Thanks Joyce and Adina for your help. I found the following note on Ben Morris (Nancy Jarrett). Carol >From Panorama of Fayette County [WV]; John Cavalier; 1985; p123 Take the case of the Ben Morris home. In 1952, the late Forrest Hull, feature writer for the Charleston Daily Mail, did a story about the Morris residence. "In the shadows of a modern coal tipple and hidden by a railroad embankment," he wrote, "an old mansion of ante-bellum days is making its last stand before the onward march of industrialism. The Ben Morris house at London, Kanawba County, built in 1825, is in ruins and faces extinction today as industry moves up the Magic Valley." Ben Morris, builder of the house, was the youngest of the sons of William Morris, Sr., the first settler in the Great Kanawha Valley. Ben had married Nancy Jarrett and was raising a family when he decided to build a home on his property. The brick house has stood the storms of time for 138 years. The mason placed over the doorway a stone in which he had cut the inscription: "Ben Morris, 1825." Then he chiseled his name, "B. Turley, stonecutter." Ben and Nancy Morris had seven children. Most of them moved to the west in early days but the ones who made Kanawha history were Celia, who married Captain John Harvey, whose son, Morris Harvey, became a noted local financier and philanthropist who founded Morris Harvey College, now located in Charleston. Hull wound up his feature story with these sentences: "The property is now in the hands of the Cannelton Coal and Coke Company.... Today the pleasant little hollow where Morris kept his tenants has seemingly changed overnight. Coal mines, tramroads, and a highway for trucks have destroyed its rustic beauty. Soon the fine old home will disappear and only the gravestones in the little neglected graveyard beside the dusty tipple will be the evidence that here once lived and labored a sturdy pioneer, one of the first in the Great Kanawha Valley." But such was not to become the fate of the Morris house. Paul Morton, later to become president of the coal company, saw the article. He and others mused over the fate of such a fine old relic of the past. The old home did not fall before the wrecking company's steel ball. Instead, it was restored and modernized. Today it is the main entrance and head office of Cannelton Coal Company. Adrian Gwin, author of the "Roving the Valley" column in the Daily Mail, has written of the building as it looks today. "The fine old hallway, where young Morris Harvey may have worn out his jeans sliding down the banisters as a boy, still contains the banisters and the hallway. The fanlight above the heavy front door still contains some of the original glass. "The old bricks, crumbling with age, have been cemented over with stucco, and the interior has been redone into modern airconditioned offices." Saved from the ravages of time and the encroachments of industrial expansion, the home will endure many more years. It happened because a company cared. jarmscoop wrote: > > Hello Carol and Adina, > This research is a little closer to "home" for me. Vincent is my > primary name of interest in the area. I have some information > which comes from a WFT CD vol 4, and also some which comes from > previous Vincent researchers, [Book Form], and > quite abit from a Becky who has a good web site.