Emma Gilham Page

Who was Emma Gilham Page?

Emma Hayden Page was the youngest daughter of Major William Gilham, Commandant of Cadets at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, where she was born 5½ years before the beginning of the American Civil War.

In 1882, Emma married William Nelson Page a United States civil engineer, entrepreneur, capitalist, businessman, and industrialist. William Page is best known as a one of the leading managers and developers of West Virginia's rich bituminous coal fields in the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as being deeply involved in building the railroads and other infrastructure to process and transport the mined coal. He was co founder of the Virginian Railway, and the namesake for the West Virginia unincorporated communities of Page in Fayette County and Pageton in McDowell County.

Emma and William Page settled in the town of Ansted, West Virginia where he had a palatial Victorian mansion built on a knoll by coal company carpenters. There, they lived for 27 years in the highly visible symbol of wealth and power in the community and raised their family with the help of 8 servants. In modern times, known as the Page-Vawter House, it is a surviving landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places that has been described as evidence of the once thriving coal business of an earlier era in the Mountain State.