six months following his graduation he
was employed by the Tremont Water and Gas Company, of which his father was
president. He was then a constructing engineer with the Philadelphia and
Reading Railroad at Frackville, Pennsylvania, and left that to come to
Logan as mining engineer for the widely known firm of Pittsburgh engineers,
W. G. Wilkins & Company. Six months later, in June, 1912, Mr. Gay became
assistant to his father in the Gay Coal and Coke Company operations. Since
1914 he has been general superintendent of the plant, and was the responsible
executive in charge throughout the period of the World war.

As a mining engineer he has been identified with other important work in
these mining fields. He assisted in building the Rum Creek Branch Railroad,
assisted in laying out the Logan Mining Company's operations, the Amherst
Mines at Amherstdale, the McGregor Coal Company's operations at Shlagel,
West Virginia, also Monitor No. 3 Mine, and he surveyed all the mines on
English Run, and other mines on Buffalo Creek.

When Mr. Gay came to the Logan field in 1912 there were forty-two mines
in operation, and at the present time there are one hundred and thirty-five.
Mr. Gay, who is unmarried, is affiliated with the Masonic Lodge and Chapter
at Logan, the Elks and his College fraternity is the Sigma Nu. He is an
active member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers.