Penn Virginia Corporation

The companies in this section of the Penn Virginia archive represent its post-1960 diversification effort.

Prior to the 1960s, the Virginia Coal & Iron Company's subsidiary companies all performed support services to its real estate holdings in southwestern Virginia. By that time, however, these secondary functions had ceased to be productive and could better be carried on by others. Most were therefore sold to larger firms engaged in the same line of work. The Interstate Railroad was sold to the Southern Railway Company in 1961 and the First National Bank of Appalachia to Dominion Bankshares Corporation in 1967. The two water companies were sold to the Town of Appalachia, Clear Creek, in 1973 and Cumberland in 1977.

In view of its changing role, the Virginia Coal & Iron Company was renamed Penn Virginia Corporation in 1967 and began a program of diversification. The company was gradually transformed into a natural resource oriented holding company with investments in raw materials, raw materials processing, and the manufacture of processing equipment.

The Wheelwright Corporation was created in 1967 for the purpose of converting fly-ash, a waste product of bituminous coal combustion, into marketable products. These included lightweight aggregate for concrete block, a partial substitute for portland cement, and magnetite for use in the flotation slurry used in coal-cleaning plants. The company absorbed the Viall-Ohio Fly Ash Company, Inc., in 1973. Continuing difficulties in the production process, combined with the declining market for construction materials during the recession of the late 1970s, rendered the company unprofitable, and it was sold in 1981.

Penn Virginia Corporation acquired a minority interest in Can-Fer Mines, Ltd., a Toronto-based owner of iron ore lands, in 1967. It was later merged into Bralorne Resources, Ltd., a larger Canadian natural resources conglomerate. Between 1970 and 1971, Penn Virginia also had an investment in Ceramtec Industries, Inc., a manufacturer of ceramic shapes and coatings. Between 1974 and 1981, it had a large investment in the Whitehall Cement Manufacturing Company. It invested in limestone quarries, purchasing the Farber White Limestone Company and Limestone Products Corporation of America in New Jersey, and the Luttrell Mining Company of Tennessee between 1974-1977. Penn Virginia acquired the Pennsylvania Crusher Company in 1976 and the Merrick Scale Manufacturing Company in 1980.

From the description of Records of subsidiary companies, 1899-1980. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 122333714

Penn Virginia Corporation was incorporated as the Virginia Coal & Iron Company on January 6, 1882. It was one of many firms established by a group of interrelated entrepreneurs headed by John Leisenring (1819-1884), a Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, civil and mining engineer.

Beginning in 1854, members of the interrelated Leisenring, Bertsch, Price, Wentz and Kemmerer families formed a series of anthracite mining companies whose operations were scattered throughout the Eastern and Western Middle Anthracite Coal Fields. Their investment in anthracite mining continued to grow until the early 1920s, and they generally ranked among the top fifteen anthracite producers.

The Leisenrings were among several anthracite operators who made the transition to bituminous coal. In 1880, John Leisenring organized the Connellsville Coke & Iron Company in the western Pennsylvania basin that then held a near-monopoly on the production of coking coal. The next year, he began investing in hitherto inaccessible coking coal deposits in southwestern Virginia.

The Virginia Coal & Iron Company acquired 70,000 acres of land near Big Stone Gap. The formation of the Virginia Coal & Iron Company was part of a larger movement of northern capital and entrepreneurs into the underdeveloped natural resource industries of the Appalachian South. Penn Virginia is somewhat atypical in that it is publicly traded, whereas most such land companies have remained privately held or are subsidiaries of the coal-hauling railroads.

The Connellsville Coke & Iron Company had come into competition with Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, and the Leisenrings were compelled to sell out to them in 1889. The capital and skilled personnel thus released were transferred to Virginia.

After the death of John Leisenring, the company was headed by his son Edward B. Leisenring (1845-1894) and his son-in-law Dr. John Shriver Wentz (1838-1918). In 1896, Dr. Wentz sent his eldest son, Daniel Bertsch Wentz (1872-1926), to Big Stone Gap to take charge of the Virginia operations. D. B. Wentz returned to Philadelphia as president of all the bituminous coal companies in 1904.

In 1902, the operation of the mines was spun off to the Stonega Coke & Coal Company, controlled by Dr. Wentz. While operating as a lessee, it remained partially interlocked with the Virginia Coal & Iron Company.

The Wentz interests had organized several other bituminous coal and land companies. Dr. Wentz purchased 8,500 acres in Harlan and Letcher Counties, Kentucky in 1899-1905 and conveyed them to the Wentz Company in 1907. The Wentz family also controlled the Virginia-Kentucky Coal Corporation owning 11,000 acres in Knott County, Kentucky. Dr. Wentz purchased the Royal Colliery Company of Virden, Illinois, in 1903, but it was too removed from the rest of his properties to be managed efficiently. In 1919, the Wentz Corporation acquired control of the Hudson Coal Company of Clarksburg, West Virginia.

In 1916-17, Dr. Wentz had acquired a large block of the Westmoreland Coal Company, and when its president died suddenly in 1929 with the entire industry rapidly declining, its management was turned over to Stonega's officers. Its real estate was spun off to a new company, Westmoreland, Inc., so that it conformed to the land company/operating company arrangement.

In the 1960s, the entire corporate structure was reorganized. In 1962, the Virginia Coal & Iron Company acquired 52% of the Westmoreland Coal Company's stock, and a year later it absorbed Westmoreland, Inc., to form a single land company. To reflect its new functions and objectives, the Virginia Coal & Iron Company was renamed Penn Virginia Corporation on April 19, 1967. The company also divested itself of its traditional Virginia subsidiaries between 1961 and 1977. Since 1967, Penn Virginia Corporation has functioned as a holding and investment company. In addition to its coal lands, it owns limestone quarries in New Jersey and Tennessee. Since 1976 it has purchased several small manufacturing companies specializing in equipment for handling and processing natural raw materials.

From the description of Records, 1864-1981. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 122547690