Mingo County, West Virginia Biography of WILLIAM PRESTON TAULBEE VARNEY This biography was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: ********************************************** ***The submitter does not have a connection*** ********to the subject of this sketch.******** ********************************************** This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, pg. 588-589 Mingo WILLIAM PRESTON TAULBEE VARNEY, vice president and cashier of the Day and Night Bank of Williamson, Mingo County, has been closely associated also with important commercial and industrial enterprises in this section of West Virginia. He was one of the promoters and organizers of the Pond Creek By-products Coal Company, is secretary and treasurer of the Leckieville Land Company, and is presi- dent of the Ira Coal Company and the Tug Valley Fuel Company. In his home city he is a loyal member of the Kiwanis Club, his political allegiance is given to the demo- cratic party, he and his wife hold membership in the Bap- tist Church and he is affiliated with O'Brien Lodge No. 101, Free and Accepted Masons, as well with other York Rite bodies and with Lodge of Perfection No. 4, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, at Huntington, and with the Tem- ple of the Mystic Shrine in the City of Charleston. Mr. Varney gave active service in local patriotic wort in the World war period, especially in furthering the campaigns in support of the Government war loans, the service of the Red Cross, etc. Mr. Varney was born on a farm in Pike County, Ken- tucky, October 28, 1886, and is a son of Asa Harmon Var- ney and Nancy (West) Varney, both likewise natives of Pike County, the West family, early founded in Virginia, having numbered representatives among the first to settle in Pike County, Kentucky. Asa H. Varney was actively engaged in farming and school teaching for the long period of forty-four years, made a splendid record in the pedagogic profession and was honored by being presented by Ken- tucky a life certificate that entitled him to teach in any county of the state which he might choose. In all of his years of teaching he never failed to attend the annual teachers' institutes until the final _ one before his death, when ill health caused his absence. The Varney family was founded in Virginia in the Colonial period of our national history. Of the children of Asa H. and Nancy Varney four sons and four daughters are living. W. P. Taulbee Varney early began to assist in the activities of the home farm, and he continued to attend the district schools of his native county until he was seventeen years old. Thereafter he passed a year in the graded schools at Pikeville, the county seat, and three years as a student in Pikeville College. In the meantime he taught about five months of each of three summers in the rural schools, and in January, 1907, he came to Williamson, West Virginia, and took a position in the weighmaster's office of the Norfolk and Western Rail- road. In the depression in the railroad business that came in the following year he lost his position, and he thereupon returned with his family to Pike County and resumed his service as a school teacher. Somewhat more than a year later he returned to his former railroad position at Will- iamson, was transferred to Portsmouth, Ohio, in 1910, and in 1912 was appointed weighmaster of the Norfolk & West- ern at Williamson. At the expiration of one year Mr. Var- ney resigned this office to take the position of bookkeeper in the National Bank of Commerce, in which he was eventu- ally advanced to the position of cashier and with which he continued his connection until the spring of 1919, when he became associated with other citizens of the county in or- ganizing the Day and Night Bank, of which he was made cashier and, in the latter part of the same year, the vice president also. He has since retained these executive offices and has been the foremost factor in developing the substan- tial business of the representative financial institution. He is one of the loyal and progressive citizens of Mingo County, and has a secure place in popular confidence and good will. On June 7, 1907, Mr. Varney wedded Miss Emma Pinson, who likewise was born and reared in Pike County, Ken- tucky, where the marriage was solemnized. The Pinson family is one of long American lineage and one of its rep- resentatives, Alonzo C., is now sheriff of Mingo County. Mr. and Mrs. Varney have three children: Golfrey Wendell, born August 25, 1908; Frances Helen, born June 7, 1912; and Anna Margaret, born September 26, 1919.