Robert Poore Valentine
Robert Poore Valentine (1852-1928), born in Charlottesville, Virginia, was the son of Virginia Green Poore and Thomas J. Valentine, a local merchant and banker.
R. P. Valentine ran a coal company and then spread out into a variety of activities, including the Charlottesville and University Street Railway Company and an electric light company. Valentine was also the President of the Woolen Mills Company. He was an elder of the Presbyterian Church and involved in the Young Men’s Christian Association, serving as President of the association for two years.
Father of Elizabeth Carroll “Bessie” Valentine Walker.
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Biography
Valentine began work as a clerk in a retail store at the age of 16 and began his own business four years later. He became exclusive agent for coal on much of the route ran by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway though this business was never incorporated. [1]
Valentine was also secretary of the Charlottesville Industrial and Land Improvement Company and president of the Development Company of Charlottesville.
In 1892, Valentine built a brick warehouse at First Street and South Street which was leased to a grocer known as Charles King & Sons. This building would explode on May 31, 1897 when a fire ignited barrels of oil and kegs of gunpowder stored in the basement. A second building was built in 1899 but it too was destroyed in a fire in February 1908. A third building was constructed but this time it was three stories high. This would be used by both the Michie Grocery Company and then the Albemarle Grocery Company before becoming the freight station for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. [1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Book. Charlottesville’s Street Railway System and its Entrepreneurs, 1866-1936 (1980), Jefferson Randolph Kean, (George Mason University Master’s Thesis, retrieved January 24, 2026.