Stanley Coal Company   Crellin, MD

      Crellin, Maryland, is located in Garrett County which is the westernmost county in the state.  The county was split off Allegany County in 1849 and was named for the Garretts of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and numismatic fame.  Crellin was originally a small place named Sunshine.  It was named Crellin in 1892 after Roland P. Crellin, who erected a sawmill in the area.  This became the Preston Lumber and Coal Co.  Judging by the name of the company, part of its lumbering operations must have been in Preston County, West Virginia, which is only a short distance from Crellin, Maryland.  I have no information that coal was ever mined to any appreciable extent but by the time the company was sold to the Kendall Lumber Company in 1905, it had shipped over 250 million feet of lumber.

      The Kendall firm, which later became the Kendall Coal and Lumber Company, continued in business until 1925, when its timber supply was exhausted.  During its operation over 350 million feet of lumber had been processed.  One of the trees cut by Kendall was an oak whose dimensions compare favorably to large trees cut on the Pacific coast.  It was cut in Tucker County in 1913 and was the largest ever harvested in West Virginia, being 13 feet in diameter 16 feet from the base of the tree.  It had to be split by dynamite before it could be loaded on railroad cars.

      Speaking of railroad cars, the Preston Lumber and Coal Co. built the Preston Railroad to haul logs to its mill in Crellin and to deliver finished lumber to larger area railroads such as the Cumberland & Pennsylvania (later purchased by Western Maryland), West Virginia Central and Baltimore & Ohio.  As lumbering operations moved further and further from the mill at Crellin, the railroad was likewise extended to the Cheat River in Preston County and into Tucker County.

      This reminds me that when I was a boy in the 1930’s I “discovered” old railroad tracks near what is now Silver Lake, WV, already practically obliterated by nature.  Silver Lake was established as a resort in the early 1930’s but during the 1920’s and earlier it was Breedlove, a company town with houses that had been built with siding of vertically placed rough lumber about 6 to 10 inches wide on which the cracks were covered by strips.  Having never been painted, the houses had weathered to black.  I should add that the name Breedlove was not one of those unusual names often encountered among lumbering or mining towns, there were several families with that surname living in that area.  A post Office was established there (as well as at Crellin) which indicates that it once had some importance.

      To continue, after a developer purchased that area in the early 1930’s, he had the houses replaced with new, painted structures, built a “roadhouse,” and erected cabins and a dam to form a small lake (hence the name “Silver Lake”).  Being on Highway 219 and in a scenic area it became a rather popular vacation spot.  My uncle lived on one of the houses but, although it was only a decade earlier, the lumbering operations were all but forgotten.  I never did learn much about the nearly buried railroad line I discovered except that it had once been used for lumbering.

      The  Kendall Coal and Lumber Company ended its lumbering business in 1925, as previously indicated.  As for coal, the company became involved in mining after demand developed during World War I.  The Appalachians that cover much of West Virginia also have a fringe in western Maryland where they are known as the Backbone Mountains.  Consequently, coal is found in that area, too, although not to the extent of West Virginia.  Kendall’s mines were Arnold Run #2 and another one at Turner Douglas, both in West Virginia.  Banner Mine was also located at Turner Douglas.

      However, the main business of Kendall had been lumber and, after that ended, a new corporation was formed which concentrated on coal.  This was the Stanley Coal Company and included the same officers.  It was named after Stanley Ashby who had been superintendent of Kendall’s mines.  The Kendall family remained stockholders in the new firm.  Others were Charles Ream, who had been superintendent of the lumber operations, and Lester Yutzy.  Ream was named president and one may see his name on Type 1 of the 1929 National Bank Notes of the Garrett National Bank of Oakland, Maryland, where he was also a bank official.

      The mines near Crellin provided employment for the town’s residents for 40 years but they were worked out by 1956 when they were closed.  The officers of the Stanley Coal Co. had by that time formed another company which took over operations at Howesville, WV, about 20 miles away in Preston County, WV,  It was called the KRAY Coal Co. after the initials of the stockholders, Kendall, Ream, Ashby and Yutzy.  Company buses transported the miners from Crellin to the mines at Howesville.

      Some of these firms are listed in Gordon Dodrill’s book on coal company stores but the dates of founding and closing do not necessarily coincide.  I am unable to account for that as I believe both his data and mine are supposed to be from reliable sources.  Based on what I have written it is possible that additional scrip may have been issued either for coal or lumber operations.

Arlie Slabaugh, submitted 03/93