Turn-of-the-century Bramwell, West Virginia, ended up being an abundant small city with more millionaires than just about any host to its size in the usa. Tucked away within the coal areas, 14 millionaires or maybe 19, according to which account you read resided sumptuously along-side the city’s 4,000 citizens. During the early 1880s, term distribute quickly associated with the development for the Pocahontas coal field over the Virginia/West Virginia line. Great coal seams eight to 10 legs high started at Bramwell, W.Va. and extensive for 48 miles. Speculators, designers, business owners and miners flocked to your budding town, understood informally as Horseshoe Bend. Some miners originated in Pennsylvania coal areas, other people straight from England, Scotland and Wales. Operators associated with brand new mines recruited immigrants at Ellis Island.
One fortune-seeker was Joseph H. Bramwell, a fresh York civil engineer, whom found its way to 1883. As very first postmaster of a postoffice that required a label that is legal he stated, “Every small infant features a name, and also this small city will need to have the exact same. We therefore name it Bramwell.” Later on, Joseph H. became very very first payday loans IL president regarding the famed Bank of Bramwell, and a big-time real-estate investor. Unlike numerous millionaires whom remained around to lose their funds throughout the Great Depression or as soon as the mines started to play down within the 1930s and ’40s Joseph Bramwell soon gathered up their fortune and relocated to Switzerland.
By 1885, C.H. Durhing, a coal business engineer, had mapped away lots for domiciles and companies. Regarding the Bluestone River’s horseshoe bend, he designed the 2 major stone roads to create a cross. A three-mile-long chartered area included the mine web web sites of Cooper to your western and Freeman into the eastern. Each mining community complex had its houses that are own schools, churches, and shops. Found among them, Bramwell had been the hub.
Bramwell had been a domestic oasis, where rich coal barons and their officials could reside in luxury making use of their families, all enjoying a sparkling social life, maybe even consuming the “beerine” produced in a regional factory. a help system of merchants, ministers, health practitioners, solicitors yet others undergirded their life style. Before 1900, the city had electric road lights, a water business, phone solution and a weekly magazine.
Officials’ Victorian houses had been avant-garde when it comes to times. Imported furnishings had been typical. A copper roof covers the 24-room, 1910 Queen Anne-style Cooper home. Built of orange brick imported from England, its amenities included a interior pool. The 1885 house of Dr. McGuffin, Bramwell’s first doctor, had interior plumbing work, a bath, and a speaking tube through the entry way to their bed room. The lovely blue 1895 Goodwill household has a ballroom. Imported Italian masons laid rock when it comes to 17-room, 6,500-square-foot, Tudor-style Thomas home.
In very early times, the lender of Bramwell, through courtesy, managed the checking and cost savings is the reason regional residents. But this is stuff that is small to its genuine company. The well-heeled bank had been the economic focus for many southern western Virginia and points far past. As an example, it financed construction of Burning Tree nation Club in Washington, D.C. For size and population, the lender offered more World War I Loan Bonds than any standard bank in the nation.