William Cooper Stiles, Jr., born in Philadelphia on duly 27, 1839, was one of the earliest operators in the West Virginia and Ohio oil fields. He traveled to the White Oak region of West Virginia in 1864, where he purchased several thousand acres and began drilling. After an ominous start, he made a major strike and later revolutionized the oil industry through the introduction of the endless cable pumping system, an application conceived from the cable system powering street cars in Philadelphia. He built the Volcanic Oil and Coal Company into a major force in the local oil industry. In 1866, at a cost of $160,000, he was the driving force in building the Laurel Fork and Sand Hill Railroad, a standard gauge rail system for transporting oil to refineries in Parkersburg. For his major contributions to Volcano, he was known as the "father of Volcano." He also served as a county commissioner from 1881 to 1885. W. C. Stiles, Jr., died at his beloved Thornhill on December 17, 1896.