Bart Hagemeyer
Bartlett Hagemeyer (Jan. 27, 1885 – Dec. 24, 1953) was an owner in the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Co. in Glenmary, and in the Oneida & Western Railroad. His business partner in both ventures was his brother, Ira Hall Hagemeyer.
Biography
Born Jan. 27, 1885 in Butler, Ky., which is just south of Cincinnati, Oh., Bart Hagemeyer was the son of Christian C. Hagemeyer (1849-1920), a German immigrant, and Mary E. Hall (1851-1890). In addition to Ira Hall Hagemeyer, his siblings included Mary Christine Hagemeyer (1878-1965) and Clifford Wiley Hagemeyer (1889-1969). He also had two half-siblings, Mabel Hagemeyer (1892-1950) and Helen Hagemeyer Hopkins (1894-1982).
Bart married Margaret Mary Alcorn on Jan. 11, 1923 in Hamilton, Oh., a suburb of Cincinnati. She was the daughter of Herbert Alcorn and Grace Snead. They had three children: Richard Hagemeyer, born about 1925, Mary Hagemeyer, born about 1928, and Bartlett Hagemeyer Jr., born about 1930.
Life in Scott County
Coal mining and coke production at Glenmary in southern Scott County dates back to 1878, when Jabe Crook and John Heaps opened the first coal mine at Coal Hill. Crook eventually sold his holdings to a group of businessmen from Lexington, Ky. in 1884, and coke production began the following year.
Several years later, the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Co. established a lumber mill at Glenmary, sawing poplar, pine and hemlock lumber. According to Glenmary resident Maggie Barger, an educator who wrote for the FNB Chronicle, Otis Pemberton — the son of prominent Glenmary resident Gatewood Pemberton — said “that place used to be known as Haggimore Town,” a reference to Hagemeyer.
In his book, Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, historian H. Clay Smith adds Hall and Bart’s brother, Clifford Wiley Hagemeyer, as an owner of the mill, along with their sister, Mary Hagemeyer Frye.
With time, the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Co. mill at Glenmary changed to a mill that produced hardwood flooring. Beginning in 1906, it made weather-boarding and ceiling planks, as well.
Also in 1906, the Hagemeyer brothers began a housing project on Nydeck Road.
On Oct. 29, 1912, the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Co. chartered the Jamestown Railroad, which was intended to be built from the Southern main line in Glenmary to Jamestown by way of Nydeck and Rugby.
However, the Hagemeyer brothers sold their interest in the mill at Glenmary shortly thereafter and moved to Verdun near Oneida, where they purchased a mill operated by the Tennessee Stave & Lumber Co. In 1913, they amended the charter to Oneida & Western Railroad, and partnered with O.H. Anderson, J.T. Anderson and W.C. Anderson.
Following a legal battle with the Stearns Coal & Lumber Co., a court cleared the way for the Hagemeyers and their partners to begin construction on the O&W, which eventually extended from Oneida to Jamestown.
Hall Hagemeyer served as president of the O&W Railroad until his death in 1936. When the 1930 census was taken, he was boarding with William and Wilda Spick on Third Avenue in Oneida.
It’s not clear when the Hagemeyers left Oneida. When the 1910 census was taken, Bart lived in Glenmary as a boarder with a widower named Maggie Rowlance. Maggie was married to an English immigrant who worked in the mining operation at Coal Hill until his death in 1908. She later married Baptist circuit preacher John Franklin Webb of Glenmary. Bart does not appear in the 1920 census, but married his wife in Hamilton, Oh. in 1923. When the 1930 census was taken, they lived in Harriman, Tenn. with their three children. They later returned to the Cincinnati area, settling in Lancaster, Oh. In 1850, Bart worked as a lumber salesman at a wholesale company in Ohio.
There’s no record that Clifford Hagemeyer ever lived in Scott County.
Death
Bart Hagemeyer died in Lancaster, Oh. on Christmas Eve 1953 at age 68. He is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Glendale, Oh., which is where his wife was also buried when she died on Jan. 25, 1942.