Appalachian Figures
William Miller Drennen began life in a brand new coal camp on Elkhorn Creek and ended it as a nationally known judge who helped reshape the United States Tax Court. Born in Jenkins, Letcher County, in 1914, he carried the experience of a company town childhood into a career that ran through Ohio State, wartime naval intelligence in the Pacific, Charleston city politics, and three terms as chief judge of a federal court in Washington. The record that survives in government files, yearbooks, and community archives lets us trace how a boy from a Kentucky coal town became one of the most important tax judges of the twentieth century.
A coal camp beginning in Jenkins
According to the official obituary issued by the United States Tax Court, Drennen was born in Jenkins, Kentucky, on March 1, 1914. Genealogical records on FamilySearch list him as a son of Everett Drennen and Louise Bright Miller, with a sister, Jean Louise, rounding out the immediate family. His arrival came just two years after Jenkins itself was incorporated as a city and as Consolidation Coal’s sprawling new operation in Letcher County took shape.
Jenkins was not an old courthouse town. It was a planned coal community carved into the valley beginning in 1911, when Consolidation Coal bought a huge tract across several eastern Kentucky counties. Company planners built rail lines, mills, and housing almost at once. Contemporary descriptions in later histories of Jenkins emphasize the speed of construction, the arrival of immigrant and local labor, and the company’s deep control of civic life.
Photographs from the Jenkins, Kentucky Photographic Collection, held by the University of Kentucky, show what that new town looked like in the years bracketing Drennen’s birth: company houses marching up hillsides, parades on dirt streets, baseball teams, and mine facilities looming over the creeks. These images do not single out the Drennen family by name, but they capture the visual world of his childhood in a coal town still under construction.
Like many families in early coal communities, the Drennens did not remain in one place forever. By the time William reached college age, he was in Ohio rather than Letcher County. The surviving record suggests that Jenkins was the place that launched him rather than the place where he made his career.
From Jenkins to Ohio State
The Tax Court press release for his death notes that Drennen earned both of his Ohio State degrees in quick succession: a bachelor’s degree in 1936 and a law degree in 1938. During law school he worked in the office of the Ohio State Tax Commissioner, an early sign that he was gravitating toward the field that would define his professional life.
After graduation, he moved into federal court work as a law clerk to Judge George W. McClintic of the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. From there he joined the Charleston law firm of Brown, Jackson & Knight, known today as Jackson Kelly, one of the major firms serving coal, rail, and industrial clients in the region.
By the late 1930s Drennen was no longer living in Jenkins, but his path still ran along familiar Appalachian corridors. Charleston, West Virginia’s capital and a river and rail hub, had deep connections to the coalfields of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. The Jenkins-born lawyer was now working in a city that shared many of the same coal and railroad ties as his birthplace.
Naval air intelligence in the Pacific
World War II interrupted his private practice. Between 1942 and 1945, Drennen served as a naval air combat intelligence officer in the Pacific, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander. The Tax Court’s obituary and his later Washington Post death notice agree on this outline of his wartime service, emphasizing that he handled intelligence work at a time when air power and carrier operations were central to the Pacific war.
That experience mattered for his later judicial role. Intelligence work required careful attention to documents, disciplined analysis, and the ability to synthesize large volumes of technical information. Those are also the skills that a tax judge needs when faced with thick case files and complex statutory schemes.
Charleston lawyer and civic leader
When the war ended, Drennen returned to Charleston and to his old firm, now Jackson & Kelly, where he became a partner. The Tax Court press release catalogues a long list of civic commitments that he took on in those years. He served on the Charleston city council, sat on the board of trustees of Charleston Memorial Hospital, joined the board of directors of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, and helped lead the Buckskin Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He was active in the American Judicature Society, took part in the American Bar Association’s tax section, and belonged to the Englewood Country Club.
He also became president of the West Virginia Tax Institute, a role that placed him at the intersection of local practice and national developments in tax law. For a Jenkins-born lawyer, this Charleston period shows both upward mobility and the way Appalachian professionals of his generation were embedded in regional civic networks.
In December 1941, in the middle of these early professional years, he had married Margaret “Maggie” Morton of Charleston. Her later obituary records that she was a Duke graduate and an active civic volunteer in Charleston before following her husband to Washington. Their marriage and family life would remain closely tied to Appalachian places even as his work took them to the nation’s capital.
A Jenkins-born judge on the U.S. Tax Court
President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Drennen to the United States Tax Court in 1958. The Tax Court obituary notes that he took the oath of office on October 1 of that year. Maggie Drennen’s Duke alumni note confirms that the family moved from Charleston to Bethesda, Maryland, when he assumed his new duties.
Once on the court, he quickly became one of its institutional leaders. In 1967 his colleagues elected him chief judge. He was re-elected for three consecutive two year terms, serving as chief until 1972. Congressional Quarterly’s review of President Johnson’s 1968 confirmations lists “Judge William M. Drennen of Bethesda, Md., born March 1, 1914 in Jenkins, Ky.” among the judicial appointments that cleared the Senate that year, confirming both his birthplace and his reappointment to a twelve year term.
During his tenure as chief judge, Congress converted the Tax Court into a legislative court under Article I of the Constitution and expanded its jurisdiction, several of the changes Drennen had urged in testimony. The Tax Court press release credits him with successfully pursuing construction of a new courthouse for the court in Washington, an institutional legacy that still shapes how the court operates.
He assumed senior judge status on June 2, 1980 and retired at the end of 1993, after more than three decades on the bench. A Washington Post obituary remembers him as a former chief judge who continued to hear cases as a senior judge until 1990 and notes that he had lived in the Washington area for more than thirty years.
Small cases, jurisdiction, and a growing court
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Congress wrestled with how to help ordinary taxpayers bring smaller disputes before the Tax Court. One proposal was to create a separate small claims division. During hearings on this idea, Chief Judge Drennen told lawmakers that the existing machinery of the court could handle such cases without setting up an entirely new tribunal.
A legislative analysis published by the American Enterprise Institute later summarized his testimony and letters to Congress, noting how he outlined a set of procedures that would eventually be adopted when Congress created what became the “small tax case” process. Those procedures allow taxpayers with relatively modest disputes to use simplified rules, an option that has become a standard part of federal tax practice.
His written opinions also show a judge who cared deeply about procedure and jurisdiction. In one 1975 case, Sylvan v. Commissioner, he wrote a dissent that insisted on strict adherence to the statutory rules governing when a petition is deemed filed in the Tax Court. Even when this produced a harsh result for the taxpayer, he argued that the court could not ignore or rewrite Congress’s jurisdictional limits.
At the same time, colleagues and later scholars noted that under his leadership the court pushed for reforms that made it more accessible, from the expansion of its traveling calendar in smaller cities to better public understanding of its role. In all of this, a judge who started life in a coal town worked to shape a federal tribunal that ordinary citizens could reach.
Family, Shepherdstown, and Appalachian ties
The Tax Court press release notes that Drennen was survived by his wife of sixty years, Margaret Morton, and four children: Margaret Penelope McLanahan, William M. Jr., David Holmes, and Dale Louise Walter. Maggie’s obituary fills out the picture, describing her as a civic leader in Charleston, a teacher and volunteer in Washington, and later the founder of Cress Creek Golf and Country Club in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, where the couple moved after his retirement from full time judicial service.
Their son William M. Drennen Jr. became a historian and co author of Red, White, Black, and Blue: A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia. In biographical notes about his life and work, reference books routinely identify his father as a tax court judge and place the family in Charleston’s South Hills before their move to Shepherdstown. Another son, David Holmes Drennen, would later be remembered in his own obituary as a Charleston born son of William Miller and Margaret Morton Drennen.
These scattered family notices reinforce what the official government record already suggests. The Drennens lived and worked in cities like Charleston and Shepherdstown that sit inside the larger Appalachian region. A coal camp birth in Jenkins led not to an exit from the mountains but to a life spent in their river towns and college communities even as the work itself became national.
On December 22, 2000, Drennen died at age eighty six at a hospital in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The Washington Post observed that he had lived in the Washington area for decades before settling in Shepherdstown; the Tax Court announcement recorded the date and place of death and noted a memorial service at Trinity Episcopal Church in Shepherdstown.
Jenkins, coal camps, and national institutions
For Appalachian history, Drennen’s life illustrates a pattern that surface level stereotypes often miss. Coal camps like Jenkins produced miners, but they also produced lawyers, teachers, and judges who carried coalfield experiences into very different arenas.
The visual and oral records preserved in the Jenkins Photographic Collection and the Coal Camp Documentary Project show the kind of community that shaped him as a child: crowded housing, rough streets, celebrations, and the constant presence of coal and rail work. Those same records now serve as primary sources for scholars and local historians trying to understand coal camp life.
Drennen’s later work on the Tax Court placed him at the center of debates over how the federal government should treat ordinary taxpayers, large corporations, and the institutions that mediate between them. His testimony on small cases, his push for a permanent courthouse, and his leadership during the court’s transition to Article I status all helped define how tax disputes are resolved in the United States.
Remembering that he came from Jenkins does not mean that every decision he made reflected mountain priorities. It does mean that one of the key architects of modern federal tax adjudication started life in a coal company town in Letcher County. That fact alone invites us to read both Jenkins’s history and the history of the Tax Court with Appalachia in mind.
Sources and further reading
U.S. Tax Court, “Judge William Miller Drennen,” press release, January 3, 2001, with biographical sketch and notice of his death in Martinsburg, West Virginia.U.S. Tax Court
U.S. Tax Court, “Death Announcement – Retired Judge William Miller Drennen,” press release index entry, December 27, 2000.United States Tax Court
Washington Post, “Tax Judge William Miller Drennen,” December 23, 2000, obituary noting his service as chief judge, years in the Washington area, and death in Martinsburg.The Washington Post+1
Legacy.com and Shepherdstown Chronicle, obituaries for Margaret “Maggie” Morton Drennen, April 2017, describing her marriage to Drennen in 1941, the family’s move to Washington in 1958 when he joined the Tax Court, and her later work founding Cress Creek Golf and Country Club in Shepherdstown.
FamilySearch, “Everett Drennen (1881–1964),” genealogical entry listing spouse Louise Bright Miller and children including William Miller Drennen (1914–2000) and Jean Louise Drennen.
Congressional Quarterly Almanac, “President Johnson’s Major Confirmations of 1968,” entry listing the reappointment of Judge William M. Drennen, giving his birth date and birthplace as Jenkins, Kentucky, and recording Senate confirmation in May 1968.
U.S. Congress, Senate, United States Tax Court: Hearings on S. 2041 (1967–1968) and related Congressional Record debates on small claims proposals, with testimony and references to Chief Judge Drennen’s views on the court’s capacity and structure.
American Enterprise Institute, legislative analysis memorandum on proposals for a small claims division of the Tax Court, summarizing and quoting Drennen’s testimony and correspondence on small case procedures.
Casemine and official Tax Court Reports, including Sylvan v. Commissioner, 65 T.C. 548 (1975), in which Judge Drennen’s dissent discusses jurisdiction and timely filing of petitions.
Encyclopedia.com, “Drennen, William M., Jr. 1942–,” biographical entry noting his parentage and career and situating the Drennen family in Charleston and Shepherdstown.Encyclopedia.com
Ohio State University Moritz College of Law references, including listings of the Judge William M. Drennen Award for excellence in tax courses, which testify to his enduring reputation at his alma mater.
Wikipedia, “William Miller Drennen,” and related pages on the United States Tax Court and Jenkins, Kentucky, which synthesize and cross check the timeline of his education, judicial service, and birthplace from primary sources.Wikipedia+2Wikipedia+2
University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center, “Jenkins, Kentucky Photographic Collection, 1911–1930,” and the History in Photos blog post “Jenkins, Kentucky,” providing visual primary sources on daily life in Jenkins in the years around Drennen’s birth.libguides.uky.edu+1