Biography of James Lewis Caldwell

James Lewis Caldwell
Company F
1846-1923

JAMES LEWIS CALDWELL. The First National Bank of Huntington is the largest bank in point of resources in the State of West Virginia. It was organized in 1884, the leading spirit in its organization being James Lewis Caldwell, who at that time was in the lumber business at Guyandotte, a suburb of Huntington. Mr. Caldwell was the first and has been the only president of this institution, and men in touch with its affairs are free to say that its great and solid prosperity is due in no small measure to the effective guidance and oversight of its honored president.

Its officers and directors comprise a number of the best known men in the commercial and professional life of Huntington. The vice presidents are R. L. Archer, D. I. Smith, and L. V. Guthrie and the cashier is D. G. Miller. The First National Bank of Huntington has a capital stock of $1,000,000 surplus and profits of $600,000, deposits aggregating $5,500,000 and the total resources are over $8,000,000. It is a great financial institution, and appropriately enough it is housed in the largest and finest business building in Huntington, a modern brick and terra cotta twelve story building, the lower floor devoted entirely to the bank and the upper floors to offices.

James Lewis Caldwell is one of the most youthful of the surviving veterans of the Civil war, and his career since the war has been closely identified with the state of West Virginia. He was born at Elizabeth, in what is now Wirt County, West Virginia, May 20, 1846. His father, John T. Caldwell was a native of Steubenville, Ohio, spent his early life in Kentucky, and was a life-long farmer. A few years before his death he retired to Parkersburg and lived with his son Charles T. In that city, where he died at the age of seventy-five. He began voting as a Whig, later became a republican and was a very active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His wife, whom he married at Letart, Meigs County, Ohio, was Regina M. Burns, a native of that community, and she died there at the birth of her youngest child, at the age of forty-five. Her children were: William B., who helped operate the home farm and was a merchant at Letart, where he died at the age of seventy; Alfred B., who also assisted in conducting the homestead and died at Letart at the age of sixty. George H., who was superintendent of the Dingess-Run Coal Company and died in Logan County, West Virginia, aged sixty-five; James Lewis; and Charles T., an attorney who died at Parkersburg in 1912.

James Lewis Caldwell was educated in the rural schools of Meigs County, Ohio, receiving the equivalent of a high school education. In the losing months of 1862, before he was seventeen years of age, he enlisted in Company F of the Sixtieth Ohio Infantry, and thereafter served until the rebellion was put down. He was in General Grant's army, participated in the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, at the mine explosion in front of Petersburg, and thereafter was with the troops on Grant's right wing through the engagements at Weldon Railroad and minor battles until Appomattox.

Following the war Mr. Caldwell for a year and a half represented the Peabody Insurance Company of Wheeling, traveling over the state establishing agencies and paying claims. He then established his business headquarters at Guyandotte, now included in the City of Huntington, and for eighteen years conducted a prosperous lumber business. His home has been in Huntington since 1887, removing here three years after the establishment of the First National Bank.

Banking has been only one of Mr. Caldwell's varied enterprises in the business field. In 1892 he organized the Huntington Electric Light and Street Railway Company and built that pioneer electric railway line, but sold it soon after it was put in operation. He organized and built the Guyandotte Valley Railway, now a branch of the Chesapeake & Ohio system. He was president and is still a director of the Consolidated Light & Railway Company at Republican, Illinois. He is president of the Dingess-Run Coal Company, which owns 30,000 acres of coal lands, with twenty active mines. He is secretary and treasurer of the Logan Cannel Coal Company, is secretary and treasurer of the Warehouse Land Company, and is a director and member of the executive committee of the Huntington Land Company, which owns a large number of vacant properties in the city, acquired from the estate of the late Collis P. Huntington for $350,000.

Mr. Caldwell has been one of the standard bearers and leaders in the republican party in the state for many years. He was delegate at large to the Republican National Convention of 1904 and a member of the committee notifying President Roosevelt of his nomination. He has been in many county and state conventions, and one time was proposed as candidate for the United States Senate, but he withdrew from the race. Mr. Caldwell is a loyal member of the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with West Star Lodge No. 12, F. And A.M., at Huntington, and is a member of the Chamber of Commerce.

In 1871, in Kanawa County, he married Miss Mary O'Bannon, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Smith, now deceased. Her father was a merchant at Louisville and also at Guyandotte, West Virginia. Mrs. Caldwell finished her education at Louisville. Seven children were born to their marriage. Ida Regina is the wife of William P.H. McFadden, a cattleman, rice grower and owner of rice mills at Beaumont, Texas. Ouida C. is the wife of Charles W. Watts, a wholesale dry goods merchant at Huntington, member of the firm Watts, Ritter & Company. Foree Dabney Caldwell, the oldest son living, was educated under the direction of the noted schoolman, Col. Robert Bingham, at Asheville, North Carolina, graduated from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and has since been actively associated with his father, being treasurer of the Dingess-Run Coal Company and of several other business organizations. George J., the second son, now in the insurance business at Huntington, is a graduate of the high school of that city. James L., Jr., graduated from West Virginia University at Morgantown, and for one year was in service as a lieutenant, being stationed near Houston, Texas, and is now secretary of a mining, car factory, and foundry corporation at Morgantown. Smith Caldwell, the youngest of the family, helped organize the noted machine gun company at Huntington, was commissioned a second lieutenant and had a year and a half of service, chiefly in Texas. He now handles the collection of rents and other business interests of his father.

The History of West Virginia, Old and New. Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1923, Volume II, pages 160-161.

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