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HARRISON COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook
vfcrook@earthlink.net
July 17, 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. 515
Harrison
JOSEPH NATHANIEL COLTRANE has been a resident of Lum-
berport over twenty years. He came into this community
soon after arriving in the state, a comparatively obscure
young man without capital or influential friends. There
followed some years of struggle, when he made little or no
progress in the tide of affairs. Persistence and industry
had their due reward, and for some years past his place
has been that of one of the most substantial business men
in Harrison County.
Mr. Coltrane is a native of North Carolina and was
born on a farm near Ashboro in Randolph County Sep-
tember 22, 1870, son of James A. and Flora A. (Henley)
Coltrane, natives of the same county. The Coltranes are
a very old and numerous family of North Carolina, and the
original stock was Quakers and many of the present gen-
eration cling to the same faith. James A. Coltrane was a
farmer. The mother is still living, as are also her ten
children, five sons and five daughters.
Joseph Nathaniel Coltrane spent his early life on the
farm in North Carolina, attended country schools, and sub-
sequently for two years was a student in Guilford College,
a noted Quaker School of North Carolina. He worked
to pay his expenses while in college, hut after two years
ran short of funds and did not realize his ambition to
complete a college career. After leaving school he sold
nursery stock, and came to West Virginia to sell a patent
gate and wire fencing to farmers.
Mr. Coltrane came to this state in 1893. Subsequently,
while at Lumberport, he met and in 1901 married Miss
Anna Laura Mathews, then a student in the Fairmont State
Normal School. She died, leaving a son, E. Glenn. Later
Mr. Coltrane married Miss Allie Storkey. They have eight
children, named Flora A., Joseph Nelson, Nathan, Anna,
Ruth, Nelson, Mary and Johnnie.
The first turn in his affairs as a struggling business
man came when after several failures, he brought in a
group of paying gas wells. As a gas producer he has en-
joyed exceptional success, and his judgment on all matters
connected with gas production in this section of West
Virginia is regarded as authoritative. In the course of
years Mr. Coltrane has accumulated a number of important
business interests. He is a contracting teamster, own-
ing an outfit of wagons and horses. He has mercantile
and real estate interests, and he owns and manages the
Lumberport Hotel. He is a director and officer in sev-
eral corporations, being a director in the Lumberport
Bank, president of the Shinnston Gas Company, director
in the Mound City Gas Company at Lumberport, the
Ten Mile Oil and Gas Company, the Hedges Land Company
and the Lumberport Land Company. Mr. Coltrane is a
republican, and fraternally is affiliated with the Independ-
ent Order of Odd Fellows and the Benevolent and Pro-
tective Order of Elks.
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