Background
Eldest son of Jacob L. Warner, native of Virginia, and Elizabeth (Cartwright) Warner, granddaughter of Robert Cartwright, pioneer of Middle Tennessee, was born in Gallatin, Tenn.
Eldest son of Jacob L. Warner, native of Virginia, and Elizabeth (Cartwright) Warner, granddaughter of Robert Cartwright, pioneer of Middle Tennessee, was born in Gallatin, Tenn.
He received a common-school education and some training from his father in the tailor's trade.
He left home at the age of seventeen to seek his fortune in Nashville. He worked as clerk, first in a wholesale grocery and then in the firm of Kirkman & Ellis, hardware merchants. He and his wife moved to Chattanooga, where Warner established a hardware business of his own. He was elected mayor for a term, and was a member of the General Assembly in 1861. Poor health prevented his enlistment in the Confederate army. During the Chattanooga campaign his home was demolished and after the Confederate defeat, Warner and his family as refugees made their way by wagon-train to Nashville. Like many another Southerner, Warner faced the aftermath of war penniless and in debt. His business ability was recognized, however, and after a brief term as bank cashier he was appointed, in 1868, secretary of the Tennessee Coal & Railroad Company. He now began a significant career of a quarter of a century in developing the mineral resources of the South. The company had been engaged in haphazard coal mining in southeastern Tennessee since the early fifties. Soon promoted to general manager, Warner foresaw coke making as a solution for the company's surplus of slack coal, which in turn might lead to the manufacture of iron with the new fuel. He was not acquainted with the problems of the blast furnace, but after a visit to the iron works near St. Louis, he and his assistant, Col. Alfred M. Shook, erected an experimental furnace at Tracy City. The "Fiery Gizzard, " as it was called, was too crude to be a commercial success, but the coke experiment led to contracts to supply furnaces in upper Georgia, and to the erection by Warner of the Chattanooga Furnace. In company with ex-Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, he purchased the Rising Fawn iron property in that state in 1874, reorganized the plant on a scientific and paying basis, and sold it in 1882 along with the Chattanooga Furnace for $311, 000. This same year Warner was made president of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company, which had recently built its first furnace at Cowan with the most modern equipment. Poor health, which afflicted Warner periodically throughout his life, had forced him to retire from active participation in the company's affairs in 1874, but now, under the new régime of John H. Inman of New York (1882 - 85), he began a new program of expansion which led to the absorption of a rival English company in the vicinity and eventually to the entry of the Tennessee Company into the Birmingham district. Warner's most notable achievement was the revival and modernization of the charcoal iron industry in Middle Tennessee. After a thorough investigation of the ore fields of Hickman and neighboring counties, the Warner Iron Company was organized in 1880, composed of Nashville capitalists. Having secured the controlling interest, he had free rein to develop the property along the most improved lines. The fifty-ton hotblast Warner Furnace, built at a cost of $125, 000, set a new precedent in the charcoal iron industry by its efficient operation. Scientific practice was applied all along the line. A charcoal byproduct plant was built and three additional furnaces blown in, all of which were sold to the Southern Iron Company in 1889, the Warner Furnace alone being valued at $1, 000, 000. Warner retained a large interest in the new company, which under A. M. Shook's management experimented successfully in making steel from Tennessee iron, until the panic of 1893 closed the works. Without any formal training, he attacked the varied technical problems of coal and iron with keen perception, and his grasp of financial problems and market trends was perhaps even more remarkable.
On November 3, 1852, he was married to Mary Williams, daughter of a Gallatin neighbor. He had seven sons and one daughter.
