Henry Louis Carspecken Bio
Monongalia Co. WV

The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.
Chicago and New York, Volume 11
pg.172



   When an individual has been identified with the business, financial
and civic interests of a community for a period of more than twenty
years it would be anomaly were he not intimately known to the citizens
of that place. In the seething, progressive life of a rising,
enterprising town or city the man who shows himself interested in the
advancement of the public weal is bound to be more or less in the public
eye, and that eye, as it has often showed itself, is capable of piercing
its way into the best-huried secrets. For more than twenty years the
record of Henry Louis Carspecken has stood inviolate before the citizens
of Morgantown, among whom he is recognized as a capable business man of
sound integrity, a financier of ability and a citizen of public spirit
and constructive ideas.
   Mr. Carspecken was born in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
February 3, 1873, a son of Henry and Mary (Schott) Carspecken. His
father was a civil engineer at Pittsburgh for many years, the latter's
father was educated for that profession, and his grandfather practiced
that vocation. In 1879 Henry Carspecken retired from civil engineering
and removed to Oakland , Iowa, where he engaged in stock raising and
farming for a number of years, but for the past twenty years has been
living in that town. The mother of Henry L. Carspecken died when her son
was an infant but nine days old.
   Henry Louis Carspecken accompanied his father and the other children
to Iowa, and in that state he attended the public schools, acquiring the
equivalent of a high school education. At the age of eighteen years he
commenced teaching school in the West, a vocation in which he was
engaged for a year, and in the meantime prepared himself for college,
with the intention of following the family vocation of civil
engineering, as had his father, grandfather and great- grandfather.
However after returning to Pittsburgh and attending a business college
he gave up, as he then thought temporarily, his intentions as a civil
engineer, and in 1893 entered the glass industry as secretary to the
president of the Brownsville Plate Glass Company at New Kensington,
Pennsylvania,eighteen miles above Pittsburgh. Upon the death of the
president of that company Mr. Carspecken reorganized that business under
the name of the Brownsville Glass Company, and became its secretary and
treasurer. Later on that concern was merged with the Appert Glass
Company, whose plant was at Port Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and general
offices in New York City. Mr. Carspecken became manager of the new
concern. In 1903 he organized the Brownsville Glass Company, a new
company with the old name, and became its secretary and general manager,
in which capacities he built the plant at Morgantown, which later was
absorbed by the Mississippi Glass Company. Mr. Carspecken continued as
manager of the Morgantown plant of this concern, and has remained in the
same capacity to the present time. For nearly twenty years he has been
identified with the business interests of Morgantown, particularly those
dealing with its oil, coal, glass, gas and allied financial interests,
and has been an offical and director of numerous companies in these
lines, all of which have benefited through his connection. He is now
vice president of the Bank of Morgantown, one of that city's most
important banking institutions. He has at all times taken an active and
helpful interest in local and civic affairs, formely served as president
of the Morgantown Independant School District Board, is a member of the
Morgantown Rotary Club, and served, with the rank of colonel, as a
member of the staffs of Governers Glasscock and Hatfield.
   Mr. Carspecken married Miss May Hutson, daughter of the Rev.
J.S.Hutson, a minister of the Baptist Church of Pittsburgh, and to this
union there were born the following children: Harold, born in 1905;
Margaret, born in 1907; Henry Louis Jr., born in 1912; and John
Frederic, born in 1915.