|
MONONGALIA COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
******************************************************************
Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
PJSTON@aol.com
December 6, 1999
******************************************************************
The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II
pg 96 + 97
Percy John Beaumont. For twenty years Percy John Beaumont, vice president
and general manager of the Beaumont Company, manufacturers at Morgantown,
West Virginia, has been closely identified with the industrial and general
business interests of this section of the state. He has borne a leading part
in the development of substantial enterprises at Morgantown and elsewhere and
as both business man and citizen has won prominence and esteem.
Mr. Beaumont is a native of England and was born in the City of Birmingham, a
great industrial center, November 15, 1864. His parents were the late John
and Elizabeth (Dowell) Beaumont, natives of England, who came to the United
States in 1884 and both died at Wheeling, West Virginia. They had two
children, a daughter, who is now the wife of Harry Northwood, and experienced
designer in the glass manufacturing industry, and Percy J.
It was in 1882, when eighteen years old, that Mr. Beaumont accompanied his
sister to the United States, where she was to be married to Harry Northwood,
who at the time was a designer for the Hobbs, Brockumier Glass Company of
Wheeling, West Virginia, but formerly had been a member of the firm of
Northwood & Company, glass manufacturers at Kingswinford, England. Mr.
Beaumont had been educated in the episcopal schools at Birmingham, and was
ready and anxious to acquire knowledge of a trade, and his brother-in-law
encouraged him to learn the glass making and decorating business, advice he
accepted and became an expert glass worker under Mr. Northwood's supervision.
In 1890 Mr. Beaumont organized the Beaumont Glass Company at Martin's Ferry,
Ohio, which was a successful enterprise from the start and soon outgrew its
quarters. When it became necessary to seek another location, inducements
were offered the company to locate at Grafton, West Virginia, and in 1902
removal was made to that city, where it is still operating as the Tyggart
Valley Glass Company. Mr. Beaumont disposed of his interests in the Grafton
concern in 1905, and became manager of the Union Stopper Company at
Morgantown in 1906, and so continued until 1917, in which year that company
was reorganized as the Beaumont Company, manufacturers of illuminated
glassware and stationers' sundries. Mr. Beaumont at that time became vice
president and general manager of the company, and so continues. Although he
has numerous other important interests, he has made the manufacture of glass
a leading one, and his reputation in this industry is widespread. He is
concerned also in the development of coal and oil and is treasurer and a
director of the Chaplin Colleries Company of Morgantown; is vice president of
the Silver Hill Oil Company; is president of the Seneca Hill Oil Company, and
is a director in the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Morgantown. He has been an
encourager and often financial helper of many other laudable business
enterprises here.
In 1889 Mr. Beaumont married Miss Laura Jefferson Dillon, daughter of
Benjamin Dillon. Mrs. Beaumont died in 1918, leaving one daughter and two
sons: Catherine Elizabeth, who is the wife of Prof. Eugene C. Auchter, Ph.
D., a graduate of Cornell University, who (1922) is a member of the faculty
as professor of horticulture in the Maryland State College; John Herbert, who
is an A. B. graduate of the West Virginia University, is taking his Ph. D.
work at the Chicago University (1922) and at the same time he is an
instructor in horticulture at the University of Minnesota; and Arthur
Brittingham, who is associated with his father in business. Mr. Beaumont is
a member of the First Episcopal Church at Morgantown. Political life has
never attracted him nor have fraternal organizations, but he enjoys
membership in the Turn Verein Society at Morgantown.
|
