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SUMMERS COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook
vfcrook@earthlink.net
August 1, 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. 629-630
Summers
HARRY JAMES EDMONDS, is the popular general manager
of the Hinton Fruit & Produce Company, which now controls
a substantial and prosperous business, with headquarters
in a well equipped establishment at Hinton, the county seat
of Summers County. The enterprise was initiated by its
present manager in the year 1908, and in 1910 the business
was incorporated under the present title. All of the
stock in the company is held in the possession of the
Edmonds family, the other interested principals being Ed-
ward T. and George A. B. Edmonds. The Edmonds family
was founded on the east coast of Virginia prior to the war
of the Revolution, and the family name has been one of
prominence in connection with development and progress
in what is now West Virginia. The old home was in
Accomac County, Virginia, and thence came the represen-
tatives in the western part of the Old Dominion, now West
Virginia, members of the family having been active in the
furtherance of coal-mining industry in the New and Kana-
wha River Districts of the latter state.
He whose name initiates this review was born October
12, 1877, in Accomac County, Virginia, and he is a son
of John W. and Nancy (Burton) Edmonds, the former of
whom now resides at Hinton and the latter of whom passed
to the life eternal in the year 1920. Harry J. Edmonds is
indebted to the schools of his native state for his early
education, and in 1900 he took a position in the office of
G. M. Surpell, an executive of the Atlantic Coast Line
Railroad, at Norfolk, Virginia, where he remained until
1908, when he came to Hinton and established, on a modest
scale, the business of which he is now the manager and
which has under his direction expanded to most sub-
stantial proportions. The company has a branch house at
Norfolk, Virginia, and another at Huntington, West Vir-
ginia, where the business is conducted under the title of
the Guyan Fruit & Produce Company, under the manage-
ment of Edward T. Edmonds, the house at Norfolk being
conducted under the management of John B. Edmonds.
Mr. Edmonds is a democrat, but has had no desire for
the activities of practical politics, as he is essentially and
unreservedly a business man. He is liberal and public-
spirited in his civic attitude, is actively identified with the
Rotary Club at Hinton, and he and his wife are zealous
members of the Presbyterian Church in this city, he being
an elder in the same and also the teacher of a large class in
its Sunday School.
In the year 1909 was solemnized the marriage of Mr.
Edmonds and Miss Margaret Savage, daughter of J. A. D.
Savage, of Accomac County, Virginia, and she is a popular
figure in the representative social activities of her home
community.
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