William Nelson Page

William Nelson Page (January 6, 1854 – March 7, 1932) was an American civil engineer and industrialist. He was active in the Virginias following the U.S. Civil War. Page was widely known as a metallurgical expert by other industry leaders and investors as well as state and federal authorities.

William Page became one of the leading managers and developers of West Virginia's rich bituminous coalfields in the late-19th and early-20th century, as well as being deeply involved in building the railroads and other infrastructure necessary to process and transport the mined coal. Page often worked as a manager for absentee owners, such as the British geological expert, Dr. David T. Ansted, and the New York City mayor, Abram S. Hewitt of the Cooper-Hewitt organization and other New York and Boston financiers.He also worked as the "front man" in projects involving a silent partner, such as Henry H. Rogers. In the town of Ansted, for 28 years, the Page family lived in a large Victorian mansion built by carpenters of the Gauley Mountain Coal Company.

Most notable among Page's many accomplishments was a project to acquire land and construct a modest short-line railroad to tap new coal reserves in a rugged portion of southern West Virginia not yet reached by the bigger railroads. Connections planned to both the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) and the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) should have inspired competition among rival carriers to transport the coal the rest of the way to market. However, collusion by the leaders of the large railroads attempted to stop the project through agreeing to only offer Page unprofitable rates. Instead of giving up, working with Rogers discreetly providing the millions needed for financing, William Page and his associates expanded the "short line" all the way hundred of miles across the Virginias to a new coal pier built on Hampton Roads, creating the Virginian Railway. Completed in 1909, the VGN was built to be very efficient and during the first half of the 20th century, became widely known as the "Richest Little Railroad in the World."

William and Emma completed their lives in Washington D.C., where they moved in 1917 as he served as a mining expert before federal regulators. One of their younger sons, Randolph Gilham "Dizzy" Page, was an early pioneer of the U.S. air mail industry during this time until his death of a heart attack at 36. William and Emma died in 1932 and 1933 respectively, and were interred in Richmond, Virginia's Hollywood Cemetery.

Early life, heritage of public service

William Nelson Page was born at "Locust Grove" in Campbell County, Virginia on January 6, 1854 into an old Virginia family. His parents were Edwin Randolph Page (1822–1864) and Olivia (née Alexander) Page (1820–1896), a scion of the Nelson family. He descended from historic roots; the Nelson and Page families were each among the "First Families of Virginia", families who were prominent in the Virginia Colony.

Through the Nelson family, he was a descendant of Robert "King" Carter (1663–1732), who served as an acting royal governor of Virginia and was one of its wealthiest landowners in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. After the American Revolutionary War, two of his great-grandfathers served as Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Some years later, in 1905, another relative, Logan Waller Page, became the first head of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, an early precursor of the agency which became the U.S. Department of Transportation. Logan Page served as an energetic advocate of the country's early interstate highway system until his death in 1918.

Although his father died in 1861, and notwithstanding the financial hardships which were widespread in the South brought on by the Civil War which began that year, from a family base in Rockbridge and Augusta counties, where his mother and siblings relocated, young William Nelson Page was educated at the University of Virginia as a civil engineer.

After the cessation of hostilities in 1865, as he launched his career, he participated in some local politics and civic activities, but primarily directed his considerable energies into developing transportation and mineral resources in the mountainous regions of Virginia and the newly formed state of West Virginia. Between 1871 and 1876, William Page played a role in engineering and building the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), which was under the leadership of Collis P. Huntington. Initially, he led one of the surveying parties charged with mapping the route of a double-track railway that had been ordered by Congress. This new railway was expected to run between Richmond, Virginia and the Ohio River (at what became Huntington, West Virginia), via the valleys of the James River and Jackson River in Virginia, and the New River and Kanawha River in West Virginia. He chose the location and directed the construction of several important C&O bridges. While working with the C&O, Page became fascinated with the potential of the untapped mineral resources of West Virginia.

Family and children William's father, a farmer, died in 1862, but his education continued. Olivia Page, William's widowed mother, owned several farms in Rockbridge County, Virginia, where she relocated. Both William and Emma had roots in the central Shenandoah Valley area named for nearby Natural Bridge.

His future wife, Emma Hayden Gilham (1855–1933), had been born at Lexington in Rockbridge County, Virginia. She was the youngest daughter of Major William Gilham, a former Commandant of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). Emma's parents moved to Richmond at the outset of the American Civil War, where her father helped with Virginia and Confederate troop training. after the end of hostilities in 1865, he worked for a fertilizer company. He died in 1872.

On February 8, 1882, Page married Emma Hayden Gilham (1855–1933) in Richmond, Virginia. By this time, William had become well-established in the region and had been named as General Manager and a Director of the Gauley Mountain Coal Company at the urging of an old friend and trustee, attorney Thomas D. Ransom of Staunton, Virginia.

Emma and William settled in the town of Ansted in Fayette County, West Virginia, where they raised their family, which included four children who lived beyond infancy. Their palatial white Victorian mansion was built by Gauley Mountain Coal Company carpenters, on a knoll in the middle of town. Later known as the Page-Vawter House, it remained has been preserved and restored and remained as a community landmark as of 2010.

Entrepreneur and developer

A knowledgeable man with the training and experience as a civil engineer and the spirit of an entrepreneur, Page was well-prepared to help develop West Virginia's hidden wealth: huge deposits of "smokeless" bituminous coal, a product exceptionally well-suited for making steel. Former West Virginia Governor William A. MacCorkle described him as a man who knew the land "as a farmer knows a field."

Page became a protégé of Dr. David T. Ansted, a noted British geologist with large land holdings in southern West Virginia. As his career developed, Page busied himself with many enterprises to develop the natural resources which lay all around him, primarily working with iron and coal operations, often as the manager for absentee owners.

He was the general manager of the Hawks Nest Coal Co. between 1877 and 1880, superintendent of the Victoria Blast Furnace at Goshen, Virginia from 1880 to 1885, and he located and built the Powellton bridge for the C&O between 1885 and 1889. After developing the Mt. Carbon Collieries, he organized and developed the Gauley Mountain Coal Company, and he became a consulting engineer for other coal-producing firms as well. He was also involved with the Virginia and Pittsburgh Land Association (a land development company) and the Pittsburgh and Virginia Railroad Company.

Of course, with his background with the C&O, Page was intensely interested in railroads, and he gained even more practical railroad experience after winning the contract to convert the C&O branch-line track, from the New River main line, up the mountainside to Ansted, to standard gauge. The project was completed on 20 August 1890, at a cost of $35,038.44.

He was later a principal of the Page Coal and Coke Company.

The "idea man from Ansted" William and Emma Page settled their family in the tiny mountain hamlet of Ansted, a town with a population of 2,000 (named for Dr. Ansted) located in Fayette County, West Virginia. Ansted sits on high bluffs on Gauley Mountain near an outcropping of rocks called Hawk's Nest overlooking the New River far below, where the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway tracks occupied both sides of the narrow valley. In the late 1870s, Emma and William's widowed mother, Olivia Page, who had come to live with them, were influential in establishing the Church of the Redeemer, the Episcopal Church in Ansted.

In 1889, while he was president of the Gauley Mountain Coal Company, Page had a palatial white Victorian mansion built by company carpenters on a knoll in the middle of town. Architect William Minter designed the house in a Gothic style. It has 15 regular rooms, plus a butler's pantry and a dressing room. There are 11 fireplaces with hand-carved wooden mantels; most are in different styles. Even the doors have ornately decorated hinges.

"Colonel" Page, as he became known, was in truth, a uniformed captain and later a major in a locally recruited Spanish–American War militia. ("Colonel" was an honorific title used informally in the South for many notable men in the years following the American Civil War). A colorful character by all accounts, he was described as a slight man who was known for his handlebar mustache, pince-nez glasses, iron bowler derby, and elegant suits. He was considered to be somewhat aloof by the local population, and could frequently be seen riding a bicycle on the sloping lawn of the mansion, where eight servants were employed.

Described years later by author H. Reid as "the idea man from Ansted," Page spent long hours working in the den just off the main entrance to his resplendent home. In addition to pursuing business interests, Page also found time to serve as the mayor of Ansted for 10 years and rose to the rank of brigadier inspector general in the West Virginia National Guard. In 1907, he was named as the first president of Ansted National Bank. His son, William Nelson (1711–1772) was a royal governor of Virginia. William Nelson's son, Thomas Nelson, Jr. (1739–1789) (grandson of "Scotch Tom") was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Brigadier General during the American Revolutionary War and a governor after statehood.

Nelson County, Kentucky (formerly in Virginia before Kentucky became a state), Nelson County, Virginia and Thomas Nelson Community College in the Virginia Peninsula subregion of Hampton Roads are each named in honor of Thomas Nelson, Jr. His son, Hugh Nelson (1768–1836) would later serve in the U.S. Congress. The circa 1730 Nelson House built by "Scotch Tom" Nelson in Yorktown, Virginia is a National Historical Landmark maintained by the Colonial National Historical Park of the U.S. National Park Service.

Page family lineage

The Page family lineage in Virginia began even earlier, in 1650, with the arrival from England of Colonel John Page (1628–1692) at Jamestown. He was from Middlesex (in the present London borough of Hounslow). She was the sister of Julius Hayden Gilham (1852–1936) who is also buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

William Page and Emma Gilham both had roots and family in the Augusta County and Rockbridge County area of the upper Shenandoah Valley. (William's married sister lived in Staunton, Virginia.) They had four children who survived childhood: Delia Hayden Page (born 1882), Edwin Randolph Page (1884–1949), Mary Josephine Page (1893–1962), and Randolph Gilham Page (1893–1930). They also had two other children who died in infancy: Evan Powell Page (born 1887) and William Gilham Page (born 1890).

Legacy

The unincorporated West Virginia coal and railroad towns of Page in Fayette County and Pageton in McDowell County were named for him. The Page Coal and Coke Company operated in each, although coal mining has long since ended. The old company store in Pageton is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 21st century, William and Emma's mansion, now known as the Page-Vawter House, still stands in Ansted, on a high knoll, overlooking the town and the New River Valley. It is evidence of the once-thriving coal business. Later occupied by the Vawter family, the Page-Vawter House is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Nearby, breathtaking Hawk's Nest overlooks the New River Gorge National River.

The seemingly remotely located terminal Page and Rogers planned and built at Sewell's Point played an important role in 20th-century U.S. naval history. Beginning in 1917, the former Jamestown Exposition grounds adjacent to the VGN coal pier became an important facility for the United States Navy. The VGN transported the high quality "smokeless" West Virginia bituminous coal favored by the US Navy for its ships and submarines, providing a reliable supply during both World Wars. Today, the former VGN property at Sewell's Point is part of the Norfolk Navy Base, the largest naval facility in the world.

After Page retired in 1917, a ship was named in his honor. William N. Page was a steamship built at Camden, New Jersey, by the New York Ship Building and Dry Dock Corp. It was taken over by the US Navy for operation by the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS) and commissioned on December 18, 1918. After fitting out, William N. Page loaded general cargo and locomotives and departed for France. It made several transatlantic trips through the treacherous German U-boat infested waters before finally returning to Norfolk where on May 31, 1919, it was decommissioned by the Navy. After its brief naval career, the William N. Page remained in active merchant service for nearly three decades. Its successive owners and operators included the Mystic Steamship Co., the Koppers Coal Co., and Eastern Gas and Fuel Associates. The latter two companies were majority owners of the Virginian Railway after purchasing a controlling interest from Rogers' heirs in 1936.

Formed in 2002, a non-profit group of preservationists, authors, photographers, historians, modelers, and rail fans, has grown to over 650 members. Members come from as far from the VGN tracks as Australia and include U.S. troops stationed in the war-torn Middle East. A group of retired railroaders calling themselves "The Virginian Brethren" meet weekly, share tales of the VGN, and answer questions posed by members of the on-line group.

In 2005, the initials "H.H.R." and 'W.N.P." were engraved in the rails of a short stretch of new roadbead laid for a caboose to be displayed at Victoria, a town they caused to be founded on the "Mountains to Sea" railroad. Their Virginian Railway has turned out to be a lasting tribute, both to Henry Huttleston Rogers, and to William Nelson Page, the "Idea Man from Ansted".