Palmer also bought into the zinc business at
Austinville, and became President of the Bertha Zinc
Co. there.
Zinc and lead occur in the same ore, but
until the process of amalgamation, or the dipping of
steel into a bath of zinc to coat it so that it
would not rust, was invented around the Civil War
zinc had been considered to have been a waste
product of lead smelting and had been discarded as
useless.
William Alexander Stuart’s first wife died, and he
remarried Mary Taylor Carter from Elk Garden.
He had lived in the house known today at the
W. A. Stuart house located to the west of Campbell’s
Choice on LO Q-345.
In 1875 they moved to the old Thomas Price
mansion east of State 80 about a mile south of US
19.
It is known that he had a telephone system
installed to connect him to the Salt Works.
His phone number was #4, and the house to
this day is still known locally as “Number
Four”.
This was most likely in the 1870’s, and shows
that at this time Palmer maintained on site
management of the operation.
By this time Palmer had bought the
Preston Home, which was the enlarged and
enhanced home of the Madisons and Sarah Buchanan
Campbell Preston.
