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Transcribed and submitted by Valerie Crook, <vfcrook
@trellis.net>
FRANK NIXON MANN. In that growing list of industries
that distinguish Huntington among the busy cities of the state, one of the important ones, due to volume of the
business and wide distribution of products, is the Huntington Sash, Door & Trim Company, of which Frank Nixon Mann
is president and general manager. Mr. Mann has been a lumber manufacturer and planing mill operator for many
years, and came to Huntington from the eastern part of the state.
He was born in Greenbrier County, July 19, 1861. Back
in Colonial times three brothers left Scotland and came to America, one locating in Pennsylvania, another in
Maryland, while the direct ancestor of the Huntington manufacturer established his home in Gloucester County, Virginia,
where he intermarried with the Page family. The grandfather of Frank Nixon Mann was Billie Thomas Mann, who
was born in Bath County, Virginia, in 1784, was reared there, was married in Monroe County, West Virginia, and
was one of the early farmers established in the Fort Spring neighborhood. At one time he owned a third of all the
land in Fayette County. This land later turned out to be exceedingly valuable on account of its coal deposits. He
died at Fort Spring in 1876. His wife was Miss Alexander, a native of Virginia.
James Mann, their son, was born in Greenbrier County,
near Fort Spring, in 1832, and when a young man he left that vicinity and spent three years as a farmer in Edgar
County, Illinois. About a year after his marriage there he returned to Greenbrier County, and conducted his extensive
operations as a farmer, but about 1878 moved into Alderson, and supervised his farm from that point until his
death, which occurred at Alderson, Monroe County, in January, 1910. He was a democrat, served three terms as a
magistrate, and was for many years an elder in the Presbyterian Church. James Mann married Elizabeth Nixon,
who was born at Springfield, Illinois, March 11, 1838, and is now eighty-four years of age, a resident of Alderson.
Prank Nixon is the oldest of her three children. Her daughter May E. is the wife of Dr. Charles P. Nash, a
retired physician and surgeon at Alderson. Bessie A. died at Alderson at the age of twenty-five, and her husband, Mr.
Lide, is now a merchant in Birmingham, Alabama.
Frank Nixon Mann acquired a rural school training in
Greenbrier County, took his preparatory course in a private school in the same county, and then entered Hampden
Sidney College in Prince Edward County, Virginia. He remained there until in his senior year, when he left, in 1884,
to take up active business. For about thirty years Mr. Mann was a lumber manufacturer and farmer living at
Alderson. His planing mill there burned in 1911, and in 1912 he moved to Huntington and established the
Huntington Sash Door and Trim Company, building the plant at Nineteenth and Second Avenue. He is principal owner and
president and general manager of the company, which is the West Virginia corporation. Others associated with him
in the official personnel are: J. W. Lawton, vice president, and F. L. Faust, secretary and treasurer. This is a large
industry with complete machinery equipment for the manufacture of all planing and mill work products including
stair, porch work, window frames, store fixtures, mouldings and interior trim. The output commands a large sale all
over West Virginia and is shipped even to Ohio and Michigan points.
Mr. Mann is a democrat, is an elder in the First
Presbyterian Church of Huntington, and since moving to that city has acquired some interests in real estate, including his
home at 1621 Fifth Avenue. In September, 1892, at Alderson, West Virginia, he married Miss Nancy B. Murray,
daughter of Rev. Patrick Murray, who married a Miss Graves. Both her parents are now deceased. Her father
was a minister of the Baptist Church. Mrs. Mann is a graduate of the Woman's Western College of Hamilton,
Ohio. Without children of their own, Mr. and Mrs. Mann reared two adopted children. The first, Nancy, is now the
wife of Garland B. Johnson, a resident of Lynchburg, Virginia, and general sales manager of the Lynchburg Pipe and
Foundry Company. The second is Elsworth F., now a student in the Military Academy at Augusta, Virginia.
The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II, pg. 170-171 |
