Anybody from Coal River, West Virginia?

Question

My daddy , Robert Wheeler was born in Coal River, West Virginia in 1918 or close to that date, He was orphaned when his mother left and a short time later, his father, a coal miner with black lung left him and his younger brother in and orphanage, possibly in Pomroy, Ohio. He was about 8 years old, his brother 3 or 4. His brother was adopted, my dad was not, He was farmed out to work, for a long time with a family called the Carpenters who raised and bred the small shetland ponies. Any body know anything?

Answer 1

I can give you links to bulletin boards devoted to specific counties in West Virginia, if you know what County Coal River is in. I can't find it, myself. There is a "Coal River Public Library" in both Charlestown and Racine, it looks like.

This looks like him on the census.

1930: Pomeroy, Meigs, Ohio; Roll: 1850; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 18;

Robert Wheeler, age 14, white, b. WV, relation to head of household "Inmate".

Institution is "Children's Home". All of the children on the page have relation "Inmate". The next institution on the page is the county jail. They are all inmates too. It looks like either the two were close, or in the same building, or the enumerator did the institutions as a group.

It says his parents are both born WV, but they might have asked him and he may have guessed.