Biography of William H. Thomas - Mercer Co. WV

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

pg 190

William H. Thomas.  While there is probably no city in the state of the size 
that has a larger number of men with distinctive and important achievements 
to their credit in the domain of commerce and industry than Bluefield, there 
is manifest a disposition to recognize and confer by consensus of opinion if 
not formally a degree of special leadership upon Mr. William Henry Thomas, 
whose name in that community really suggests all the best elements of power 
and influence involved in constructive citizenship and commercial enterprise.

Mr. Thomas represents an old family of Roanoke County, Virginia, and he was 
reared and educated and had his early commercial training there.  Though his 
home has been in Bluefield for a number of years, he still feels in touch 
with the vicinity where he was born and reared.  His birth occurred November 
13, 1865, at what was then known as Big Lick, now Roanoke City.  He is a son 
of Charles M. and Jane (Crawford) Thomas, natives of Roanoke County.

Giles Thomas, Sr., came to this country from England about 1745, settling 
near Havre de Grace, Maryland.  His son, Giles Thomas, Jr., who was born in 
1763 and died in 1842, moved to Virginia in 1796, settling in the county of 
Botetourt, now Roanoke.  He was only twelve years of age when the 
Revolutionary war broke out, and in his sixteenth year he joined the Maryland 
Regiment and served until the close.  He was under General Thomas in the 
great campaign of the Carolinas, and witnessed the surrender of Lord 
Cornwallis at Yorktown.  For these services as a soldier he received a land 
grant, which was located west of Cumberland in Washington County, Maryland.

On June 4, 1786, Giles Thomas, Jr., married Ann Wheeler.  He was a cousin of 
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, a venerable signer of the 
Declaration of Independence.  They were married at Carrollton.

Charles M. Thomas, a son of Giles Thomas, Jr., was born July 15, 1790, and 
died May 30, 1869.  He was about six years of age when the family settled in 
Botetourt County, Virginia.  He married Elizabeth Barnett, who was born April 
1 1792, and died in November, 1875.  They were the parents of Charles 
Marigold Thomas.

Charles M. Thomas was born in 1825 and died in 1866.  He was a farmer in 
Roanoke County and in 1861 moved his family to Big Lick.  During the war 
between the states he was with a Virginia regiment, and on account of 
physical disability was chiefly employed in the Quartermaster's Department 
and the Home Guard.  Charles M. Thomas was one of ten brothers who were in 
the Confederate army, and this approaches if it does not establish a record 
for participation of one family that or any other war of the nation.  In 1852 
he married Jane Crawford, who was born July 24, 1831, and died in 1914.  She 
was a descendant of James Crawford, Sr., who was of Scotch-Irish birth and 
came from Northern Ireland in 1770.  His wife was a Miss Wallace a descendant 
of Sir John Wallace of Scotland.  Hames Crawford, Jr., their son, was five 
years of age when the family came to this country.  He married Eliza Poague, 
whose family came in 1765 from Scotland and settled in Augusta County, 
Virginia.  This James Crawford, Jr., by his wife, Eliza was the father of 
James Crawford, father of Jane Crawford Thomas.  The mother of Jane Crawford 
was Jane Deyerle.

William H. Thomas, who therefore descends from very substantial American 
stock on both sides, never had any better school advantages than those 
supplied by the common schools of Roanoke County, and at the age of seventeen 
he was earning his living as clerk in a retail general store at Big Lick, and 
the year represented a valuable training to him.  He then went on the road as 
a traveling salesman, and for eight years sold groceries and general 
merchandise throughout the South and Coast states.  In 1889, at the age of 
twenty-four, Mr. Thomas became associated with three other men, one of whom 
was his brother-in-law, B. P.  Huff, in the firm of Huff, Andrews & Thomas, 
wholesale grocers.  The personnel of this firm has remained the same for over 
thirty years, though their greatly extended business is conducted under a 
number of corporate names.  The partnership has been maintained as a firm at 
Roanoke, where they had their first headquarters as wholesale grocers.  Mr. 
Thomas was the man who acquired the business for this early firm as traveling 
salesman, and for several years he covered the states of Virginia and West 
Virginia.  The first important step in expanding the business came in 1895, 
when a branch was located at Bluefield, and this is now the main house of 
Huff, Andrews & Thomas Company.  The business at Bluefield has from the first 
been conducted as a corporation, with Mr. Thomas as president and general 
manager.  In the meantime the partners in 1892 had organized a wholesale dry 
goods and notion business under the title F. B. Thomas & Company, the active 
head of which was F. B. Thomas, a brother of William H. and one of the origina
l partners in the Huff, Andrews & Thomas Company.  F. B. Thomas & Company is 
still doing business.

There are now seven wholesale grocery houses representing the expanded 
interests of the original concern at Roanoke, and Mr. Thomas of Bluefield is 
connected with all of them as a director.  The six houses outside of 
Bluefield are:  Thomas-Andrews Company at Norton, the Bristol Grocery Company 
at Bristol, Abingdon Grocery Company at Abingdon, National Grocery Company at 
Roanoke, these all being in old Virginia;  and Williamson Grocery Company at 
Williamson, and Mullins Grocery Company at Mullins, West Virginia.

Mr. Thomas has organized and has participated in the management of a large 
number of successful business undertakings, including the Roanoke Candy 
Company, of which he is a director, the Bristol Candy Company at Bristol, 
Virginia, the Bluefield Ice and Cold Storage Company, which he with others 
organized in 1904 and of which he is president; the Citizens Underwriters 
Insurance Agency; the Flat Top National Bank of Bluefield, which he and 
others organized in 1903 and of which he is vice president; the Bluefield Gas 
& Power Company, of which he is a director; the Southern Investment and Real 
Estate Company of Roanoke, of which he is a director; the Bailey Lumber 
Company of Bluefield probably the largest lumber company in the state; the 
Montvale and Company and the Big Clear Creek Coal Company in Greenbrier 
County.

When his associates speak of his civic record they usually begin and end with 
unqualified praise of what Mr. Thomas did as member and for many years 
president of the School Board of Bluefield City.  He first went on the board 
as a member in 1902, and altogether served twelve years, most of the time as 
president of the board.  While he was president practically all of the modern 
school buildings in the city now in use were erected, both for the white and 
colored people.  Mr. Thomas has some sound ideas on education, but his 
particular service was due to his great faculty of getting things done, 
whether it comes to the promotion of a strictly business enterprise or the 
financing and construction of a group of school buildings.

On November 17, 1891, Mr. Thomas married at Elizabethon, Tennessee, Miss 
Minnie Folsom, daughter of Maj. H. M. and Elizabeth (Berry) Folsom.  Major 
Folsom, who was a relative of Francis (Folsom) Cleveland, widow of President 
Cleveland, was one of the able lawyers of Tennessee and had a distinguished 
war record, going into the Confederate army at the age of seventeen and being 
promoted to major before he was twenty.  He died in 1909.  Mrs. Thomas is a 
member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and for many years has 
been president of Bluefield Chapter of the United Daughters of the 
Confederacy.  Mr. and Mrs. Thomas have three children:  Paul C., who was born 
in Tennessee in 1892 and finished his education in Washington and Lee 
University, Florence F. and Grace Elizabeth.

Mr. Thomas is of Scotch Irish ancestry, and his people were among the early 
settlers of the Valley of Virginia and also identified with the pioneering of 
Roanoke County.  Some of his ancestors were soldiers in the Revolution and 
one of them was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Thomas assisted in organizing the Bluefield Country Club and is one of 
its Board of Governors.  His favorite sport is hunting and fishing, and he 
particularly enjoys the pursuit of big game in the Maine woods.  He is a 
democrat in politics, is affiliated with the Royal Arch, Knight Templar, and 
Scottish Rite Masons and Mystic Shrine, the Knights of Pythias, the 
Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Lions, and he and Mrs. Thomas are 
members of the Presbyterian Church.  Mr. Thomas in 1904 was a delegate from 
West Virginia to the World's Sunday School Convention at Jerusalem, and 
during that trip abroad he made an extensive tour all through the Holy Land, 
Egypt and other Mediterranean countries.


Submitted by PJSTON@aol.com

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