Pocahontas County, West Virginia     Biography of CHARLES W. FREEMAN

The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 396


CHARLES W. FREEMAN, of Bramwell, a retired coil
operator, whose former extensive interests are represented
in the Pocahontas Fuel Company, of which he is a director,
has been associated with every phase of the coal industry
in Southern West Virginia, both on the business and the
technical side.


Mr. Freeman was born at Trevorton, Pennsylvania, June
9, 1873, son of John and Isabel (Rutter) Freeman. His
parents were born in England and were brought when young
to Pennsylvania, where their people became coal miners.
John Freeman was born at Clay Cross, England, as a
young man worked in the mines near Trevorton, Pennsyl-
vania, and on moving to West Virginia was for a number
of years superintendent of mines for the Fire Creek Coal
Company in Fayette County. In 1883 he moved into the
Pocahontas District of Mercer County and located at Sim-
mons, where in the latter part of 1883 or the early part of
1884 he made the first shipments of Pocahontas coal from
this section. He was active in the operation known at the
Freeman & Jones Operation, but later became merged with
the Caswell Creek Coal and Coke Company and finally be-
came part of the properties of the Pocahontas Fuel Com-
pany.


Charles W. Freeman acquired his early education in the
common schools of Simmons and Bramwell, took a bnsinea
course at Dunmore College at Staunton, Virginia, and com-
pleted his business education with special training in book-
keeping, general office work and auditing in Packards'
Business School of New York City. He then returned to
Simmons and entered the mines under his father, acquiring
experience in all the various departments of coal oper-
ation, from actual mining to the handling and executive
work of mine foreman, superintendent and general manager.
He was one of the leading operators of that section for
a number of years. When the Caswell Creek Coal & Coke
Company was sold to the Pocahontas Fuel Company, Mr.
Freeman accepted as his share of the proceeds stock in the
Pocahontas Company, and for a number of years has been
one of the directors of this great corporation. Since then he
has acquired other coal properties in Kentucky, including 
the Elkhorn Seam Company at Yager.


Mr. Freeman in 1909, at Lynchburg, Virginia, married
Martha Francis Wheeler. They have four children: Martha
Wheeler, Charles Wesley, Margaret Ann and May Llewellen.
Mr. Freeman and family are members of the Episeopal
Church. He is a Royal Arch and Knight Templar Mason
and Shriner, a life member of the Elks, and belongs to the
Bluefield Country Club, the Shenandoah Club of Roanoke,
Virginia, the Falls Mills Hunting and Fishing Club of
Bluefield, and is a charter member of the new Mercer
County Country Cub. His favorite diversion is golf.



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