Biography of Jabez B. HANFORD Monongalia County, West Virginia This file was submitted by Suzie Crump, 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. 251-252 JABEZ B. HANFORD for a number of years has had an interesting place of power and influence among the executive officials connected with the great coal mining industry of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. He is one of many men prominent in the business who have come up from the ranks. As a boy he was a worker in the mines of Western Pennsylvania, and he comes of a coal mining family in which the raising of coal to the surface is practically a traditional occupation. Both he and his parents and his foreparents for generations were natives of Staffordshire, England. His maternal grandfather, William Smith, was a coal miner nearly all his life. The Smith and Hanford families have been miners for many generations in Staffordshire. Jabez B. Hanford was born in Staffordshire, June 4, 1865, and his parents Joseph and Emila (Smith) Hanford, were born there, respectively in 1843 and 1845. The father died in 1878 and the mother in 1905. Joseph Hanford brought his family to the United States in 1870 and located at Sharon, Pennsylvania, in the midst of one of the great industrial and mining districts of that state. His previous training brought him connections with the coal mining industry, and he continued this work until he met his death as the result of a mine accident. Jabez B. Hanford was thirteen years old when his father was killed. He had very few school advantages, and two years before his father's death he had gone to work in the mines of Mercer County, Pennsylvania. He served the long and arduous apprenticeship of the common miner, but after getting started his promotion was singularly rapid. At the age of twenty-five Mr. Hanford was mine foreman, at thirty he was mine superintendent, at thirty-six, was division superintendent for the Shawmut Mining Company of Elk County, Pennsylvania, and at thirty-eight became general superintendent of this, one of the larger mining corporations of Pennsylvania. Mr. Hanford has been identified with the coal mining industry in West Virginia since 1905, in which year he moved to Morgantown, as general superintendent of the Elkins Coal & Coke Company. This corporation was then engaged in developing the West Virginia field. Mr. Hanford continued as general superintendent until the Elkins company's interests were taken over on October 28, 1919, by the Bethlehem Mines Corporation. Since then Mr. Hanford has been with the National Fuel Company, with headquarters at Morgantown, and he has all the duties if not the official title of chief executive for that corporation. The coal mining industry all over the country recognizes him as a man of marked achievement. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Coal Mining Institute of America, and was one of the organizers of the Coal Mining Institute of West Virginia and was its president for the first threes years. He is also a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, and is president of the Morgantown Engineers Club. When the Morgantown Post Company was organized to take over the Post-Chronicle newspaper in 1918, Mr. Hanford became a member of the new company and has since served as vice president. He is vice president of the Morgantown Country Club, a member of the Episcopal Church and is affiliated with Lodge No. 187, A. F. and A. M., and the Royal Arch Chapter No. 137, R. A. M., at Barboursville, Kentucky. Mr. Hanford married Joanna Dillon. She was born at Aberdeen, Whales, daughter of Lawrence and Mary (Downey) Dillon. Mr. and Mrs. Hanford have a son, James, and a daughter, Josephine. The latter graduated A. B. from West Virginia University in 1920, and is now a teacher in the Masontown High School. The son, James Hanford, born October 2, 1892, attended West Virginia University and studied mine engineering at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. March 4, 1918, he joined the colors, going from Morgantown to Camp Oglethorpe, Georgia, and two weeks later to New York, where was assigned to the Three Hundred and Second Sanitary Train of the Seventy-seventh Division. April 6, 1918, just a month after enlisting, he was ordered overseas, landed at Liverpool, crossed the channel from Dover to Calais, and proceeded to the St. Omer sector of the western front, and at the signing of the armistice was in the Baccarat sector. He returned to the United States May 6, 1919, and was discharged at Camp Meade May 28, 1919. James Hanford is now superintendent of the National Fuel Company of West Virginia. He is a highly qualified mining engineer, and is a member of the Coal Mining Institute of America. He belongs to the Sigma Chi college fraternity.