Henry Chester Parsons, son of Jethro and Comfort Parsons, was born in St. Albans, Vermont on September 25, 1840. After obtaining a bachelor's degree at the University of Vermont, Parsons enlisted as a captain in the 1st Vermont Cavalry and was placed in command of Company L. Wounded at Gettysburg, Parsons received a medical discharge on January 4, 1864. Soon afterward, he married Eliza Jane "Nellie" Loomis of Springfield, Massachusetts; the couple would have three daughters. Following the war, Parsons moved to West Virginia, settling in Cabell County, and engaged in real estate business. Later, he became a director of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. In partnership with others, he purchased the right-of-way of the James River and Kanawha Canal and built the Richmond & Alleghany Railroad on what had been the canal's towpath. Parsons served as vice president of the railroad and as president of the associated Alleghany Coal and Iron Company. Plans called for the R&A to be extended to Toledo, Ohio through a connection with the to-be-built Atlantic and Northwestern Railway at Kanawha Falls, West Virginia. The Kanawha Construction Company, with Parsons as chief stockholder and H. D. Whitcomb as president and chief engineer, was organized to build the Atlantic and Northwestern. Parsons became involved in a dispute with his partners in the R&A, however, and they purchased his interest in the companies by selling him their shares in the Natural Bridge of Virginia. (The R&A extension failed to be completed, and the line was sold in 1889, eventually becoming a branch of the C&O.) In 1884, Parsons published a small collection of poems titled The Reaper . Henry C. Parsons was killed by Thomas A. Goodman, a Chesapeake & Ohio Railway conductor, in Clifton Forge, Virginia on June 29, 1894. He was buried at High Bridge Presbyterian Church in Natural Bridge, Virginia.
From the guide to the Henry C. Parsons Papers, 1863-1905, (Special Collections, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.)
