Elmer Workman, seated on the log in a white shirt, poses with fellow cross-cut saw demonstrators working for the Simonds Saw and Steel Company. The location in the photo is unknown, but is possibly in Webster Springs, W.Va.
Elmer Workman was the third child and second son of James Madison and Mary Elizabeth Moss Workman. He was born May 31, 1905, at the “Krauss Place” in a log cabin. This place is now a part of Watoga State Park. When he was about a year old, they moved to another log cabin on the Greenbrier River. At the age of 13, he went to work for the C&O Railroad. He helped to lay steel from Seebert to Durbin and was employed by the C&O for a number of years.
Workman joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1933 and was stationed at Camp Watoga and Camp Seebert. He was an experienced woodsman and was employed as a foreman, working the men who built the road from Beaver Creek to the Greenbrier River at Seebert. In 1936, he was employed by Simonds Saw and Steel Company of Boston, Massachusetts as a cross-cut saw demonstrator in the eastern United States. He stayed with them for many years until chain saws took over the cross-cut saw business. Simonds did not make chain saws.
He married the former Lola Elizabeth Buzzard. They had a son, Elmer David Workman, II, and one grandson, Justin Travis Workman. Elmer retired to his home at his camp “Island Ford” on the Greenbrier River and died in 1986. He is buried at Beaver Creek Cemetery in Huntersville, W.Va. (Photo and biography courtesy of David Workman; ID: PHP003836)
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