William Henshaw Nigh
On preceding pages of this publication is entered a memoir to the late and distinguished Col. Elias Nigh, whose name is held in enduring honor in his native State of Ohio, and whose noble achievements are briefly noted in the circumscribed tribute possible of incorporation in n work of this order. The son William H. is known as one of the representative business men of his native City of Ironton, where he is well upholding the prestige of the family name, but in the article here presented it is unnecessary to repeat the data that are given in the memoir of his honored father, as ready reference may be made to the article mentioned.
William Henshaw Nigh, secretary and treasurer of the Nigh Lumber Company, of Ironton, is thus identified with one of the important industrial enterprises contributing to the commercial prestige of his native city, and the president of the company is his elder brother, Samuel H., the two owning and controlling the business, in which they own equal shares and which has been by them developed to large proportions. William H. Nigh was born in Ironton on the 8th of November, 1868, and continued his studies in the public schools of the city from an early age until he had completed the curriculum of the high school. At the age. of eighteen years he became associated with his brother Samuel H., who was engaged in the buying and shipping of lumber, with headquarters at Ironton. At the end of one year William H., then nineteen years old, was sent by his brother to Mississippi to assume the management of a saw mill owned by the latter on the Yazoo River. William H. passed about three years in the supervision of the business in Mississippi and then, in 1890, he became associated with his brother in the purchase of a portable saw mill at Catlettsburg, Boyd County, Kentucky. This mill they continued to operate successfully in that part of the Bluegrass State for four years, and they still have large lumber interests in Kentucky. Mr. Nigh returned to Ironton, the two brothers here erected their present saw mill, at the foot of Ellison Street, in January, 1890, and having placed the same in operation in addition to their lumbering activities in Kentucky. The mill has been kept up to the highest standard and has the capacity for the output of 50,000 feet of lumber a day. Through progressive methods and definite circumspection the enterprise has been built up to a status of marked prosperity and it proves a valuable adjunct to the industrial activities of this section of the Buckeye State, as one of the foremost of its kind in the Hanging Rock Iron Region. The brothers effected the organization of the Nigh Lumber Company, which is incorporated with a capital stock of $10,000, shared equally by the two. The plant and business at Catlettsburg, Kentucky, are conducted under the firm name of S. H. Nigh & Brother. He whose name initiates this review owns a half interest in each of these important business enterprises, as already intimated, and he is likewise associated with his brother in the ownership of a valuable tract of 7,500 acres of timber land in Kentucky. In Ironton he owns his attractive modern residence, known as a center of generous hospitality, besides other houses and lots. Mr. Nigh has proved a reliable and progressive businessman and a loyal and public-spirited citizen, with abiding interest in all that pertains to the welfare of his home city and county.
In politics Mr. Nigh is aligned as a supporter of the cause of the republican party, and he is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and the Masonic fraternity, in the latter of which he has received the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, besides being affiliated with the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Both he and his wife are zealous communicants of the Protestant Episcopal Church and he is a member of the vestry of the parish of his church.
In September, 1899, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Nigh to Miss Josephine Wood, daughter of George and Martha Wood, of Maysville, Kentucky, and the two children of this union are William H., Jr., and Samuel H.
From "A Standing History of the Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio" by Eugene B. Willard, Daniel W. Williams, George O. Newman and Charles B. Taylor. Published by Lewis Publishing Company, 1916