SAMUEL GROVER SMITH

The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 579
Kanawha

SAMUEL GROVER SMITH. As a young civil and construc-
tion engineer Samuel Grover Smith came to West Virginia
nearly twenty years ago. He helped build and manage
some of the important industrial railroads in the southern
part of the state, but in recent years has turned his time
and attention chiefly to the business of coal production, being
twice president and treasurer of the Indian Run Coal Com-
pany, treasurer of the Indian Run Collieries Company, and
a director in several other companies.

Mr. Smith, who is well known in social as well as in busi-
ness circles at Charleston, was born at Philadelphia, August
9, 1884. Most of his youth was spent at Selinsgrove, Penn-
sylvania, where he attended public schools, and for two years
he was a student in a college at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
At the age of eighteen he entered the engineering depart-
ment of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and in 1904, at the age
of twenty, came to Charleston in the employ of the Coal &
Coke Railway while they had under construction more
than a hundred miles of new road. From 1906 to 1916
he was officially connected with the developing of the mining
properties of the Blue Creek Coal & Land Company and the
building and operating of the Kanawha and West Virginia
Railroad, and in 1916 he handled the negotiations by which
the Kanawha and West Virginia Railroad was sold to the
New York Central.

For the following three years he was general manager of
the Blue Creek Coal and Land Company, and since August,
1919, has been vice president and treasurer of the Indian
Run Coal Company of Charleston, West Virginia, one of
the largest coal wholesale concerns in Southern West Vir-
ginia. He is interested in several other producing com-
panies.

Mr. Smith is a member of the First Presbyterian Church,
and was vice chairman of the recent Billy Sunday revival
campaign in Charleston. He is a Knight Templar, thirty-
second degree Mason, and Shriner, a member of the Rotary
Club and a director of the Charleston Y. M. C. A. In 1907
Mr. Smith married Miss Mabel Hickel, of Charleston. They
have a sun, Grover Smith, Jr., born in 1910.

Submitted by:  vfcrook@trellis.net (Valerie F. Crook) 

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