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William Nelson Page (January 6, 1854 – March 7, 1932) was an American civil engineer and industrialist. He was active in the Virginias following the U.S. Civil War. Page was widely known as a metallurgical expert by other industry leaders and investors as well as state and federal authorities. William Page became one of the leading managers and developers of West Virginia's rich bituminous coalfields in the late-19th and early-20th century, as well as being deeply involved in building the railroads and other infrastructure necessary to process and transport the mined coal. Page often worked as a manager for absentee owners, such as the British geological expert, Dr. David T. Ansted, and the New York City mayor, Abram S. Hewitt of the Cooper-Hewitt organization and other New York and Boston financiers, or as the “front man” in projects involving a silent partner, such as Henry H. Rogers. In the town of Ansted, for 28 years, the Page family lived in a large Victorian mansion built by carpenters of the Gauley Mountain Coal Company. Most notable among Page's many accomplishments was a project to acquire land and construct a modest short-line railroad to tap new coal reserves in a rugged portion of southern West Virginia not yet reached by the bigger railroads. Connections planned to both the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) and the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) should have inspired competition among rival carriers to transport the coal the rest of the way to market. However, collusion by the leaders of the large railroads attempted to stop the project through agreeing to only offer Page unprofitable rates. Instead of giving up, working with Rogers discreetly providing the millions needed for financing, William Page and his associates expanded the "short line" all the way hundred of miles across the Virginias to a new coal pier built on Hampton Roads, creating the Virginian Railway. Completed in 1909, the VGN was built to be very efficient and during the first half of the 20th century, became widely known as the "Richest Little Railroad in the World." William and Emma completed their lives in Washington D.C., where they moved in 1917 as he served as a mining expert before federal regulators. One of their younger sons, Randolph Gilliam "Dizzy" Page, was an early pioneer of the U.S. air mail industry during this time before his death in plane crash in 1930. William and Emma died in 1932 and 1933 respectively, and were interred in Richmond, Virginia's Hollywood Cemetery. ==Early life, heritage of public service== William Nelson Page was born at "Locust Grove" in Campbell County, Virginia on January 6, 1854 into an old Virginia family. His parents were Edwin Randolph Page (1822–1864) and Olivia (née Alexander) Page (1820–1896), a scion of the Nelson family. He descended from historic roots; the Nelson and Page families were each among the “First Families of Virginia”, families who were prominent in the Virginia Colony. Through the Nelson family, he was a descendant of Robert "King" Carter (1663–1732), who served as an acting royal governor of Virginia and was one of its wealthiest landowners in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. After the American Revolutionary War, two of his great-grandfathers served as Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Some years later, in 1905, another relative, Logan Waller Page, became the first head of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, an early precursor of the agency which became the U.S. Department of Transportation. Logan Page served as an energetic advocate of the country's early interstate highway system until his death in 1918. Although his father died in 1861, and notwithstanding the financial hardships which were widespread in the South brought on by the Civil War which began that year, from a family base in Rockbridge and Augusta counties, where his mother and siblings relocated, young William Nelson Page was educated at the University of Virginia as a civil engineer. After the cessation of hostilities in 1865, as he launched his career, he participated in some local politics and civic activities, but primarily directed his considerable energies into developing transportation and mineral resources in the mountainous regions of Virginia and the newly formed state of West Virginia. Between 1871 and 1876, William Page played a role in engineering and building the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), which was under the leadership of Collis P. Huntington. Initially, he led one of the surveying parties charged with mapping the route of a double-track railway that had been ordered by Congress. This new railway was expected to run between Richmond, Virginia and the Ohio River (at what became Huntington, West Virginia), via the valleys of the James River and Jackson River in Virginia, and the New River and Kanawha River in West Virginia. He chose the location and directed the construction of several important C&O bridges. While working with the C&O, Page became fascinated with the potential of the untapped mineral resources of West Virginia. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Nelson Page」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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