Turn-of-the-century Bramwell, western Virginia, ended up being a rich small city with more millionaires than just about any host to its size in the usa. Saved within the coal areas, 14 millionaires or maybe 19, dependent on which account you read resided sumptuously along-side the city’s 4,000 residents. During the early 1880s, term distribute quickly of the finding regarding the Pocahontas coal field over the Virginia/West Virginia line. Great coal seams eight to 10 foot high started at Bramwell, W.Va. and extensive for 48 kilometers. Speculators, designers, entrepreneurs and miners flocked to your budding town, understood informally as Horseshoe Bend. Some miners originated in Pennsylvania coal areas, other people straight from England, Scotland and Wales. Operators associated with brand new mines recruited immigrants at Ellis Island.
One fortune-seeker ended up being Joseph H. Bramwell, a brand new York civil engineer, whom found its way to 1883. As very very very first postmaster of a postoffice that required a appropriate label, he stated, “Every small infant includes a title, and also this small city should have the exact same. We therefore payday loans California name it Bramwell.” Later, Joseph H. became very first president for the famed Bank of Bramwell, and a big-time property investor. Unlike numerous millionaires whom stayed around to reduce their funds throughout the Great Depression or as soon as the mines begun to play down within the 1930s and ’40s Joseph Bramwell soon gathered up their fortune and relocated to Switzerland.
A coal company engineer, had mapped out lots for homes and businesses by 1885, C.H. Durhing. Regarding the Bluestone River’s horseshoe fold, he designed the 2 major stone roads to create a cross. A three-mile-long area that is chartered the mine internet web internet sites of Cooper into the western and Freeman to your eastern. Each mining community complex had its very own homes, schools, churches, and shops. Situated among them, Bramwell had been the hub.
Within Bramwell’s elongated restrictions, six railroad bridges and six highway bridges crossed the looping, snaking Bluestone River, while the highway crossed the songs 3 times.
Bramwell had been a domestic oasis, where rich coal barons and their officials could are now living in luxury using their families, all enjoying a sparkling social life, maybe even consuming the “beerine” produced in a local factory. a help system of merchants, ministers, physicians, lawyers yet others undergirded their life style. A water company, telephone service and a weekly newspaper before 1900, the town had electric street lights.
Officials’ Victorian houses had been avant-garde when it comes to times. Imported furnishings had been typical. A copper roof covers the 24-room, 1910 Queen Anne-style Cooper house. Built of orange brick imported from England, its amenities included a interior pool. The 1885 house of Dr. McGuffin, Bramwell’s first doctor, had interior plumbing work, a bath, and a talking tube through the door to their room. The lovely blue 1895 Goodwill home features a ballroom. Imported Italian masons laid stone for the 17-room, 6,500-square-foot, Tudor-style Thomas home.
In Bramwell’s heyday, the four major regional mines each bore the name “Coal & Coke Company”: Mill Creek, Buckeye, Booth Bowen and Caswell Creek. One business used 400 males. a fan that is 16-foot-diameter 174 beehive coke ovens at another company. One mine produced 100,000 a lot of coal yearly. Miners blasted coal seams with gunpowder, then hand-loaded the coal into mule carts to carry it down. In 1889, a year following the city’s charter, miners got 1.05 for the coal vehicle that held tons that are 2-1/2. A solid, efficient worker could load 4-1/2 vehicles per day. Accidents had been typical.
In very early times, the financial institution of Bramwell, through courtesy, handled the checking and cost savings is the reason regional residents. But this was stuff that is small to its genuine business. The bank that is well-heeled the economic focus for many southern western Virginia and points far past. For instance, it financed construction of Burning Tree nation Club in Washington, D.C. The bank sold more World War I Loan Bonds than any financial institution in the country for size and population.
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