They opened the fence line between their properties and enclosed about a quarter of an acre to use for family burials.

[2] Ten years later, in December 1885, the Woodlawn Cemetery Company was incorporated and plots were offered for sale to the larger community.

Among them is Francis Harrison Pierpont, the Governor of the Restored State of Virginia from 1861 to 1868, his wife Julia and three of their four children.

James Otis Watson is considered the father of the bituminous coal industry in north central West Virginia.

He and Pierpont owned the first coal mine to be commercially viable following the completion of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Fairmont with the eastern seaboard markets.