W.H. Cooper operated a store on Michigan Avenue, the main business street, from 1914 to 1951. When a youth, Cooper came to this area from the Ohio River town of New Haven to work in the mines.

“Another fellow and I ran away from home and came to Charleston on a freight train,’’ he recalls.

“When we got there we slept in a hollow sycamore tree the first night and then walked up Campbell’s Creek to get a job.”

“Work there just didn’t pay,’’ Cooper said. By 1912 he had a flatboat grocery store on the Kanawha at Crown Hill. Two years later he moved to Smithers. 

“I moved to Smithers because I was told it was the best business place in Kanawha Valley in the early part of the century,” he said.

In 1919 Smithers business district, including Williams store, burned to the ground. The fire was believed to have started in the town pool hall and may have been intentionally set in revenge for local bootleggers snitching on their competition.**

W.H. Cooper, general merchandise, owner of building; [reported] loss [of] $17,000* with small insurance. [under insured?] He resided on the second story and lost his household goods.

William rebuilt his store and home and sold general merchandise there much of the remainder of his life.

In 1951 Cooper stated, “I’m closing out now, though, and I am thinking of moving to Beckley where I hope to spend the rest of my life.’ At the age of seventy-nine Cooper did move to Beckley where he owned a filling station, [later] operated by his sons. (Cavalier)

*(About 3.9 million in 2024) This was the largest reported loss of any single business in town at the time, because unlike most, he owned both the building and the business.  

Still his financial loss was probably not the most devastating. Isaac George, a fruit store owner, reported a $7,000 loss and found out that his insurance policy had expired two weeks before the fire.  He packed up and moved to Charleston.  Others had no insurance at all.

** John Cavalier relates:

Had the wind shifted in the slightest, the entire town would have been destroyed.

 

Had the fire department of Montgomery been notified earlier and realized the seriousness of the conflagration, some of the property destroyed could have been saved.

In talking to a few of the senior citizens of Smithers I was given the following story as to the why of the fire:

 

It was related that a brakeman on the Kanawha and Michigan railway was running whiskey into town and hiding it in the drift mouth of the Eagle Seam Mine…

 

 

A few of the local bootleggers knew of this and informed the local constable, George Wolfe. Wolfe, accompanied by Joe Oliver, a local pool hall operator, raided the mines and confiscated the whiskey.

 

The brakeman, on his next run, learned of the raid and made the threat, “I will burn the damn town for this.” As fate would have it, the town was destroyed by fire a couple of days later.The brakeman was never convicted because nothing could be proven on the man. (Cavalier)

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