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FAYETTE COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Chris & Kerry
cmac4330@chesapeake.net
December 18, 1999
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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
pg. 157 & 158
HOMER WISEMAN is one of the younger business men of Charleston, but enjoys that
substantial element of success due to associations in an executive capacity
with one of the most substantial of the city's industries, the West Virginia
Brick Company, of which he is secretary and treasurer.
The West Virginia Brick Company is a local industry of some years' standing.
Through the special quality of its product ''Charleston Brick" has a reputation
among building engineers as being one of the highest grade fire brick
manufactured anywhere. It has proved superior to the usual product, as shown by
the most rigid tests. This brick fuses only at the exceedingly high temperature
of 3146 degrees. It is made from a superior clay which the company mines on its
own property. The plain brick is used mostly for boiler room construction. The
pressed face brick has a widely distributed sale in many cities, chiefly New
York, and many architects give it first choice for exterior brick in the most
beautiful modern structures.
Mr. Wiseman was born at Elliott in Fayette County, West Virginia, in 1887, son
of Benjamin F. and Elizabeth (Crist) Wiseman, natives of this state. He grew up
in Fayette County, attended public schools there, and when past the age of
fifteen he came to Charleston and attended business college. For some five or
six years he was in the employ of the firm Crawford & Ashby and with the South
Charleston Land Company.
Mr. Wiseman in 1912 went into the brick manufacturing business as a member of
the West Virginia Clay Products Company, which had been founded in 1910 and
which has since become the West Virginia Brick Company. As secretary and
treasurer he is also active head of the company, since the president of the
corporation lives at Louisville. The West Virginia Brick Company has a modern
plant adjacent to Charleston, at Elk Two Mile, on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
Mr. Wiseman has devoted his best efforts to the building up of this essential
industry, and his part therein is a record of which many ambitious business men
might well be proud. He is a member of the Charleston Kiwanis Club and the
Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Wiseman married Miss Elizabeth Crookshanks, also a native of Fayette
County. Their two children are Homer Clyde and Claude Franklin.
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