Turn-of-the-century Bramwell, West Virginia, was a rich little town with more millionaires than any place of its size in America. Tucked away in the coal fields, 14 millionaires or perhaps 19, depending on which account you read lived sumptuously along-side the town's 4,000 citizens.
In the early 1880s, word spread quickly of the discovery of the Pocahontas coal field along the Virginia/West Virginia line. Fantastic coal seams eight to 10 feet high began at Bramwell, W.Va. and extended for 48 miles. Speculators, developers, entrepreneurs and miners flocked to the budding village, known informally as Horseshoe Bend. Some miners came from Pennsylvania coal areas, others directly from England, Scotland and Wales. Operators of the new mines recruited immigrants at Ellis Island.
One fortune-seeker was Joseph H. Bramwell, a New York civil engineer, who arrived in 1883. As first postmaster of a post office that needed a legal label, he said, "Every little baby has a name, and this little town must have the same. I therefore name it Bramwell."
Later, Joseph H. became first president of the famed Bank of Bramwell, and a big-time real estate investor. Unlike many millionaires who stayed around to lose their money during the Great Depression or when the mines began to play out in the 1930s and '40s Joseph Bramwell soon gathered up his fortune and moved to Switzerland.
