A while back, I asked people to identify the structures in this photo.
No one got it.
I revealed the answer in the chat room, and then I forgot about it.
It was only last night that realized I hadn’t answered this question on the blog.
So here it is:
It was the world’s largest carbon black factory.
Carbon black is used to make toner and ink. It has a variety of industrial purposes, most of which involve it being used on tires to make them last longer.
In the early 1900’s, the Godfrey L. Cabot was a major carbon black industrialist.
From 1910 until the 1920’s, his largest operation was on the Little Kanawha River, just below the town of Grantsville. It was the largest of its kind in the world.
Godfrey Lowell Cabot was a son of two of the most prominent Old Yankee families in Boston and was a major benefactor of Harvard and Columbia. He was true Boston Brahmin.
The Cabot family had made its money (in part) with the slave trade and claimed ancestry to the explorer John Cabot or his son, Sebastian (not Mr. French).
Godfrey L. Cabot was a member of the Watch and Ward Society in Boston, which used economic and political pressures to stop the sale of “offensive” books in Boston. It was partly from pressures from the Watch and Ward Society that we get the phrase “banned in Boston.”
The Carbon black factory was a major money maker, because the automobile industry took off. The carbon black was needed for more tires and hoses.
I should note that very little of that money remained in Calhoun County, West Virginia, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation.
I should note that one of the stories I heard about Godfrey L. Cabot was that he always came to Calhoun County dressed as tramp. One day, when he was of more advanced years, he was overseeing his operations by horseback, when he heard a worker ask “Who is that bald-headed son of a bitch?”
It is said that Cabot approached the foreman and told him to give that many a five cent raise!
So maybe Cabot wasn’t the prude he made himself out to be.
Maybe he was just doing it to look proper among the Bostonians.
The place where his carbon black factory was is called Cabot Station, but Godfrey wanted to call it Boston-upon-Kanawha.
If you can pronounce Kanawha, you win a prize.
There are two pronunciations:
One is acceptable in southern WV and around the state capitol, which is in Kanawha County on the (Greater) Kanawha River.
The Little Kanawha is not pronounce the same way, but there are two variants on that one.
I’ve heard both KHAN-ah-wah and Khan-AH-wah. But wouldn’t be surprised to hear a long A or two in there….
IIRC it is pronounced Ka-naw. I seem to remember being a little thrown because the written word has three syllables but one is dropped for spoken.
The Little Kanawha has all three syllables. One pronunciation is little Kanawhee.
The other is pronounced as you say- Kanaw.
What’s the emphasis? KA-na-whee, Ka-NAW-whee?
The first one.
I still hear my grandpa talking about the Little Kanawhee River flowing into the Ohia at Parkiesburg (Parkersburg).