Elmer Waitman Cook, vice president and cashier of the First National Bank in the industrial Village of Iaeger, McDowell County, was born at Oceana, Wyoming County, West Virginia, March 24, 1896, and is a son of Robert Lee and Mary (Conley) Cook, both likewise natives of Wyoming County and now residents of Williamson, Mingo County. Robert L. Cook became editor and publisher of the Wyoming Herald at Oceana, which later bocame the Independent-Herald, and subsequently he was identified with newspaper enterprise at Pineville. He is now connected with the Mingo County Republican at Williamson. His father, Capt. James A. Cook, was an officer of the Confederate service in the Civil war, and was eighty years of age at the time of his death. The family early settled in Wyoming County, and the family name was one of prominence in the civic and material development and progress of that county.

Elmer W. Cook, the eldest in a family of seven children, of whom two sons and four daughters are living, gained his early education in the public schools at Oceana and Pineville, his discipline including the curriculum of the high school. At the age of seventeen years he became bookkeeper in the First National Bank of Pineville. He later held a position in the First National Bank of Martinsville, Virginia, and next became assistant cashier of the Clark National Bank at Northfork, McDowell County, West Virginia. After leaving this bank he held the position of bookkeeper for the Traders Coal Company at War Eagle, Mingo County, and in 1919 he became one of the organizers of the First National Bank of Iaeger, of which he has since been vice president and cashier - one of the youngest bank executives in West Virginia and one who has made a splendid record. He is a steward of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in his home village, and his wife is a member of the Presbyterian Church.

In 1917 Mr. Cook wedded Miss Nathalie Morris, daughter of N. R. Morris, of Martinsville, Virginia, and the two children of this union are Nathalie Elizabeth and Sallie.

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The HIstory of West Virginia, Old and New
The American Historical Society, Inc.; Chicago/New York (Vol III); p 498

Contributed by: Valerie Crook