Wentz Corporation.

This group of records covers two general holding and investment companies set up by Dr. John Shriver Wentz and his wife Mary Douglas (Leisenring) Wentz, along with those coal companies controlled by the Wentz family that were not merged into either Penn Virginia Corporation or the Westmoreland Coal Company.

Dr. and Mrs. Wentz purchased nearly 19,000 acres of coal lands astride the Virginia-Kentucky border beginning in 1899. The lands adjoined those of the Virginia Coal & Iron Company (now Penn Virginia Corp.) of which Dr. Wentz was president and a large stockholder. These properties were transferred to The Wentz Company, Inc., formed in 1907. The firm was reincorported in Virginia as the Wentz Corporation on June 18, 1913. The Kentucky land remained undeveloped and was sold to the United States Coal & Coke Company, a subsidiary of U. S. Steel, in 1917. U. S. Steel constructed the model mining town of Lynch, Kentucky, on the site. The remaining Wentz lands in Virginia were sold to the Virginia Coal & Iron Company in 1928.

The proceeds from the sale to U. S. Steel were reinvested in securities and in other bituminous coal properties. Wentz's investment in the Royal Colliery Company of Virden, Illinois, made in 1903, was transferred to the Wentz Corporation. The Royal Colliery was leased to the Chicago, Wilmington & Franklin Coal Company in 1915 and sold to them outright in 1920. In 1919 the firm invested in the Hudson Coal Company near Clarksburg, West Virginia. When it went bankrupt in 1925, the Wentz Corporation secured the appointment of Ralph H. Knode as receiver and reorganized it as the Valley Coal Company.

The Wentz Corportion also made investments in anthracite properties. After 1938 it became a general investment company for the Wentz Estates. It was reincorporated in Pennsylvania in 1962.

The Virginia-Kentucky Coal Corporation was another bituminous coal company controlled by the Wentz and Kemmerer families in partnershp with Joshua Fry Bullitt. The coal proved to be thin and unpredictable, and the property was sold to the Evans Oil & Gas Company in 1944.