CHIEF:  Dr Robin Boyd, MA (Oxon); MB BS; LRCP, MRCS; DCH; AFOM, 8th Baron Kilmarnock

Richard G. Boyd

NEW EMAIL ADDRESS

RichBoyd (at sign) Charter.net

Grace Margaret Boyd / James W. Thornhill

BARBOUR CO; W. VA

JAMES W. THORNHILL is owner and active proprietor of the J.W. Thornhill planing-mill at Belington, an industry not excelled in mechanical efficiency and management in this section of West Virginia. The various processes of lumber manufacture from the trees in the forest to the finished product are intimate by almost life-long experience to Mr. Thornhill, and he is the type of business man who thoroughly loves the material with which he works.

James William Thornhill was born July 31, 1866, in Barker District, Barbour County. When he was a child his parents moved to Belington, where he had the privilege of attending a few brief terms of the common schools. He worked in the fields on the home farm, and as a youth of eighteen found employment in handling lumber in a lumber yard at wages of 10 cents an hour. From common labor he was promoted to inspector, at $35 a month, and for seventeen years he was in the service of the widely known lumber and timber firm of Pardee and Curtin at Sutton, West Virginia. Mr. Thornhill left this firm in 1907 and returned to Belington and took the contract for filling the lumber products of the Belington Planing Mill Company. When this firm became financially involved he bought the plant, in 1912. The plant was then of very small dimensions, employing perhaps ten men. Mr. Thornhill at once injected new energy and new possibilities into the business. The plant at the beginning of 1922 has three times the machinery it had when Mr Thornhill took charge, and its drying kilns have a capacity of 100,000 feet. A year after Mr. Thornhill became owner of the old plant an enemy set fire to the lumber yard and everything but the mill was destroyed. The loss entailed was greater than the resources that remained, but with the insurance and the credit he had established he restocked his plant and pushed the business even harder than before. Gradually his energy found fruit in the extending stacks of lumber and the great quantities of finished material in their warehouses and shipped out by the car loads. The buzz and hum of the planers and saws has been sweet music to the loyal men who make up the force of from thirty to forty-five who handle the extensive business of the plant.

The Belington community regards Mr. Thornhill as one of its permanent citizens, and he in turn has made use of his growing prosperity for the benefit of the little city. In 1917 he finished his own home, a spacious and generous residence, the planning and arrangement being the result of the joint co-operation of himself and Mrs. Thornhill. All the finish and much of the other material entering into this home came from his planing mill. Mr. Thornhill was reared in a democratic family and has voted that ticket beginning with Grover Cleveland. He has always been loyal to the Presbyterian Church of his mother, and for a number of years he was an elder in the church of Sutton, while he lived there. Outside of these interests his life has been in his business and in his home,and he has not been attracted into fraternal organizations.

On April 11, 1889, Mr. Thornhill married Miss Cora E. Dunham, daughter of John C. Dunham and grand-daughter of Rev R.F. Dunham, a Baptist minister. She was a niece of R.J. Dunham, of Phillipi. Mrs. Thornhill, who died May 17, 1908, was the mother of three children. The oldest, Mary Leoline, born January 13, 1890, is the wife of W. E. Coffman of Keyser, West Virginia. The only son of Mr. Thornhill by this union is W. Frank Thornhill, was born September 10, 1892.  He married Flora Griffin. Evelyn Ruth Thornhill, the youngest of the three children, was born December 31, 1898, and is the wife of H. Sherwood Shinn, of Belington.

November 29, 1911, Mr. Thornhill married MISS GRACE MARGARET BOYD. She was born in Harrison County, August 21,1891, daughter of ROBERT CALVIN and JOCASTA (GOODWIN) BOYD, being the fourth among their five children. The others are: BESSIE MAY, wife of J. R. McHenry, of Centralia, West Virginia, BENJAMIN THOMAS, of Weston; ROBERT COY, of Denver, Colorado; and GEORGE DEWEY, of Buckhannon. Mrs. Thornhill had a public school education and was married at the age of twenty at Oakland, Maryland. Mr and Mrs Thornhill have two children, MARGARET LEE, born May 11, 1913, and JAMES WILLIAM, JR., born May 29, 1916.

During the World war the Thornhill home played its part in the burden of financing the war and its auxiliary efforts, taking large amounts of bonds and contributing to the Red Cross, and doing some of the practical work, such as knitting for the soldiers at the front.

Source: The History of West Virginia, Old and New, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III -  Barbour

NOTE: Use this data as a finding tool, just as you would any other secondary source. When you find the name of an ancestor listed, confirm the facts in original sources.

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