Appalachian History

The Charleston Daily Mail
Dec. 27, 1925


Grantsville, Calhoun County, W. Va., March 24, 1886. The following history of the haunted house, situated on the bank of Little Kanawha river, about three miles from this place, is presented to the scientist for explanation. The skeptical reader is frankly and honestly referred to any one of the persons named herein for verification of their share of the history.

Although it is one of the strangest and most unaccountable stories written on this subject within a quarter of a century, every detail is well authenticated. A solution of the mysteries connected with this history will be received with gratitude and pleasure by hundreds of the respectable and honest citizens of Calhoun, Ritchie and Wirt counties. But to the history:

About three miles from the county seat of Calhoun county there resided, and still resides, Mr. Collins Betts, a farmer, who is well known throughout this section of the country. His house is a one-story, rambling affair, close to the banks of the stream and but a short distance from the highway. But for the reputation of the house it would be a frequent stopping place for the wayfaring; as it is, there are now but few men, in a country famed for its nervy and physical giants, who would dare to stop over night at Betts house.

The reputation of the house as being haunted was acquired some years since. By some - many in fact - it is ascribed to the disappearance of a peddler in the neighborhood and never to be heard of more. It is whisperingly surmised by the most cautious that the peddler was known to have had over $1,000 in his possession at the time; and was probably murdered in the vicinity. Others say his horse had been left and no one ever came for it. Be this as it may, from that time forward Collins' house has borne the reputation of being haunted.


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source: www.lindapages.com/calhoun/ghost.htm



Little+Kanawha+River Betts+house+ghost Grantsville+WV appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"In this county Godfrey L. Cabot of Boston, MA has the largest carbon factory in the world, utilizing natural gas for the purpose," stated the WV Geological Survey about Calhoun County in 1911. "The product is wagoned to Creston where it is loaded on boats and shipped down the Little Kanawha River to railway connection at Owensport, the southern terminus of the Little Kanawha R.R. Mr. Cabot has another factory located at Creston in Wirt County."

The most widely used black pigment, carbon black is virtually pure carbon, made from the incomplete combustion of petrochemical oils of gases. It is widely used even today as a filler in the rubber industry and as a UV stabilizer in plastics. Distinct from soot, this substance, sometimes called lamp black, has been around for a long time. Prehistoric cave dwellers used it to draw animals on cave walls, and the Egyptian pharaohs used it as a pigment. Cabot and his brother Samuel saw similar applications for it.

The Cabot brothers didn’t begin their business in West Virginia. They first built a plant in Buffalo Mills, PA, that used natural gas to produce carbon black in 1882, and in 1884 Godfrey patented a carbon black production process that used stationary plates and rotating burners. In 1887 Godfrey bought out Samuel's interest in the business.

At about this time, a glut developed in the carbon black market; at the same time, new uses were being found for natural gas, which was the raw material for carbon black. Cabot's response was to purchase gas leases and drill on the sites, drilling his first successful gas well in Saxonburg, PA, in 1888. He continued, despite the glut, to buy up small carbon black factories as well, and by 1897 he was probably the largest producer in the industry.

In 1898, with the exhaustion of the Pennsylvania gas fields, Cabot moved his operation to West Virginia, where he acquired oil and gas leases, which he drilled successfully. By 1900 the new carbon factory---Cabot Station, in Grantsville---employed twelve men paid from $1.25 to $2 a day. The plant was producing 800 pounds of carbon black a day when it first opened, but that quickly increased to 1,400 pounds. Cabot continued to add gas sites in West Virginia, and built a natural gasoline extraction plant near Elizabeth, West Virginia, in 1914.

While the advent and spread of high-speed presses and similar applications greatly expanded Cabot's business, World War I demonstrated the potential for carbon black in the modern economy. It had been known for a while that carbon black could inhibit damage to materials caused by the sun; a few years before that war, the India Rubber Gutta-Percha and Telegraph Works Co. of Silvertown, England, began to manufacture automobile tires using carbon black as a stabilizing or reinforcing agent.

During World War I the United States began using carbon black, and its superior properties became evident in improved tread wear and lower rates of tire failure. After the war, its use spread throughout the tire industry, providing a tremendous burst of growth to suppliers.

By the early 1920s, Cabot’s locus of carbon black production was shifted out of West Virginia, first, unsuccessfully, to Louisiana, and then to Texas. Meantime Cabot’s original factory in Grantsville—Cabot Station—was shifted to a compressor or pump station for natural gas by the Hope Natural Gas Company, which had purchased the property. Today the spot of the former world’s largest carbon factory in Calhoun County, WV is home to Cabot Recycling Center.

Sources: www.hurherald.com/cgi-bin/db_scripts/articles?Action=user_view&db=hurheral_articles&id=13737
www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/24/Cabot-Corporation.html
West Virginia Geological Survey: Wirt, Roane and Calhoun Counties, by Ray
Vernon Hennen, W. J. Latimer, F. N. Meeker, 1911, Acme Publishing Co., p. 27


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Cabot+Station Calhoun+County+WV carbon+black+factory Godfrey+L.+Cabot Grantsville+WV lamp+black