West Virginia University - Monticola Yearbook (Morgantown, WV)

Page 15 text:

COL. JOSEPH L. BEURY Colonel Joseph Lawton Beury is credited with mining the first New River coal in 1873. He continued to be one of the greatest individual factors in West Virginia ' s development in the coal industry for thirty years after this achievement. At the time of his death in 1903 he was an officer and director in more than a score of the largest organizations in the southern section of the state, owning and operating coal lands and mines. Much of his remark- able success was attributed to his exceptional knowledge of practical economic geology. Two sons, Thomas C and Henry B., and one daughter, Mrs. Daisy Ethel Nichol, survive.

Page 14 text:

HARRY BOWEN Mr. W. H. (Harry) Bowen, residence Freeman, Mercer County, West Vir- ginia; Chairman of the Board, Pocahontas Fuel Company, Inc. He was born at Ashland, Pennsylvania, on October 14, 1860, and went to work when 16 for the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company. In 1887 he came to Mercer County as Secretary of the Booth-Bowen Coal and Coke Company, later becoming treasurer and then president. He was married to Miss Harriet Hopkinson, of St. Clair, Pennsylvania, in 1880; four sons and three daughters were born to them. He is one of the original coal operators of Mercer County. His father, Jonathan P. Bowen, a native of Wales, migrated to Pennsylvania, where he became a coal miner and advanced to the superintendency of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company. While attending a meeting of coal men in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, in the 1 880 ' s, his father met William (Billy) Booth and Jim Booth, who together with Joe Taylor, had secured a lease in the Pocahontas Coal Field. These men interested him in the new venture and, on his way to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, he stopped at what is now Freeman to inspect the property. It looked so good to him that he cancelled his trip to New Orleans, wrote his resignation to the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, and took charge of the Pocahontas property, which was named the Booth-Bowen Coal and Coke Company. Shortly thereafter the father brought his family down from Pennsylvania, which included the son, Harry, and his wife and infant son. Harry Bowen ' s first love was the Booth-Bowen Coal and Coke Company, which exhausted its coal in February, 1 938, after having mined over 9,000,000 tons. However, he is a large stockholder and Chairman of the Board of the Pocahontas Fuel Company, Incorporated, and is financially interested in other coal mining ventures, as well as having holdings in several banking institutions and numerous other business enterprises.

Page 16 text:

WILLIAM J. BEURY William Joseph Beury, son of William Beury, was born June 26, 1877, at Shamokin, Pennsylvania. The father first became interested in the Pocahontas field in 1 886 in the Millcreek Coal and Coke Company, Coopers, W. Va. Wil- liam Joseph came to Algoma June 1 , 1 898, and was married to Katherine Frame of Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1 901 , by whom he had two children. He is president of Algoma Coal and Coke Company and the First National Bank of Northfork, and has financial interests in other coal operating and selling companies as well as other business enterprises.