Biography of Henry Fairbanks Warden - McDowell Co. WV

The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society Inc.
Chicago and New York Volume 11
Page 240
Bio- Henry Fairbanks Warden-McDowell Co.


   Henry is a young man who has shown fine executive and administrating
ability in connection with the coal-mining industry in West Virginia,
where he is a general manager of the Williams Pocahontas Coal Company at
War, McDowell Co., besides being general manager also for the Orinoco
Mining Co., Orinoco, on Pond Creek, Pike Co., Kentucky. His residence
and official headquarters are maintained at Bluefield, Mercer Co., West
Virginia.
   A scion of staunch Colonial ancestry in New England, Mr. Warden was
born in the town of Monroe, Grafton Co., New Hampshire, on the 29th of
May, 1893, and he is the son of Alexander and Susie (Fairbanks) Warden,
both likewise natives of Monroe, Grafton Co., New Hampshire, where the
father was a representative merchant and farmer and influential in
political circles and public affairs of a local order. He died in 1908,
at the age of seventy-four years. The first wife of Alexander Warden
bore the maiden name of Lucy Flint, and his second wife, mother of the
subject of this review, died in 1907, at the age of fourty-four years.
Mr. Warden served as draft officer in his native country in the period
of the civil war, and he represented his county in the State
Legislature, served as its sheriff, was city clerk and postmaster at
Monroe, and held other positions of trust. A man of inviolable integrity
and mature judgment, he was a guide and counselor in his community and
commanded unqualified popular confidence. He was  one of the builders of
the Methodist Episcopal Church edifice at Monroe, and was one of the
most zealous and liberal members of the church. His political allegiance
was given to the republican party and he was affiliated with the Masonic
fraternity. He passed the last seven years of his life in supervising
his farms and other property interests. Alexander Warden was a member of
a  family of eleven sons and two daughters, and his father, Andrew
Warden, was one of the substantial citizens of Monroe, Grafton Co., New
Hampshire, at the time of hos death. Alexander and Lucy (Flint) Warden
had one son, Oliver S. who is now owner and manager of the Great Falls
Daily Tribune at Great Falls, Montana. Of the three children of the
second marriage Henry F. of this sketch is the eldest. David R. is chief
inspector and chemist in the employ of W.C.Atwater & Company at
Bluefield, West Virginia. He was a student at Norwich University at
Northfield, Vermont. In the World war period he was with the Near East
Relief Commission in Turkey and Armenia, a service with which he
connected eighteen months before his return to the United States. Ralph
B., a youth of seventeen years(1922), resides with his brother, Henry
F., at Bluefield.
   The early education of Henry F. Warden was acquired in the public
schools of his native county and was supplemented by a four year's
course at St. Johnsbury Academy, a leading preparatory school at St.
Johnsbury, Vermont. Thereafter he held a clerical position with Boston &
Montana Smelting Co. at Great Falls, Montana, now a subsidiary of the
famous Anaconda Smelting Co., and upon his return to the East he took a
course in technical and industrial chemistry at Pratt Institute,
Brooklyn, New York, in which institution he was graduate in 1913. Soon
afterward he came to Bluefield, West Virginia, and took the position of
chemist in the office of thePocahontas Coke Co. Eighteen months later he
became chief inspector and chemist for William C. Atwater & Co., his
duties involving inspection of coal mines and their products and the
preparation of coal for market. He retained this position until he was
made manager of the Williams Pocahontas Coal Co. and the Orinoco Mining
Company's properties, owned by the Oriental Navigation Co., New York
City, who are in a position to ship their coal from the West Virginia
and Kentucky coal fields to all parts of the world. The Oracle, official
publication of the Oriental Navigation Co., in one of its recent issues
published a full-page portrait of Mr. Warden, who is probably the
youngest general manager of coal-mining corporations to be found in West
Virginia.
   In 1915 Mr. Warden married Miss Ethel Witt, daughter of J.F. Witt, of
Bluefield, and the two children of this union are Henry Fairbanks, Jr.,
and James Alexander. Mr. and Mrs. Warden are members of the Bland Street
Methodist Church, South, and are popular in the representative social
circles of their home city.

Submitted by Joan Wyatt <mewyatt@uakron.edu>

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