"Coal Baron" W. P. Tams; The Tams Brothers


Major W. P. Tams, of Staunton, Virginia, was educated at Virginia 
Polytechnic. Working for Samuel Dixon as a mining engineer, he prospected 
for coal along Winding Creek. Tams asked a cousin J. Fred Effinger of 
Staunton, who was a classmate of William C. Bullitt, to try to get a lease 
on Winding Gulf. Bullitt, as president of Beaver Coal Company, agreed to a 
3,000 acres lease. Dixon financed and became the first president of Gulf 
Smokeless Coal Company. The "Coal Baron," as he (W. P. Tams) was called, 
first lived at Slab Fork and walked up the mountain and back each day as he 
surveyed the lease. 

By Spring of 1909 he was able to get the materials hauled up to the mountain
to built himself a cabin. By 1910 he had built the Tams coal camp of 125 
houses, a store and office, a Tipple, and the first coal car was shipped 
out. They had water wells with a hand pump for each of the eight houses and 
electric lights in the homes.

The only census that W P Tams is listed on is 1910 in Slab Fork District, 
household #185 with Physician George T Thornhill (age 37 & born in VA); 
Superintendent of Coal Mines W. P. Tams (age 24 & born VA); and secretary 
of coal company James O Watts (age 30). His brother must have came later 
because he wasn't listed.

W. Frazier Tams, brother of Major W. P. Tams, directed many of the 
activities of Gulf Smokeless Coal Company as general manger. They were 
called the "Tams Brothers." On Monday, 21 December 1942 an accident in the 
company's No. 2 tipple at Tams caused a fatally injury to W. F. Tams and he 
died on Tuesday. Major Tams sold the mines to Winding Gulf Coal, Inc. in 
1955.

William Purviance Tams Jr. (son of William Purviance Tams Sr.) was born 19 
May 1883 and died August 1977.

Submitted by Doris Slaughter <dslaughter@bigfoot.com>

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