Clarence W. Watson (1864-1940) was a coal mining "baron" from West Virginia. Watson organized several coal companies that became the Consolidation Coal and Mining Companies in West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. Watson was president of the company until 1911, then became its chairman. Later in life, he became President of Elk Horn Coal Company and served as trustee of various corporations, railroads, and banks across the United States. A Democrat, he served as United States Senator from West Virginia from 1911 to 1913 after Stephen B. Elkins died in office. In March 1918, Watson was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Ordinance Department of the United States Army and served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France until January 1919. In 1918, while overseas, he was once again nominated as a candidate for the U.S. Senate from West Virginia, but lost the election. He lived in Fairmont in Marion County, on his family's homestead, an estate named Fairmont Farms, and also maintained residences in New York City (where Rockefeller Center now stands) and in Baltimore. Watson was married to Minnie Owings Watson of Ellicott City, Maryland, whose portrait hangs in the ballroom of the Governor's Mansion in Charleston. Their show horses (including the well-regarded Lord Baltimore) won numerous awards both in the United States and in Europe. He died in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 24, 1940, while tending to Elk Horn Coal Company business, and is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Fairmont.
