Logan County, West Virginia         Biography of John A. McCALLISTER

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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 260
Logan County

JOHN A. McCALLISTER is superintendent for the Faulk-
ner Coal Company at Huffco in Logan County. His home
is in Huntington. Mr. McCallister has been acquainted with
practical mining operations for forty years, and his name
is widely and favorably known among the prominent coal
interests represented in the southern part of West Virginia.
The Faulkner Coal Company is one of the operations carried
on by the W. E. Deegans Consolidated Coal Company.

Mr. McCallister was born at Big Sewell Mountain, Fay-
ette County, West Virginia, November 13, 1868, son of
William and Rebecca (Campbell) McCallister. His father
was a farmer and shoemaker, and finally left the farm to
locate at Sewell, a station on the Chesapeake & Ohio Rail-
road. He was a democrat, and with his wife worshiped in
the faith of the Baptist Church. They had ten children,
six sons and four daughters. The son Edward was for
five years foreman of the Paragon Mines on Ram Creek,
and is now a mine foreman in the New River District.

John A. McCallister attended school at Fayette County,
and was only a boy when his parents died. His education
was abbreviated by the necessity of doing something for
his own support. At the age of fourteen he went to work
as a trapper in the mines at Sewell, and his experience in-
cluded bailing water, hauling coal, mule driving, and finally
he was made boss driver, a job he held three years. For
seven years he was a coal loader. Then, after an experi-
ence of a few months in the mines at Jellico, Tennessee,
he became assistant foreman of a mine on Loup Creek,
West Virginia, and from there went to the Paragon Mines
on Ram Creek as foreman. He spent eight years in the
service there and was promoted to superintendent.  His
next work was with the E. R. Johnson Coal Company be-
low Peach Creek, on the Guyandotte, as superintendent, and
he was also superintendent of the operations at Peach Creek.
He spent about ten months there, and then became assist-
ant superintendent at Toplin, and in October, 1921, took
up his present duties with the Faulkner Coal Company.

While living at Paragon he was a member of the school
board. Mr. McCallister married in 1898 Hester H. House,
daughter of Robert House. Her father was a native of
England, and Mrs. McCallister was born in West Virginia.
Mr. and Mrs. McCallister have nine living children, three
sons and six daughters. The sons Kenneth G. and John L.
are in the grocery business at Huntington. Mr. and Mrs.
McCallister are Methodists, and fraternally he is affiliated
with Longdale Lodge No. 14, F. and A. M., on Ken-
neys Creek, the Scottish Rite bodies of the Consistory at
Wheeling, the Mystic Shrine of Charleston, the Independ-
ent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias. In
politics he is an independent voter.