Visiting Our Past: Best is a name that fell short of local fame

Best, the name of the town that became Biltmore Village in the 1890s, evokes a tale of one businessman's extraordinary rise and fall.

"Best," according to various sources, refers to William J. Best, owner, in 1880, of the Western North Carolina Railroad, which reached its Swannanoa River location on Oct. 3, 1880.

By that historic date, however, Best had lost ownership of the rail line. His business partners, as Best confessed to N.C. Gov. Thomas Jarvis less than a month after purchasing the state lease on Apr. 27, 1880, "decline to advance any portion of the money."

There may have been a conspiracy afoot. Ultimately, Best was forced to get funding from the Richmond & Danville Railroad, which had ulterior motives. Its control over railroads in North Carolina made sure that traffic went to Norfolk, Virginia, rather than to New Bern or Morehead City.

Best remained president of the Western North Carolina Railroad as it strove to connect Asheville with Murphy and Paint Rock.

During this time, Best did a remarkable thing. While acting as president under the Richmond & Danville folks, he built a rival company, the Midland Railroad, to unseat his bosses. The guy had an engine in him that could pull cars up mountains, it seems.

He started off in his youth in Ireland as a house painter and made his way into the linen trade, which boomed in the late 1800s. He immigrated to New York and built an import business, using his Ireland connections and making friends in high places in America.

He had financial skills. His friends appointed him to manage receiverships for bankrupt institutions. He swam with the sharks.

When his first railroad ownership fell apart, he rounded up backers from Boston and sold Gov. Jarvis on his plan to build the Midland Railroad (parallel to Richmond & Danville's North Carolina Railroad) in the Piedmont, improve the Atlantic and N.C. Railroad in the east and build a trunk line to the coast to enrich that whole region.

In his 1971 book, "William J. Best and the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad," Edwin John Effinger wrote that "Best hoped to take these two lines (Midland and Atlantic), one complete and the other not, and use them as leverage to pry the W.N.C.R.R. from the Richmond and Danville group."

The watershed moment would be July 1, 1881. That's when Richmond & Danville, according to its lease, was supposed to finish the extension of its railroad to Paint Rock.

The company deposed Best on April 12, 1881, after a court challenge. The new president, Col. Alexander B. Andrews (after whom Andrews Geyser is named) appealed for an extension of the lease.

Jarvis favored both Best and Andrews in their quests to possess the rails in the west. By pitting two capitalists against each other, he hoped to get more work done.

The scramble was on.

Best traveled to Washington and gained the support of Zebulon Vance, former governor and now U.S. Senator. Vance was also one of three commissioners, along with Jarvis and Jonathan Worth, state treasurer, empowered to decide on the lease on behalf of the state.

Asheville attorney Augustus Merrimon represented Best before the commissioners, and spoke for three hours, the New York Times reported on Sept. 12, 1881.

Jarvis, leaning with his fellow commissioners toward Best, was ready to bring in the militia to seize its property. "'North Carolina will no longer be a strip of land between two states.' This is the cry," the Times related.

It looked as if Best had the WNC Railroad in the bag. However, Richmond & Danville outplayed him. It purchased a controlling interest in the Virginia Midland Railroad Company, which had a charter to build a railroad from Danville through Charlotte to South Carolina. It paid off all its debts plus interest and got to work on railroad construction. Best, meanwhile, managed to build only 8 of the 150 miles of the Midland line.

Jarvis switched his support in the lease conflict to Richmond & Danville. Worth joined him, and by December Richmond & Danville got its extension.

"As if all his dealings depended upon one," Effinger writes, "Best faced nothing but failure after he was denied the W.N.C.R.R."

Best lost his lease on the Atlantic & N.C. Railroad, which went into receivership, and was returned to the state, not to be leased again until 1910, when Norfolk and Southern took charge. His Boston backers relieved him of his presidency of Midland Company.

In 1885, Best was arrested for embezzlement in connection with a past receivership and spent a week in jail because no one posted bail. Insufficient evidence was found, the bail amount was reduced and Best paid his own way out.

I have not been able to find any further biographical material or an obituary for Best.

Rob Neufeld wrote the weekly "Visiting Our Past" column for the Citizen Times until his death in 2019. This column originally was published Jan. 7, 2013.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Visiting Our Past: Best is a name that fell short of local fame