WV-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest				Volume 99 : Issue 169

Today's Topics:
  #1 BIO: ST. CLAIR, Alexander            [Spelrcg@aol.com]
  #2 BIO: CALDWELL, James Lewis, Huntin   [Spelrcg@aol.com]

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______________________________X-Message: #1
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 18:48:51 EST
From: Spelrcg@aol.com
To: WV-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com
Message-ID: <0.2690db82.259aa663@aol.com>
Subject: BIO: ST. CLAIR, Alexander
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II,
Page 160

ALEXANDER ST. CLAIR. Though his home was always over the state line in 
Tazewell County, Alexander St. Clair was associated in many of his interests 
with the industrial district of which Bluefield is one of the most prominent 
centers. Bluefield is also the home of his sons Drs. Wade H. and Charles T. 
St. Clair.

Alexander St. Clair was born at Jeffersonville, now Tazewell Court House, 
April 15, 1845, son of Alexander and Martha (Tabler) St. Clair. His father 
died while the Civil War was in progress and the mother survived him over 
thirty years. Alexander St. Clair found his work within a close radius of his 
birthplace, and for many years was one of the prominent farmers and cattlemen 
of Southwestern Virginia, and practically always had some active interests in 
merchandising, banking, and other affairs. He was one of the organizers of 
the Bank of Clinch Valley at Tazewell, served as president of the 
institution, was connected with the First National Bank of Pocahontas, and at 
one time he owned land on which the town of Pocahontas was built.

    Alexander St. Clair was a boy when the war came on, but he served during 
the last two years of the Confederate Army as a member of Company I, 
Forty-fifth Virginia Cavalry, under Colonel Graham, whose son, W.R. Graham, 
is now a resident of Bluefield. Mr. St. Clair left his studies at Roanoke 
College to join the army at the age of eighteen, and finished his education 
in that institution before taking up his business career. Mr. St. Clair was a 
consistent member of the Methodist Church and was affiliated with the Masonic 
Order.

    September 26, 1871, he married Miss Maria J. Tiffany. They were married 
at the old Tiffany homestead on Bluestone in Tazewell County, and they lived 
there until about fifteen years ago, when they moved to a handsome home on 
the edge of Tazewell Court House. Here on September 26, 1921, they celebrated 
their golden wedding anniversary, and it was less than a month later that a 
wide circle of friends and business associates who had learned to esteem 
Alexander St. Clair as a safe business guide and adviser felt an intimate 
personal loss in his death, which occurred October 21, 1921. Mr. and Mrs. St. 
Clair were the parents of eleven children, two of whom, Rosalinda and Janie, 
died in childhood. The nine who with their widowed mother survive are: Drs. 
Charles T. And Wade H. St. Clair, of Bluefield; John, Frank and Alexander, of 
Bluestone; Glen M. And Roy, of Tazewell; Otis, of Welch; and Miss Maria of 
Tazewell.

______________________________X-Message: #2
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 11:06:21 EST
From: Spelrcg@aol.com
To: WV-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com
Message-ID: <0.b6dcfebf.259b8b7d@aol.com>
Subject: BIO:  CALDWELL, James Lewis, Huntington, WV
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II,
Page 160-161

JAMES LEWIS CALDWELL. The First National Bank of Huntington is the largest 
bank in point of resources in the State of West Virginia. It was organized in 
1884, the leading spirit in its organization being James Lewis Caldwell, who 
at that time was in the lumber business at Guyandotte, a suburb of 
Huntington. Mr. Caldwell was the first and has been the only president of 
this institution, and men in touch with its affairs are free to say that its 
great and solid prosperity is due in no small measure to the effective 
guidance and oversight of its honored president.

    Its officers and directors comprise a number of the best known men in the 
commercial and professional life of Huntington. The vice presidents are R.L. 
Archer, D.I. Smith, and L.V. Guthrie and the cashier is D.G. Miller. The 
first National Bank of Huntington has a capital stock of $1,000,000 surplus 
and profits of $600,000, deposits aggregating $5,500,000 and the total 
resources are over $8,000,000. It is a great financial institution, and 
appropriately enough it is housed in the largest and finest business building 
in Huntington, a modern brick and terra cotta twelve story building, the 
lower floor devoted entirely to the bank and the upper floors to offices.

    James Lewis Caldwell is one of the most youthful of the surviving 
veterans of the Civil war, and his career since the war has been closely 
identified with the state of West Virginia. He was born at Elizabeth, in what 
is now Wirt County, West Virginia, May 20, 1846. His father, John T. Caldwell 
was a native of Steubenville, Ohio, spent his early life in Kentucky, and was 
a life-long farmer. A few years before his death he retired to Parkersburg 
and lived with his son Charles T. In that city, where he died at the age of 
seventy-five. He began voting as a Whig, later became a republican and was a 
very active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His wife, whom he 
married at Letart, Meigs County, Ohio, was Regina M. Burns, a native of that 
community, and she died there at the birth of her youngest child, at the age 
of forty-five. Her children were: William B., who helped operate the home 
farm and was a merchant at Letart, where he died at the age of seventy; 
Alfred B., who also assisted in conducting the homestead and died at Letart 
at the age of sixty. George H., who was superintendent of the Dingess-Run 
Coal Company and died in Logan County, West Virginia, aged sixty-five; James 
Lewis; and Charles T., an attorney who died at Parkersburg in 1912.

    James Lewis Caldwell was educated in the rural schools of Meigs County, 
Ohio, receiving the equivalent of a high school education. In the closing 
months of 1862, before he was seventeen years of age, he enlisted in Company 
F of the Sixtieth Ohio Infantry, and thereafter served until the rebellion 
was put down. He was in General Grant's army, participated in the battles of 
the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, at the mine explosion in front of 
Petersburg, and thereafter was with the troops on Grant's right wing through 
the engagements at Weldon Railroad and minor battles until Appomattox.

    Following the war Mr. Caldwell for a year and a half represented the 
Peabody Insurance Company of Wheeling, traveling over the state establishing 
agencies and paying claims. He then established his business headquarters at 
Guyandotte, now included in the City of Huntington, and for eighteen years 
conducted a prosperous lumber business. His home has been in Huntington since 
1887, removing here three years after the establishment of the First National 
Bank.

    Banking has been only one of Mr. Caldwell's varied enterprises in the 
business field. In 1892 he organized the Huntington Electric Light and Street 
Railway Company and built that pioneer electric railway line, but sold it 
soon after it was put in operation. He organized and built the Guyandotte 
Valley Railway, now a branch of the Chesapeake & Ohio system. He was 
president and is still a director of the Consolidated Light & Railway Company 
at Republican, Illinois. He is president of the Dingess-Run Coal Company, 
which owns 30,000 acres of coal lands, with twenty active mines. He is 
secretary and treasurer of the Logan Cannel Coal Company, is secretary and 
treasurer of the Warehouse Land Company, and is a director and member of the 
executive committee of the Huntington Land Company, which owns a large number 
of vacant properties in the city, acquired from the estate of the late Collis 
P. Huntington for $350,000.

    Mr. Caldwell has been one of the standard bearers and leaders in the 
republican party in the state for many years. He was delegate at large to the 
Republican National Convention of 1904 and a member of the committee 
notifying President Roosevelt of his nomination. He has been in many county 
and state conventions, and one time was proposed as candidate for the United 
States Senate, but he withdrew from the race. Mr. Caldwell is a loyal member 
of the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with West Star Lodge No. 12, F. 
And A.M., at Huntington, and is a member of the Chamber of Commerce.

    In 1871, in Kanawa County, he married Miss Mary O'Bannon, daughter of Mr. 
and Mrs. Nicholas Smith, now deceased. Her father was a merchant at 
Louisville and also at Guyandotte, West Virginia. Mrs. Caldwell finished her 
education at Louisville. Seven children were born to their marriage. Ida 
Regina is the wife of William P.H. McFadden, a cattleman, rice grower and 
owner of rice mills at Beaumont, Texas. Ouida C. is the wife of Charles W. 
Watts, a wholesale dry goods merchant at Huntington, member of the firm 
Watts, Ritter & Company. Foree Dabney Caldwell, the oldest son living, was 
educated under the direction of the noted schoolman, Col. Robert Bingham, at 
Asheville, North Carolina, graduated from the University of Virginia at 
Charlottesville, and has since been actively associated with his father, 
being treasurer of the Dingess-Run Coal Company and of several other business 
organizations. George J., the second son, now in the insurance business at 
Huntington, is a graduate of the high school of that city. James L., Jr., 
graduated from West Virginia University at Morgantown, and for one year was 
in service as a lieutenant, being stationed near Houston, Texas, and is now 
secretary of a mining, car factory, and foundry corporation at Morgantown. 
Smith Caldwell, the youngest of the family, helped organize the noted machine 
gun company at Huntington, was commissioned a second lieutenant and had a 
year and a half of service, chiefly in Texas. He now handles the collection 
of rents and other business interests of his father.