ALEX.: You have been in this men's shop. You're Mr. William, uh,
Wilson.
HARPER: Westley.
ALEX.: Westley. Your father's name's Wilson.
HARPER: No, his name's William Weis.
ALEX.: William Weis. Right.
HARPER: Harper.
ALEX.: Right. And your father was engaged in the lumber industry
in this county for a while, and uh, the reason I recall you
told me came from the Buckhannon are in Upshur County.
HARPER: That's right.
ALEX.: Uh, how did he get down in this country and, uh, I guess
you came with him or were you born here?
HARPER: No, no, I was born over in Upsur County. But, uh, my
father came, had been as I told you, he had always been in
the lumber business, and in a very small way in Upshur
County, and uh, there I went to Nicholas County, and it
was in the late twenties and early thirties.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HARPER: Then he, uh, came over here to a loggin' operation for a
mill that operating down near Hillsboro. And there he
went to, uh, Jackson's River in Virginia, another's
loggin' operation for Curry and Haupt. I mentioned those
to you.
ALEX.: Would you spell that for me?
HARPER: H-A-U-P-T, was Haupt.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HARPER: Mr. Curry was a merchant here in Marlington and had a
general store.
*: Hi.
HARPER: Hi, Jim. He was not active in the lumber business. Dad
managed the lumber business. Curry had the money to start
with. Later on, uh, Dad bought Mr. Curry out. When
you're operating down at Millpoint, that was, uh, start
about 1940. And he continued there until he died in 1962.
And I worked for him, uh, in the office and as a lumber
inspector. I'm laughing at that guy trying that hat on up
there. Uh, had a plain mill in addition to the saw mill.
Did some retail business with the plain mill, but, Janet
Ait was, uh, wholesale business, manufacturing wholesale
lumber. There are a couple of mills, about, I should have
mentioned one to you that I didn't mention before. One
was here in town, a mill that operated here for a long
time was a Williams & Pifer Lumber Mill in the upper end
of the county. Within the corporation.
ALEX.: Pifer?
HARPER: Pifer. Yes.
ALEX: P-I
HARPER: P-I-F-E-R.
ALEX: F-E-R.
HARPER: Uh, Ed Williams was a well-known lumberman and farmer here
for several years. He's dead now and so is Mr. Pifer
dead, but they had, uh, a real big operation in the upper
end of town here. Another mill that I didn't mention.
You asked about the mills in Pocahontas County was up at,
uh, Bartow, a mill that came in later up there was Frank
Schoalfield Lumber Company out of Philadelphia. It was
operated by Schoalfield's son-in-law, Jim O'Halloran.
ALEX.: How do you spell his last name, you remember?
HARPER: O-H-A-L-L-O-R-A-N was uh, O'Halloran's name. They sold
out to Interstate Lumber Company that still operates up
there at Bartow.
ALEX.: Uh huh. Now when did they come into that area, Bartow?
You remember, roughly?
HARPER: That would have been, uh, in the, u h, late fifties.
ALEX.: In the late fifties.
HARPER: Yes.
ALEX.: Then your father operated his biggest operation, you say,
in around Millpoint?
HARPER: That's right.
ALEX.: Now what about this Woodrow site out here, uh, near the
fish hatchery?
HARPER: Oh, yes. Well, uh, you've mentioned the old sawdust pile
out there across the road from the West Union Church. Dad
and Curry operated there, uh. When that operation was in
progress, that Mr. Haupt died one morning in the
wintertime. He was down there.(----Okay, * come back.----speaking to customer) He was trying to start a water pump.
They had to pump the water to the mill from a spring, uh, a
little gasoline-operated pump. He went down to start that
thing and tried to start it a few times and it quit. Dropped
over dead with a heart attack down there. That's when, as I
told you Curry had no experience in operating a mill, he was
primarily merchant and he needed somebody to look after
the mill for him and Dad was doing the loggin' for them at
that time, so he bought Mr. Haupt's interest and later
bought Mr. Curry's interest too before he went to
Millpoint.
ALEX.: Uh huh. So he finished up, uh, pretty much as a jobber or
a wholesaler.
HARPER: Yeah.
ALEX.: And did business with a number of other mills I think you
told me in Virginia?
HARPER: Uh, he did work at a lumber contractor for Curry and Haupt
on Jackson's River in Virginia.
ALEX: That’s not confidential and or. What I'm trying to do is fill
in the deposits . . .
HARPER: Right place over there. Gathride owned vast acreage over
there.
ALEX.: What was his, how you spell his last name?
HARPER: G-A-T-H-R-I-D-E, I believe.
ALEX.: Okay.
HARPER: I'll be glad to order it. And they've got timber on his
property.
ALEX.: Now I remarked to you in all sincerity that you're a much
younger-looking man than you are and you look much more
active than uh, than a man of your age and you've been in
this clothing store which, in my judgement, a quality
store for a period of what, six or seven years?
HARPER: Well, no, been five and a half years. Uh, I took this
business over in January '71. And I've been here since.
As I told you I intend to wind up this year.
ALEX.: Uh huh. You gave me your date of birth before and I, I
remember you're in your sixties, but . . .
HARPER: November 28, 1911.
ALEX.: 1911. You certainly don't look that . . .
HARPER: I've certainly got good hearing. I hope I don't drop
over before I'm eighty.
ALEX.: I'm telling you. Well, that kind of things help. Let me
ask you another, something else that I uncovered and I, I
knew existed but not many people, I guess, would think of
it and soon some people would forget it all together, but
evidently they had a federal prison camp back there near
Millpoint. Do you remember any of that operation when
they were building that highway? Used prison labor,
didn't they, to build part of that highway?
HARPER: Yes, yes, they did. When we first moved down there in,
uh, 1940, they'd just started working on that road across
to Richwood. There was no road from Millpoint across to
Richwood. Not even a trace of a road. It went, it went
uh, go to the top of the mountain, you know, where the
visitor center is up there. The only way you could've
gotten to go up there was to walk from the end of the road
right up to ____ bridge.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HARPER: And the mill, the prison camp also operated a saw mill
back there in addition to building that road. They cut
the timber off the government and uh, had those prisoners
to build that highway. They knapped the rock for the base
by hand and moved ____ out there by hammers. They had a
lot of prisoners there during the war that were
conscientious objectors and they were all federal
prisoners and uh, a lot of them were good people, so, but
because of religious reasons they didn't approve of the
war and didn't participate in it. They elected to go to
federal prison rather than go to the army. Uh, Layman
Davis, by the way, that you've talked to, I think . . .
ALEX.: Yeah, I've interviewed him. Yeah, he's the one who put
me on to it. I remember the camp.
HARPER: He was a guard out there and part of his job was to take
the crew out and work them on that road and foresee them.
ALEX.: When did they finish out there?
HARPER: Let's see. Uh, that would be a guess. That must have been, uh, early
in the sixties.
ALEX.: Uh huh. Early in the sixties?
HARPER: Yeah. Maybe about '60.
ALEX.: About 1960. They've got a good road across that mountain.
HARPER: Yes, they do.
ALEX.: Did they build it down the other side, too?
HARPER: Yes, they built it all the way into Richwood.
ALEX.: Is that right? It's a nice stretch of highway across that
mountain.
HARPER: Yes, sir. Beautiful trip.
ALEX.: Well, I appreciate your taking a few moments to talk to me
again this morning and I enjoyed the visit and this will
be very, very helpful. I'm sure we've got this. You want
to hear it?
At this time 7/11/02 Mr. Harper is still living in a nursing home in
Marlinton, WV.
END