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CABELL COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook
vfcrook@trellis.net
March 19, 2000
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 368
Cabell
WILLIAM GOFF HOLSWADE is a prominent West Virginia
financier and business man, and is founder and treasurer
of the Security Savings Company of Huntington, and active
in real estate and other lines of business in that city.
He represents one of the older families of West Virginia.
His great-great-grandfather Holswade was a German sol-
dier under Napoleon in many of the campaigns of the
Napoleonic era. He died from the effects of wounds re-
ceived in the battle of Austerlitz. His son, Frederick
Holswade, was of Alsatian ancestry, was born in a Rhine
province of Germany in 1819, and in 1834 came to the
United States. He located in Lewis County, West Virginia,
and became a successful farmer and stock raiser there. He
died at Spencer. West Virginia, in 1876. His wife, Martha
Alkire, was born at Janelew, Lewis County, in 1819, and
died at Spencer in 1904. John M. Holswade, father of the
Huntington business man, was born at Spencer, August 13,
1853, and has spent all his life in that community. He
acquired an excellent education under private tutors, and
during his mature career has given attention to his exten-
sive farming interests and for a number of years has been
a grower of pure bred Hereford cattle. He is a democrat,
a leading member of the Methodist Protestant Church, and
a Royal Arch Mason. John M. Holswade married Emma
Kate Goff, who was born at Spencer, May 12, 1866, and
died at Huntington, January 19, 1914. William Goff is her
oldest child. Harry S., who follows in his father's footsteps
as a farmer and stock dealer at Spencer, was a captain in
the One Hundred and Fiftieth Infantry, Thirty-eighth Divi-
sion, with the American Forces in Prance, where he spent
a year. Alice Isabelle is the wife of Thomas M. Brady, a
civil engineer, living at Sistersville, West Virginia.
William Goff Holswade was born at Spencer, Roane
County, West Virginia, December 2, 1882. He graduated
from the Spencer High School in June, 1901, completed
his junior year in West Virginia University at Morgan-
town, and in 1905 accepted the opportunity to learn banking
as a clerk in the Bank of Spencer. His abilities and
diligence were duly rewarded and he was promoted to assist-
ant cashier. After leaving the bank in 1907 he served one
year as paymaster for the West Virginia and Maryland
Gas Company at Cumberland, Maryland. For a short time
he was with the Philadelphia Company of Pittsburgh, and
then, returning to his native state, he organized at Walton
in Roane County the Poca Valley Bank. He was cashier
and active executive officer of this institution for eight
years, and is still a director. Mr. Holswade transferred his
financial interests and home to Huntington in 1916, when
he organized the Security Savings Company, of which he is
treasurer. The other executive officers of this company
are William B. Thomas, president, and Dan H. Holton, vice
president. The company occupies the ground floor of the
Holswade Building at 317 Ninth Street. Mr. Holswade is
also president of the Holswade Land Company, and he and
his cousin, J. Fred Holswade, own jointly the Holswade
Building, a seven-story office building, one of the prominent
structures of the Huntington business district. Mr. Hols-
wade owns a large amount of other real estate in Hunting-
ton, including a modern home on Circular Drive, Spring
Hill. He is unmarried, is a democrat, is affiliated with
Huntington Lodge No. 313, B. P. O. E., and is a member
of the Guyandotte Club and the Huntington Country Club.
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