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KANAHWA COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA - BIOS: The Charleston Lumber Co. (published 1923)
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Submitted by
Valerie Crook
vfcrook@trellis.net
September 16, 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 III,
pg. 238
Kanwaha County
THE CHARLESTON LUMBER COMPANY, of which W. L.
Savage is president, is one of the old established concerns
in the capital city, and the business today comprises a large
retail yard, handling every class of building material, and
also a planing mill.
The company was incorporated in 1897, with George
Faloon as president, and A. Baird as secretary. This com-
pany took over the Meeker & Company sawmill and planing
mill, with its retail yard and some fifteen or twenty em-
ployes. That business had been in existence about ten years,
and was the outgrowth of a still older concern, the Deveraux
Lumber Company, established about 1885. A. Baird was
manager of the Charleston Lumber Company until 1906,
when W. L. Savage was made president and S. C. Savage,
vice president, and eventually they secured all the stock
formerly owned by Baird. The company for a number of
years were producers of rough lumber, operating a band
sawmill with a capacity of 40,000 feet per day. When the
supply of timber was decreased to a point where the sawmill
could not be profitably operated that department of the
business was closed out, but a planing mill has been con-
tinued, the rough lumber being secured from various mills
in the hardwood sections of West Virginia. There are about
100 employes in the planing mill department, and this mill
produces everything used in connection with house building.
The company still operates a retail lumber yard, and the
business represents an investment of about $400,000.
The active men in the business today are the Savage
brothers. Both are natives of Jackson County, Ohio, and
came to West Virginia in 1876. Their father, W. A. Sav-
age, was for twenty years one of the prominent oil pro-
ducers, opening up many new wells in Texas. The family
have lived at Charleston since 1876.
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