Hall Hagemeyer
Ira Hall Hagemeyer (Feb. 10, 1881 – Dec. 19, 1936) was an owner of the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Co. in Glenmary, along with his brother, Bartlett Hagemeyer. The two men were also owners of the Oneida & Western Railroad.
Biography
Born Feb. 10, 1881 in Butler, Ky., Hall Hagemeyer was the son of Christian C. Hagemeyer (1849-1920), a German immigrant, and Mary E. Hall (1851-1890). In addition to Bartlett, he had two siblings, Mary Christine Hagemeyer and Clifford Wiley Hagemeyer, and two half-siblings, Mabel Hagemeyer and Helen Hagemeyer.
Hall Hagemeyer married Grace Meehan in 1915. After she died of heart trouble in 1924, he married Grace Sinton in 1932. Both of his wives had a child from an earlier marriage, but Hall had no children of his own.
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 Hagemeyer left Oneida, but his 1932 marriage to Grace Sinton took place in Cincinnati, Oh. Their home was listed at the time as Fort Mitchell Heights in the Cincinnati suburbs.
It does not appear that Hagemeyer always lived in Oneida. When the 1920 census was taken, he and his first wife, Grace, and Grace’s son, lived in Cincinnati with Grace’s mother, Eleanore Meehan. Hall is not found in the 1910 census, but his brother, 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.
In 1930, when Hall still lived in Oneida and served as president of the O&W Railroad, his brother, Bart, lived in Harriman, Tenn. with his wife and children.
There’s no record that Clifford Hagemeyer ever lived in Scott County.
Death
Hall Hagemeyer died suddenly on Dec. 19, 1936 in Cincinnati, at age 55. He was buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Ky., a suburb of Cincinnati.