Historic Resource Study: Wolf Creek Park and Harlem Heights Cemetery Fayette County, West

prepared by: Michael E. Workman, Ph.D. Billy Joe Peyton, Ph.D.

Graduate Research Assistant: Jessica Sargent-Hill

Undergraduate Assistants: Rick Adkins Zachary Crouch Katelyn Damron Ashley Peggs Zane Samples Maxx Turner Alfred Williams

September 27, 2019

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Table of Contents

Historic Resource Study: Industrial Heritage of Wolf Creek Park Background 2 Purpose of Study 2 Project Scope 3-5 1.0 On the Waters of Wolf Creek 5-12 2.0 The Civil War Comes to Wolf Creek 12-19 3.0 Coal: Boosterism and Land Speculation 19-24 4.0 Kay Moor and Minden: Trees Above with Coal Below 24-26 5.0 Death Trap: Parral and Stuart Shaft Mines 27-28 6.0 The Coal Boom: 1900-1930 28-34 7.0 Stonehinge: Field Work and Discussion 34-36 8.0 Conclusions: A Multi-Purpose Engineering Station 36-39 9.0 Industrial Site Recommendations 39-40 10.0 Bibliography 41-42 11.0 Measured Drawings and Photographs 43-52

Historic Resource Study: Harlem Heights Cemetery 12.0 Brief History of Harlem Heights 53-56 13.0 Harlem Heights Cemetery 57-62 14.0 Harlem Heights Cemetery Recommendations 63-64 15.0 Graves in Harlem Heights Cemetery 65-151

16.0 Bibliography 152-156

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Historic Resource Study: Industrial Heritage of Wolf Creek Park Fayette County,

Background Wolf Creek Park is a 1,059.75-acre multi-purpose development area located between Fayetteville and Oak Hill in Fayette County, West Virginia. It is situated on a plateau drained by Wolf Creek and its tributaries. The Park was established in 2006 to promote residential, light industrial, and recreational reuse of the property, which had been left practically vacant after the decline of agriculture and industry in the last fifty years. Historically, the property supported agriculture, logging, and mining. This report is the culmination of a one-year long study undertaken by a team of historians from West Virginia State University for the Fayette County Urban Renewal Authority’s Wolf Creek Park in Fayette County, West Virginia.

Purpose of Study This project was made possible with generous support from the National Coal Heritage Area Authority, under the leadership of Executive Director Christy Bailey. The report is the culmination of a one-year long study undertaken by a team of historians from West Virginia State University for the Fayette County Urban Renewal Authority’s Wolf Creek Park in Fayette County, West Virginia. Work focused on the historical features and associations of the 1,000- acre park, with a spotlight on two historic cultural resources, a stone and concrete industrial structure associated with coal mining, and an African American cemetery, both located in the southern part of the park. Goals of the project have been to document these two sites, make recommendations on interpretation and preservation, and research the historical associations of the sites and the park, itself. The project team consisted of Drs. Michael E. Workman and Billy Joe Peyton, both historians currently involved in teaching and research at West Virginia State University, and Jessica Sargent-Hill, candidate for the M.A. at Marshall University. West Virginia State University undergraduate students assisted in the documentation of the industrial site through a Historical Archaeology Field School course (History 399): Richard Adkins, Zachary Crouch, Katlyn Damron, Ashley Peggs, Zane Samples, Maxx Turner, Alfred Williams. In addition, Jason Lykens photographed the site. Billy Strasser provided valuable assistance as the Wolf Creek Park representative and guide; Sam Chaber assisted in the fieldwork. Special thanks also goes to the New River Gorge Trail Alliance.

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Project Scope The project team carried out a pedestrian reconnaissance of the property using historic and current maps and valuable input from Billy Strasser and Sam Chaber. No attempt was made to comb the entire property, but existing trails were used to locate and study cultural resources. The team focused its efforts on the stone and concrete structure known colloquially as Stonehinge and the Harlem Heights Cemetery. The team conducted extensive research in the Records Room of the Fayette County Courthouse, West Virginia Archives and History at the Culture Center, Fayette County libraries at both Oak Hill and Fayetteville, and various sites on the World Wide Web geared toward understanding and documenting these cultural resources and the historical associations of the park property. WVSU Historical Archaeology students spent three afternoons investigation the Stonehinge site under the direction of Dr. Michael E. Workman. Some artifacts were collected, but most of the work consisted of cleaning the dirt and debris from the foundations of the structures. Photographer Jason Lyken documented the site with photos and measurements taken for plan drawings. These drawings were later prepared by Maxx Turner. The team then prepared a context and description of the two main resources, with additional work focusing on the historical associations of the Wolf Creek area. Dr. Billy Joe Peyton focused on Harlem Heights Cemetery and conducted research in the individuals buried there and their families. Finally, the team conferred with a representative of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, Jeff Davis, as well as Billy Strasser, to develop recommendations for preservation and interpretation of the site.

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Figures 1 & 2: Wolf Creek Project Area (Fayette Co. GIS Map & Fayetteville, Beckwith, Oak Hill, Thurmond USGS 7.5’ quad maps).

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Figure 3: Pin shows location of the coal-related industrial site informally known as “Stonehinge” at 38.0033325N, -81.1098242W.

1.0 “On the Waters of Wolf Creek” This section examines the pre-industrial history of the Wolf Creek area using a number of archival sources, including the vast number of land deeds held in the Fayette County Courthouse records room. Deeds and other property records are generally indexed by their location within the county, so the archaic phrase “on the waters of Wolf Creek” was found repeatedly by researchers, so much so that it came to epitomize much of the research. Wolf Creek Park is part of the Wolf Creek watershed, which encompasses 10,947 acres in the center of Fayette County, taking in parts of both Fayetteville and Oak Hill. Its headwaters are located in the southwestern part of the watershed near Lochgelly at an elevation of approximately 2,000 feet, which is reached at several high points within the watershed. For the most part, the stream and its tributaries traverse rolling land with slopes of less than 10 percent, which is unusual for much of Fayette County and southern West Virginia, where steep slopes are the norm. The watershed is often considered part of the larger Fayette Plateau, a section of tableland that also includes the National Scouting Jamboree’s Summit Bechtel Reserve. The stream gradient is fairly gentle, less than 5 percent, until a point beyond its with a tributary, House Creek, where it begins a precipitous decline of nearly 1,000 feet in about one mile as it empties into the New River near the Fayette Station Bridge.

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The Wolf Creek watershed has played an important role in the history of Fayetteville and Oak Hill. Two important roads pass through the area on a generally north-south axis: U.S. Rt. 19, a recently improved, limited access freeway, and Rt. 16, a two-lane highway that dates to 1847, when it was completed as the Giles, Fayette, and Kanawha Turnpike. Wolf Creek has been a lifeline to Fayetteville until recently as a water source. The creek was dammed near its confluence with a tributary, Short Creek, to form a reservoir, which was utilized for water supply and as a fishing hole until 2008, when the town of Fayetteville sold both its water supply and sewage systems to West Virginia American Water, which now supplies water to the town from a water source near Beckwith. The Wolf Creek reservoir remains to provide water on an emergency basis. It is not completely clear how Wolf Creek got its name, but it is likely that it was derived from the eponymous mammal rather than a family. With its rolling fields, Wolf Creek has long been known for its pasturage of horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and hogs. Much of this livestock went un-corralled during the early nineteenth century, so wolves must have been a great threat. Local governments offered bounties for kills, which had to be proven by presenting a wolf scalp or head. Just two years after its formation, in 1834, Fayette County paid a substantial sum of $2.00 per wolf scalp; in 1841 the County Court upped that bounty to $5.00 per scalp, and then, in 1842 paid $5.00 for an old scalp to aptly-named James Shepherd. The County Court continued this practice until the eve of the Civil War, ordering in June, 1859 that an “allowance of $2.50 be paid for wolf scalps and half price for young ones, and $1.00 for red fox scalps and half price for young ones.”1 One can only speculate on where these wild beasts were killed, but some must have been culled from such an active open range as Wolf Creek. Yet another possible clue leading us to a lupine origin for the name comes from local lore and legend. A ghost known as the White Wolf of Whitlock Farm, portrayed on the web-site “West Virginia Ghosts,” allegedly prowls the farm which neighbors Wolf Creek Park. According to the story, old timers from the nearby communities of Gatewood and Garten attest to knowing, if not believing, the legend. Over sixty percent of the Wolf Creek watershed is forested today, with a few evergreens scattered among the oak, maple, beech, and poplar stands. It is a second- or third-growth forest with stumps attesting to earlier timbering activity. The more diverse hardwood of pre-industrial times, according to regional climate studies, took shape around 6,500 B.C., long after the great megafauna of the Pleistocene died-out to be replaced by the assemblage of fauna which have occupied the region since: wolf, black bear, white-tailed deer, raccoon, opossum, muskrat, beaver, fox squirrel, gray squirrel and gray fox.2 It is impossible to know when humans first came to Wolf Creek, but evidence for the first occupation of the area dates to the Archaic period (9,000 B.C. - 1,000 B.C.). The Archaic was a time of “settling-in” for many Native Americans, whose predecessors during the earlier Paleolithic period (15,000 B.C. – 9,000 B.C.) had been migrant hunters. Native Americans continued to move about, but the disappearance of the megafauna led many groups to focus their hunting and gathering strategies on a few localities where food was seasonally available, assembling at a central place at certain times of the year. Sites along the river valleys, such as the

1“County Court Proceedings,” J. T. Peters and H. B. Carden, History of Fayette County, West Virginia. Fayette County Historical Society, Inc., Fayetteville, 1926.

2 Downstream Strategies, “Watershed-Based Plan for the Wolf Creek Watershed of the New River Fayette County, West Virginia,” final approved report submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, May 19, 2009, 2-5. 6 one at St. Albans or even islands on the New River in Summers County, served as a central place, and the much smaller sites like those on Wolf Creek were places where smaller groups hunted and foraged. The few open-air and rock shelter camp sites in the Wolf Creek area were small and short-lived, suggesting that they were occupied by a mobile group of people. Most cannot be dated to any particular period or diagnosed with any cultural affiliation and are limited to only a few lithic flakes. Two or three can be diagnosed to date to the Archaic Period and include remnants of lithic tools, suggesting that weapons or tools were produced or repaired there. Two of the sites are suggestive of a Woodland Period (1,000 B.C. – 1700) occupation, when life in the Appalachian region was transformed by the development of pottery, agriculture, the bow-and-arrow, and mound-building.3 But, the value of these sites is limited by the fact that they have been extensively looted by treasure-hunters. The revolution that followed the introduction of trade goods in the seventeenth century completely transformed Native American life in most of eastern North America. Native American’s allure for shiny objects has been vastly exaggerated as the most important trade goods were iron tools and weapons, including guns. Furs, especially beaver, were what Europeans sought, so Native Americans hunted--and over-hunted—these fur- and pelt-bearing animals to exchange. Vast territories were necessary to harvest sufficient quantities, so tribes fought for control of interior lands. The so-called Beaver Wars of the 1640s and 1650s were the most fierce, but by no means only, struggle for control of the hunting grounds. The Iroquois confederation in the north and Cherokees in the south—particularly the former—seemed to have prevailed, at least in the short run. These wars, as well as the diseases imported from and white encroachment, were disastrous for the eastern tribes. Many were scattered. The territory that now makes up West Virginia, which had supported significant populations during the Woodland period, was depopulated. Wolf Creek’s history during the frontier period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century is devoid of thrilling stories of fort-building and border warfare because very few, if any, white settlers appeared. The first whites who came here were hunters and traders, not settlers. They dealt in furs and pelts, in effect taking the place of the Native Americans who had all but disappeared. When settlement of the “western country” did begin in earnest after the Revolution, most settlers bypassed the mountainous areas like Fayette County in favor of more fertile and accessible land farther west. The lack of good “bottom land” for farming and the isolation of the area caused by the lack of roads and impossibility of navigating the New River retarded settlement. Rudimentary trails used by Indians to access the salt licks of the Kanawha valley existed, but these were narrow, lacked bridges, and were unsuitable for wagon travel. We will probably never know the identity of the first white settlers to come to the area since historians Cardin & Peters assure us in their reputable history of Fayette County that some came inconspicuously and took up land as squatters under the “brush” or “tomahawk” right and looked after legal titles later. A tomahawk right was a way to claim title to a tract of land during the period of frontier settlement in the . The claimant typically girdled several trees near the head of a spring, then blazed the bark of one or more of them with their initials or name. Tomahawk rights gave the settler no legal title unless followed by occupation or a warrant and a patent secured from the land office, but early settlers generally recognized tomahawk rights. We

3Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc., “Phase I Archaeological Survey for the Proposed Wolf Creek Park, Fayette Heights, Fayette County, West Virginia,” in conjunction with Thrasher Engineering, Inc. passim. 7 know that Peter Bowyer established a ferry across the New River in 1798 at what is now Sewell; he is generally considered the first settler in the New River Gorge.4 Abraham Vandal (1758- 1848) is credited with being the first white settler of record to take up land on the waters of Wolf Creek and actually live there. Vandal, who came to Virginia in 1795 from New York after serving in the Revolutionary War, served as a road overseer for the Giles County Court and purchased 200 acres on the waters of House Creek (a tributary of Wolf Creek) at what is now the town of Fayetteville in 1812. By 1818, he had built a cabin and operated an “ordinary” for the lodging and feeding of travelers at his farmhouse. First known as Vandal’s Mountain, the little settlement grew with the addition of other families and became known as Vandalia.5 The construction of roads and the establishment of turnpikes by the Commonwealth of Virginia mitigated—if it did not solve--the transportation problem. In 1785, the Old State Route was authorized by the General Assembly to extend through much of the east-west girth of the state from Richmond to Lexington (now Kentucky). It followed Indian trails, which had been improved to some small extent by pioneers. It was completed along the right (east) bank of the New River and down the north bank of the Kanawha to Kelly’s Creek by 1791, and then on to Ohio by 1800. Since it lacked adequate bridges, the Old State Road was generally considered inadequate, so in 1820 the General Assembly authorized an improved road, the James River and Kanawha Turnpike (later known as the Midland Trail or Rt. 60) on much the same route to link the James River to the Great Falls of the Kanawha River near Gauley Bridge. With its covered bridges across the New and Gauley rivers, the turnpike was opened in 1822 to Kanawha Falls, the upstream limits of navigability on the Kanawha. It skirted the Wolf Creek area in favor of a more northern route through present-day Ansted.6 Then known as New Haven, Ansted became the first seat of Fayette County when it was established in 1831 due to the stimulus of new commerce and settlement made possible by the turnpike. Although the crossing at the New River at Bowyer’s Ferry made it possible for some traffic on the turnpike to flow into the Wolf Creek area, it could not have been a substantial volume. The Giles, Fayette, and Kanawha Turnpike (today Rt. 16), which passed directly through the Wolf Creek watershed, was more instrumental in the development of the area. It was authorized by the Virginia General Assembly in 1837 to link Pearisburg in Giles County to Kanawha Falls. Despite subscriptions from those along its route, it was not built with the same dispatch as the James River and Kanawha turnpike. Although it was completed through Fayette County though the heart of the Wolf Creek and to Fayetteville by 1847, the turnpike company reported in 1854 that financial problems prevented the final completion of difficult sections of the road.7

4 Bowyer was a Revolutionary War veteran who sired 14 children.

5Vandal was of Dutch descent and originally spelled his name Wendell, but changed it in the face of American pronunciation. Some sources spell his name with Vandal, but most use the common spelling, Vandal. His 200 acres was part of a land grant originally provided to Andrew Moore and John Beckley as a 170,038 acre survey and described as the Loup Creek and Clear Fork of the Coal River District.” Vandal’s purchase was actually made from a man named Reed, who had purchased a part of the extensive Lewis Stuart tract, which came from the Beckley lands. “Abraham Vandal,” Daughters of American Revolution, Geni Profile, www.geni.com/people/Abraham Vandal, accessed August 4, 2019.

6 Billy Joe Peyton, “The James River and Kanawha Turnpike,” West Virginia Encyclopedia, West Virginia Humanities Council, 2012; accessed online July 2019.

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Charles Bibb was another early settler who came to the waters of Wolf Creek and started what is now the Gatewood community (3.5 miles south of Fayetteville on the headwaters of Short Creek, a Wolf Creek tributary). Bibb was from Amherst County, Virginia and went first to Bowyer’s Ferry in 1829 where he operated the New River ferry. After eight years, he and his wife, Elizabeth Gatewood, purchased a 300-acre tract of land 2.5 miles west of the river and built their farmstead. Like many of the earlier settlers, the Bibbs were prolific with eight children. And, according to Cardin and Peters, of great service to the community: “Charles Bibb was a sort of a doctor and ministered much to the sick; calomel and fresh air being the remedies mainly used in restoring health….”8 Cardin and Peters laud this and other founding families: Bibb’s children became—or married—pillars of the Gatewood community. Their generation saw the arrival of a host of other Gatewood stalwarts, including Obadiah Settle, John and David Rodes, who traveled in a covered wagon on the Giles, Fayette and Kanawha Turnpike; William H. Jeffries, a Civil War veteran who fathered a Hardshell Baptist preacher; Charles Dequasie, who married Rachel Bibb; John Withrow; Benjamin Summerfield, whose abode hosted the first school in the area prior to the Civil War and who built one of the first mills in the county; and Jacob Sanger, who came from Rockingham County, Virginia, right after the Civil War. This band of congenial families intermarried, and formed the backbone of Gatewood and surrounding communities with names now forgotten: O’Neal, Salem, Braggville, Horse Ridge, Snake Town and Toney Town.9 But it was Abraham Vandal who played the most instrumental role in developing the lands drained by Wolf Creek. In 1833, two years after the formation of Fayette County, Vandal at the age of 75, applied for his Revolutionary War pension. He used it to purchase an additional 1,000 acres near his original farmstead. In 1837, his son, Edward, organized some of this property into lots for a town named Fayetteville. One large lot was reserved for the seat of government for the infant Fayette County as it was removed from New Haven following a special election.10 Abraham Vandal and his family also farmed these acres extensively, raising large crops of grain, horses and cows and owning nine slaves. They continued to operate their “ordinary,” a tavern they kept to care for weary travelers, including such notables as .11 During the antebellum period, Fayetteville remained a sleepy country town. No population figures are available for the town until the 1880s, but a detailed plan of the area prepared by General William Rosecrans’ Topographical Engineers, depicted thirty-eight

7 N.A., “Giles, Fayette, and Kanawha Turnpike,” West Virginia Cyclopedia. Accessed online July 2019. 8 Cardin and Peters, p. 540; Calomel was a mercury compound that was seen as something of a drug, being used in heroic doses for a host of diseases and ailments, including syphilis, bronchitis, cholera, ingrown toenails, teething, gout, influenza, and cancer. It was highly recommended by Benjamin Rush, the famous Revolutionary War era physician, but was recognized as a poison by the late 19th century.

9 Ibid., 543.

10 The Vandals may have been playing a role in a conspiracy to capture the county seat from New Haven (Ansted) and another potential seat, the Falls of Kanawha. According to Cardiff and Peters, Vandalia prevailed because the clerk of Fayette County gave away a number of one-acre tracts of land, without specific boundaries, bestowing certain land-less, pro-Vandalia citizens with the right to vote in the special election, 382-83.

11 Neil Darlington, Cabins of the Loop and Environs of the Southern Half of Fayette County, Virginia (Now West Virginia) McClain Printing Company, Parsons, WV, 1987, 210-213. 9 structures in a shape of a rough circle there in 1861.12 Fayette County, with its rugged terrain and raging rivers, grew only modestly. At its first census in 1840, the county held only 3,924 people, a population which increased to only 5,997 by 1860. The only exception to this slow growth was the Kanawha District of Fayette County, located largely on the west side of Gauley Mountain along the Kanawha River; it contained the largest industries and most of the modernizing occupations--agents, superintendents, engineers, coal diggers, etc. The Forest Hill Mining and Manufacturing Company of this district, capitalized and staffed by English professionals, annually produced fifty-two thousand barrels of refined coal oil from cannel coal and employed over forty men. The overwhelming majority of the population, 97.2 percent, were born in Virginia, usually in Nicholas or Greenbrier counties from which Fayette County had been carved in part. Churches were central cultural institutions in the rural, mountain county that was moving toward a town-centered culture. There were twenty-five churches in the county: fifteen Methodist, eight Missionary Baptist, one Christian Baptist, and one Dunkard. A sharp cleavage within the Methodist churches had occurred. Ten of the Methodist churches had affiliated with the Methodist Church South, five with the Methodist Church North. This two-to-one pro-South division in the Methodist church signaled the ominous cleavage within the most important institution in the county prior to the Civil War.13 Farming occupied the majority of Fayette County heads of households; in the Fayetteville District: 72.8 percent were farmers.14 The Plateau region—the tableland area stretching south from Fayetteville through Oak Hill and Mt. Hope—held arable land that was moderately fertile with mostly gentle slopes. The families who took up land on the waters of Wolf Creek were a sturdy yeomanry who cultivated grains and raised livestock on relatively small plots of lands— many less than one hundred acres. Generally, the first aim of the farmstead was to supply the needs of the family. Vegetables were raised for the table, and hunting and gathering remained a major source of food, as well as income.15 Corn and oats were grown to feed livestock, but wheat, which could never compete in the market, was often grown for domestic use, as were potatoes, buckwheat, sorghum and orchard fruits, especially apples. Most families kept chickens and other fowl for eggs and meat and usually a “milch” cow (quaint term for a cow in milk). Livestock—cattle, hogs, later sheep (after the wolves were thinned), horses and mules were allowed to run on the open range, which often included forest and waste lands—all forming what

12“Military reconnaissance in the vicinity of Gauley Bridge, Department of western Virginia, Brig. Gen’l W.S. Rosecrans, comd’g Sept. 11 to Nov. 15, 1861,” Library of Congress Map Collection. www.loc.gov/item/99446354, accessed August 10, 2019. These maps were prepared by experienced topographical engineers, so they have considerable credibility.

13 Census of the Population, Eighth Census of the United States, 1860 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M653), Fayette County, hereafter referred to as 1860 Census. Quoted in Lou Athey, “Loyalty and Civil Liberty in Fayette County during the Civil War,” West Virginia History (Vol. 55, 1996): 1-24. www.wvculture.org/history/journalwvh.55, accessed on August 9, 2019.

14 Ibid.

15 Cardin and Peters list a remarkable number of roots of wild plants harvested for trade: ginseng, goldenseal, blacksnake root, wild ginger, blood root, spikenard and may apple. The plentiful supplies of deer and fur-bearing animals of pioneer days were largely depleted by the 1830s. 10 can be considered a “commons.” Livestock were brought in for slaughter or for wintering in the barn after they fed on the wild grasses from the fields and the mast from the forest. While self-sufficiency was the primary goal of the farmstead, gaining income from markets near and wide was almost as important. Livestock was the primary source of income, especially in the early days. The most important cash crop was tobacco. Rather than the light- colored burley grown in other regions, a dark tobacco was cultivated. Since tobacco sucks up large quantities of nutrients from the soil on its way to maturity, when it can reach six or seven feet tall with leaves as large as watermelons, it was almost always grown on newly-cleared land. The harvest was large: from 500 to 800 pounds per acre. After curing in a special tobacco barn, the crop was shipped to markets mostly downstream. Tobacco was so valuable during the antebellum period and even later that it was used as legal tender. For trade, it would be hauled down the Giles, Fayette, and Kanawha Turnpike to Kanawha Falls or farther downstream, then loaded onto flatboats for shipment on the Kanawha River. Cincinnati, which was the favorite market for Kanawha salt makers, was usually the destination. Tobacco was also transported to local markets, where processors worked it up into chewing tobacco. Tobacco growing continued throughout the nineteenth century and did not decline until the twentieth century as fields became exhausted.16 The U.S. Agricultural Census of 1860 offers a more detailed picture of farming on the waters of Wolf Creek. Names of property owners who formerly held titles in, or near, the 1,000+ acres of Wolf Creek Park, were targeted, and then data was gathered about these folks and their farms from the census. Reports were made for certain key farms, and a net encompassing forty farms was cast to get a more general, aggregate view. A look at specific farms included those of the Vandal, Bibbs, Adkins, Bays, and Sanger families. A summary of those results is presented below. Production totals are for the previous year. Jacob Sanger Farms: 153 total acres valued at $3,000, $100 worth of farm implements and machinery, 15 cows, 3 horses, 4 milch cows, 30 swine, 33 bushels of wheat, 8,490 lbs. of Indian corn, 210 lbs. of oats, 1,350 lbs. of tobacco, 200 lbs. butter, 10 tons hay, 52 lbs. Irish potatoes, 10 lbs. sweet potatoes. Bibb Farm: 145 acres valued at $1,300, $25 machinery and farm implements, 2 horses, 4 milch cows, 3 cows, 12 sheep, 14 pigs, total livestock value $311, 11 bushels of wheat, 211 lbs. Indian corn, 241 lbs. oats, 75 lbs. wool, 50 lbs. Irish potatoes, 350 lbs. butter, 1 ton hay, 5 gallons molasses, 30 lbs. flax, 100 lbs. honey, $50 in home manufacturers, $11 worth of slaughtered animals. Isaac Bays Farm: 100 acres valued at $1,000, $20 worth of implements and machinery, 6 horses, 3 milch cows, 2 cows, 22 sheep, 10 pigs, $500 worth of livestock, 30 bushels of wheat, 115 lbs. of Indian corn, 40 bushels of oats, 200 lbs. of tobacco, 39 lbs. of wool, 40 lbs. of Irish potatoes, 5 lbs. of sweet potatoes, 26 bushels of buckwheat, $30 of orchard produce, 100 lbs. of butter, 20 lbs. of honey, $15 in slaughtered animals, $30 in home manufactured goods. Adkins Farm: 97 acres valued at $1,522, $350 worth of machinery and implements, 6 horses, 2 oxen, 12 swine, total livestock valued at $200, 200 lbs. of Indian corn, 100 lbs. butter, 4 tons hay,

16 Cardin and Peters, 302-09; used the Agricultural Census of 1920 to round-out their portrayal of farming for the 1926 volume. A tobacco manufactory was located at Hinton for a short period after the Civil War. 11

1 cow, 6 sheep, 23 bushels of wheat, 13 lbs. wool, $11 worth of orchard produce, $65 in slaughtered animals, $50 in home manufactured goods. Vandal Farms: 1,410 acres valued at $7,500, $356 in machinery and farm implements, 6 oxen, 8 milch cows, over 60 swine, 30 lbs. Irish potatoes, $400 in slaughtered animals, $40 in home manufactured goods, 1,301 lbs. honey, 15 gallons molasses, 50 lbs. cheese, 300 lbs. butter, 36 sheep, 510 bushels of wheat, 2,000 Indian corn, 300 bushels of oats, 85 lbs. wool, 4 bushels of peas, 11 lbs. of sweet potatoes, $50 in orchard produce, 20 tons of hay, 50 lbs. flax. A look at the forty farms studied shows that the aggregate size was 7,402 acres with a total cash value of $51,000. Livestock was the most valuable product: these forty farms held 93 head of cattle, 63 horses, 422 sheep, and 398 swine—all worth $8,910. Although some stock was slaughtered for home use, most was reserved to be exchanged for cash or bartered for other valuable goods. This illustrates the market orientation of these farm families, as does the tobacco production, which amounted to 13,050 pounds, though it was concentrated on only seven of the forty-two farms. A wide array of produce used mostly for family subsistence was grown. In addition to corn, potatoes, wheat, hay, and oats, many farmers grew flax, peas, sweet potatoes, beans, and orchard fruit. Butter was the most widely produced commodity, but many farms also produced molasses, honey, maple sugar, butter and cheese as well.17 According to one source, Jacob Sanger planted a vineyard, made and sold wine.18 The semi-subsistent family farm was, indeed, the typical economic unit “on the waters of Wolf Creek” in 1860. What role did slavery play in the economic and political life of Fayette County during the antebellum period? Slavery was an important institution in Fayette County, but certainly not central to economic life as in neighboring Kanawha and Greenbrier counties. In 1860, Fayette county's 64 slaveholders owned 271 slaves, 4.5 percent of the population, while Kanawha County held 2,184 and Greenbrier 1,317.19 Slavery was a negligible factor in the Wolf Creek area, despite the prevalence of tobacco cultivation. No slaves were reported in the area in the 1850 or 1860 slave schedules: the nine slaves reported for the Vandal family during the 1830s do not appear in the 1850 or 1860 slave schedules.

2.0 The Civil War Comes to Wolf Creek Fayette County was firmly attached to the Confederate cause during the Civil War. This can be explained, in part, by the fact that the slaves were largely a prerogative of the political elite. These families held a large part of the county s wealth, and they exerted a powerful influence on county governance at Fayetteville through the County Court.20 Other factors were undoubtedly at work as well: the fact that such a large majority of its citizens hailed from Old Virginia and continued to have family ties there; and the salient fact that

17 Agricultural Census of 1860, Fayette County Records, West Virginia Archives, Charleston, WV.

18 Mrs. Joe Huddleston, “A Brief History of Crooked Run Community,” Web: West Virginia Archives & History, 1.

19 Map of Virginia: showing the distribution of its slave population from the census of 1860.

20 Lou Athey in “Loyalty and Civil Liberty,” passim. 12 transportation arteries linked the county to Virginia towns, east and west, where slavery thrived. But, politics and the underlying political culture seemed to trump any economic justification of slavery. The political elite of the county endorsed slavery and the pro-south orientation through the directives of the powerful County Court (composed Justices of Peace from all magisterial districts), which was both the judicial and executive voice of local government. Court orders, recorded by Cardin and Peters, suggest this was always the case. One of the earliest decisions of the court was to pay A. Vandal, who was the jailer, the sum of $7.50 for apprehending “2 negroes that broke jail.”21 Other early decisions in the 1830s granted freed slaves the right to reside in the county in accordance with Virginia law; another during the 1850s provided for the sale of a runaway slave, and, in 1853, setting up a special Patrol to visit all “negro quarters and other places suspected of having unlawful assemblies.” Morris Harvey was appointed Captain of the Patrol for Fayetteville.22 Such directives illustrate a concern about maintaining what could be seen as a dying institution. The Civil War began after political maneuvering left the nation divided following the election of in 1860. Virginia was slow to follow the Deep South states to secession and gave a special convention the responsibility for that decision. The convention voted 88 to 55 for secession following the firing on Fort Sumter in April, 1861; Fayette (and Raleigh) County’s delegate, Henry L. Gillespie, voted in favor of secession. Virginia voters ratified the vote on May 23 with Fayette voting strongly for secession, 508 to 223. By way of comparison, neighboring Kanawha County opposed secession, 1,697 to 520; Fayette’s eastern neighbor, Greenbrier, on the other hand, voted 1,016 for secession and only 110 against. The ratification vote meant little, however, as Virginia was already mobilizing for a fight. Meetings were held at Gauley Bridge and Fayetteville in late-April and early-May to whip-up support and recruit volunteers for the Confederate cause. About fifty men stepped forward at a Fayetteville meeting on May 18 to serve under Brigadier General Alfred Beckley. They were strongly supported by the County Court, which appointed five officers and appropriated five thousand dollars to equip what would become the 8th Company of the 142nd Regiment. The Court vowed to oppose the “hostile army of northern fanatics” and “eat roots and drink water and still fight for our liberty unto death.” Fayette County would eventually send three companies into the Confederate army, as well as one company to the . 22 As armies formed and moved into the region in June 1861, it became apparent that Fayette County would be a frontier between Union and Confederate forces. Situated on the head of navigation of the Kanawha River, along or near two turnpikes which led into the heartland of the Old Dominion, the county seemed destined to become a battleground. Its forbidding terrain deterred the movements of troops and supplies, however, ensuring that casualties would be low by Civil War standards.

21 “County Court Proceedings,” January 1836 term. Cardin and Peters, 181-2. This ruling was apparently made before the county seat was moved to Fayetteville from Ansted. There was no county jail at the time, so it is unclear where the two Negroes were being held.

22 Ibid. 13

Figure 4: “Military reconnaissance in the vicinity of Gauley Bridge, Department of Western Virginia, Brig. Gen’l W.S. Rosecrans, comd’g Sept. 11 to Nov. 15, 1861.” The map above was prepared by Union topographical engineers under Rosecrans’ command. Confederate positions are shown in red. It is clear that Confederate forces were preparing to fight for Fayetteville on the line of Giles, Fayette, and Kanawha Turnpike. It is well beyond the scope of this report to provide a detailed chronological narrative of the movements and clashes of opposing Federal and Confederate armies in the Fayetteville/Wolf Creek area during the 1861- to 1865 period. It is important, however, to note how the people and the area, itself, were changed, and ascertain whether anything of national significance transpired here. For the most part, Fayette County residents responded with zeal to the clarion call of the Old Dominion for warriors to fend—off the “hostile army of northern fanatics.” The Wolf Creek area sent several of its fathers and sons to serve in Thurmond’s Rangers, an independent company of cavalry organized in May 1862 after the Confederacy passed the Rangers Act on April 22, 1862. The law was passed to stimulate enlistment of irregular forces into the. Confederate army and legitimize their service, thereby ensuring that captured rangers would be

14 accorded all of the rights of POWs—not shot or imprisoned as common criminals.23 It also allowed farmers and mountaineers to remain near their homes and protect their property. The two companies of Thurmond’s Rangers were raised in Monroe, Greenbrier, and Fayette counties by the two Thurmond brothers, William D. and Philip J. According to one account, the W.D. Thurmond family was burned-out by opposing forces at some point during the war. He served as a captain in the company. It is unclear where the company served until it was combined with other partisan companies to form the 44th Virginia Cavalry Battalion in late-1863 and become part of the regular army. Although Philip was killed in action at Winfield on October 26, 1864, Captain William D. Thurmond became a surveyor, coal operator, and land agent after the war and founded the New River Gorge town of Thurmond in the 1880s. His property was located just outside the Wolf Creek watershed along Coal Run near Minden, where he is buried. A host of other Wolf Creek men served in Thurmond’s Partisan Rangers, including four members of the Adkins family, Skelton and Stephen Arthur, Abner A. Bibb, Charles A. Dequasie, two men from the Rodes family, Joseph Franklin Sanger, who served as a corporal, and Benjamin Summerfield, Jr.24 It is also worth noting that the South’s greatest general, Robert E. Lee, passed the waters of Wolf Creek as he traveled through the region in the late- summer and fall of 1861. Lee attempted to rally the commands of Generals Henry Wise, John B. Floyd, both-ex-governors, and W.W. Loring to unite against the Union invasion led by General William Rosecrans, but achieved nothing due to the petty jealousies of the generals and the terrible weather. Lee’s forlorn hope met with derision from Richmond newspapers, who referred to him as “Granny Lee.” For all his efforts, Lee did return to Old Virginia with his famous war steed, Traveler, and a newly-sprouted full beard25. Following Lee’s failure in the fall of 1861, Confederate forces were unable to hold Fayette County and the Kanawha Valley as Union forces under General Jacob Cox invaded from Ohio, taking Fayetteville in November of 1861. Retreating Confederates burnt the beautiful

23 Tim McKinney, “Thurmond’s Rangers,” The West Virginia Encyclopedia, December 2015, Web, accessed August 12, 2019; see Winthrop Rutherford, “The Partisan Ranger Act: The Confederacy and the Laws of War,” Louisiana Law Review, Vol. 79, No. 3 (Spring 2019) for a discussion of how the law related to the emerging literature on laws of war. Unlike Union cavalry, most Confederate cavalry enlistees supplied their own mounts, so they generally preferred to fight independently under their own commanders and under their own rules early in the war. Known as guerrillas or by Union forces, these units played havoc with Federal communications, inflicted losses on small units, and stole livestock, supplies and even clothing from civilians, especially in western Virginia, though they nearly always claimed to be fighting to defend their homes and farms. Union commanders retaliated by shooting captives or by treating them as common criminals. The Partisan Ranger Act was designed to remedy this situation and force Federal forces to treat captives as legitimate POWs. The law also sought to correct another inherent problem bought on by the tendency of the guerrillas to confiscate property of civilians. Rather than splitting-up the loot, the law required Partisans to turn it over to the nearest Confederate Quartermaster, who would pay them, thereby removing a cause of moral opprobrium and also adding to the stock of Confederate supplies. Confederates had commissary stations in Greenbrier and Monroe counties east of the for the first two years of the war, where supplies, including horses and livestock confiscated from farms of Union supporters or depots in western Virginia, were deposited by partisan units, to be redistributed to active units. The supply stations were moved farther east after the Battle of in November 1863.

24 Russell E. Bennett, Jr, “Thurmond’s Company Independent Partisan Rangers, Virginia Cavalry,” Find a Grave: A Virtual Cemetery, at www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/215086, accessed August 11, 2019.

25 C.H. Ambler, “General R. E. Lee’s Northwest Virginia Campaign,” West Virginia History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (January, 1944):101-115. Gauley Bridge High School memorialized “Traveler” as its mascot until the school closed in 2006. 15 covered bridge across the along the James River & Kanawha Turnpike to slow down the invaders, making the Giles, Fayette & Kanawha turnpike from Kanawha Falls to Fayetteville the main east-west route. Another Ohio officer, Rutherford B. Hayes, the future president, arrived at Fayetteville with the occupation force on November 14. He found the place nearly deserted and wrote in his diary about his troops housed in such a “fine village, deserted by its people, leaving them fine winter quarters. Hoping to winter here. Much the best place we have been in. All or nearly all of the people gone, fine houses, and good forage.” Waxing more descriptive, another union soldier with the 2nd Virginia Cavalry wrote of the “shire town of Fayette County. Beautiful location. Part of the village is on high ground, with here and there small houses in the valley. From all appearances, before the war the villagers really lived at home and had their respective places or residence surrounded with beautiful trees and shrubs. Village upon arrival was almost depopulated having only one family living there. Most of the buildings were mutilated by the soldiers, leaving only two or three houses untouched….” 26 Since the map prepared by General Rosecrans topographical engineers depicted thirty-eight buildings, it seems obvious that the ravages of war had hit hard; townspeople found “eating roots and drinking water” more than a little unpalatable and left town. Union forces did overwinter at Fayetteville; Hayes left on March 12, 1862—too early to play role in the ensuing Battle of Fayetteville, but instrumental.in throwing up breastworks and building forts, including Fort Scammon on the southwestern side of the village. They also established a position known as Camp Ewing near Bowyers Ferry where a connecting road led up from the New River crossing through the Wolf Creek area to Fayetteville. On the east side of the river, a connector linked the position to the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, a potential rebel invasion route. General Robert C. Schenck’s unit was stationed at Camp Ewing.27

26 Both quotations found in narrative of Michael J. Pauley and Pat Wendell, “Fayetteville Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places, Section 7, 2-3.

27 Mary Elizabeth Kincaid,” Fayetteville, West Virginia, During the Civil War,” West Virginia History Vo. 14, No. 4 (July 1953): 339-64; available at www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh14-2.htlm. 16

Figure 5: Gen. Loring’s map of his movements through Fayette Co. during the Fayetteville-Charleston campaign in September 1862. But, the fortunes of war are fickle, and the fall of 1862 brought a rebel attack led by General W.W. Loring. Loring’s force of about five thousand came north from Camp Narrows, Virginia following the Giles, Fayette, and Kanawha Turnpike with the intention of re-taking the Kanawha Valley. Various detachments of Union forces totaling 1,430 men stationed in and around Fayetteville and, under the overall command of Colonel J.A.J. Lightburn, stood in their way, however. Much of the maneuvering and some of the fighting of the Battle of Fayetteville unfolded on the waters of Wolf Creek. With the tactical objective of taking Fort Scammon, at

17 dawn on September 9, 1862, Loring deployed his forces in two wings as he approached Fayetteville along the turnpike. The left wing, with one unit under the command of Colonel George S. Patton (a Charleston lawyer whose grandson was the famed World War II general) would proceed up the Nickelville Road, which parallels the turnpike about one-quarter mile west, to attack the fort from the rear, while the right wing would attack straight up the turnpike, delaying its attack for one hour to strike simultaneously with the left wing. Both wings were subsequently drawn into a firefight with the Union forces that would last all day and part of the night. The smaller Union force was bested, so under cover of darkness the defenders retreated after burning their commissary. Loring attempted to pursue the following day, but had left the turnpike road to Kanawha Falls unguarded and the federals escaped. Both sides had fought hard, so the Battle of Fayetteville was a bloody battle by western Virginia standards: Confederates lost sixteen killed and thirty-two wounded, while Union losses, which were tabulated for the entire four days that included the retreat down the valley to Charleston, were twenty-five killed, ninety- five wounded, and one hundred and ninety missing.28 Fayetteville and the entire Kanawha Valley was now in the hands of Confederates. Loring left garrisons at Fayetteville and Gauley Bridge. There was little time for celebration, however, as by October 19 Union forces had retaken Fayetteville and the entire Kanawha Valley. As federals reoccupied Fayetteville, they rebuilt its forts and defenses during the winter of 1862- 63. Fayetteville would remain in Union hands throughout the remainder of the war. However, there was another engagement with Confederates: a four-day running skirmish unfolded from May 17 to May 20 along the turnpike from Raleigh to Fayetteville. This was largely a cavalry fight, though some infantry and artillery were involved as well. The significance of this small affair was that it was the context for a landmark in modern warfare: the first use of indirect artillery fire. Sergeant Milton W. Humphreys of Bryan’s Battery was able to lay fire on the federal fort in Fayetteville without a direct line of sight. Humphreys, who was born and raised in Greenbrier County, was a child prodigy who attended Mercer Academy in Charleston, and then Washington College in Lexington, Virginia before being drawn into the Civil War in 1862. Cannon had been around for centuries, of course, but fire was directed by the admonition, “if you can’t see it, you can’t hit it.” Humphreys and his comrades boldly attacked the federal fort at Fayetteville and found themselves well in advance of all but a few supporting troops. With Union cannon pelting his position, he moved from their line of sight to a position behind a forested hill, where he could use his knowledge of trigonometry and an observer to rain fire on the heads of the enemy. The method he used became standard military practice later. He was a widely recognized expert in ballistics and gunnery after the war, and in 1926 wrote a book, Military Operations, 1861-63, in Fayette County, West Virginia explaining the episode.29 The Union occupation of Fayetteville ended in the spring of 1864 following their successful raid on the Dublin Depot and New River Bridge on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. The Union army of 7,000 headed back down the Kanawha Valley after this last

28 Ibid., p 346.

29 Tim McKinney, "Milton W. Humphreys." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 03 December 2012. Web. 17 August 2019. 18 movement in the Fayetteville area.30 The war had not been kind to Fayette County. From 1861 till 1865 there was no civil government; the county was under military control. Lives had been lost, men had been wounded and maimed, farmsteads had been “burnt-out,” livestock stolen, watermills destroyed. The Courthouse had been burnt, and nearly every building in Fayetteville had been damaged or destroyed. As residents trickled back, Fayetteville and the surrounding communities on Wolf Creek began rebuilding after the war, but it would take many years just to reach the level achieved just before the war. The population of the county, which reached 5,997 in 1860, rose to only 6,647 in 1870. Fayetteville remained the county seat, and the courthouse was rebuilt, only to be burned down in 1887, and eventually replaced by the 1895 courthouse that stands today. New construction was limited until the 1890s. Only four or five buildings from Fayetteville’s Historic District, in which a total of 276 structures were surveyed, date to the 1860 to 1880 period.31 Meanwhile, back on the farms of Wolf Creek, recovery was slow as well. The ravages of war had taken their toll. The numbers and value of livestock at the 40 or so selected farms declined during the 1860s; the value of all livestock went down from $8,910 to $8,540 while the total number of all livestock declined from 1,095 in 1860 to 890 animals. Farmers shifted production somewhat to flax and sorghum (processed on the farm into molasses), and grew more tobacco: production of the “stinking weed” rose from 13,050 pounds in 1860 to 18,880 with production from ten farms. Joseph Sanger was listed in the 1882 West Virginia Gazetteer as the major tobacco trader in Fayetteville.32 Tobacco farmers took advantage of the disruption of the trade in Virginia and Kentucky caused by the war and emancipation; tobacco remained a cash crop through the 1920s.

3.0 Coal: Boosterism and Land Speculation In terms of economic development, Fayette County remained in a state of “arrested development” laying bare the rosy predictions of economic and social progress put forth by statehood leaders after the war.33 Reconstruction was not as painful as in other border states as there had been so few slaves in Fayette County; the biggest controversies arose over readmitting ex-Confederates to the electorate. This usually involved taking a loyalty oath to both the U.S. and the new state of West Virginia, but some resisted, including W.R. Thurmond, who remained an “unreconstructed rebel” his entire life.34

30 Mary Elizabeth Kincaid,” Fayetteville, West Virginia, During the Civil War.” This 7,000-man march was only one of many occasions when the number of soldiers in the Fayetteville area outnumber the entire citizen population of Fayette County, which was 5,997 in 1860. With the many homes known to have been abandoned in Fayetteville and farms burnt-out in the surrounding areas, the civilian population was probably far less in 1864.

31 Pauley and Wendall, “Fayetteville Historic District,” 1 and passim. The initial survey identified 111 contributing resources and 26 non-contributing, but a second survey and expansion of the historic district added 139 more. By far, most of the contributing buildings date to the 1900 to 1940 period.

32 “Agricultural Census, Fayette County, West Virginia,” 1870; for information on Sanger, see West Virginia State Gazetteer, R.L. Polk & Co., Detroit, 1882.

33 The term “arrested development” was coined by one of the state’s greatest historians, Charles Henry Ambler.

19

Despite a sharp and long-lasting national recession, things did begin to change in the 1870s. Basic changes came on the heels of the completion of the Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Railway along the New River Gorge in 1873. The isolation that had retarded growth and industrialization was seemingly coming to an end—for the Gorge. But the Plateau, nearly one thousand feet above was not reached by railway branches or good roads for decades. Arrival of the railroad paved the way for industrialization and the accompanying coal boom, which would dramatically change the county and, eventually, the entire state. Thousands of newcomers would come by rail, and millions in capital would come for investments in land and industrial infrastructure. The coal measures of Fayette County are deeply buried under 250 to 350 feet of overlying rock strata on the Plateau, but the three important seams that make up the so-called New River Group outcrop along the gorge. Although the geological stratigraphy and nomenclature for coal seams in the area were not well known until the 1880s and early-1890s, the existence and high quality of coal had been known for at least a half century. In fact, in April, 1855, the County Court ordered that the Courthouse be heated by coal, rather than wood. The coal must have been obtained in the gorge; a September, 1837 order by the Court called for a survey to be made for a road from the mouth of Wolf Creek (in the Gorge) to intersect the Courthouse and the turnpike.35 After the construction of the C&O, the first wave of land speculation and coal development got underway, partly due to the efforts of former Confederate officers, who presumably had noted the fine coals of Fayette County during their active service. George William Imboden (1836-1922) married a Fayette County girl, Mary Frances Tyree, before the war and rose to the rank of colonel serving with his well-known brother, John, during the war while commanding the 18th Virginia Calvary. He moved to New Haven in 1870 and rapidly took a leadership role in politics and industrial development. He became mayor of New Haven soon after he arrived, and renamed it Ansted in 1873 after the British scientist and geologist, David Ansted (1814-1880). Ansted had begun to survey and map the New River coal field in 1853 and was now completing his work. Knowing where the best reserves were located, Imboden joined with Ansted to purchase 1,000 acres of coal and timberlands on Gauley Mountain and started the Gauley-Kanawha Coal Company in 1873. This company was one of the first to ship coal on the C&O Railroad. Imboden remained an ardent supporter of industrial development and a capitalist, himself, throughout his active life.36 The aforementioned Civil War career of William N. Thurmond was a prelude to his bigger role as surveyor, developer, and coal operator. Thurmond added to his land holdings in the Coal Run area with purchases on the north side of the New River and later founded the town of Thurmond. He managed the town, as well as the Thurmond Coal Company, as an “unreconstructed Rebel” and strict Baptist until his death in 1910. Perhaps the most important of the former Confederate developers was a promoter, Jedidiah Hotchkiss (1828-1899), who served as Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson’s topographical engineer. Widely lauded by historians for his maps of the Valley of Virginia which assured Jackson’s success, Hotchkiss served under Lee and other generals after Jackson’s death in 1863.

34 McKinney, “W.D. Thurmond,” West Virginia Encyclopedia. 35 Cardin & Peters, 181 & 192.

36 Lou Athey "George W. Imboden." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 04 December 2012. Web. 24 August 2019; NA, “David T. Ansted,” Wikipedia, accessed Aug. 15, 2019. 20

After the war, Hotchkiss moved to Staunton, Virginia, where he taught school and took-on mapping and engineering projects. He was instrumental in the geological surveys of many Virginia counties. His played the role of promoter of coal and iron in the New River and many other Virginia and West Virginia districts with his journal, The , which only ran from 1880 to 1884. The journal’s articles included charts showing the stratigraphy of New River rock formations, chemical analyses of the chief coal seams, as well as the latest information about business deals and land sales. What is more, the tone of the journal was a refined boosterism, a vision of the New South: Hotchkiss was convinced that certain districts in the two Virginias held concentrations of high quality iron and coking coal that would enable them to become the industrial center of the country. He was particularly favorable to a combination made possible by the C&O Railway: New River coal, turned into coke mine sites, with iron ore and limestone from western Virginia iron ore.37 The catch was whether the iron furnaces were to be built in old or new Virginia: would coal stay in the New River area and be the basis for a home-grown iron industry or be shipped east to Virginia? Hotchkiss’ boosterism was shared by many others, including a developer who found his way to Kanawha County, W.H. Dewees. He offered his services in “exploring, developing or purchasing mineral lands” in the state. In a letter posted in the 1880 edition of The Virginias Dewees offers reasons why West Virginia was “particularly favored:” 1) That it is pre-eminently the mountain and industrial state of the Union. 2) That it has within its borders immense deposits of Gas, Splint, Cannel and Coking Coals, in beds lying convenient for mining and adjacent to water and railroad transportation. 3) That by reason of there being large deposits various kinds of iron ore closely associated with cheap fuel and convenient to the best markets of the country, the state is peculiarly as a location which to erect furnaces and other iron-works. 4) That by reason of its central geographical position, and other natural advantages, it will eventually supply most of the coal consumed throughout the Mississippi Valley. 5) That the price at which land is now being sold is so greatly out of proportion to the productive capacity that the opportunities for purchasing it, at present figures, cannot long continue…[also] …consider the inducements offered by this state for profitable employment of capital.38 New River coals were touted liberally by Hotchkiss. This was before marketing was in full swing, so New River coals had yet to be hyped as “smokeless.” But, praise continued to be heaped-on and investment encouraged. One engineer, writing in the American Institute of Mining Engineers journal, noted that the New River seams had a high reputation as steam coal, but that its “reputation as a coking coal made it very valuable.” Moreover, “no expensive machinery is required for handling the coal or for ventilation or drainage.” New River coals were also ideal for ironmaking because they will “stand-up” under a heavy burden in the furnace, and will “prove to be one of the best and most economical furnace fuels in use.”39

37 Steven E. Woodworth, “Jedidiah Hotchkiss,” Encyclopedia Virginia, accessed Aug. 15, 2019.

38 Hotchkiss, The Virginias, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 10. Hotchkiss fully “endorsed” the appraisal of Dewees.

21

This sort of boosterism was part and parcel of the Industrial Revolution in the U.S., as it inspired capitalists to take the risk of investing. It had a large impact on the New River coal field as investors came from not only the Old Dominion, but elsewhere. Most came from the Northeast—particularly New York and Philadelphia, including Abiel Abbot Low of Brooklyn, New York. Low had actually begun his investment into mineral lands in 1858, but most of his purchases came after 1870. Low traded or purchased mineral rights in the Wolf Creek area; in 1882 he exchanged 56 acres of surface rights to Joseph F. Sanger for the mineral rights to 371 acres, reserving the rights to “coal and other minerals” on both tracts.40 In general, this was the manner in which coal lands were purchased in Fayette County. Mineral rights were separated from surface rights, bought and sold separately for the most part. The coal was hundreds of feet below the surface, so mining did not interfere with surface activities. The farming population was not uprooted from their land, though some sold their mineral rights for a song. Those who held out were often rewarded with financial windfalls.41 In fact, land speculation was as common as blackberries in Fayette County among not just the titans of industry, but also among ordinary folks who acquired lands thought to be underlain with coal and held them to sell later for a profit. An example is the Sanger family, who held lands on the waters of Wolf Creek (as well as farther south new Oak Hill at the community known as “Sanger”). Joseph Franklin Sanger, who was mentioned earlier as a corporal in Thurmond’s Partisan Rangers, and son, Jacob, who received legal training, played this game cleverly and, in the end, won a tidy sum. The Sanger family exchanged property among the family, but also purchased mineral and surface lands on Wolf Creek from Peter Miller in 1880 (160 acres), from Christopher Sherman in 1883 (112 acres), from Giles M. Toney in 1896 (35 acres), and from W.R. Boone in 1900 (15 acres).42 Property descriptions in the deeds which document these purchases are hard to follow at times, but generally enough is said about neighbors and landmarks to pin them down between Crooked Run of Wolf Creek, Coal Run, just south, and the Giles, Fayette, and Kanawha Turnpike in the west. However, it would difficult, if not impossible, to re-survey these tracts based on the verbal descriptions, which are based on the old metes and bounds system. Measurements were calibrated in poles and rods and boundary lines determined by compass readings, with landmarks based on natural features, rather than pins, stakes or rails. The deeds can be bewildering at times and sometimes even hilarious. Joseph F. Sanger’s purchase of the Toney lands brought forth this boundary description: Beginning at a clump of bushes on the bank of Wolf Creek, and on the original line, thence down and with the meanders of said creek to a small chestnut and pointers on the bank of the creek in a line of the original survey, thence with the same 10 poles W to a chestnut and dogwood in a small drain, then 116 poles N to a maple, chestnut and white oak corner to Rhodes, thence N 20 poles to the

39 Fisher Morris, M.E., “The New River Coal-field of West Virginia,” Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers Vol. 8 (1879-1880): 261-9.

40 A.A. Low & wife to Joseph f. Sanger, Deed, January 24, 1882. Records Room, Fayette County Courthouse.

41 Cardin and Peters, 309.

42 Peter Miller to Joseph F. Sanger, July 5, 1880; Christopher Sherman to Joseph F. Sanger, Nov. 19, 1883; Giles M. Toney to Joseph F. Sanger, January 22, 1896; and W.R. Boone to J.F. Sanger, March 1, 1900, Records Room, Fayette County Courthouse. 22

beginning….43 Perhaps the favorites were references to objects or plants that were no longer extant: the old dogwood stump or “where the elderberry bushes used to grow.” Since maps are very rarely included with the deeds, these boundaries would have to be defended on the ground with fences and other markers. Big investors like A. A. Low had advantages over small fish like the Sangers in the speculation game. Low had a fortune and was seeking his second. He had earned the first in conjunction with his family’s import and shipping business in New York City. Born in 1811 in Salem, Massachusetts, Low was also a director of the C&O Railway. He would continue his purchase of mineral lands on Wolf Creek and elsewhere through the late 1800s, culminating in a big deal in 1903 put together by his two prominent “coal men” and investors—Frank Lyman and James Kay. Lyman (1852-1938) was Low’s right-hand man. Like Low, he was born in Massachusetts, but began his career in Brooklyn after attending MIT and studying mining engineering. He was named treasurer of the Low Moor Iron Company in 1880 and also served as the head of mining and iron manufacture. James Kay (1849-1934) was more of a businessman with a practical frame of mine. He was born in Lanark, Scotland, and came to American in 1869, arriving in Charleston, West Virginia, the following year. He was an independent contractor during the 1870s, doing stonework for the C&O and other firms. With the New River coal industry poised to take off he came to that area, purchasing coal lands for himself and others (including Low), building coke ovens and starting the Kay Moor mine in 1899. He left the new River area in 1909 to start mines along Cabin Creek (Kayford) and finished his career as a businessman in Charleston.44 Lyman and Kay, along with James Laing, a Fayette County native who served shortly as head of the West Virginia Department of Mines, worked together to aggregate lands and then pass them on to the Low Moor Iron Company. They put together deals with individual land owners: for example, Lyman paid $25 per acre for four tracts on Wolf Creek in 1899. These individual deals were the prelude to a large deal on December 28, 1900, in which Lyman passed those eight tracts amounting to 1,908 acres to Low Moor for $57,353. Most of the original landowners gave up only their mineral rights, but some also sold surface rights.45 Some landowners did well in their dealings with Low Moor: Jacob Sanger sold the mineral rights to 500.27 acres on the waters of Wolf Creek to Low Moor for $27,514.85 ($53 per acre) in 1907. The Sangers had moved to Thomas, Oklahoma, earlier on the basis of favorable land deals.46

43 Giles M. Toney to Joseph F. Sanger, January 22, 1896, Records Room, Fayette County Courthouse.

44 For Low’s biography and a history of Low Moor, see Lou Athey, “The Low Moor Iron Company of Virginia, 1873-1930,” New River Symposium, (April, 1986): 141-9; information on Kay from Henry W. Battle and Tad Randolph, “James Kay,” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, August 29, 2017. Lyman’s information from Geni,Web at Geni.com/people/Frank Lyman.

45 James Kay et. al, Lease to Frank Lyman, April 1, 1899; Frank Lyman, trustee to Low Moor Iron Company, James Kay, trustee, December 28, 1900, Records Room, Fayette County Courthouse. The purpose of the lease agreement remains unclear. A map is attached to the Lyman deed.

46 J.F. Sanger & Wife, Deed to The Low Moor Iron Company, November 1, 1907, Record Room, Fayette County Courthouse. 23

As A.A. Low and his colleagues acquired mineral lands, they formed the Low Moor Iron Company in 1873. Workers soon began to dig iron ore at its mines in Augusta County, Virginia: the ore proved to be of good quality and plentiful, so in 1878 the company erected its first blast furnace, and then a second followed in 1893. At first the company purchased its coke from the New River mines of other companies, but in 1902 the Low Moor Company opened its captive mine, Kay Moor. It was situated along the New River Gorge in such a manner that its headings were directed to the Wolf Creek watershed.

4.0 Kay Moor and Minden: “Trees Above with Coal Below” Kay Moor bottom was situated in the New River Gorge, about 900 feet below the plateau. The Sewell coal seam was on the “bench level” approximately 270 feet below the plateau, and the C&O Railway on the bottom.47 This presented a unique challenge to James Kay, who developed a triple-incline system for lowering coal to the tipple, shuttling people up and down the gorge, and lowering slate to the dump below. For the most part, it was safe and successful, but there were accidents, such as the one reported on November 30, 1913, by the Fayette Tribune explaining how two people died when a cable rope broke. Kay Moor was a medium-sized operation: throughout most of its history, Kay Moor employed between two hundred and three hundred miners and put out between one hundred and two hundred thousand tons of coal per year. The Sewell coal seam, one of the three seams of New River group of “smokeless” coals, was only three feet and eight to four feet and six inches thick, so miners had to work bent over or on their knees. A thick layer of shale (which miners typically called slate because of its smooth, even polished, appearance) overlaid the coal seam, and often became mixed with the coal when it was shot, and had to be removed.by hand and separated. The mine was partly mechanized: electric machinery was used in haulage and undercutting the coal, but loading remained the domain of the hand-loader. Ventilation was by electric fan, but when a second opening was made for Kay Moor No. 2, a furnace was used for several years. Furnaces were typical in the early days of mining to create a draft. They were operated inside the mine, inefficient, and inherently dangerous, so they were phased out.48

47 The subheading title is a reference to Jon Nuttall’s 1870 book of the same name.

48 Kay Moor is probably the most extensively documented mine and community in the world. Among the best sources: Jack Bergstresser, “Kaymoor Coal Mine” Unpublished report for the Historic American Engineering Record, (HAER No. WV-38); and Sharon Brown, “Historic Resource Study. Kaymoor,” New River Gorge National River, WV, July 1990, Web: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/neri/hrs1/chap1.htm 24

Figure 6: Map of Fayette County showing ownership of mineral lands in 1911. Many coal and land companies, as well as individuals, pieced together large tracts of land by buying up mineral rights from farmers—some “for a song,” and others for a fortune. Low Moor’s lands shown southeast of Fayetteville. Kay Moor presents the interesting spectacle of hundreds of miners cutting through the earth at 200 to 300 feet below the surface, slowly advancing toward the “waters of Wolf Creek.” According to one informant, sounds of the blasting could be heard in Fayetteville. It brings to life the irony of coal mining in the Gorge: Trees Above with Coal Below. Kay Moor was not the only mine in which hundreds of miners tunneled their way underneath Wolf Creek. A larger coal mining operation at Minden, situated near Arbuckle Creek, was making its way through the plateau. The Minden mine had four drift openings and produced double the amount of coal as Kay Moor, so miners were moving forward faster. Minden had originally been owned and operated by an eccentric Irishman, Colonel W. P. Rend (1840-1915). Rend was yet another Civil War officer who developed mines in the New River field. Born in Ireland and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, he became a millionaire from his various ventures

25 in coal mining. To develop his coal properties on Arbuckle Creek, he built a two-mile branch line connecting it to the C&O‘s Southside Branch line at Thurmond.49 Like Kay Moor, Rend’s mines at Minden were drift mines working in the Sewell seam— though one mined the Fire Creek seam, another of the vaunted New River “smokeless” coals. Apparently, Rend had had enough by 1906, so he retired to Chicago and sold out to the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company. This company was a creature of the Berwind-White interests, who had acquired extensive tracts of New River and Pocahontas coal in the state. It began as a partnership of Edward Julius Berwind, Charles Berwind, and Congressman Allison White, and upon White's death it became known as Berwind White Company in 1886. The company was one of the largest producers of coal at the turn of the twentieth century. Its’ New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company was headquartered in Philadelphia, with E.J. and H.A. Berwind in charge. The company even had its own sales agency. It had mines in Pennsylvania, as well, and in addition to Minden, had mines at Berwind and Havaco in West Virginia.50 With vast resources, the Berwinds modernized their Minden mines, giving them a capacity of 4,000 tons per day.51 Berwind would continue to buy- up coal lands and mines including the Layland mine in around 1907, making its operating company, New River and Pocahontas Consolidated, one of the most productive in the county and state. In 1920 Black Diamond, a coal trade journal, reported that Berwind had expanded his holdings in the Wolf Creek area by purchasing 1,443 acres from Low Moor Iron Company for $235,000. These lands consisted of two tracts adjoining the land leased by the Thurmond Coal Company. They held the Sewell and Fire Creek coals seams that Berwind was mining at Minden, so it appeared that the company was planning to drive its mine headings northeast and eventually mine these areas.52 Low Moor Iron Company sold its remaining property and structures of the Kay Moor mine to the Berwind interests in 1925. This gave Berwind control of a vast and continuous swath of coal lands in the Wolf Creek area, much of it owned fee simple with surface rights. New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company opened both the Minden and Kay Moor mines until they closed in the 1950s and 1960s, respectively. Berwind Land Company retained its ownership of the Wolf Creek property purchased in 1920 until 2004, when the Fayette County Commission acquired it in 2004 to initiate Wolf Creek Park. The land was partly fenced and logged during this period. According to one informant, folks hunted deer and other small game on the land, and there were no “No Trespassing” signs.53

49 “Report of Third Mining District,” Annual Report of Coal Mines in the State of West Virginia, for Year ending in 1899, (Charleston, WV) p. 379.

50 Keystone Coal Buyers Catalog, 1922, Web, https://archive.org/details/coalminingcatalo1922newy, accessed August 29, 2019.

51 “Report of Third District Mining Inspector,” Annual Report of West Virginia Department of Mines, 1906.

52 Black Diamond, Vol. 64, No. 1 (January 3, 1920): 689.

53 Interviews with Bill Marshall, December 2018. Marshall was raised on the waters of Wolf Creek near Fayetteville. He recalled some of places and activities of his childhood in a phone interview and emails, including fishing in Wolf Creek during the 1950s and 1960s. 26

5.0 Death Traps: Parral and Stuart Shaft Mines With miners at Kay Moor and Minden driving toward Wolf Creek from the east and the south, two more mines were sunk that were situated on the western fringe at Summerlee and Lochgelly. But these names were not the original ones for these places. Lochgelly was originally known as Stuart (a.k.a. Stewart) for the Stuart Colliery Company, and Summerlee was first known as Parral, the name of the mine there. Both were shaft mines that blew up due to gas explosions in consecutive years—Parral in 1906 and Stuart in 1907. The names of the places were changed to erase or obscure memories of these disasters. Both mines were owned and operated by Samuel Dixon, perhaps the most powerful man in Fayette County. Dixon (1856- 1934) emigrated from England and quickly rose as a coal tycoon and political kingmaker in Fayette County. He organized the New River Company in 1906 and it became the largest in the New River field. His political clout was legendary as the Republican boss of the county and he was known as “King Samuel.”54 Dixon’s Stuart Colliery Company operated the Parral shaft, which was situated on the White Oak Railway, which Dixon built, with connections to the Virginian Railway and C&O. The shaft measured 685 feet deep, but it was not paired with a ventilation shaft, which made it illegal according to West Virginia code. The company partitioned the shaft with wooden boards to provide an entrance and exit for a circuit of air provided by an electric fan. Inspectors had labeled the mine gaseous. But, the mine was little more than a death trap. It exploded on February 8, 1906, killing 23 of the 35 miners in the pit; the remaining twelve were rescued. The same result came from the Stuart shaft mine. It was 571 feet deep, situated along the White Oak Railway, and considered gaseous by inspectors. Tragically, it blew up on January 29, 1907, killing 85 miners. A December 30, 1907, New York Times article tells the sad tale: 80 MAY BE DEAD IN MINE. GAS AFTER EXPLOSION IN WEST VIRGINIA PIT PREVENTS RESCUE WORK. Charleston, West Va., Jan. 29. – With a detonation heard for miles around, dust in the Stuart Mine, near Fayetteville, exploded this afternoon, bringing death to the eighty or more men who were at work more than 500 feet below the surface. There is no chance that any of the men will be taken out alive for it is thought that the terrific force of the explosion snuffed out their lives instantly. It will not be possible for the rescuers to reach the bottom of the shaft for forty-eight hours. Most of the men were Americans and many of them were married and had large families. There were a dozen colored men and fifteen or more foreigners. The rescue work was begun as soon as the wrecked parts of the shaft house could be repaired. About two hours after the explosion three men were lowered into the shaft. Before descending sixty feet two of the men were overcome with foul air and the third was barely able to give the signal to his comrades at the top. All further attempts were abandoned for the time. Air was supplied to the mine by several large fans, but the mechanism was damaged and the fans were idle for about two hours. The fans were then started

54 Ken Sullivan, "Sam Dixon." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. October 17, 2012. Web. 29 August 2019. 27

again, and if the men were not all dead by the force of the explosion it may be that they will have air enough to survive until the rescuers reach them. The Stuart Mine is owned by the White Oak Fuel Company, a part of the New River Fuel Company, of which SAMUEL DIXON is President.... Both of these mines re-opened soon after the disasters. A Coroner’s Jury founds grounds for the prosecution of Dixon and other mine managers, but the Fayette County authorities refused to bring the case forward—an example of the power of Samuel Dixon. These disasters unfolded at mines situated just a few miles from the Wolf Creek properties of Low Moor Iron Company and the Minden mine, by then operated by the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company. The New River Company initiated a “safety first” program in ensuing years, but was shocked by one of the worst explosions in Fayette County history on March 2, 1915, when its Layland Mine blew up, killing 112 miners. Company officials were stunned by the disaster because the mine was a pick mine (very few, if any, cutting machines) for the most part and well-ventilated. Moreover, the company employed a permanent mine inspector just for this mine. Like most mine disasters, no cause was positively determined, but most observers considered coal dust, blasted into the air when miners shot-off charges to loosen the coal, was the culprit.55

6.0 The Coal Boom: 1900 – 1930 The rise of West Virginia coal following the Panic of 1893 was truly remarkable, as the state initiated the climb that made it the top coal-producing state in the nation by 1927. With an extensive and ever-growing railroad network, the state’s coal found its way into all major markets, including the long-sought “Lake Market,” the western end of the great manufacturing belt. Southern West Virginia, including the “smokeless” coals of the Pocahontas (in McDowell, Wyoming and Mercer counties) and New River groups did even better as it captured the “bunker” or steam-ship market along the east coast. Along with the general steam market and its continued use for coke-making, it seemed as if there was no limit to how much coal the nation would consume or how much money coal operators and miners could make. The defeat of the United Mine Workers’ of America (UMWA) attempt to organize the New River field kept wages rates below those in the northern coal fields and prevented the contract and wildcat strikes which plagued northern operators. Mine guards, such as those supplied by the Baldwin-Felts agency of Bluefield, were called-in during the strikes and organizing campaigns to suppress the union. The UMWA was simply declared illegal in Fayette County and all of southern West Virginia. Business was good during this period as the price for coal inched up from around $1.25 around the turn of the century to $2.50 in the mid-teens—and reaching as high as $15 per ton during the World War I boom, which ended in 1920. The 1920s witnessed the beginning of a general decline in coal prices, but profits were still being made until the Great Depression made things very difficult. Money was flowing into Fayette County from profits and investments: scores of mining towns (most commonly called “camps” by locals) were built, along with the infrastructure for coal mining.

55“As From the Tomb,” Fayette Tribune, March 11, 1925, posted at the West Virginia Culture and History web site, http://www.wvculture.org/history/disasters/layland02.html, accessed August 31, 2019. 28

While coal miners were locked out of joining the United Mine Workers until 1933, they were making money holding the top-paying industrial job in the nation until the late-1920s. Most miners were paid by the ton of clean coal they mined (until 1925, coal companies and the state of West Virginia measured coal with the long ton, 2,240 pounds, as opposed to the short ton of 2,000 pounds). Wages rose from around $2.00 per day to $4.00 or $5.00, even higher by the late-1910s, but began a downward in the mid-1920s. Miners’ cost of living was moderate since companies charged only a nominal amount for rent. Miners houses were adequate and equipped with electricity far earlier than many of the homes of independent communities. Miners generally were not required to shop at the company store, but most did nonetheless as it provided credit and had a wide array of goods, many of which were not supplied by stores in independent towns. In fact, people who did not work in the mines sometimes shopped at the company stores for the variety. And, some mining families were beginning to purchase “machines” (autos were quaintly referred to as “machines” by newspaper reporters), but few mining families had them until after World War II. The coal boom brought a host of newcomers into Fayette County. As can be seen by the table on the following page, the population of the county increased dramatically from 20,542 in 1890 to 72,050 in 1930. These newcomers were both immigrants and migrants—the later included a large contingent of African Americans fleeing difficult conditions in the South. By far, most of the blacks came from Virginia, “ridin’ that New River train” west on the C&O. In 1909, for example, 2,949 of the 12,859 coal miners in the county were blacks, followed by Italians (978), Hungarians (302), and Poles (319). Native/white was the largest category of miners with 5,724.56 “Foreigners” were not as numerous as blacks in the southern West Virginia fields, but they made up a significant part of the work force. Segregation existed in the mining towns as most were divided among black, native white, and immigrant neighborhoods, but there was “equal pay for equal work”—something that did not exist in the South.57 An examination of the manuscript census for 1900 demonstrates that some of the mining communities were actually composed of a majority of African Americans. Three mining communities had larger black populations than white: Nuttallburg, with 335 souls, had 193 blacks, 57.6% African American; Hawks Nest, with 165, had 95 blacks, 56.8%; and Stonecliff, with a total population of 242, had 134 blacks, 55.3%.58

56 Ronald L. Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community, 1780-1980, (University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 132; Table on Fayette County’s overall population from Wikipedia.

57 Ibid.

58 Michael E. Workman, “The African American Experience: Company towns in the Smokeless Coal Fields,” Unpublished manuscript for New River Gorge National River, National Park Service, April 2016. 29

Population of Fayette County

Census Population %±

1880 11,560 73.9%

1890 20,542 77.7%

1900 31,987 55.7%

1910 51,903 62.3%

1920 60,377 16.3%

1930 72,050 19.3%

1940 80,628 11.9%

1950 82,443 2.3%

1960 61,731 −25.1%

1970 49,332 −20.1%

1980 57,863 17.3%

1990 47,952 −17.1%

2000 47,579 −0.8%

2010 46,039 −3.2%

Est. 43,018 −6.6% 2018

U.S. Decennial Census:[A] 1790–1960[B] 1900–1990[C] 1990–2000[D] 2010–2018[E]

30

Despite receiving equal pay for equal work, African American miners generally did not operate machinery in and around the mines—though there were exceptions to this rule. Blacks typically worked in the coke yards, handled animals in haulage, or loaded coal. When underground machinery appeared, first as cutting machines and underground, electric “motors” during the 1900 to 1920 period, then as loading machines and shuttle cars in ensuing decades, blacks remained in the lower-paying, manual labor jobs. Many lost their jobs and left the coal fields during the late-1920s, 1930s & 1940s, a trend that was exacerbated by the dramatic decline in bee-hive, coke-making after 1920. Fayetteville grew dramatically after its incorporation in 1883, and especially during the coal boom. Its population rose from 413 in 1900 to 1,143 in 1930. Many of the fine homes in the town date to this period, some by men connected to the Fayette County Bar.59 There was a significant progressive element in the town as well if we can judge by the number of fraternal organizations that included the Masons, Knights of Pythias, the Order of United American Mechanics, Odd Fellows, Woodmen of America, American Legion, and the Improved Order of Red men. The latter was strong during the 1910s and 1920s and may have participated in secret, vigilante actions; it traced its origin back to the Boston Tea Party during the lead-up to the Revolution. It had lodges all around the county, with Lodge No. 20 at Gatewood. Fayetteville got its drinking water from a reservoir fed by Wolf Creek and, long before Appalachian Power erected its grid and power stations, its electric power from Samuel Dixon’s Lochgelly power plant. According to Cardin and Peters, the first motion picture theater opened in 1909 and the first auto was seen in 1910; main roads, such as Rt. 16, were paved during the Good Roads movement of the 1910s and early 1920s. The coal boom would not last, however. Over-expansion of the industry (caused largely by West Virginia’s large production) and competition from other fuels led to stiff competition among firms and to lower prices. The United Mine Workers union came into Southern West Virginia with the blessing of federal government in 1933, so the coal companies lost their control of labor. Profit margins in the 1930s were extremely thin, and many coal companies were operating at a net loss. The tough conditions generally led to out-migration and decline. Despite a general boom during the 1940s due to World War II, the general decline continued. The 1950s witnessed widespread unemployment in the coal fields: some old-timers consider conditions worse during this decade than during the 1930s. Mines began to shut down for good during the late 1950s, and by the 1960s the coal industry was hardly the beast it was just a few decades earlier.60

59 “Fayette County Historic District” nomination to the National Register of Historic Places,” passim.

60 Richard Simon, “The Development of Overdevelopment,” Ph.D. dissertation, 1979. Simon blames the state’s underdevelopment as ascertained by the Appalachian Regional Commission on the overdevelopment of the coal industry. 31

Figure 7: New River Coal Field with stratigraphy on left. (The Virginias 1880 issue)

32

How did the farmers and communities of Wolf Creek respond to this invasion by the beast of coal? For the most part, farmers were not uprooted from their ancestral lands. Since mineral rights were generally separated from surface rights and the coal seams were so deeply embedded below, land and coal companies typically purchased only the latter, leaving farms to continue to operate. Exceptions occurred, of course, including the lands of the Berwind company on which Wolf Creek Park is located. Farmers were displaced here, but some made the most of it. For example, Berwind and allied interests paid one prominent landowner, J. F. Sanger, $27,524.85 for the purchase of 500.27 acres of Wolf Creek lands in 1907.61 Another deal in 1900 brokered by Frank Lyman, treasurer of Low Moor Iron Company, brought six farm families a total of $57,353.62 Another deal landed three families with Wolf Creek property $29,719.75 or $25 per acre in 1899.63 Sanger was able to migrate to Thomas, Oklahoma and later retire to with funds accumulated from sales of land to Low Moor. Many farm families sent sons and daughters to work in the mines. Newspaper accounts and other sources provide general accounts of farmers in this area going to work in the coal mines. Cardin and Peters concluded that mines at Concho, Rock Lick, Brooklyn, Coal Run, South Caperton, Elverton, Brown, Kay Moor and Minden furnished work for many of the citizens and a market for their products. Farming was a distressed industry in Fayette County and in all of West Virginia during the twentieth century. Farms in the Midwest captured markets for food crops and livestock formerly raised in West Virginia. Farmers in the Mountain State could not compete with the deep, dark soils and cheap transportation provided by the railroads of the Midwest. Food items shipped from the Midwest and sold in the Mountain State were generally cheaper than those raised locally. Some farmers were able to market their produce, especially milk, in the many company stores in Fayette County, but this was not typical. Non-mining families and grocers buying their food and other items in the company stores was probably more common. Farm size in Fayette County had been reduced by division as families split their property among sons and daughters; by 1920 the average farm was 61.6 acres. Corn and hay were the prominent crops; farmers had progressed enough to plant legumes, such as clover and alfalfa, among the wild grasses in the hay fields. Crops were fed to livestock, mostly cattle since they require less care than other animals. Many farm families had a wage-earner in the household working in the mines or elsewhere, so this supplemented any income or produce produced on the farm Thus, the semi-subsistence economy of early years continued, but with more reliance on outside income.64

61 J.F. Sanger & Wife to The Low Moor Iron Company, Nov. 1, 1907, Record Room, Fayette County Courthouse.

62 Frank Lyman, Trustee, to Low Moor Iron Company, November 28, 1900, Records Room, Fayette County Courthouse.

63 C.W. Dillion et. al to Frank Lyman, May 27, 1899, Record Room, Fayette County Courthouse.

64 Cardin & Peters, History of Fayette County, Chapter XVII. The authors mentioned the advantages of truck farming and selling products in coal company towns as a prospect for the most part, and not as a reality. 33

Figure 8: 1928 Fayetteville USGS topo quad with locations of “Stonehinge” and “bunkhouse” enclosed in rectangle.

7.0 Stonehinge: Field Work and Discussion Project sponsor representative Billy Strasser introduced the project team to the stone structure ruins with all of its interesting features (which we fondly call Stonehinge) before the project got underway. After four cursory inspections of the site, a more intense archaeological investigation was undertaken in conjunction with West Virginia State University’s historical archaeology summer field school. Michael E. Workman and Jessica Sergeant-Hill, along with seven undergraduate history students (named in the preface) spent three afternoons there in late June 2019. Three students returned the following week to conclude field tests. West Virginia State University provided a photographer on one of those June afternoons. Students undertook

34 industrial archaeology excavations in conjunction with close visual inspections, with clearing and digging geared mainly to expose foundations and features obscured by accumulations of dirt and debris. Measurements were taken of the four structures that make up the site, drawings were produced later, and photos were taken with a digital, small-format camera. In addition, a reconnaissance survey was undertaken along the old red dog roads, now used as trails for four- wheelers, to examine possible ancillary sites or features. A total of four structures were located. The two largest are obvious, but the others were revealed by excavations. Building No. 1 is the most important: it is a stone structure consisting of two sections. The first is a machine room, which features a grooved concrete floor and a drainage pit in the rear. The second section is a stone and concrete structure that seems to be a cap for the vertical shaft. The shaft is not visible, but a hole has been broken in the cap to reveal a steady stream of air characteristic of a deep shaft. In the machine room of this structures are remnants of a roof of reinforced concrete that hangs from the wall between the two rooms in an awkward, acute angle (hence the name Stonehinge). This roof is fitted with a heavy a metal structure fitted with doors, which suggests that an electric fan was positioned here to ventilate the mine. The machine room is fitted with electrical fixtures for lighting and features a small rectangular opening in its west elevation that leads to Building No. 2. This machine room also features the most interesting feature at the site: an opening to the vertical shaft or borehole which is surrounded by heavy stone footers. This opening provides a steady draft (it is obvious that locals have had campfires beside it) and eerie sounds of air and water movements can be heard. It was from this point that the string test for depth was made—744 feet. Building No. 1 is composed of stone and reinforced concrete. Stone walls show at least two and possibly three periods of construction. Finely laid and closely fitted foundation stones underlie the entire structure, including the foundation of the second room encasing the shaft. Walls of the first room are irregular in height, but approximately twelve feet high at their highest point, and capped partly by the angled reinforced concrete roof. The finely laid foundation stones give way to rougher-looking stonework as the walls extend upward. Some parts of these walls feature raised mortar, false seams that give the building a more symmetrical appearance from a distance. This suggests that there may have been three periods of construction—or perhaps two different masons during the latter period. Building No. 2 is slightly larger than No. 1. It is attached to No. 1, but has an independent wall alongside the north wall of No. 1. Stonework in this building is of the rougher, less precise, type found in the walls of No. 1. No complete floor was apparent. Instead concrete pads were laid at different points at ground level. These pads were fitted with industrial-grade mounting bolts, so they obviously hosted machinery at some point. Evidence for electrical equipment was found at one pad, which featured a grounding bar with several attached wires. It is unclear whether the building had a roof, but there is evidence for a concrete roof similar to the one above the first room of Building No. 1. The walls, which have been razed to a height of about four feet, show evidence of vertical beams to support some sort of roof. There is evidence for a door or window on the west elevation of the building: broken glass embedded with reinforcing wire, typically used in industrial buildings, was found at this point in the exloration. Buildings 3 and 4 were obviously ancillary to 1 and 2. They were so obscured by vegetation and debris that they were missed on some of the early inspections. These are foundation stones fitted with mounting bolts for machinery. Building No. 3 has an interesting

35 feature: a stationary, one-quarter wheel cog adjacent to a vertical metal rod. From their arrangement, it is highly probable that both Buildings 3 & 4 held hoisting/boring machinery. No. 3 probably held the hoisting engine, which was probably driven by electricity. The wheel cog- vertical rod arrangement was probably a stop-and-hold mechanism for the hoisting engine or drum. Building No. 4 consists of two stone foundation stones fitted with industrial bolts and stays. Their size and positions suggest that they held the hoist drum with its attached steel cable, bits and baskets used for boring the shaft and removing debris. Several other features and artifacts were found that add more information. Two broken core samples, apparently from an exploratory core drilling, were found, substantiating a theory about the early use of the site. An iron tongue from a wagon or cart was found; it appeared old and could have been part of a tram system for moving rock debris. The remnants of metal posts similar to those used in fencing were found slightly above Building No. 4, suggesting that the site was at least partly fenced. Also near Building 3, part of an iron rail was positioned vertically in the ground in such a fashion to suggest a property boundary landmark. Finally, the reconnaissance revealed another habitation site located approximately .two-tenths of a mile above our site to the northeast atop the high ridge. This was a residential site which included stonework configured as a hearth, an assembly of wood and metal ducts, with random stones and trash piles. One feature, a support for a guy line for an electric pole, suggested it was electrified. This could have been a housing station for those who took care of the engineering station, a hunting lodge, or simply a rural retreat. It did appear to date to the first half of the twentieth century.

8.0 Conclusions: A Multi-Purpose Engineering Station Adding information and insights from historical research to our field investigations, we can come up with some tentative conclusions about the site’s function and evolution. It is clear that the site was an engineering station used for a variety of purposes as it evolved over the years. From an examination of USGS topographic maps, the facility was built sometime between 1908 and 1928 because it does not appear on the former and shows-up on the latter. The 1928 map shows the structure at the end of a country road with another building nearby. Ruins of this second building were found during the fieldwork. The ruins pointed towards a domestic use for this building: it was probably a bunkhouse to house workers. We have no initial construction date, but some evidence points to an initial construction and utilization as a prospecting station during the 1900 to 1925 Low Moor period. The West Virginia Economic and Geological Survey Volume for Fayette County, published in 1919, features an analysis of the geological stratigraphy of Fayette County written by I. C. White, the state geologist and originator of the anticlinal theory of oil and gas geology. White entitles his illustrated essay: “Notes on Bore Hole Records Through the New River Group Received from the Low Moor Iron Company of Virginia.” He waxes eloquently in writing of the borings and rock formations: “beginning as they do above the great Nuttall Sandstone cliffs which overlie the famous Sewell Coal by 300 to 400 feet at top, are of especial value in giving accurate measurements between important coal horizons of the New River Group….” White then lays out the stratigraphic records of five separate boreholes, showing on a keyed map where the borings were undertaken.

36

Minden No. 4 on left.

Underground ofmine withNo.and a section map 1 on right Kaymoor

9:

Figure

37

Borehole No. 3, “located on the plateau above a branch of Wolf Creek at an elevation of 1,927 feet” appears to be located at the same spot as our Stonehinge. No. 3 hole goes to a depth of 1,375 feet, with the Sewell seam showing at 272 feet. Low Moor Iron Company had been prospecting since the 1870s, when it began its iron ore mining operations in Virginia. So, it is no surprise that they would undertake these exploratory borings on their Fayette County lands. Perhaps, there was hope of locating a layer of iron ore, but it was vital for them to ascertain the thickness and purity of the Sewell seam that they were working from Kay Moor. At 3 feet, 4 inches, the Sewell seam was shown to thin-out at this point from the 4-plus feet found nearer the outcrop along the gorge. This information may have gone into their soon-to-follow sale of the property and all their operations to the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company in 1925. Making the borehole required a portable rotary drill, a drill stem and hollow bit, and some sort of stable platform, but no substantial structure was required. It is inferred that, despite the use of the site for prospecting, no structure appeared at this time. What of the shaft that was measured at 744 feet? When and by whom was this hole made? This was a significant engineering effort and judging by what happened at Sam Dixon’s two shaft mines, a dangerous one. The hole was drilled mechanically with a drill stem and bit that broke up the rock with reciprocating action—much like a traditional spring pole setup. The real challenge was removing the debris. After breaking-up a horizon of rock, the rig would be refitted with a scoop and the hoist used to remove as much debris as possible, but manpower would be needed as well to thoroughly clean-out the hole. Men known as “sinkers” would be lowered in metal baskets to do this hazardous work: A sinker was killed in 1907 while sinking the Stuart air shaft.65 When was the shaft sunk and what was its purpose? Some indirect evidence points to the 1920s, probably after the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company took over the operations at Minden and Kay Moor in 1925. New River and Pocahontas coal Company certainly had substantial resources for investment in ancillary structures. Evidence from USGS topographic maps provides confirmation. While the 1908 USGS topographic map, Fayetteville Quad does not depict the structure, the 1928 USGS Fayetteville quad does: it shows two structures, Stonehinge and the bunkhouse (discovered in our walkabout) to the northeast. The 1965 quad does not depict either of the two structures, indicating that they were in ruins.by this time. The purpose of the shaft was NOT to mine coal as there was no railroad nearby, and there is no evidence at the site for that activity. It appears to have been a ventilation shaft. The metal doors in the roof were part of a system that routed a current of air to, or from, the fan. As both the Minden and Kay Moor mines approached this point underground, a need would arise for the ventilation of these deep workings located so far from the drift mouth, where the original ventilation fan had been positioned. Boring the shaft required the installation of hoisting equipment, so structures were required. Most of the buildings at the site date to this period during the 1920s. Buildings 3 and 4 were required for making the hole with boring and hoisting equipment; building 1 was required to house an electric ventilation fan, while No. 2 housed electrical equipment to generate (or

65 “Report of Third Mining District,” Annual Reports of Coal Mines in State of West Virginia for year ending in 1907, Web, https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Mr44AQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP1, accessed August 25, 2019. 38 transfer) an electrical current to the fan. It is not clear whether the company generated its own power from boilers and a generator or simply purchased power from another source. While no electric grid existed at this time, the town of Fayetteville and environs were supplied with electricity from Samuel Dixon’s power plant at Lochghelly. Such an arrangement may have occurred here. It seems likely that this engineering station went from prospecting to ventilation. It is even more likely that the last function was de-watering the mine tunnels below. The testimony of an informant, the position of mounting bolts, the outlet on the east side of the building, and the ditch below strongly suggest that a powerful pump was positioned in buildings 1, with supporting machinery in building 2. The opening in the west wall of No. 1 suggest that belt- drive may have been used to power a rotary pump.66 It is probable that the shaft was capped at this point, exposing only the small area visible today.

9.0 Industrial Site Recommendations This is an interesting site, and, despite our extensive research, much can still be learned about it. Little documentary evidence was found regarding the site's origin or purpose. Further research could be undertaken at the Low Moor Iron Company's archives at the University of Virginia Library in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Berwind Company's records could prove valuable as well, but may be difficult to access because it is still an active company. Additional informants may come forward as time passes: despite calls for information, which were posted online and in newspapers, we got very little useful information. Additional information may be obtained from the site itself, both in its present state and during the West Virginia DEP remediation, when more aspects will be exposed. Many questions remain to be answered about the site. Is there both a ventilation shaft and a borehole present? The 1919 Fayette County report from the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey indicates that Low Moor Iron Company made a borehole for prospecting at this point. This hole reached the depth of 1,375 feet, passing through the Lower Coal Measures to the red shale of the Mauch Chunk formations. The Sewell coal seam, which was mined at both Kay Moor and Minden, was located at 372 feet below the top elevation of 1,927 feet. In a string test, students from the Historical Archaeology field school measured the hole that is now accessible and found a depth of 744 feet. This is thought to be the borehole, perhaps filled to an extent by rock and debris. It would have been pointless to bore the ventilation shaft to this depth—if indeed the shaft was for ventilation. There is absolutely no documentation for the construction of this shaft. It is mainly an educated guess that it was used for ventilation. The report of an informant suggests that the recent use of the shaft was for dewatering the underground works. Answers to these questions may come if/when the holes are exposed during DEP remediation; however, the opportunity for further documentation will be lost at that point. There are also questions about the types of machinery used in boring the holes and in ventilation and pumping. Field investigations revealed the presence of seven machinery mounts

66 One person volunteered information on the “Friends of Fayette County” Facebook site that her father said it was a pumping station. That seems obvious, though, from observation of the site, as does the fact that there was far more going on. 39 on the site. Learning the nature of this machinery is contingent upon understanding what powered them. It is plainly apparent that the site used electrical power in its most recent phase. However, it is not clear what type of power source was used historically. Was electrical current produced at the site with boilers and a generator, or was it obtained from an electrical grid? The site pre-dates construction of the electrical grid by Appalachian Power during the late 1930s, so the question of the original power source remains unanswered. This industrial ruin is a dangerous site for visitors and investigators. The reinforced concrete roof in Building 1 is an obvious potential hazard. It seems stable at the present time (Summer 2019), but a heavy object (like a tree) that falls on it, or any movement of adjacent walls or of the rock strata below, could lead to its sudden collapse. Also, the high stone walls of Building 1 appear structurally unstable. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has a plan to remediate the site under its Office of Abandoned Mine Lands & Reclamation, so these dangers should be removed eventually. However, the timetable for this is unknown so it may be necessary to take some steps now to prevent an accident. Placing a fence around the site with no trespassing signs may have a positive impact, but the determination of some visitors to continue using the site for campfires and gatherings could make this a meaningless gesture. Consideration should be given to supporting the unstable roof with timber cribbing—a type of reliable support used in coal mines. Care should be taken in regard to placement of the cribs and how they articulate with the roof. It may be necessary to consult with a structural engineer in this endeavor. Wolf Creek Park should attempt to work with the DEP in planning the reclamation work. Typically a site of this nature is returned to a natural state, but it may be possible to preserve some parts of this significant historical site. If deemed safe, the foundation stones of Buildings 3 & 4 could be preserved, along with the walls of Buildings 1 & 2 to a height of about four feet. If possible, a representative of Wolf Creek Park and/or the team that prepared this historical study should be on hand when the work is commenced to observe and photograph the site as it is dismantled. More visitors will access the site as area hiking/biking trails are developed, and historical interpretation could enhance their experience. It is recommended that signs warning visitors of the inherent dangers of unstable structural ruins be posted before site reclamation. An interpretive wayside should also be erected to explain functions of the site, with a suggested theme that coal mining involves far more than just getting out the coal. For example, ventilation—and its vital role in maintaining safety—and dewatering can both be explained and illustrated graphically. Area geology could also be highlighted in text and images. Content information for the interpretive marker can be sourced from the 1919 Fayette County Geological Survey report and drawings of are rock strata completed by the National Park Service. This type of interpretation could mimic the popular "Drain the Oceans" concept used by the National Geographic Channel in its popular TV series that combines scientific data and digital recreations to reveal the bottom of lakes, seas and oceans around the world. As noted on the National Geographic Channel website: “Drain the Oceans dives deep into the unknown; a truly epic, truly original series that takes underwater adventure and earth science illustration into a whole new era. Ambitious exploration, advances in scientific research, and innovative technology mean Earth Science and History step forward to expose hidden evidence of the most amazing undersea mysteries, as never seen before.” (http://www.natgeotv.com/int/drain-the-oceans/about)

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10.0 Bibliography Books and Articles Ambler, C.H. “General R.E. Lee’s Northwest Virginia Campaign.” West Virginia History, Vol. 5, No. 2 January 1944. Athey, Lou. “Loyalty and Civil Liberty in Fayette County during the Civil War.” West Virginia History. Vol. 55, 1996. http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh55-1.html accessed on August 9, 2019. ______. "George W. Imboden." The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 2012. ______. “The Low Moor Iron Company of Virginia, 1873-1930.” New River Symposium, April 1986. Bailey, Kenneth R. “A Judicious Mixture: Negroes and Immigrants in the West Virginia Mines, 1880-1917,” West Virginia History. Kincaid, Mary Elizabeth. “Fayetteville, West Virginia during the Civil War.” West Virginia History Vol. 14, No. 4, July 1953. www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh14-html. Berkstresser, Jack. “Kaymoor Coal Mine.” Unpublished report. National Park Service, Historic American Engineering Record. Brown, Sharon. “Historic Resource Study. Kaymoor.” New River Gorge National River, WV, July 1990. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/neri/hrs1/index.htm. Carden, H.B. and Peters, J.T. History of Fayette County, West Virginia. Fayette County Historical Society, Inc., Fayetteville, 1926. Darlington, Neil. Cabins of the Loop and Environs of the Southern Half of Fayette County, Virginia (Now West Virginia). McClain Printing Company, Parsons, WV, 1987. Hennen, Ray and White, I.C. Fayette County Report. West Virginia Geological Survey, 1919, Wheeling News Litho. Lewis, Ronald L. Black Coal Miners in America. University Press of Kentucky, 1987. McKinney, Tim. “Thurmond’s Rangers.” West Virginia Encyclopedia, December 2015. ______. "Milton W. Humphreys." West Virginia Encyclopedia, 2012. Peyton, Billy Joe. “The James River and Kanawha Turnpike.” West Virginia Encyclopedia, West Virginia Humanities Council. 2012. Rutherfurd, Winthrop. “The Partisan Ranger Act: The Confederacy and the Laws of War,” Louisiana Law Review, Vol. 79, No. 3. Spring 2019. Tams W.P. Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 1963, 2001. Trotter, Joe. “Black Migration to Southern West Virginia.” Transnational West Virginia, editors, Ken Fones-Wolf and Ronald L. Lewis. West Virginia University Press, 2002.

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White, I.C. Report on Coal, Vol. Two, West Virginia Geological Survey. Morgantown, W.Va.: Morgantown Post Company, 1903. West Virginia Department of Mines, Annual Report, Various, 1897 - 1926. ______. Inspection Report. New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company, Minden No. 4 Mine. 1946. Workman, Michael, “Coal Mining in the United States: A Technological Context,” Institute for History of Technology & Industrial Archaeology, 2000, Unpublished manuscript. ______. “The Kay Moor Mine, 1901-1962: A Case Study of Underground Mechanization in the Bituminous Coal Fields of Southern West Virginia.” Canal History and Technology Proceedings Vol. XIX, March 18, 2000. ______. Historic Resource Study. Coal-Related Cultural Resources. New River Gorge National River. August 2005. ______. The African American Experience: Company Towns in the Smokeless Coal Fields, Nuttallburg & Helen,” unpublished manuscript. April, 2016. New River Gorge National River. U.S. Census, Agriculture, Slave Schedule, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1900, 1920, Manuscript Census, 1900 - 1940, Fayette & Raleigh Counties, manuscript copy, accessed at Ancestry.com. USGS, 7.5 Quad Maps, Fayetteville, 1908, 1928, 1965: Oak Hill, 1966; available at Perry- Castañeda Library Map Collection, http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/west_virginia/.

Newspapers, Periodicals and Other Records Annual Report of the Department of Mines for 1907, West Virginia Department of Mines. Black Diamond, Volume 68, No. 25 (June 24, 1922). Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc., “Phase I Archaeological Survey for the Proposed Wolf Creek Park, Fayette Heights, Fayette County, West Virginia.” in conjunction with Thrasher Engineering, Inc. Downstream Strategies, “Watershed-Based Plan for the Wolf Creek Watershed of the New River Fayette County, West Virginia.” May 19, 2009. Fayette County Courthouse. Records Room, Maps and Deeds. Various. Fayette Journal, 1913-1921. Fayette County Public Library, Oak Hill Branch. Fayette Tribune. 1904-1926. Hotchkiss, Jed. The Virginias. 1880-1884. Rosecrans, W.S. “Military reconnaissance in the vicinity of Gauley Bridge, Department of western Virginia, Brig. Gen’l W.S. Rosecrans, comd’g Sept. 11 to Nov. 15, 1861.” Library of Congress Map Collection, www.loc.gov/item/99446354.

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11.0 Measured Drawings and Photos Students from West Virginia State University’s Historical Archaeology field school documented the site and prepared measured drawings in June 2019. Measurements were taken by several students in the field school, and student Maxx Turner drafted the drawings. Four plan view drawings prepared to scale are all medium format and could not be downloaded into this document; however not-to-scale copies of the drawings are reproduced on the following pages. Copies of scaled drawings will be made available via email attachments upon request. Digital color photographs were taken on a number of occasions, with the majority done on June 26, 2019, by Jason Lykens, staff assistant in the Communications Department within the College of Arts & Humanities at West Virginia State University. The photos are not archival quality.

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Photo 1: Looking south towards Building No. 1.

Photo 2: West elevation of Building No. 2 showing excavation. 49

Photo 3: Students excavate to reveal outlines of Building No. 4.

Photo 4: Building No. 4 excavation by WVSU students (note mounting bolts in foreground).

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Photo 5: Measuring west elevation of Building No. 2.

Photo 6: Measuring thickness of foundation stones at Building No. 4.

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Photo 7: Frame ground wires found in floor of Building No. 2.

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Historic Resource Study Harlem Heights Cemetery Fayette County, West Virginia

12.0 Brief History of Harlem Heights

Harlem Heights (located at 38.00567N and -81.12232W at an elevation of 1,998 feet mean sea level) was an African-American community established in 1940 and situated between Fayetteville and Oak Hill in Fayette County, West Virginia. Unlike many historically black communities in southern West Virginia, Harlem Heights was not a coal camp or railroad town. Residents proudly owned their own homes through the Homeseekers Land and Building Company, and they held a variety of middle-class occupations including teachers, coal miners and mine inspectors, ministers, merchants, farmers, activists, and more. Russell E. Matthew Park in Harlem Heights honors a prominent resident remembered for his contributions to the community.

Figure 10: Harlem Heights Area in 1976. (Fayetteville, Beckwith, Oak Hill and Thurmond, W.Va., USGS 7.5’ quadrangle maps)

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Dirt roads and outhouses were the norm in the early days, but paved streets, indoor plumbing, and running water soon transformed Harlem Heights into a vibrant black community that supported a number of locally owned businesses and shops, several churches, civic clubs, fraternal organizations, and a school. Built in 1947, Harlem Heights School educated pupils through eighth grade, and high school students rode a bus seven miles to the all-black DuBois High School in Mount Hope. The First Baptist Church of Harlem Heights organized on May 24, 1945. After holding worship services in a house on Lewis Street, construction began in April 1948 on a building that the congregation used for many years. The current church opened in 1960 with Rev. Walter N. Harris as pastor.67 Integration in the 1950s and ‘60s brought dramatic changes to Harlem Heights. Businesses closed or changed, and students began attending formerly white grade schools, then Collins High School in Oak Hill. In 1967, Harlem Heights School closed its doors. From its humble beginnings as an African American neighborhood established in the era of racial segregation, Harlem Heights remained small in area but grew to become a prominent community. The city of Oak Hill annexed Harlem Heights in the 1980s. Today, the area contains three churches and a masonic lodge.68

Figure 11: First Baptist Church of Harlem Heights. (GoogleMaps)

Figure 12: Community Restoration Worship Center in Harlem Heights, formerly Community Baptist Church. (GoogleMaps)

67 New River Gorge National River. “African American Heritage Auto Tour.” Accessed June 5, 2019. https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/african-american-heritage-auto-tour.htm.

68 New River Gorge National River. “The Community of Harlem Heights; Oak Hill, WV.” Accessed July 15, 2019. https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/the-community-of-harlem-heights-oak-hill-wv.htm.

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Resident Recalls Harlem Heights History (reprinted from Beckley Register-Herald, November 2, 1997) By Neale R. Clarke, Register-Herald Reporter

(Harlem Heights) - It is the same house Jessie Barrett moved into in 1942, a simple wood-frame dwelling with few rooms but endless memories. She and her husband, Columbus, were married next door and set up housekeeping as the seventh family to live in Harlem Heights, at the time an all-black community that provided homes for coal miners initially, and later for people who worked at the EMCO plant at Alloy. There was electricity, and a couple families had telephones, Barrett recalled. But “we didn’t have city water here, no gas line. We didn’t get that around here until sometime around 1950.” There were a couple of wells used by the community, but rain barrels also were pressed into service and water was hauled up from a creek. Barrett came to Fayette County in the late 1930s from Muhlenberg County, Ky., so she could go to high school. "They didn't furnish us any bus transportation there (in Kentucky)," she said. “When you finished eighth grade that was it. You didn't have an option whether you got to go to high school unless relatives lived where there was a high school or somebody let you board with them.” At the time, Barrett’s sister lived at Minden, and her brother-in-law invited her to come live with them so she could attend DuBois High School in Mount Hope. “The bus picked up children all the way below the company store at Concho and picked up kids from Minden on up into Oak Hill.” The bus dropped the youngsters off at an apple orchard, where they waited for a second bus to pick them up and take them to Mount Hope. When she and Columbus Barrett were married and moved into the little frame house, Harlem Heights consisted of High Street, Lincoln Street and Lewis Street. Land was purchased from Homeseekers, a land and building company whose office was in Oak Hill. “This was a dirt road through here. If it rained, it got muddy, and you just walked through it. Every now and then somebody would go to the state road, and we’d get some red dog through here.” Getting to the grocery store involved either taxi rides or catching the Greyhound bus that came through, although eventually a city bus came through the community. Transportation needs also included getting to church and school, because there was neither in Harlem Heights when the Barretts set up housekeeping. “There wasn’t a whole lot activity here in this community,” she said. “People who had transportation would go out to churches at Minden or Summerlee, or someplace like that.” Barrett is a Pentecostal minister—“I do more teaching than preaching”—and initially opted for a church at Minden. “Pentecostal people will worship wherever, in a tent or under a tree. We worshiped in homes, and this house here was one of the first places a meeting was held for a church. When the few children began to move to Harlem Heights, with no church and no activities, I started bringing them over here and having Bible studies with them, teaching them some Christian songs and some scriptures.” She said sometimes the house was so crowded with children it was hard to get through the door. The first school building in the community was put on Lincoln Street, although the structure began life at Sanger. “They took it down in sections and brought it here ant put it right there on Lincoln Street.” That was a one-room frame structure, eventually replaced with a more spacious

55 cinderblock building that finally became Oakvale School, used for special education students. The facility closed and is now leased by the city of Oak Hill as a community center for Harlem Heights. Next to the school building is another block structure, which was the first church built in the community. “That was Community Baptist. That was a lot the Homeseekers gave the community to build a church. The people who built it were Baptists, so there weren’t a lot of denominations in the community. Desegregation was ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in the mid-1950s, and things began to change somewhat. “My children didn’t complain too much,” Barrett recalled. “They rode the bus that picked up white children. Later they would tell me some of the things said on the bus, but we didn’t have a lot of trouble. I don’t think it bothered them that much.” She and her husband reared a son and two daughters. One of the daughters is deceased. Today, Harlem Heights is part of Oak Hill, annexed in the early 1980s to include all frontage property on Broadway (Harlem Heights Road) on the right and everything on the left-hand side of the road as one travels toward Fayetteville. “What sticks out over the years is that we didn’t have all these trees and woods,” Barrett noted. “first of all, the cows kept all the trees down when they pastured around here. And one thing you miss is you don’t see chickens running around out here.” Barrett said in earlier years people kept chickens, raised hogs and had milk cows, selling milk and butter to neighbors. “And everybody had a big garden every year,” she said. “Now the weeds and bushes take up the garden spots. There were so many older people who are now gone that would do that. Nobody here works in gardens anymore.” She said she doesn’t get out too much anymore, and as a result, “I don’t know the community much anymore. I don’t know who’s who. But it’s grown into a real fine community.

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13.0 Harlem Heights Cemetery

Harlem Heights Cemetery is a 2.34-acre burial ground (located at longitude 38.001038N, latitude -81.070194W at 1,981 feet mean sea level) situated at the end of Willis Street in Harlem Heights. From First Baptist Church of Harlem Heights (located at intersection of Broadway Avenue & Harris Street), access is gained by taking Harris Street to Willis Street and following the unimproved dirt road to the cemetery, which is in a gently sloping wooded area bordering the southwestern edge of Wolf Creek Park. It consists of five parcels, one 25’ x 25’ (.01 acre) private plot acquired by Charles and Irene Willis on May 28, 1952, and four tracts of 2.33 acres acquired on June 26, 1959, by Harlem Heights Memorial Park.69 One small area of the cemetery contains 16 identified graves and 15 grave markers (one married couple shares a common headstone), plus five unidentified graves that are delineated by metal funeral home markers lacking names. Additional unmarked graves likely exist elsewhere on the 2.34-acre grounds. Individuals buried in Harlem Heights Cemetery are African-Americans (with the exception of one person claiming “American Indian” ancestry) who died between 1952 and 1966 and ranged in age at death from an 83-year-old retired coal miner to a stillborn infant. Many of those buried here came from families that migrated to West Virginia from rural North Carolina or Virginia. Some of their ancestors were slaves prior to the Civil War, and tenant sharecroppers after it ended. Starting in the late 1800s, Fayette County became home to scores of African Americans who moved there in search of industrial employment as coal miners and railroaders. Historically, the cemetery provided a final resting place for residents of Harlem Heights; in 2019, the cemetery is overgrown and apparently abandoned. Of the 16 persons known to be interred there, nearby Harlem Heights Baptist Church became the venue for funeral services of four. Three funerals took place at Harlem Heights Community Baptist Church, and nine other individuals had funerals that took place at other houses of worship in Fayette and Raleigh counties. All of the men, women, and children whose mortal remains rest in Harlem Heights Cemetery have been deceased for over a half-century, and personal memories of them have faded over time. However, each one deserves remembrance for the life they lived, contributions they made, and family they left behind.

69 Fayette County, WV, Assessor. “Interactive GIS Map: Fayette WV Parcel Viewer.” Accessed August 28, 2019. http://agdonline.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=40e83dc58c0e4b77b8ef8db4b78edc58. 57

Figures 13 & 14: Harlem Heights Cemetery. (1976 Fayetteville USGS 7.5’ quadrangle & GoogleMaps)

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Figure 15 & 16: Harlem Heights Cemetery (Fayetteville USGS 7.5’ quadrangle & Fayette County Interactive GIS Map).

HARLEM HEIGHTS CEMETERY

Long/Lat: 38.003452N, -81.117388W Elevation: 1,981 ft. mean sea level Acreage: 2.34 acres (= five parcels) Owner: Charles Willis & wife (1 parcel) Owner: Harlem Hts. Mem. Pk (4 parcels) Date Acquired: 5/28/1952 & 6/24/59 Tax Unit: Fayette Co. Plateau District Deed Bks/Pgs: 169/0376 & 222/336

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Figures 17 & 18: Harlem Hts. Cemetery is on a gently sloping knoll.

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14.0 Harlem Heights Cemetery Recommendations

Preservation of gravesites and grave markers in Harlem Heights Cemetery is a desirable goal. A total of six graves have stone markers, five granite and one marble. Three traditional etched granite headstones set on stone bases are in good condition and show no obvious signs of chipping, cracking, or water damage, but they could benefit from gentle cleaning done in accordance with best practices for historic cemetery preservation. One upright marble headstone that adorns a veteran’s grave is in fair to poor condition due to the presence of lichens, moss, mold, or other biological growth, and requires gentle cleaning. Two horizontal granite gravestones situated at ground level are in fair condition but require gentle cleaning because lichens, moss, mold or other biological growth is present on the flat etched surfaces. Stake markers that were likely put in place by the funeral home at time of burial delineate nine known graves in Harlem Heights Cemetery. Three markers placed by Dodd-Payne Funeral Home of Beckley are of good quality and in good condition, with names and dates intact. However, six are of poor quality and in poor shape due to faded names and/or dates, rusting metal frames or stakes, and overall deterioration after decades of exposure to the elements. Stake markers in good condition should checked to determine if they are set in concrete. If not, they should be made secure. Markers in poor condition should be closely monitored, with the goal of eventually replacing them with new markers set in concrete. All gravesites should be mapped to show GPS coordinates and site plan within the cemetery. Enclosing known graves with an environmentally sensitive split-rail fence is advised. Erection of a historical wayside marker is encouraged to tell the interesting story of the veterans of two world wars, the tragic deaths of three Robinson infants and the difficulties faced by African Americans who lived here. Harlem Heights Cemetery encompasses 2.34 acres on paper. It consists of a 25’ x 25’ (.01 acre) private plot acquired in 1952 by Charles and Irene Willis that contains the marked grave of Charles and possibly wife Irene’s (whose grave has not been located), as well as a 2.33- acre parcel made up of four tracts acquired by Harlem Heights Memorial Park in 1959. All identified graves are located in a small area at the southeast corner of the burial ground. There is a high probability that other graves exist. Therefore, it is recommended that the entire cemetery grounds be carefully cleared of brush, leaves, etc. and a reconnaissance survey be undertaken to search for downed markers, ground disturbances, or any evidence of graves. Additional research could reveal important information on individuals who rest there. Officials at First Baptist Church and Community Restoration Worship Center (formerly Community Baptist Church) in Harlem Heights could have information on burials, as may area funeral homes. On the following page is a link to the .pdf version of the National Park Service Preservation Brief 48: Preserving Grave Markers in Historic Cemeteries. This Preservation Brief focuses on historic cemetery preservation, providing guidance for owners, property managers, administrators, maintenance staff, volunteers, and others who are responsible for or are interested in preserving and protecting grave markers. It describes “grave marker materials and the risk factors that contribute to their decay”…[and] “provides guidance for assessing their conditions and discusses maintenance programs and various preservation treatments.”

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Preservation Brief 48: https://www.nps.gov/tps/how-to-preserve/preservedocs/preservation- briefs/48Preserve-Brief-GraveMarkers.pdf

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15.0 Graves in Harlem Heights Cemetery

Identified Burials, Birth-Death Dates, and Ages at Death (assembled by Sarah Elswick, Tourism Specialist, National Coal Heritage Area Authority edited by Billy Joe Peyton, Contract Historian)

1. Cyde L. Arnold (F) April 4, 1896 – August 26, 1957 61 years 2. Isabelle C. Bibb (F) December 25, 1924 – December 30, 1952 28 years 3. Fannie Coates (F) May 4, 1892 – February 6, 1963 70 years 4. Walter G. Coates (M) December 22, 1882 – August 4, 1954 67 years 5. John A. Hughes (M) December 12, 1882 – February 28, 1964 81 years 6. Nannie E. Hughes (F) March 17, 1896 – January 16, 1963 66 years 7. James A. Hughes (M) March 21, 1919 - January 15, 1964 44 years 8. James Jackson (M) September 5, 1899 – May 9, 1960 60 years 9. Bessie McLemore (F) August 1889 – April 19, 1966 76 years 10. Goldie McLemore (M) December 25, 1899 – May 5, 1952 52 years 11. Frank Moore (M) August 8, 1902 – May 30, 1960 57 years 12. Cheryl Robinson (F) March 11, 1957 – March 11, 1957 10 hours 13. Crystal Robinson (F) March 11, 1957 – September 5, 1957 25 weeks 14. Dereick Robinson (M) August 30, 1966 – August 30, 1966 stillborn infant 15. Zeddie Whittaker (F) January 12, 1887 – February 2, 1953 66 years 16. Charles H. Willis (M) December 5, 1882 – February 10, 1966 83 years

In addition to 16 identified burial sites, five metal stake markers (typically placed by funeral homes as temporary placeholders) exist with no names attached. Additional unmarked gravesites likely exist within the burial ground. An example of a nameless marker is pictured below.

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15.1 Clyde L. Arnold (female, b. 1896 - d. 1957)

Stake marker at Clyde L. Arnold’s grave.

Clyde L. Arnold was born Clyde Livingston Smithers on April 4, 1896, at Hinton in Summers County, West Virginia, to Ella K. Smithers and an unnamed father. Ella Smithers’s parents, and Clyde’s maternal grandparents, were Charles and Martha Smithers. As a young child Clyde Smithers relocated with her unwed mother to Perry County, Ohio, where on October 17, 1901, her 26-year-old Ella Smithers married 28-year-old John Whittaker. At the time of their union, the couple resided in Congo, a coal mining town in Perry County. Ella worked as a domestic, John was a coal miner, and Clyde was five years old. John had been married once and divorced, and it was Ella’s first marriage.70

Figure 19: Marriage Application Ella Smithers & John Whittaker.

70 Ancestry.com. Ella K. Smithers & John Whittaker. Ohio, Perry County Marriage Records, 1774-1993. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Accessed July 31, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 66

Little information exists about Clyde Smithers’ childhood, but she likely faced a number of societal hurdles as an African American female born out of wedlock. The historical record indicates that, on February 27, 1923, 26-year-old Clyde wed coal miner Oral R. Arnold (age 25) at Rendville in Perry County, Ohio, where they both resided.71

Figure 20: Marriage record for Oral Arnold & Clyde Smithers.

Oral Rhea Arnold was born on August 20, 1897, at Gallipolis in Gallia County, Ohio, to Frank Ervin Arnold and Josephine (Josie) Williams Arnold. In 1900, two-year-old Oral lived there with his 44-year-old father, Frank, a day laborer originally from West Virginia, his 43- year-old mother, Josie, and four siblings. Ten years later, 12-year-old Oral lived at Monroe in Perry County, Ohio, with his sister Velva (age 18) and widowed father Frank (age 54), a coal mine laborer who owned his home.72 On August 24, 1918, in , Pennsylvania, 21-year-old Oral Rhea Arnold registered for the military draft as required under the Selective Service Act of 1917 that

71 Ancestry.com. Oral Arnold & Clyde Smithers. Ohio, Perry County Marriage Records, 1774-1993. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Accessed August 9, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

72 U.S. Census, 1900; Census Place: Gallipolis, Gallia, Ohio; Page: 4; Enumeration District: 0029; FHL microfilm: 1241271; U.S. Census 1910; Census Place: Monroe, Perry, Ohio; Roll: T624_1222; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 0135; FHL microfilm: 1375235. Accessed August 10, 2019. www.ancestry.com 67 authorized a supplemental registration for young men turning 21 years old after June 5, 1918. He worked at Byers Pipe Mill in the Steel City at the time.73 One month later, on September 25, 1918, he mustered into the National Army at Pittsburgh. Oral initially served in Company 26, 7th Battalion of the 152nd Depot Brigade until October 18, 1918, then joined Co. K, 63rd Pioneer Infantry for the duration of his enlistment. Pioneer infantry regiments were similar to regular army troops in that they trained in infantry tactics, but they also trained in combat engineering. For example, a pioneer unit might receive orders to construct a bridge in a combat zone, and then be directed to defend it.

Figure 21: Oral Arnold’s 1918 draft registration and entry in The Official Roster of Ohio Soldiers, Sailors, and Marine.

73 National Archives. World War I Draft Registration Cards. Accessed June 4, 2019. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww1/draft-registration; Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Allegheny County, PA. Provo, UT, USA. Accessed June 4, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 68

Fighting in World War I ended with an armistice that took effect at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, less than seven weeks after Private Arnold entered the military. He was released from active duty one week later and received his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army on December 13, 1918.74 Following the war, Oral worked as a coal miner in Rendsville, Ohio, where he met and married Clyde Smithers in 1923. In 1930, 33-year-old Oral and 34-year-old spouse, Clyde, lived with Oral’s 74-year-old retired father, Frank, in Miles Heights, a suburb of Cleveland in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. At the time, Oral worked as a laborer at a stove company, and Clyde was a cook in a cafeteria. By 1940, Oral and Clyde had relocated to Garfield Heights, another Cleveland suburb, where Oral worked as assistant shipping clerk at a stove manufacturing works. Living with the pair was 12-year-old ward, William King. The 1940 census indicates that the Arnolds owned their home, and Oral had completed two years of college.75 Around 1940, Clyde (then around 44 years old) gave birth to the couple’s only known child, Joyce Josephine Arnold. Sometime in the early 1940s, the family relocated from Ohio to Fayette County, West Virginia. On April 22, 1947, the Beckley Post-Herald reported that Mrs. Clyde L. Arnold had purchased Lot 5 in Harlem Heights for about $3,000 from Henry S. Sherrod and his wife.76 The Arnolds likely moved to Harlem Heights soon thereafter. In 1957, Joyce Josephine Arnold was a senior at Collins High School in Oak Hill. In her yearbook, The Acorn, it notes that “Joy Joe” took college preparatory courses as a senior. In addition, she was involved in Commercial Club, Glee Club, and Future Teachers of America, where Joyce served as assistant secretary.77

74 Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Accessed July 31, 2019. www.ancestry.com; The Official Roster of Ohio Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the World War, 1917-18. Columbus, OH, USA: The F.J. Heer Printing Co., 1926.

75 U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Miles Heights, Cuyahoga, Ohio; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 0672; FHL microfilm: 2341521; U.S. Census 1940: 1940; Census Place: Garfield Heights, Cuyahoga, Ohio; Roll: m-t0627- 03053; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 18-141, Accessed July 5, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

76 Beckley Post-Herald (WV), Apr. 22, 1947. Accessed July 5, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com.

77 "U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012"; School Name: Collins (WV) High School; Year: 1957. Accessed August 10, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 69

Figure 22: Joyce Josephine Arnold’s 1957 senior class photo.

Details of Joyce Arnold’s life after high school are unknown. Likewise, specific information about Clyde’s husband, Oral, is absent after about 1940. Beckley newspapers report that Mrs. Clyde Arnold received $54.40 and $120.00 in 1951 and 1952, respectively, from the General Relief Fund for Board and Care of Children in Raleigh County.78 This suggests that the Arnold family had fallen on hard times, and possibly sought public assistance. However, it is unknown why help came from Raleigh County rather than their home county of Fayette. Clyde Arnold lived with husband Oral and daughter Joyce in Harlem Heights for the rest of her life. In February 1957, Clyde was convalescing at home after being a patient at Laird Memorial Hospital (in Montgomery) for several weeks.79 She subsequently died about six months later, on August 26, 1957, at age 61.80 Her death certificate indicates she expired at 9:00 p.m. at her home from “acute coronary occlusion” (heart attack). Funeral services took place at Harlem Heights Community Baptist Church with Rev. Thomas Pryor officiating. Burial followed at Harlem Heights Cemetery. Dodd-Payne Funeral Home handled arrangements. Dodd-Payne, founded in 1930 in Fayetteville, West Virginia, is now Dodd Payne Ross Funeral Home. Clyde Livingston Arnold was survived by her husband Oral Rhea Arnold and daughter Joyce, a recent high school who lived at home.

78 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), June 21, 1951 and February 26, 1952. Accessed July 31, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com.

79 Beckley Register & Post-Herald (Beckley, WV), February, 22, 1957. Accessed July 31, 1019. www.newspaperarchives.com.

80 Raleigh Register, August 27, 1957. Accessed July 31, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com. 70

Figures 23 & 24: Clyde L. Arnold’s death certificate & obituary.

71

About 16 months after Clyde’s death, Oral Arnold got married for a second time. On January 3, 1960, the 62-year-old widower wed divorced 58-year-old Mary Virginia McKinney at Hansford in Kanawha County. At the time of the nuptials, Oral was a bus driver and Mary a schoolteacher residing in Montgomery.81 At some point, the couple relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where Oral Rhea Arnold died in a long-term care facility on May 3, 1974, at age 76. He is buried in Highland Park Cemetery at Highland Hills in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.82 His second wife, Mary V. Arnold, died at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cleveland on November 10, 1987, at age 86. She is buried alongside her husband in Highland Park Cemetery.83

Highland Park Cemetery in Cuyahoga County, Ohio (from Find A Grave Cemeteries)

81 West Virginia Vital Research Records, Marriages, Oral Arnold & Mary McKinney, January 3, 1960. Accessed August 5, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=12078454&Type=Marriage.

82 Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.Ohio Death Records, May 3, 1974 on www.ancestry.com; Find A Grave, Ohio index at www.findagrave.com/cemetery/41411/memorial-search?firstName=oral&lastName=arnold.

83 Ancestry.com and Ohio Department of Health. Ohio, Death Records, November 10, 1987. Provo, UT, USA. Accessed July 31, 2019. www.ancestry.com; Find A Grave, Ohio index. Accessed July 31, 2019. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/85615952/mary-virginia-arnold. 72

15.2 Isabelle C. Bibb (female, b. 1924 – d. 1952)

Headstone for Isabelle Bibb, who died at age 28.

Isabelle Loretta Coates was born on December 25, 1924, at Glen Ferris in Fayette County, West Virginia. Few details are known about Isabelle’s early life, other than she was the daughter of Walter G. and Fannie (or Fanny) Coates of Glen Ferris. Fannie’s mother was born about 1893 in North Carolina, and her father hailed from Virginia. In 1930, Fannie and George Coates lived in a rented home along Kanawha River in Glen Ferris with eight children ranging in age from 19 years to just under two years. Five-year-old Isabelle was the second youngest child.84 Walter Coates worked at the time as a liner for the Electrometallurgical Company (known as ElectroMet or EMCO), a subsidiary of Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation that operated a ferroalloy smelting operation at Glen Ferris since 1907.85 EMCO gained notoriety in the 1930s when it constructed the Hawk’s Nest Hydroelectric Tunnel that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of workers from silicosis after exposure to high concentrations of pure silica dust. Isabelle Coates graduated from Simmons High School in Montgomery around 1942.86 On February 2, 1946, at age 21, she married William Preston Bibb of Garten, a small coal town in Fayette County. The ceremony took place in the bride’s Glen Ferris home just over a month after the groom had received his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army on December 24, 1945.

84 US Census, 1930; Census Place: Falls, Fayette, West Virginia; Page: 12B; Enumeration District: 0004; FHL microfilm: 2342265. Accessed August 4, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

85 Ibid.

86 Simmons High School opened in 1879 as the first school in Fayette County for African American students. It was named after Reverend J. W. Simmons from Louisville, Kentucky. Simmons High School closed in 1956; Laura Maple on behalf of Marshall University Libraries. "Simmons School." Clio: Your Guide to History. May 14, 2015. Accessed July 25, 2019. https://www.theclio.com/entry/14569. 73

Bibb, who originally joined the army for a three-year enlistment on February 17, 1941, in Huntington, West Virginia, spent four years and 10 months in uniform during World War II.87

Figure 25: Marriage of Isabelle Coates & William Bibb. Isabelle Coates’ husband, William Preston Bibb, was born on July 2, 1918, at Louisa in Louisa County, Virginia. In 1920, one-year-old William lived with his parents, Julian Mason Bibb, a farmer, and Lucile Bibb, a laundress, along with two older siblings in Louisa. By 1930, the Bibb family had moved to Mount Hope in Fayette County, West Virginia, where Julian worked as a coal miner to provide for his spouse and their five children.88 Before 1935, the Bibbs relocated to Garten in Fayette County. In 1940, 54-year-old Julian (who had a fifth grade education) and 46-year-old Lucile shared their home with son William Preston (age 22) and two other children. At the time, William worked as a coal loader for the New River & Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company.89 About a year after Isabelle and William Bibb got married, William worked as a coal miner in Fayette County. In 1947, the couple welcomed their first child into the world, a boy named Wendell Preston Bibb.

87 “Negro Activities” section of Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), February 12, 1946. Accessed June 10, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com; World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2005. Accessed June 10, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

88 U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Louisa, Louisa, Virginia; Roll: T625_1894; Page: 8B; Enumeration District: 85; U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Mount Hope, Fayette, West Virginia; Page: 17A; Enumeration District: 0007; FHL microfilm: 2342266. Accessed June 11, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

89 U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Fayetteville, Fayette, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04401; Page: 2B; Enumeration District: 10-13. Accessed June 11, 2019. www.ancestry.com; The National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; William P. Bibb. WWII Draft Registration Cards for West Virginia, 10/16/1940 - 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 36. Accessed June 10, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 74

On April 19, 1950, William Bibb, a four-year veteran, reenlisted in the army. His reasons for doing so are unknown, but financial security may have played a role. Then, in June 1950, Isabelle and three-year-old son, Wendell, moved from Fayette County, West Virginia, to join Corporal William P. Bibb at Fort Knox, Kentucky.90 Bibb remained in the army until May 31, 1966, when he retired with the rank of Master Sergeant (E-8). His 20 years of accumulated military service resulted in a lifetime pension.91 After a two-year hitch at Fort Knox, Sergeant William Bibb received orders for a transfer to Fort Bliss, Texas, in late 1952. But, life took a catastrophic turn on December 30, 1952, when a fatal auto-truck collision claimed the life of his 28-year-old wife Isabelle and another motorist.92 The crash, on an icy Indiana highway, also injured the Bibb’s five-year-old son, Wendell. Sergeant William Bibb suffered only minor injuries. Isabelle’s funeral took place on Sunday, January 4, 1953, with burial “in the family cemetery at Harlem Heights.”93 (Actually the family plot.) Several Indiana and West Virginia newspapers covered the deadly accident.

Figure 26: Anderson Herald Bulletin & Logansport Press (Indiana) reports, and Beckley Post Herald (West Virginia) obituary.

90 Beckley Post Herald (WV), June 21, 1950. Accessed June 4, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com.

91 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Accessed June 4, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

92 Anderson Herald Bulletin (IN), December 31, 1952; Logansport Press (IN), December 31, 1952. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com.

93 Beckley Post Herald, January 3, 1953. Accessed June 4, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com. 75

Fortunately, Wendell Preston Bibb survived the tragic car crash that killed his mother. However, it undoubtedly had a profound impact on his life. With his father in the military, the youth returned to Fayette County and attended public school through his junior year at Collins High School in Oak Hill in 1965. When his father retired from the army in 1966, Wendell moved to Pemberton, New Jersey, and attended his senior year at Pemberton Township High School, where he graduated in 1966.94

Figure 27: Wendell Bibb’s 1965 junior school photo in West Virginia on left, and 1966 senior photo in New Jersey on right. After relocating to New Jersey for his senior year in high school, Wendell Bibb maintained important ties to his West Virginia roots. In fact, at age 22 he wed 16-year-old Jane Elizabeth Hymon of Scarbro in Fayette County. The ceremony took place on September 27, 1969, at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Garten.95 At the time, the groom was serving in the U.S. Air Force at Pope Air Base in North Carolina. Unfortunately, Jane and Wendell’s marriage did not last, and both parties eventually remarried. In 2019, 72-year-old Wendell Preston Bibb resided in New Jersey.

94 "U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012," School Name: Collins High School; Year: 1965 School Yearbooks and School Name: Pemberton High School; Year: 1966 School Yearbooks. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

95 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), October 1, 1969. www.newspaperarchives.com; (Virginia Marriage Records on www.ancestry.com) West Virginia, Births Index, Fayette County, 1950, www.ancestry.com. 76

Figure 28: Wendell Preston Bibb & Jane Elizabeth Hymon wedding. Sometime before 1955, widower William Preston Bibb married his second wife, Juanita Oldham, who was born on September 30, 1924, in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Juanita gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Lois Orleana Bibb, in Fairbanks, Alaska, on February 26, 1955. Lois Bibb died on December 11, 2014, in Willingsboro, New Jersey. Then, on August 25, 1959, Juanita had son Julian Otto Bibb. The couple also had an unidentified third child.96 On December 23, 1985, 26-year-old Julian Bibb got remarried to 23-year-old Tawana Lynn Wales in Newport News, Virginia. As of 2019, he resided in the Washington, D.C. area.97

96 “William P. Bibb Family Tree” from Ancestry.com, Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

97 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Marriages, 1936-2014; Roll: 101176679, Julian Bibb & Tawana Lynn Wales. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 77

Figure 29: Marriage record for Tawana Wales & Otto Julian Bibb. Juanita Oldham Bibb died on December 12, 1989, at age 65.98 Twice widowed William Bibb married a third time on January 15, 1994, to Marian L. Yon in Burlington, New Jersey. Retired Master Sergeant William Preston Bibb passed away at age 91 on February 4, 2010, at Willingboro in Burlington County, New Jersey. He was interred with military honors in Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery at Arneytown, New Jersey.99 He shares the gravesite with second wife, Juanita Oldham Bibb, who preceded him in death.

98 U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Accessed June 10, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

99 Find A Grave, New Jersey. Accessed June 10, 2019. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/48168778.

78

Figure 30: William Preston Bibb (1918-2010). Few details are known about William Preston Bibb’s military service. However, his army photo (above left) offers clues. The shoulder patch indicates he was a member of the Third Armored Division (nicknamed “Spearhead”). The division was first activated in 1941, and fought in the European Theater during World War II. It remained stationed in West Germany for much of the Cold War, and participated in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In 1992, the division ceased operations and was inactivated during a drawdown of forces at the end of the Cold War.100 Above Bibb’s left breast pocket is a row of service ribbons, awarded to personnel by the U.S. Army for various achievements they earn over the course of their time in the armed forces. He is also wearing the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, awarded to infantry members who fought in active ground combat during World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. Master Sergeant Bibb also received the Army Commendation Medal, awarded for consistent acts of heroism or meritorious service.101

Grave of William Preston Bibb and second wife Juanita.

100 “3rd Armored Division (United States).” Accessed June 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_Armored_Division_(United_States)#Spearhead.

101 “Awards and Decorations of U.S. Armed Forces.” Accessed June 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards and decorations of the United States Armed Forces. 79

15.3 Fannie Coates (female, b. 1893 – d. 1963)

Flat stone marker on Fannie Coates’ grave. Fannie Gallaway Coates was born on May 4, 1892 (her grave marker denotes 1893), in Leaksville, North Carolina, to parents Hap (or Hamp) Hannibal Gallaway (born March 1860) and Nannie Johnson Gallaway (born August 1874).102 Nannie Gallaway died sometime in the mid-1890s, leaving Hannibal to raise the couple’s five young children. Hannibal remarried a woman named Eliza A. Coates in 1898, and the couple had a son named Jake a year later. The family lived at Wentworth Township in Rockingham County, North Carolina, where Mr. Gallaway worked as a farmer on rented land. According to the 1900 census, Eliza and Hannibal were raising six children: sons Dillard (age 13), Earl (12) and Sam (10), all of whom worked as farm laborers, daughter Fannie (9), daughter Venia (8), and son Jake (1). None of the children attended school, and only Dillard and Earl could read or write. These facts suggest the Gallaways were likely a poor sharecropping family that eked out a living by farming a small plot of land in the segregated South.103 On December 2, 1909, 22-year-old Fannie Gallaway married 23-year-old Walter G. Coates in Wentworth Township. Rev. J. W. Hubbard performed the ceremony witnessed by S.W. Gallaway, Sarah Gallaway, and Dick Smallwood.104 Early in their marriage, Walter worked as a laborer in a North Carolina cotton mill. He and Fannie proceeded to have six children by the time they relocated from Leaksville, North Carolina, to West Virginia around 1923. They joined thousands of other southern blacks who migrated the Mountain State in search of work as coal miners, railroaders, and industrial workers. Fannie gave birth to two children in West Virginia between 1924 and 1927. In 1930, the family lived at Glen Ferris in Fayette County, and then included eight children: son Floyd (age 19), daughter Odell (17), son Dallas (14), son Walter (13), son Jesse (10), son Henry (8), daughter Isabelle (age 5), and daughter Margaret (1 year, 11 months). At the time, George and

102 Ancestry.com. West Virginia, Deaths Index, 1853-1973. Provo, UT, USA. Accessed June 11, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

103 U.S. Census, 1900; Census Place: Wentworth, Rockingham, North Carolina; Page: 8; Enumeration District: 0086; FHL microfilm: 1241215. Accessed June 8, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

104 Ancestry.com. Rockingham County, North Carolina, Marriage Records, 1741-2011. Provo, UT, USA. Accessed June 8, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 80 son Floyd worked for Electrometallurgical Company (EMCO) at its Glen Ferris ferroalloy plant. (EMCO began construction on the infamous Hawk’s Nest Tunnel project in 1930, but there is no evidence that either George or Floyd worked on it.) Meanwhile, Fannie kept house.105 In 1934, the Coates’ celebrated the marriage of their oldest son, Floyd, to Wentworth, North Carolina, native Laura Jane Allen, in Danville, Virginia.106 In late 1949, Walter Coates retired from EMCO after working 25 years for the company. In late 1952, his 60-year-old spouse, Fannie, purchased four lots (#176, 177, 178, 179) in Harlem Heights from Homeseekers Land and Building Company for approximately $1,500.107 Presumably, she and Walter moved from Glen Ferris to Harlem Heights shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, Walter Coates died less than two years later, on August 4, 1954, at his Harlem Heights home, at age 67. Fannie remained in Harlem Heights following Walter’s passing. Some of the couple’s children had moved out of state but several lived nearby, as did an extended family on her husband’s side. On February 6, 1963, Fannie Coates died at age 70 from a “cerebral hemorrhage” (type of stroke caused by a ruptured blood vessel in the brain) at her daughter Margaret Calloway’s Harlem Heights home.108 Fannie’s death certificate listed her occupation as domestic. Godfrey- Pack Funeral Home in Montgomery handled arrangements for the family. Survivors included daughters Margaret Calloway of Harlem Heights and Odell White of Boomer, son Floyd of Smithers, son Henry of Charleston, sons Walter and Dallas of Detroit, Michigan, as well as 18 grandchildren and four great-children.109 Fannie Gallaway Coates lies in eternal repose beside her husband, Walter G. Coates, in Harlem Heights Cemetery.

105 U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Leaksville, Rockingham, North Carolina; Roll: T625_1317; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 200; U.S. Census 1930; Census Place: Falls, Fayette, West Virginia; Page: 12B; Enumeration District: 0004; FHL microfilm: 2342265. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

106 Virginia, Select Marriages, 1785-1940. Provo, UT, USA. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

107 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), December 2, 1952. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com.

108 West Virginia Vital Research Records, Fayette County Death Index, January 3, 1960. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.wvculture.org.

109 Beckley Register Herald (WV), February 7, 1963. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.newspaperarchives.com. 81

Figures 31 & 32: Death certificate & obituary for Fannie Gallaway Coates.

82

Death dates are known for five of Fannie and Walter Coates’ eight children. Isabelle Bibb died on December 30, 1952, Walter, Jr. died in 1990, Dallas died on December 14, 1990, Margaret Calloway died on July 6, 1992, and Odell White died in 1994.110

Figures 33 & 34: Obituary for Dallas Coates and Margaret Coates Calloway.

110 Register Herald (Beckley, WV), July 8, 1992 and December 18, 1990. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 83

15.4 Walter G. Coates (male, b. 1882 – d. 1954)

Flat stone marker on Walter Coates’ grave. Walter G. Coates was likely born on December 22, 1886 (his grave marker denotes 1882), in Martinsville, Virginia. He was the son of Catherine Tatum Coates, who was born on March 23, 1867, at Crites in Patrick County, Virginia, and David Lee Coates, who was born on August 1856 in North Carolina (likely at Leaksville in Rockingham County).111 As a black youth growing up in rural North Carolina in the late 1800s, Walter Coates experienced hard work at an early age. In 1900, he was already working as a farm laborer at age 13. Walter attended school for three months that year, and he could read and write.112 On December 2, 1909, the 23-year-old married 22-year-old Fannie Gallaway at Wentworth Township in Rockingham County, North Carolina.113 At the time, he worked as a laborer in a local cotton mill. Fannie gave birth to the couple’s first child, son Floyd, around 1911. They eventually had six children before 1920.114 Somewhere around 1923, the Coates family relocated to West Virginia from Leaksville, North Carolina. Around that time, scores of southern blacks were migrating north in search of improved work opportunities. The promise of a better life is probably what drew the Coates family to Fayette County, where 41-year-old Walter started his long career as an employee of Electrometallurgical Company (EMCO) on December 30, 1923. By 1930, he was a furnace liner at EMCO’s ferroalloy plant at Glen Ferris, while Fannie (age 31) kept house. The pair’s eight children lived at home: son Floyd (age 19, worked as a packer at EMCO), daughter Odell (17), son Dallas (14), son Walter (13), son Jesse (10), and son Henry (8), all of whom were born in Virginia; daughter Isabelle (5) and daughter Margalee (1) were

111 US Census, 1900; Census Place: Leaksville, Rockingham, North Carolina; Page: 11; Enumeration District: 0072; FHL microfilm: 1241215. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

112 Ibid.

113 Ancestry.com. Rockingham County, North Carolina, Marriage Records, 1741-2011. Provo, UT, USA. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

114 U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Leaksville, Rockingham, North Carolina; Roll: T625_1317; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 200. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 84 born in West Virginia.115 In 1934, Floyd Coates married North Carolina native Laura Jane Allen in Danville, Virginia.116 On August 30, 1944, Walter Coates’ mother, 77-year-old Catherine Tatum Coates, died at Walter’s home from a “coronary occlusion” (blocked artery that results in a heart attack). She also suffered from “senility” (dementia).117 Originally from Rockingham County, North Carolina, Catherine lived in Glen Ferris for many years and was survived by her brother, Preston Tatum, from Winona, a Fayette County coal town. Catherine Coates is buried at Glen Ferris.118

Figure 35: Catherine Coates’ obituary.

115 U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Falls, Fayette, West Virginia; Page: 12B; Enumeration District: 0004; FHL microfilm: 2342265. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

116 Virginia, Select Marriages, 1785-1940. Provo, UT, USA. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

117 WV Vital Research Records, Fayette County Death Index, August 30, 1944. Accessed June 5, 2019. www.wvculture.org.

118 Charleston Gazette (WV), September 1, 1944. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 85

Walter Coates retired from EMCO in late 1948 after more than 25 years of service. In January of 1949, he participated in a company dinner at Glen Ferris, where he and fellow honored retirees received a gold watch from the Alloy plant superintendent, W.W. Jennings.119 Following his retirement, Walter became a member of the Fayette Farm Bureau, a volunteer organization involved with home and farm agricultural programs.120

Figure 36: Walter Coates retired from EMCO after 25 years. Following Walter’s retirement, he and Fannie recorded a deed from Homeseekers Land and Building Company for a right-of-way agreement with Appalachian Electric Power Company in Harlem Heights.121 Then, in late 1952 Fannie purchased four lots there (#176, 177, 178, 179) from Homeseekers Land and Building Company for approximately $1,500.122 The couple likely relocated from Glen Ferris to Harlem Heights shortly thereafter.

119 Charleston Daily Mail (WV), January 19, 1944. www.newspaperarchives.com.

120 Beckley Post Herald (WV), November 1, 1949. www.newspaperarchives.com.

121 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), March 14, 1949. www.newspaperarchives.com.

122 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), December 2, 1952. www.newspaperarchives.com. 86

Walter G. Coates lived in Harlem Heights for only a short time. He died en route to Oak Hill Hospital at 9:00 a.m. on August 4, 1954, at age 67. His death certificate listed the cause of death as “medullary failure,” compounded by “thromboid encephalomalacia” (brain damage) and “arterioschlerosis” (hardening of the arteries). Funeral services took place on August 8, 1954, at Glen Ferris Methodist Church with Rev. W. M. Jones officiating. Washington and Coleman Mortuary of Montgomery handled arrangements.123 Walter Coates’ final resting place is at Harlem Heights Cemetery alongside his wife, Fannie.

Figures 37 & 38: Walter Coates’ death certificate and obituary. Fannie Gallaway Coates remained at her Harlem Heights home following Walter’s death in 1954. Nine years later, on February 6, 1963, she passed away at her daughter Margaret Calloway’s residence in Harlem Heights at the age of 70. The cause of death for Fannie Coates was a cerebral hemorrhage.124 Fannie and George Coates rest side-by-side in Harlem Heights Cemetery. Their graves are distinguished by granite ground stones, the only such markers in the burial ground.

123 Charleston Daily Mail (WV), August 5, 1954 and August 7, 1954. www.newspaperarchives.com.

124 WV Vital Research Records, Fayette County, Death Index, 1963. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.wvculture.org. 87

15.5 John A. Hughes (male, b. 1882 – d. 1964)

Grave of Nannie E. and John A. Hughes. John A. Hughes was born on December 12, 1882, in Goochland County, Virginia, to Sterling Hughes and Clarissa G. Allen Hughes. Sterling was born in 1845 in Powhatan County, Virginia, to Phillip and Sally Hughes, and Clarissa was born around 1851 in Goochland County.125 Given their birthdates and location, Sterling and Clarissa were likely born into slavery. They married in Goochland County on January 15, 1873, and lived several years on Clarissa’s parents farm, where Sterling worked as a laborer. By 1900, Sterling and Clarissa Hughes resided at Dover in Goochland County, with their seven children: daughter Manda B. (age 19), son John A. (17), daughter Sallie D. (14), daughter Laura A. (12), daughter Mary (10), son Howard F. (5), and daughter Matilda L. (2). Sallie, Laura and Mary attended school for two months, while John (who could read and write) worked as a laborer on the farm.126 Clarissa Hughes died on June 24, 1914, at age 60 from “acute ascending paralysis” in Goochland County. Sterling Hughes passed away on December 14, 1915, at age 65 from “organic heart disease.” His death occurred at Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County.127 As an African American farm laborer during the Jim Crow era, prospects were limited for John Hughes. As a result, he left Virginia around 1915 and moved to southern West Virginia, where he began a new life and career working as a coal miner.

125 Ancestry.com. Virginia, Goochland County, VA, Select Marriages, 1785-1940. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

126 U.S. Census, 1900; Census Place: Dover, Goochland, Virginia; Page: 6; Enumeration District: 0014; FHL microfilm: 1241710. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

127 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Goochland County, Virginia, Deaths, 1912-2014 and Dinwiddie County, Virginia, Deaths, 1912-2014. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 88

Figures 39 & 40: Clarissa & Sterling Hughes’ death certificate.

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Although he did not serve in the military during World War I, John Hughes (age 35) registered for the draft, as required under the Selective Service Act of 1917,during the third registration held September 12, 1918, for men age 18 through 45.128 He lived at Keystone, a booming community along Elkhorn Creek in McDowell County, where he worked as a coal miner.McDowell County became the state’s center of African-American population in the industrial era, and Keystone served surrounding coal company towns as a regional center for wholesalers, retailers, saloons, and entertainment. Known for its racial diversity, as well as the infamous red light district of Cinder Bottom, Keystone boasted the state’s first African-American mayor, the state’s leading minority newspaper (the McDowell Times), and was a center of McDowell County’s community of color.129

Figure 41: John Hughes’ 1918 military registration card. According to the 1920 census, John and wife Nannie Ayres Hughes lived with their seven-year-old daughter Mary L. and 10-month-old son James A. at Big Four, a coal camp on Brown’s Creek in McDowell County.130 About a year later, on May 7, 1921, 38-year-old John is on record as marrying 25-year-old Nannie Ayres in Keystone, McDowell County.131 The

128 National Archives, Military Records, “World War I Draft Registration Cards.” Accessed June 10, 2019. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww1/draft-registration.

129 McGehee, C. Stuart "Keystone." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 03 December 2018. Accessed June 12, 2019. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1200.

130 U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Browns Creek, McDowell, West Virginia; Roll: T625_1960; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 60; Accessed June 10, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

131 WV Vital Research Records, McDowell County, Marriage Index, 1921. Accessed June 6, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcdetail.aspx?Id=11406245. 90 marriage was the first for both parties. As previously discussed, their two children, Mary and James, were born out of wedlock prior to 1921, which suggests the couple engaged in cohabitation, a disreputable and illegal practice at the time. Cohabitation became legal around 1970 with the removal of statutory restraints.132

Figure 42: Marriage license John Hughes & Nannie Ayers (Ayres). The Hughes family left McDowell County by the late 1920s and relocated for a time to Pemberton, a coal camp located near Sophia in Raleigh County.133 They next lived a short time in Skelton before moving to Winding Gulf, a coal camp south of Sophia in Raleigh County,

132 Caplow, Theodore, Louis Hicks, Ben J. Wattenberg. The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000 (Aei Press; 1st edition, January 1, 2000), Ch. 4: Family, “Cohabitating Couples.” https://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/4family3.htm.

133 Beckley Sunday Register (WV), January 13, 1929. www.newspaperarchives.com. 91 where John worked as a coal loader.134 Nannie’s half-brother, George Titus Wingfield, and his family also resided at Winding Gulf at the time. In 1930, the Hughes family included six children: daughter Mary (age 17), son James (11), son Sterling (8), son John (7), daughter Clara (5), and daughter Edith (18 months). Around 1935, they moved to Lynwyn, a coal camp on Slab Fork. In 1939, John Hughes earned $800 working a total of 40 weeks as a coal loader there. According to census data, the household in 1940 included: John A. Hughes (age 57 and head of the household), wife Nannie Hughes (44), son Sterling Hughes (18), daughter Clara Hughes (15), daughter Edith Mae Hughes (11), daughter Gladys Hughes (3), and daughter Flossie Wingfield (2 months).135 In reality, Flossie was a niece whose mother, Flossie Wingfield, had married Nannie’s step-brother George T. Wingfield sometime earlier, but had tragically died in childbirth with baby Flossie in January of 1940.136 The Hughes’ son John, then age 17, moved in with his widowed uncle to help him keep house following Flossie’s death. George Wingfield owned his home at Raleigh and worked as a tracklayer in the mines in 1940. Nannie and John eventually returned to Winding Gulf, where they lived in April 1944 when their son, army Staff Sergeant Sterling Hughes, came home on 15-day furlough from Fort Sill, Oklahoma.137 After leaving the army, Sterling Hughes “raised cattle and sold milk, cheese, butter, eggs and homemade hot dinner rolls” from a farm he owned at Harlem Heights.138 Sometime in early 1950s, Nannie and John Hughes likely moved to Harlem Heights where they lived in retirement for the remainder of their days. In the early 1960s, the Hughes family experienced three somber events in rapid succession. First, matriarch Nannie E. Hughes passed away on January 16, 1963, at age 66. Then, a year after, on January 15, 1964, Nannie and John’s son, James Andrew Hughes, died at age 44 in Oak Hill Hospital. Finally, 81-year-old patriarch John A. Hughes took his last breath a few weeks later. The retired coal miner passed away in his Harlem Heights home at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, February 28, 1964, from “carcinoma of the abdomen” (stomach cancer), compounded by “bronchial asthma” and “fibrosis emphysema.”139 John Hughes’ funeral took place on Monday, March 2, 1964, at First Baptist Church in Harlem Heights, with the Rev. G.C. Gilbert and the Rev. Walter Harris officiating. Richie and Johnson Funeral Home in Beckley handled arrangements.140 The funeral home, established in 1955 by William O. Richie, Sr. and James F.

134 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Tazewell County, Virginia Marriages, 1940; Roll: 101168628. Accessed June 11, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

135 U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Town, Raleigh, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04443; Page: 30A; Enumeration District: 41-38. Accessed July 15, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

136 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Raleigh County, 1940. Accessed July 10, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=2679078.

137 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), April 21, 1944. www.newspaperarchives.com.

138 New River Gorge, “Community of Harlem Heights.”

139 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1966. Accessed July 10, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=745539&Type=Death.

140 Beckley Post-Herald and Register (WV), March 1, 1964. www.ancestry.com. 92

Johnson, Sr., is still in business. John A. Hughes rests alongside Fannie Eliza Ayres Hughes, his partner of over 40 years, in Harlem Heights Cemetery. The couple share a granite headstone.

Figures 43 & 44: John Hughes’ death certificate and obituary.

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15.6 Nannie E. Hughes (female, b. 1896 – d. 1963)

Headstone marking the graves of Nannie E. and John A. Hughes. Nannie Eloise Ayres (alternate spelling Ayers) Hughes was born on March 17, 1896, in Buckingham County, Virginia, to Daniel Vaden Ayres, Jr., and Eliza Wingfield Ayres. Both of Nannie’s parents were from Virginia.141 Her paternal grandparents, Daniel Vaden Ayres, Sr. (known as Vaden) and Lucinda Diggs Ayres, were born in antebellum Virginia, and therefore likely enslaved. In 1870, five years after the Civil War, farm laborer Vaden (age 24) and wife Lucinda (age 25) lived with their three sons, ages six, three, and one month, on a farm at Slate River District (a tributary of James River) in Buckingham County, Virginia. Ten years later, the couple owned a 25-acre farm on Slate River that included 20 tilled acres and five woodland acres.142 They now had seven children, including Nannie Hughes’ father, Daniel V. Ayres, Jr., who was eight years old in 1880.143 In 1892, Nannie Hughes’ parents, Daniel Ayres, Jr. (age 19) and Eliza Wingfield (age 16), got married in Buckingham County, Virginia. The couple initially rented farmland from Eliza’s widowed father, George Wingfield, who owned the adjacent farm.144 Daniel and Eliza quickly settled down to raise a family. They welcomed three children into the world by 1900— son Harry (born in 1893), daughter Nannie (born in 1896), and son Charlie (born in 1898). By 1910, Daniel and Eliza Ayres owned their own farm in Slate River District. Eliza reporting having given birth to 11 children, eight of which were living: son Harry (age 17), daughter Nannie E. (14), son Charles (12), son Edwin (10), daughter Sallie (7), daughter Edna (6),

141 WV Vital Research Records, Fayette County Deaths, 1963. Accessed July 15, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=1960227.

142 U.S. Agricultural Census, 1880; Census Place: Slate River, Buckingham, Virginia; Archive Collection Number: T1132; Roll: 21; Page: 5; Line: 8; Schedule Type: Agriculture. Accessed July 10, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

143 U.S. Census, 1880; Census Place: Buckingham, Virginia; Roll: 1357; Page: 529A; Enumeration District: 0381880. Accessed July 22, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

144 U.S. Census, 1900; Census Place: Slate River, Buckingham, Virginia; Page: 10; Enumeration District: 0062; FHL microfilm: 1241702. Accessed July 12, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 94 daughter Florence (3), and son Payton (8 months) Four of the Ayres’ children attended school, among them teen-aged daughter Nannie.145 Nannie Hughes’s paternal grandfather, Daniel Ayres, Sr., died on December 23, 1924, at age 91. His wife (Nannie’s grandmother) Lucinda passed away on December 14, 1930, at age 85. Burial took place at Mourners Valley Baptist Church Cemetery at Dillwyn in Buckingham County, Virginia.146

Figure 45: Death certificate for Daniel Vaden Ayres, Sr. Daniel Ayres, Jr., died on May 6, 1915, at age 42. He left behind a widow and six children below the age of 18. More than four decades later, his widow, Eliza Wingfield Ayres, passed away on April 9, 1961, in Buckingham County, Virginia, at around 85 years of age.147 She is buried at Ridgeway Baptist Church Cemetery in Centenary, Virginia.148

145 U.S. Census, 1910; Census Place: Slate River, Buckingham, Virginia; Roll: T624_1623; Page: 5A; Enumeration District: 0070; FHL microfilm: 1375636. Accessed July 12, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

146 Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/175753295/daniel-vaden-ayers; Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/159651503/lucinda-ayers. Accessed August 1, 2019.

147 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Buckingham County, Virginia Deaths, 1912-2014. Accessed August 1, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

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Figure 46: Death certificate for Daniel V. Ayres, Jr. Nannie Ayres likely remained with her family in Virginia for a few years after her father’s death. By 1920, she was apparently married and living with husband John A. Hughes at Big Four, a coal camp on Brown’s Creek in McDowell County, West Virginia. The couple had a seven-year-old daughter named Mary (born in 1912), and a 10-month-old son James (born in 1919).149 Surprisingly, while raising their two young children, and with a third (son Sterling) on the way, 38-year-old John A. Hughes and 25-year-old Nannie E. Ayres got married on May 7, 1921, at Keystone in McDowell County. According to their marriage license, neither the bride nor groom had been married before. If this is true, it suggests that their children, Mary and James, were born out of wedlock. While not a significant issue today, in 1921 “cohabitation” was considered disreputable (“living in sin”) and often illegal. Cohabitation “became legal around 1970 with the removal of statutory restraints such as false registration laws, which prevented unmarried couples from checking into a hotel, and customary restraints, such as the refusal of landlords to rent to unmarried couples.”150

148 Find A Grave Memorials, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/173390229. Accessed August 2, 2019.

149 Nannie Hughes is incorrectly listed as Mattie Hughes on Ancestry.com; U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Browns Creek, McDowell, West Virginia; Roll: T625_1960; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 60. Accessed July 2, 2019 www.ancestry.com. 150 The First Measured Century. Family “Cohabitating Couples.”

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Figure 47: Marriage license John Hughes & Nannie Ayers (Ayres). Although the date of John and Nannie Hughes’ legal union remains in question, their commitment to one another is not. They left McDowell County by the late 1920s and moved with their kids to Pemberton, a coal camp in the Winding Gulf coalfield near Sophia in Raleigh County.151 Nannie was a member of the Industrial Sewing Club there.152 The Hughes family then lived in Skelton a short time before moving to Winding Gulf, a coal camp on Winding Gulf creek in Raleigh County, where John worked as a coal loader. Nannie’s half-brother, George T. Wingfield and his wife Flossie, also lived at Winding Gulf with their family. In 1930, John and

151 Beckley Sunday Register (WV), January 13, 1929. www.ancestry.com.

152 Ibid. 97

Nannie Hughes had six children at home: daughter Mary (age 17), son James (11), son Sterling (8), son John (7), daughter Clara (5), and daughter Edith (18 months).153 Around 1935, the Hughes family moved again, this time to Lynwyn, a coal camp on Slab Fork in Raleigh County. Census data reveals seven individuals living in the Hughes household in 1940: John A. Hughes (age 57), Nannie Hughes (44), son Sterling Hughes (18), daughter Clara (or Clarice) Hughes (15), daughter Edith Mae Hughes (11), daughter Gladys Hughes (3), and Flossie Wingfield (2 months), listed as a daughter, but actually a niece. Infant Flossie’s mother, also named Flossie, was Nannie Hughes’s sister-in-law and the wife of her half-brother, George Titus Wingfield. Tragically, 40-year-old mother Flossie died on January 17, 1940, of “acute dilation of heart following childbirth.”154 The sad truth is that Nannie and John Hughes were taking care of their niece, who had tragically lost her mother about three months earlier, when the census worker arrived at their door on “Census Day” April 1, 1940.155 Following Flossie Wingfield’s death, Nannie and John Hughes’ 17-year-old son John moved in with his 49-year-old widowed uncle at the home George owned at Raleigh in Raleigh County. George Wingfield worked as a tracklayer in the mines there, while his nephew kept house.156

153 U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Slab Fork, Raleigh, West Virginia; Page: 29A; Enumeration District: 0012; FHL microfilm: 2342287. Accessed June 1, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

154 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Raleigh County, 1940. Accessed July 10, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=2679078.

155 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “Census Day” has been held on April 1 since 1930.

156 U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Town, Raleigh, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04443; Page: 30A; Enumeration District: 41-38, on www.ancestry.com. 98

Figure 48: Death certificate for Flossie Wingfield. Another conspicuously noteworthy event in Hughes family history was the June 25, 1940, marriage of Nannie and John’s 15-year-old daughter, Clarice (or Clara) Agnes Hughes, to a divorced 38-year-old man named (Reid) Roosevelt Christmas, at Tazewell in Pulaski County, Virginia.157 Clarice Hughes and Roosevelt Christmas lived in Winding Gulf, West Virginia, at the time, so why did they get married in Virginia? The logical answer is that the Commonwealth of Virginia, then and now, charges only a nominal fee for a marriage license, has no waiting period to marry after the issuance of a license, does not require witnesses to be present at the wedding, or for the betrothed couple to take a blood test. As a result of lenient marriage laws, generations of eloping West Virginia couples have taken literally the phrase, “Virginia is for Lovers!”

157 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Pulaski County, Virginia Marriages, 1940; Roll: 101168628. Accessed July 1, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 99

Figure 49: Marriage certificate for Clarice Hughes (age 15). As shocking as it may seem to modern sensibilities, it was legal under certain circumstances then (and remains legal today) for an underage 15-year-old girl like Clarice Hughes to wed a man more than twice her age. According to the Virginia Department of Health website, in 2019: “The minimum age for marriage in the Commonwealth of Virginia is sixteen (16) years for both parties; however, if either party is under eighteen (18), consent to the marriage must be given by the father, mother or legal guardian. This may be done in person by the parent or legal guardian before the person issuing the license or by written consent properly sworn to before a notary public. Special provisions are made in Virginia law to allow marriage for under age parties when the female is pregnant and for situations in which under age applicants have no parent or legal guardian.”158 Perhaps not surprisingly, Clarice Hughes’ marriage to Roosevelt Christmas ended in divorce. In 1947, Clarice married a coal miner named Albert Lewis at Minden in Fayette County, West Virginia. The couple remained together until Lewis passed away in 1972. Roosevelt Christmas also remarried. He died in 1986 in Louisa, Virginia. In April 1944, Nannie and John Hughes were residing at Winding Gulf when their 22- year-old son, Army Staff Sergeant Sterling Hughes, came home on a 15-day furlough from his army post at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.159 After leaving the military following World War II, Sterling

158 Virginia Department of Health, Marriage Requirements. Accessed June 29, 2019. http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/vital-records/marriage-requirements/.

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Hughes “raised cattle and sold milk, cheese, butter, eggs and homemade hot dinner rolls” from his farm at Harlem Heights.160 By the early 1950s, Sterling’s parents also relocated to Harlem Heights, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Nannie Eliza Ayres Hughes died at 6:30 a.m. on January 16, 1963, at the age of 66, while a patient at Laird Memorial Hospital in Montgomery, West Virginia. Cause of death was “arteriosclerotic heart disease.”161 Nannie’s husband, three sons and four daughters survived her, along with a large extended family that included four brothers and two half-brothers, three sisters, and nine grandchildren. Nannie’s visitation took place at Richie and Johnson Funeral Home in Beckley, and funeral services occurred on January 19, 1963, at First Baptist Church of Harlem Heights where she was a member, with the Rev. G. G. Gilbert presiding. Nannie E. Hughes rests beside her husband John in Harlem Heights Cemetery.162 A single granite headstone marks the couple’s gravesite.

Figures 50 & 51: Death certificate & obituary for Nannie Hughes.

159 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), April 21, 1944. www.newspaperarchives.com. 160 New River Gorge National River, “Community of Harlem Heights.”

161 WV Vital Research Records, Fayette County Deaths, 1963. Accessed July 15, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=1960227.

162 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), January 17, 1963. www.newspaperarchives.com. 101

Figure 52: Obituaries for James Hughes (died Jan. 17, 1964), Clarice Lewis (died Feb. 19, 1989), Sterling Hughes (died Sept. 20, 1995).

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Figure 53: Obituaries for John Hughes (died Sept. 16, 1998), Gladys Robinson (died Oct. 8, 1998), Edith McGhee (died Aug. 19, 2005), Louise Williams (died July 1, 2007).

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15.7 James A. Hughes (male, b. 1919 – d. 1964)

James A. Hughes’ grave marker. James Andrew Hughes was born to John and Nannie Hughes on March 21, 1919, at Big Four, a coal camp on Brown’s Creek in McDowell County, West Virginia.163 James’ mother, Nannie, was born in 1896 in Buckingham County, Virginia, to Daniel Ayres, Jr., and Eliza Wingfield Ayres, and father John was born in 1882 in Goochland County, Virginia, to Sterling Hughes and Clarissa G. Allen Hughes. In 1920, John and Nannie Hughes lived at Big Four, in McDowell County, with their seven-year-old daughter Mary and 10-month-old son James.164 The family left McDowell County by the late 1920s and relocated to Raleigh County, first to Pemberton, a coal camp near Sophia.165 Then they lived a short time in Skelton before moving to Winding Gulf, a coal camp on Slab Fork, where James’ father John worked loading coal.166 John and Nannie Hughes had six children at home in 1930: daughter Mary (age 17), son James (11), son Sterling (8), son John (7), daughter Clara (5), and daughter Edith (18 months). Around 1935, the family moved again to Lynwyn, another coal camp on Slab Fork. Three years later, 19-year-old James Hughes lived on his own at Winding Gulf and worked as a coal miner. On October 17, 1838, at Beckley, West Virginia, 19-year-old James Andrew Hughes

163 The National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for West Virginia, 10/16/1940 - 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 233. Accessed July 17, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

164 U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Browns Creek, McDowell, West Virginia; Roll: T625_1960; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 60. Accessed July 1, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

165 Beckley Sunday Register (WV), January 13, 1929. www.newspaperarchives.com.

166 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Pulaski County, Virginia Marriages, 1940; Roll: 101168628. Accessed July 1, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 104 married Hazel Elaine Hughes, also age 19, of Beckley.167 (Though they shared the same last name and both their families lived in McDowell County, it is undisclosed whether the couple were blood relatives.) Hazel was born at Venus in McDowell County, on March 1, 1919, to Benjamin Frank Hughes and Hattie Lipscomb Hughes.168 At her birth, Hazel’s father worked at U.S. Coal & Coke Company’s Gary No. 10 mine at Venus.169 B. F. Hughes and Hattie Lipscomb had wed 15 months earlier, on December 18, 1917, at Keystone.170 The family remained in McDowell County, where Benjamin worked in the mines and Hattie taught public school. The couple lived at Gary in 1930, and by then had three children: daughter Hazel (then age 11), daughter Eloise (10), and son Frank, Jr. (7). Three boarders also shared the rented residence.171

167 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Raleigh County, 1940. Accessed June 30, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcdetail.aspx?Id=11508859.

168 WV Vital Research Records, Births, McDowell County, 1919. Accessed June 30, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=2043786&Type=Birth.

169 DellaMea, Chris. “Southern WV: Venus.” Coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains. Accessed June 12, 2019. http://www.coalcampusa.com/sowv/flattop/venus/venus.htm; U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917- 1918, McDowell County, WV. www.ancestry.com.

170 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, McDowell County, 1917. Accessed July 1, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=11403180&Type=Marriage.

171 U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Adkin, McDowell, West Virginia; Roll: T625_1959; Page: 28A; Enumeration District: 431930; U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Adkin, McDowell, West Virginia; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 0002; FHL microfilm: 2342278. Accessed August 2, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 105

Figures 54 & 55: Marriage license for Hazel Hughes’ parents, and (right) for Hazel and James Hughes. Not long after their 1938 wedding in Beckley, James and Hazel Hughes relocated to Brooklyn, a Fayette County coal town in the New River Gorge, where their daughter Deloris was born on September 5, 1939.172 In 1940, the Hughes family lived on Slab Fork in Raleigh County. Hazel may have later given birth to two boys, John and Donald, although specific details are unknown. On October 16, 1940, 21-year-old James Andrew Hughes registered for military conscription as required under the Selective Service Act of 1940, which prepared the nation for entry into World War II and was the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. He stood 5’11” tall and weighed 168 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair, lived at Winding Gulf in Raleigh County, and worked as a coal miner at Winding Gulf Colleries.173 There is no evidence that James served

172 U.S. Census, 1940; Slab Fork, Raleigh, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04441; Page: 11B; Enumeration District: 41-16, on www.ancestry.com; U.S. Public Records Index, 1950-1993, Volume 2. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Accessed August 21, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

173 The National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for West Virginia, 10/16/1940-03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 233. Accessed August 18, 2019. www.ancestry.com. 106 in the military during World War II, possibly because he received a deferment as a coal miner engaged in essential war production work. James and Hazel Hughes’ marriage ultimately ended in divorce prior to 1949. Hazel remarried a man with the last name of Simms (or Sims) in 1953, and she died in Prince George’s County, Maryland, on September 16, 1993.174 John and Hazel Hughes’ daughter, Deloris (born in 1939), married a man with the surname of Carter. As of 2005, she lived in the Washington, D.C. area at District Heights, Maryland.175 After his first marriage ended in divorce, James Hughes found a life partner in Bertha Lou Wright. Bertha was born on February 9, 1923, at Gladstone in Nelson County, Virginia, the daughter of John Wright and Rena Spencer Wright. The Wrights had five children in 1930 and nine (5 boys, 4 girls) by 1940, ranging in age from an eight-month-old baby boy to 17-year-old daughter Bertha.176 For at least a decade in the 1930s to ‘40s, the Wright family lived at Brooklyn, a coal camp in Fayette County’s New River Gorge. James Hughes likely met Bertha Wright at Brooklyn, where he and then-wife Hazel resided in 1940. James Hughes and Bertha Wright became romantically involved sometime in the 1940s. The couple cohabitated at Brooklyn in Fayette County where they welcomed their first child, daughter Thressa Gay Hughes, on January 12, 1949. However, their joy turned to sorrow four days later when, at 3:00 a.m. on January 16, baby Thressa died from “suffocation by blankets.”177 (Her death would now be termed Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS.) The tragic accident occurred as the infant slept in her bed. Thressa Gay Hughes is buried in Coal Run Cemetery at Cunard in Fayette County. Dodd-Payne Funeral Home in Fayetteville handled arrangements for the Hughes family.178

174 U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007; U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 Accessed June 12, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

175 Charleston Gazette (WV), January 17, 1964. www.newspaperarchive.com.

176 U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Fayetteville, Fayette, West Virginia; Page: 26B; Enumeration District: 0013; FHL microfilm: 2342265; U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Fayetteville, Fayette, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627- 04401; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 10-15. Accessed August 12, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

177 WV Vital Research Records, Death Index, Fayette County 1949. Accessed July 22, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=41402&Type=Death.

178 Find A Grave, Thressa Faye Hughes. Accessed August 10, 2019. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/138679826.

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Figure 56: Death certificate for Thressa Gay Hughes. About a year after losing baby Thressa, James and Bertha welcomed a son named James Alexander Hughes into the world on February 2, 1950, in Brooklyn. Not long after his birth, the family left the state and relocated to Richmond, Virginia. The Hughes’ may have opted to leave the state in the midst of an economic downturn in the coal industry brought about by a combination of mine mechanization and lowered demand for coal after World War II. James and Bertha Hughes had at least three more children after James’ birth: daughter Gloria Mae was born October 11, 1952, in Richmond; son Ronald Lee was born May 20, 1955, in Richmond; daughter Brenda was born at an unknown date and location.179 As adults, Gloria Mae Hughes Dearing and her husband, Lonnie Dearing, resided in Oak Hill, West Virginia; Ronald Lee Hughes and his wife, Deborah, lived in Washington, D.C. and Roxboro, North Carolina; daughter Brenda Hughes Massey lived in Takoma, Washington and Roxboro, North Carolina; son Ronald Lee Hughes died on February 6, 2005, in North Carolina.180

179 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia, Birth Records, 1912-2016. Accessed August 12, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

180 Beckley Register Herald (WV), February 10, 2005. www.newspaperarchive.com.

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Figure 57: Ronald Lee Hughes’ 2005 obituary.

James Hughes and Bertha Wright relocated to Richmond with their children around 1951. Then, on December 8, 1957, the longtime cohabitating couple tied the knot. Their marriage certificate notes that James (then age 38) worked as a laborer, while Bertha (age 34) did not work. James was divorced, and Bertha had not been previously married.181 At the time of the nuptials, Bertha and James had at least three living children, and possibly four (depending on the birthdate of daughter Brenda). It is interesting to note that James’ parents, John and Nannie Hughes, had lived together for many years, with two children and one on the way, when they chose to get married.

181 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Marriages, 1957; Roll: 101168433. Accessed August 15, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

109

Figure 58: Marriage certificate for James Hughes & Bertha Wright. The Hughes’ family lived in Richmond, Virginia, for nearly a decade when they endured another horrible personal tragedy involving one of their children. On May 29, 1960, 10-year-old James Alexander Hughes accidentally drowned in the James River. The deadly mishap occurred around 3:00 p.m. at the “end of Maury Street” where the youth “fell into river” and died minutes later. A.D. Price Jr. Funeral Home, founded in 1894 as one of Richmond’s oldest funerary establishments for African Americans, handled arrangements for the family.182 James Alexander Hughes lies in eternal rest at Woodland Cemetery in Richmond.183

182 Alfred D. “A.D” Price Marker, SA-58 at MarkerHistory.com. Accessed august 18, 2019. http://www.markerhistory.com/alfred-dad-price-marker-sa-58/.

183 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Deaths, 1950. Accessed August 15, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

110

Figures 59 & 60: James Hughes’ death certificate, and (ca. 1940) A.D. Price, Jr. Funeral Home postcard.

111

Sometime in the late 1950s or early ‘60s, James and Bertha Hughes, along with children Donald, Ronnie, Gloria, and Brenda, returned to West Virginia and lived in Harlem Heights. Death visited the family again on January 15, 1964, when 45-year-old James Andrew Hughes of Harlem Heights died at Oak Hill Hospital, some 27 hours after being admitted. Death resulted from “acute pulmonary edema” due to “congenital heart failure” and “coronary schlerosis” (heart disease).184 Richie and Johnson Funeral Home of Beckley handled arrangements, and transferred James’ body to First Baptist Church in Harlem Heights one hour prior to services. Rev. Walter Harris officiated at the funeral.185 Left to grieve was his widow, Bertha (age 40), six children, and a large extended family.186

Figures 61 & 62: James Hughes’ death certificate and obituary. On December 18, 1965, nearly two years after losing husband James, Bertha Hughes (age 42) married Chester Arthur Terry (age 46) of Harlem Heights. Rev. Frank Robinson performed the wedding ceremony in Harlem Heights.187 The Terry family resided at Harper Heights in Raleigh County. Sadly, less than seven months later, on August 2, 1966, Chester Arthur Terry

184 Beckley Post-Herald (WV), January 16, 1964. www.newspaperarchive.com.

185 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1964. Accessed August 18, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=1363259.

186 Charleston Gazette (WV), January 17, 1964. www.newspaperarchives.com.

187 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Fayette County Marriages, 1965. Accessed August 18, 2019. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcdetail.aspx?Id=12077456. 112 died at the Beckley Veteran’s Administration Hospital at age 47 from high blood pressure and kidney disease.188

Figures 63 & 64: Arthur Terry’s death certificate and obituary. Following the untimely passing of husband Arthur, Bertha Terry became a widow for the second time with three children at home. Less than two years later, she wed for a third time (at age 45) to Darryl Arilus Christian (age 38). Rev. Walter N. Harris performed the marriage ceremony at Harlem Heights on April 8, 1968.189 Darryl Arilus Christian passed away in Oak Hill on October 10, 2001, at 72 years of age.190 Bertha Hughes Terry Christian died at a Charleston, West Virginia, hospital on August 3, 1997, at age 74 after a long illness.191 She was a member of numerous civic organizations, as

188 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), August 4, 1966. www.newspaperarchive.com; WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Raleigh County, 1966, http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=786454&Type=Death.

189 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Fayette County, 1968. Accessed August 15, 2019. www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcdetail.aspx?Id=12080029.

190 Ancestry.com. West Virginia, Marriages Index, 1968. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011; U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007. Accessed August 12, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

191 Beckley Register-Herald (WV), August 6, 1997. www.newspaperarchive.com.

113 well as the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic body with stated goals of charity, fraternity, education, and science that is open to both men and women.

Figure 65: Bertha (Wright Hughes Arthur) Christian’s obituary.

114

15.8 James Jackson (male, b. 1889 - d. 1960)

Veteran’s headstone marks the grave of James Jackson. James Jackson was born on September 5, 1899, in Newport News, Virginia, to parents Charles Jackson (born in Virginia about 1881) and Janie Cowan Jackson (born in North Carolina about 1881). At some point in the early 1900s, the Jackson family relocated to Fayette County, West Virginia.192 When the U.S. declared war on Germany in April 1917, Congress enacted the Selective Service Act that authorized the federal government to raise a national army through conscription. As a result, the Selective Service system held three draft registrations that led to 2.8 million draftees, plus about two million volunteers, for the armed services. The first draft registration took place on June 5, 1917, for all men between the ages of 21 and 30; the second, on June 5, 1918, registered those who turned 21 after June 5, 1917, with a supplemental registration on August 24, 1918, for those turning 21 years old after June 5, 1918. A third registration took place on September 12, 1918, for men age 18 through 45.193 Nineteen-year-old James Jackson participated in the third registration. He mined coal for Kanawha and Hocking Coal & Coke Company at the time, and lived with his family at Carbondale, a coal mining community near Smithers in Fayette County.194 James entered active duty with the U.S. Army on September 25, 1918.195

192 U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards; State: West Virginia; Registration County: Fayette; Roll: 1992386; Draft Board: 21917-1918. www.ancestry.com.

193 National Archives, “World War I Draft Registration Cards.”

194 World War I Draft Registration Cards; West Virginia; Fayette.

195 Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com.

115

The U.S. military was racially segregated at the time, and remained so until President Harry Truman integrated the armed forces in 1948. While still discriminatory, the army was far more progressive in race relations than other branches of the military during World War I. Blacks could not serve in the Marines, and could only hold limited and menial positions in the Navy and the Coast Guard. Very few African Americans served in combat units, and most were limited to labor battalions in non-combat support units commanded by white officers.196

Figure 66: James Jackson’s World War I Draft Registration Card. Private James Jackson served as a private in 13 Battalion, 51 Company of the 153d Depot Brigade, commanded by Colonel Elmer Lindsley. Organization of depot brigades consisted of numbered battalions of roughly 500 men, which in turn contained numbered companies of around 100 men each. Seventeen major depot brigades organized for World War I, with the role to receive and organize recruits, provide them with uniforms, equipment, and initial military training before the supplied troops shipped out to France to fight on the front lines. Depot brigades also received soldiers returning home at the end of the war to complete out-processing and discharges, which most likely, that was the primary role of the 153d Depot Brigade when James Jackson joined the unit at Camp Dix, New Jersey, in the final weeks of the war.197 About the time Jackson arrived at Camp Dix, a major outbreak of Spanish Flu hit the troops there. The influenza pandemic was the most severe in modern times. It spread worldwide during 1918-1919, and in the U.S. it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918.

196 Bryan, Jami L.“Fighting For Respect: African-American Soldiers in WWI.” Army Historical Foundation. January 20, 2015. https://armyhistory.org/fighting-for-respect-african-american-soldiers-in-wwi/

197 “152d Depot Brigade (United States).” In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Accessed July 12, 1019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/152d_Depot_Brigade_(United_States)#cite_note-14. 116

Estimates reveal that about 500 million people (one-third of the world’s population at the time) became infected with the virus, with the number of deaths estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.198 On September 28, 1918, the Camden Morning Post (New Jersey) reported on the Spanish Flu outbreak at Camp Dix.

September 28, 1918, Camden Morning Post report on Spanish Flu.

198 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, “1918 Pandemic (H1N1 Virus).” Accessed August 3, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic- h1n1.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Ffeatures%2F1918-flu-pandemic%2Findex.html. 117

James Jackson completed his military service and received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army on October 3, 1919. After mustering out he returned to Fayette County, where he worked as a motorman in the mines. He lived with his coal miner father, Charles, and mother, Janie, in Smithers, a small town in the upper Kanawha Valley on the Fayette-Kanawha county line. Also residing with the family in Smithers was Janie’s 34-year-old sister Bessie Cenfis (spelling?), who worked as a cook for a private family, and Bessie’s 9-year-old daughter, Lissie Cenfis.199 Jackson worked as a coal miner through the 1920s and 1930s. On March 2, 1934, he married Mary Lee Burgin at Fayetteville, West Virginia. However, the marriage did not last and the couple divorced by 1949.200 On September 1, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act that established the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. It required that all men between ages 18 to 65 register for the draft. The first registration required those ages 21- 36 to register on October 16, 1940. Between 1941 and 1943, there were six more registrations for ages 18-44, plus the “Old Man's Draft" for those between 45-64 years old.201 Over 10 million American men subsequently registered for the armed services between November 1940 and October 1946.202 As required, James Jackson registered for the draft on February 16, 1942, during the third registration for men 20-21 and 35-44 years; however, he did not serve. James stood 5’9” and weighed 192 pounds, with brown eyes, black hair, and dark brown complexion. The 42-year-old miner worked for West Virginia Coal & Coke Company and lived at Omar in Logan County.203 At age 49, James married his second wife, Eleanor McKinney (age 34), on August 5, 1949, at Montgomery in Fayette County. Eleanor was born around 1915 in Richmond, Virginia, to parents L. J. and Beatrice McKinney. James and Eleanor resided in Montgomery at the time of the marriage, and each was divorced. J. M. Jackson performed the ceremony.204 The Jacksons moved to Harlem Heights not long after buying a lot from Homeseekers Land Company for approximately $500 in 1954.205

199 U.S. Census 1920; Census Place: Falls, Fayette, West Virginia; Roll: T625_1947; Page: 16B; Enumeration District: 8. www.ancestry.com.

200 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Fayette County, 1934. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=12064123&Type=Marriage.

201 Fold3 by Ancestry. “WWII Draft Registration Cards.” Accessed July 30, 2019. https://www.fold3.com/title/816/wwii-draft-registration-cards/description.

202 Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. www.ancestry.com.

203 The National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for West Virginia, 10/16/1940 - 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 240. www.ancestry.com.

204 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Fayette County, 1949. www.wvculture.org.

205 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), September 2, 1954. www.newspaperarchives.com. 118

Regrettably, James Jackson had a brush with the law on May 26, 1957. As reported in the local newspaper, Beckley police arrested the 57-year-old Harlem Heights resident for driving “without registration and driving with an improper license.” Authorities scheduled his court hearing for the following evening, but the outcome is unknown.206 On May 9, 1960, 60-year-old James Jackson was pronounced dead on arrival at the Oak Hill Hospital emergency room from “acute coronary occlusion,” (heart attack). Time of death was listed as 8:45 a.m.207 Trent Funeral Home (now Trent and Durgan) in Beckley handled arrangements.208 The World War I veteran rests in Harlem Heights Cemetery; his grave is discernable for its upright marble marker provided by the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs. Georgia Marble Company fabricated Jackson’s headstone.209

Figures 67 & 68: James Jackson’s death certificate and obituary.

206 Beckley Post Herald (WV), May 27, 1957. www.ancestry.com.

207 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1960: http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=1328543&Type=Death.

208 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), September 10, 1960. www.newspaperarchives.com.

209 Applications for Headstones, compiled 01/01/1925 - 06/30/1970, documenting the period ca. 1776 - 1970 ARC: 596118. Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774–1985, Record Group 92. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. www.ancestry.com. 119

Figure 69: Application for marker on James Jackson’s grave. Eleanor McKinney Jackson outlived her late husband by many years. In 1975, she conveyed a deed to Pansy Walker for Lot 10, Harlem Heights 2, Section 3, for less than $100.210 Eleanor’s date and cause of death are unknown. She may be buried next to her husband at Harlem Heights Cemetery, but no marker identifies the gravesite so her final resting place remains a mystery.

James Jackson’s veteran’s headstone.

210 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), January 1, 1975. www.newspaperarchives.com. 120

15.9 Bessie McLemore (1889-1966)

Stake marker on Bessie McLemore’s grave. Bessie Lee Spinner McLemore was born on August 5, 1889, in Virginia, to Adeline and Garland Spinner. Bessie’s mother Adeline was born around 1860 to Judah (born around 1846) and James Spinner (born around 1848) in Bedford County, Virginia.211 Given their birth dates and residency in Virginia, it is probable that Adeline, Judah, and James were enslaved prior to the Civil War. By all accounts, Adeline Spinner led a difficult existence. After being married for 13 years, she became a widow sometime around 1890. In 1900, the 42-year-old ran a boarding house at 316 Second Avenue North in Roanoke, Virginia. She had given birth to 10 children by that time, of which six were alive and residing with her in Roanoke: daughter Eliza (age 18), daughter Bessie (age 14), son John (13), son Billie (11), son Charlie (10), and grandson John N. (3). According to census data, none of her six living offspring could read or write. Adeline also kept seven boarders (five males, two females) who ranged in age from 26 years to one year.212 Sometime after the turn of the twentieth century, Adeline moved with her children to the Brown’s Creek area of McDowell County, West Virginia, perhaps because she had family there. In 1910, the 52-year-old widow worked as a cook in a boarding house that she shared with her two coal miner sons, Charles (age 18) and William Spinner (21), as well as three male boarders (two coal miners, one railroad worker) and one female boarder with no occupation.213 The vagaries of life eventually caught up with 63-year-old Adeline Spinner on June 27, 1918, when she died from “apoplexy” (stroke) at Brown’s Creek in McDowell County.214

211 U.S. Census, 1880; Census Place: Charlemont, Bedford, Virginia; Roll: 1355; Page: 53B; Enumeration District: 014. www.ancestry.com.

212 U.S. Census, 1900; Roanoke Ward 5, Roanoke City, Virginia; Page: 8. www.ancestry.com.

213 U.S. Census, 1910; Census Place: Browns Creek, McDowell, West Virginia; Roll: T624_1686; Page: 15A; Enumeration District: 0076; FHL microfilm: 1375699. www.ancestry.com.

214 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, McDowell County, 1918: http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=4689324&Type=Death. 121

Little information exists about the early life of Adeline Spinner’s daughter, Bessie Lee. Aside from Bessie’s birth on August 5, 1889, the most significant documented life event was her July 10, 1948, marriage to Goldie McLemore, a 48-year-old coal miner from Ingram Branch, located near Loop Creek in Raleigh County. The couple wed at Raleigh in Raleigh County. Either by mistake or by design, Bessie’s birthdate on her marriage certificate is August 5th 1898 (making her age 49). She was actually born on August 5, 1889, meaning her true age was 59 years old. It was Goldie’s second marriage and Bessie’s first.215

Figure 70: Marriage license for Goldie & Bessie Spinner McLemore. In early 1951, a land deed transfer occurred from Homeseekers Land and Building Company to Goldie and Bessie McLemore for approximately $500 to purchase a lot in Harlem

215 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Raleigh County. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcdetail.aspx?Id=11520215. 122

Heights.216 The couple likely moved to the community shortly thereafter. Goldie McLemore, who had been ill for some time, died at his Harlem Heights residence just a year later, on May 5, 1952, at age 52.217 His body was taken to the home of wife Bessie’s niece, Mrs. Mabel Davis of Hilltop, a day before the burial, and to Harlem Heights Community Baptist Church prior to services. Goldie Roscoe McLemore’s funeral took place on Sunday, May 11, 1952, at the church, with Rev. H. Hill of Lochgelly officiating. Collins Funeral Home in Glen Jean handled the arrangements.218 Bessie continued to reside at the McLemore’s home in Harlem Heights, where she lived for nearly 14 years following her husband’s death. After a long illness, 76-year-old Bessie died at a local hospital on April 19, 1966. Funeral services took place at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, at Community Baptist Church in Harlem Heights with Rev. David Powell presiding.219 Ritchie and Johnson Funeral Home of Beckley handled arrangements. Bessie Lee Spinner McLemore rests beside her husband, Goldie Roscoe McLemore, in Harlem Heights Cemetery.

Figures 71 & 72: Bessie McLemore obituaries.

216 Beckley Post-Herald (WV), April 23, 1951. www.newspaperarchives.com.

217 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1952. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=1331792.

218 Beckley Post-Herald (WV), May 10, 1952. www.newspaperarchives.com.

219 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), April 20 and April 22, 1966. www.newspaperarchives.com. 123

15.10 Goldie McLemore (male, b. 1899 - d. 1952)

Stake marker on Goldie McLemore’s grave. Goldie Roscoe McLemore was born on December 25, 1899, at Powellton in Fayette County, West Virginia. His father, Austin McLemore, was born in March 1874 in North Carolina, and his mother, Emma Jane Featherstone McLemore, was born in March 1877 in Virginia. Eighteen-year-old Austin McLemore and 15-year-old Emma Jane Featherstone married in 1892, and they welcomed their son Goldie into the world seven years later.220 The McLemore’s moved to West Virginia around that time. In 1900 they lived at 234 Fourth Avenue in Montgomery, where Austin worked as a day laborer. The couple had two young boys at the time—Goldie and Howard.221 In 1917, the family relocated to Kanawha County. They lived at 816 Brooks Street in the capital city of Charleston, where Austin worked as a laborer and miner.222 Emma McLemore gave birth to daughter Bertha around 1905, followed by son Robert around 1910.223 Goldie McLemore lived with his family on Brooks Street in 1918, and worked as a clerk. When he registered for the military draft in 1918 near the end of World War I, as required under the Selective Service Act of 1917, he worked as a chauffeur for Armour Co.(?) in Charleston.224 There is no record of Goldie McLemore actually serving in the military.

220 U.S. Census, 1900; Census Place: Kanawha, Fayette, West Virginia; Page: 12; Enumeration District: 0014; FHL microfilm: 1241758. www.ancestry.com.

221 Ibid.

222 Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, Charleston, WV, 1917. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com.

223 U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Charleston Ward 12, Kanawha, West Virginia; Roll: T625_1958; Page: 9A; Enumeration District: 108. www.ancestry.com.

224 U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918; Registration State: West Virginia; Registration County: Kanawha; Roll: 1992382: www.ancestry.com. 124

Figure 73: Goldie McLemore’s 1918 military registration card. Thirty-nine-year-old Emma Jane McLemore resided at 816 Brooks Street in 1920 with sons Goldie (age 22) and Howard (age 18), daughter Bertha (14), and son Robert (10). According to census data, Emma Jane was divorced and head of the household. She could neither read nor write, and did not work. (Emma’s ex-husband Austin McLemore does not appear in any subsequent vital records searches or census data.) Goldie apparently supported the family by working as a truck driver or chauffeur, while his three younger siblings attended school.225 Two years later, Goldie and brother Howard were employed as packers at Charleston Milling & Produce Company in Charleston.226 On July 28, 1925, 25-year-old Goldie McLemore married 21-year-old Christine Oatneal, a Fayette County native who lived at Handley in eastern Kanawha County. The wedding took place in Charleston with C.H. Woody performing the ceremony.227 Less than a year after exchanging wedding vows Goldie apparently lived alone at 1302 Gardner Alley in Charleston, where he drove a truck for Kanawha Wholesale Grocery Company. Meanwhile, his younger brother and former housemate, Howard McLemore, resided at 411 Bradford Street and worked as an agent for Supreme Life & Casualty Company.228

225 U.S. Census, 1920; Charleston Ward 12, West Virginia. www.ancestry.com.

226 Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, Charleston, WV, 1922. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com.

227 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Kanawha County, 1925. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcdetail.aspx?Id=12582527. 228 Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, Charleston, WV, 1926. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com. 125

In April 1930, Goldie McLemore lived with his mother at 215½ Welch Street in Charleston. Emma Jane also shared her residence with son Howard, daughter Bertha (who had possibly married in 1923 and was recently divorced), adopted son Robert McLemore (age 18), and adopted daughter Roxie McLemore (age 25).229 Howard, who worked as a laborer at DuPont, appears to be the sole breadwinner in the household at the time.230 Meanwhile, Goldie’s estranged wife, Christine, worked as a domestic (and possibly lived) at the YWCA.231 On October 20, 1931, Goldie’s mother, Emma McLemore, died at age 50 after losing her battle against a “tonsular abcess” complicated by “septic bronchitis.” At the time of death, she lived at 540 North Rand Street in Charleston. Emma Jane Featherstone McLemore is buried in Charleston at Spring Hill Cemetery.232

Figure 74: Death certificate for Emma Jane McLemore. Goldie McLemore held a variety of jobs in the 1930s and 1940s. Christine returned to live with her husband at 608 McCormick Street in Charleston in 1932, when Goldie worked as a driver. Goldie’s younger sister, Bertha McLemore, resided with the couple and worked as an

229 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Kanawha County, 1923. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=12595480&Type=Marriage.

230 Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, Charleston, WV, 1930. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com.

231 Ibid.

232 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Kanawha County, 1931. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=1935119&Type=Death. 126 elevator operator.233 Goldie remained at McCormick Street in 1934, and he was a miner. His wife Christine did not live with him, but sister Bertha did. Meanwhile, brother Howard was married and lived with wife Jackie at 1414½ Virginia Street.234 Christine’s absence from the McLemore residence may indicate that her marriage to Goldie was in trouble. As it turned out, the couple did divorce within a few years. In 1946, Christine married Dearmon at McAlpin in Raleigh County.235

Figure 75: Marriage application for Christine Oatneal.

233 Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, Charleston, WV, 1932. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com.

234 U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Charleston, Kanawha, West Virginia; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: 0037; FHL microfilm: 2342271. www.ancestry.com.

235 WV Vital Records Index, Marriages, Raleigh County, 1946. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=11518583&Type=Marriage. 127

In 1940, Goldie McLemore lived at 1006 Washington Street in Charleston, and worked as a yardman at the upscale Daniel Boone Hotel on Capitol Street. Younger brother Howard worked as a janitor; he and wife Jacqueline then resided at 1333½ Elmwood Avenue on Charleston’s East End.236 On February 1, 1942, 42-year-old Goldie McLemore registered for the military draft in Charleston, as required under a series of registrations for all males age 18-65 as mandated by the Selective Service Act of 1940.237 He took part in the third registration for men 20-21 and 35-44 years old. The registration listed the Daniel Boone Hotel, an upscale hotel located at the corner of Washington and Capitol streets in downtown Charleston, as his place of employment. At the time, Goldie lived with his sister Bertha at 715 Bullitt Street in Charleston, where he remained until 1946. Goldie McLemore relocated in 1947 to Ingram Branch, near Loop Creek in Fayette County, most likely to work as a coal miner. Then, on July 10, 1948, the 48-year-old married Bessie Lee Spinner (listed as age 49 on their marriage license application, but she was actually 59) at Raleigh in Raleigh County, West Virginia. It was his second marriage and her first.238

236 Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. On www.ancestry.com

237 The National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for West Virginia, 10/16/1940 - 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 321: www.ancestry.com.

238 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Raleigh County, 1948. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcdetail.aspx?Id=11520215. 128

Figure 76: Marriage license for Goldie & Bessie McLemore. In early spring 1951, a land deed transfer took place from Homeseekers Land and Building Company to Goldie and Bessie McLemore for approximately $500 for purchase of a lot in Harlem Heights.239 The McLemore’s likely moved to the community not long afterward. Unfortunately, Goldie’s days were numbered. Following an extended illness, he died at his Harlem Heights residence at age 52. Death came at 5:00 a.m. on May 5, 1952, due to “uremia,” with complications from “chronic nephritis” (kidney disease) and hypertension (high blood pressure).240 His body was taken to the home of Bessie McLemore’s niece, Mrs. Mabel Davis of Hilltop, on Saturday afternoon May 10, and then moved to Harlem Heights Community Baptist Church prior to services. The funeral took place at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 11, 1952, at the

239 Beckley Post-Herald (WV), April 23, 1951. www.newspaperarchives.com.

240 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1952. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=1331792. 129 church, with Rev. H. Hill of Lochgelly officiating. Collins Funeral Home in Glen Jean handled the arrangements. Goldie Roscoe McLemore was buried at Harlem Heights Cemetery. His wife, Bessie, of Harlem Heights, survived him.241

Figures 77 & 78: Goldie McLemore’s death certificate and obituary. Goldie McLemore’s obituary states that he was survived by a daughter, Miss Bertha McLemore, of Lakin in Mason County, West Virginia. However, research reveals that Bertha was actually Goldie’s younger sister who had resided with him in Charleston years earlier. As it turns out, she was a patient at Lakin State Hospital when her brother passed away in 1952. Lakin State Hospital for the Colored Insane was established by the West Virginia Legislature in 1919 as an institution “for the care and cure of the mentally ill colored persons of this state.” The institution opened in February 1926, when 162 African American patients transferred from Weston State Hospital. Lakin integrated staff and patients following desegregation of the state’s mental health system in 1954. In 1974, the legislature changed the name to Lakin Hospital.242 Bertha McLemore died at Lakin on August 18, 1961. Her passing resulted from a “cerebro vascular accident” (stroke) due to “cerebro vascular disease.” She also suffered from “involutional melancholia,” which may be why she was sent to the hospital in the first place. The

241 Beckley Post-Herald (WV), May 10, 1952. www.newspaperarchives.com.

242 Sonis, Larry "Lakin Hospital." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 17 May 2013. Accessed June 15, 2019. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1287.

130 illness is defined as “agitated depression occurring at about the time of menopause that was formerly considered a distinct disorder but is now subsumed under major depressive disorder.”243 Bertha’s death certificate reveals few details about her life. She was born in Montgomery and lived in Charleston, West Virginia, worked as a domestic, and was divorced. (On July 1, 1923, at age 18, Bertha had married 21-year-old Robert Jackson in Charleston, with C.H. Woody performing the ceremony.)244 However, her parents’ names were unknown, as was her Social Security number. Bertha’s age at death was 53? [sic], which suggests a birth date of 1905-1910. This coincides with research on her family history, and confirms that Bertha and Goldie were indeed siblings. He was born in 1899, and thus no more than a 10-year age difference separated the pair.245 On August 19, 1961, a day after Bertha died, Lakin Hospital officials sent her body to West Virginia University Medical Center in Morgantown (termed “Removal” on county records) for medical research purposes.246 Did Bertha grant permission for her body to go to WVU? The answer is, probably not. As a 15-year patient of an institution dedicated to “the care and cure of the mentally ill colored persons of this state,” she would have had no legal right to make her own decisions. Moreover, it is unlikely that her family granted approval, since Goldie had died in 1952 and his widow Bessie (or other family members) probably had no contact with her. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Bertha McLemore wound up at WVU Medical Center because she was an unmarried and institutionalized black woman who died with no known living relatives.

Lakin State Hospital, demolished in 2006. (Point Pleasant Register)

243 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2019. https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/involutional%20melancholia.

244 WV Vital Research Records, Marriages, Kanawha County, 1923. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=12595480&Type=Marriage.

245 Ibid.

246 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Mason County, 1961. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=2128387&Type=Death. 131

Figure 79: Bertha McLemore’s death certificate.

132

15.11 Frank Moore (male, b. 1902 – d. 1960)

Stake marker at the grave of Frank Moore. Frank Moore was born in Martinsville, Virginia, on August 8, 1902, to an unknown mother and father Henry Moore. Few details exist about Frank’s life, except that he left his native Virginia prior to 1930, and married his spouse Nanny Elizabeth (unknown maiden name) sometime before 1940. The first mention of Frank Moore in the historical record comes in 1930, when the 28- year-old boarded with a man named Gilmer Greene at 491 Number Six Road at Raleigh, a coal camp in Raleigh County. Each one worked as a motorman in the local mine. Raleigh Coal and Coke Company opened Raleigh mine and camp in 1909. Miners like Moore and Greene wrested coal, branded by the company as "Black Knight," from the Beckley Seam. The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway located their train yard for the area at Raleigh (called Beckley Junction). After World War II, Raleigh Coal and Coke ran out of mineable reserves, and the company closed in 1950.247 Sometime prior to 1940, Frank Moore got married. In 1940, he and wife Elizabeth (age 36) resided in a rented home along State Route 61 at Chesapeake in Kanawha County. Frank reported having a third grade education, Elizabeth a fourth grade one. Frank made $1,100 in 1939 working for 40 weeks as a coal miner. The couple had no children.248 On February 1, 1942, 40-year-old Frank Moore registered for the military as required under the Selective Service Act of 1940. When he registered, Frank stood 5’5” tall and weighed 146 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair. He worked for Ames Mining Company, which

247 DellaMea, Chris. “Southern WV: Raleigh.” Coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains. Accessed June 12, 2019. http://www.coalcampusa.com/sowv/river/raleigh/raleigh.htm.

248 U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Loudon, Kanawha, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04416; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 20-103. www.ancestry.com. 133 operated a mine in the New River Gorge. At the time, Frank and Elizabeth resided at Fayetteville in Fayette County.249 Elizabeth and Frank Moore had three children: daughters Mary Frances Moore and Cleopatra Moore, and son Frank, Jr., all of whom lived in New York City as adults. Their birth dates remain a mystery. It is not known if/when any of the three married or had children, or if they remain alive in 2019.250 In 1954, Frank Moore became a plaintiff in a legal case against the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway that originated with a crippling injury suffered by his seven-year-old son, Frank, Jr. The senior Moore sued the C&O and the two locomotive engineers involved in the accident for $25,000 in damages when Frank Jr. was struck by a train walking home from school with his sister on January 14, 1944. Sadly, the mishap resulted in the amputation of Frank, Jr.’s leg at the knee. Floyd M. Sayre represented the Moore family in the lawsuit.251 The outcome of the filing is unknown.

Figures 80 & 81: Beckley newspaper articles from January 10, 1945.

249 The National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for West Virginia, 10/16/1940 - 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 339. www.ancestry.com.

250 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), June 3, 1960. www.newspaperarchives.com.

251 Beckley Post Herald (WV), January 10, 1945. www.newspaperarchives.com. 134

The Moore family more than likely relocated to Harlem Heights in the 1950s. Frank Moore died at his home there on May 30, 1960, at age 57.252 His death certificate lists the time of death at 5:30 a.m., the result of “decompensated cor pulmonale” (congestive heart failure in pulmonary disease) due to “chronic pulmonary emphysema” and “chronic bronchial asthma and silicosis.”253 It is not surprising that Moore, a former coal miner, suffered from chronic lung disease, or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). However, the inclusion of silicosis as a contributing factor in his death brings up a possible link to the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel, a hydroelectric power project undertaken in Fayette County during the 1930s. Hundreds, if not thousands, of workers got sick and died from acute silicosis, many of them poor and unidentified African Americans, after being knowingly exposed to pure silica rock dust during the drilling process.254 Records are scarce on many of the workers who contracted silicosis at Hawk’s Nest, but no verifiable evidence exists to suggest that Frank Moore, Sr., actually worked on the tunnel project. Moreover, pneumoconiosis (black lung disease) and silicosis often appear together in coal miners because coal seams lie between rock layers that contain silica. Frank Moore’s final rites occurred at the First Baptist Church in Harlem Heights at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 4, 1960. Trent Funeral Home in Beckley handled arrangements. He was survived by wife Nanny Elizabeth Moore, daughter Mary Frances Moore, daughter Cleopatra Moore, and son Frank Moore, Jr. (all of New York City); brother James Smith of East Beckley; and sister, Mrs. Archie Harris, of Fairmont. Frank Moore is interred in Harlem Heights Cemetery.255 No information is known on the death of Nanny Elizabeth Moore or the location of her grave.

252 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), June 3, 1960. www.newspaperarchives.com.

253 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1960. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=1330820.

254 Silicosis is an occupational lung disease contracted from breathing in dust that contains silica, a tiny crystal found in sand, rock, or mineral ores like quartz. Over time, silica can build up in lungs and breathing passages, which leads to scarring that makes breathing difficult and may cause death; WebMD, Lung Disease & Respiratory Health, “What is Silicosis?” Accessed June 25, 2019. https://www.webmd.com/lung/what-is-silicosis#1.

255 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1960. 135

Figures 82 & 83: Frank Moore’s death certificate and obituary.

136

15.12 Cheryl Robinson (female, b. 1957 – d. 1957)

Stake marker for Cheryl Robinson. Cheryl Annette Robinson was one of a set of twin girls born prematurely around 12:00 noon on March 11, 1957, to Gladys Hughes Robinson and Frank S. Robinson of Harlem Heights. Her weight was 2½ pounds at birth. Cheryl died at Oak Hill Hospital at 10:00 p.m.) about 10 hours after delivery, from “circulatory failure due to premature birth six month’s gestation.”256 Richie and Johnson Funeral Parlor in Beckley handled funeral arrangements. Cheryl Annette Robinson is buried in Harlem Heights Cemetery, where a metal stake marker delineates her final resting place.257

Figures 84 & 85: Cheryl Annette Robinson obituaries.

256 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1957. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=5370486.

257 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), March 12 & 13, 1957. www.newspaperarchives.com. 137

Figures 86 & 87: Death certificates for Cheryl Annette Robinson and Crystal Anita Robinson.

138

15.13 Crystal Robinson (female, b. 1957 – d. 1957)

Stake marker on the grave of Crystal Robinson. At around noon on March 11, 1957, twin girls Crystal Anita Robinson and Cheryl Annette Robinson were born prematurely at Oak Hill Hospital at six months gestation to Gladys Hughes Robinson (daughter of Nannie and Frank Hughes) and Frank S. Robinson of Harlem Heights. Cheryl died in the hospital about 10 hours after her birth.258 Cheryl’s twin, Crystal Anita Robinson, survived for 25 weeks before she succumbed of “bronchial viral pneumonia (pertussive type)” compounded by “secondary anemia,” likely a result of her premature birth. Death came at 10:00 a.m. on September 5, 1957, in Oak Hill Hospital.259 Richie and Johnson Funeral Parlor in Beckley handled arrangements.260 A metal stake marker identifies her grave in Harlem Heights Cemetery.

Figure 88: Obituary for 25-week-old Crystal Anita Robinson.

258 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1957. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=5370486.

259 Ibid. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=1208398.

260 Beckley Post Herald (WV), September 6, 1957. www.newspaperarchives.com. 139

15.14 Baby Dereick Robinson (male, b. 1966 – d. 1966)

Dereick Robinson’s grave marker. Dereick Robinson, infant son of Gladys Hughes Robinson and Frank S. Robinson of Harlem Heights, was stillborn at Oak Hill Hospital at 6:30 p.m. on August 30, 1966, after his mother went into premature labor. J. B. Thompson was the attending physician.261 Dereick was the third child of Gladys and Frank Robinson’s to die in infancy since 1957. Richie and Johnson Funeral Parlor in Beckley handled arrangements for the Robinson family.262 Dereick Robinson was survived by his parents and one brother, Frank Lamont Robinson. Dereick was preceded in death by his twin sisters, Cheryl Annette and Crystal Anita Robinson. Baby Dereick is at eternal rest in Harlem Heights Cemetery.

Figure 89: Obituary for stillborn baby Dereick Robinson. Gladys and Frank Robinson were parents of Cheryl Annette, Crystal Anita, and Dereick Robinson. Gladys was born August 10, 1930, to Nannie and John A. Hughes at Winding Gulf in Raleigh County, and Frank was born May 1, 1919, at Sanger in Fayette County, to Lula Brown Robinson and Charlie Robinson. They are buried in Blue Ridge Memorial Gardens at Prosperity

261 WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1966: http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=5372784&Type=Death.

262 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), August 31, 1966. www.newspaperarchives.com. 140 in Raleigh County.263 The Robinsons had two children live to adulthood. Frank Lamont Robinson was born July 30, 1962; he wed Genevieve F. Slee on December 23, 1987, in Columbus, Ohio; Marsha Angela Robinson was born December 19, 1968; she married Michael Wayne Brookins on April 22, 1994, in Arlington, Virginia.264 Frank S. Robinson also had a son, William Lester Butler (August 29, 1941 - June 30, 1995), from a previous marriage.265

Figures 90 & 91: Gladys & Frank Robinson obituaries.

263 Register-Herald (Beckley, WV), July 29, 1995. www.newspaperarchives.com.

264 Ohio Department of Health; Columbus, Ohio; Ohio Marriage Index, 1970 and 1972-2007. www.ancestry.com; Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Marriages, 1936-2014. www.ancestry.com.

265 Register-Herald, July 29, 1995; and U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007. www.ancestry.com. 141

15.15 Zeddie Whittaker (male, b. 1887 – d. 1953)

Zeddie Whittaker’s grave marker. Zeddie Whittaker was born in McDowell County, West Virginia, on January 12, 1887. His father, Henry Whittaker, was from Virginia. His mother, Mary Jane Meade Whittaker, was born around 1864 to a large family in Nelson County, Virginia. In 1880, 16-year-old Mary Jean Meade lived on a farm with her parents and nine siblings ranging in age from 23 to one year. The four oldest children, including Mary Jane, could neither read nor write. Two of her younger siblings attended school.266 Mary Jane Meade married Henry Whittaker sometime around 1885, and their son Zeddie came into the world on January 12, 1887. Henry Whittaker died when Zeddie still lived at home. In 1910, 19-year-old Zeddie resided with his widowed 49-year-old mother Mary Jane (head of household), brother Walter R. (age 24), brother Fred (age 17), and sister Martha (age 16) at Matoaka, a coal camp in Mercer County, West Virginia. Zeddie Whittaker and his two brothers were coal miners, while his sister attended school. According to census data, Zeddie could read but not write, whereas brother Fred could do neither.267 In 1920, Zeddie Whittaker (listed as age 29 and single) resided at Mabscott in Raleigh County with his 50-year-old coal miner (possibly half?) brother Garfield and his wife Sarah Whittaker (age 42), a laundress. Zeddie did not work, and had no listed occupation.268 Ten years later, Zeddie still had no job and continued to reside with Garfield and Sarah. Zeddie and Garfield’s mother, Mary Whittaker (age 74), also lived with the group at Wickham, a former coal camp (now an unincorporated community) near Crab Orchard in Raleigh County. It is named for coal operator Thomas Wickham.269

266 U.S. Census, 1880; Census Place: Massies, Nelson, Virginia; Roll: 1379; Page: 236C; Enumeration District: 113. www.ancestry.com.

267 U.S. Census, 1910; Census Place: Rock, Mercer, West Virginia; Roll: T624_1690; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 0140; FHL microfilm: 1375703. www.ancestry.com.

268 U.S. Census, 1920; Census Place: Mabscott, Raleigh, West Virginia; Roll: T625_1970; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 169. www.ancestry.com.

142

By 1940, Zeddie Whittaker lived at Anawalt in McDowell County with his brother-in- law Joe Pete Walker, a 57-year-old coal miner, Joe’s wife Belle Walker (age 50), and the couple’s son Andrew Walker, a 23-year-old miner.270 For the first time, the census enumeration documented that Zeddie was unable to work. Considering the fact that he had not held a job since at least 1920, it is possible that Zeddie suffered an injury in the mines, possibly while working at Matoaka in the 1910s. In November 1951, Zeddie Whittaker was confined to bed by illness at the Harlem Heights residence of his niece, Gladys Baker ,and her husband, the Rev. Carl Baker (who was also a coal miner).271 He died on February 2, 1953, at age 66. The cause of death was “coronary occlusion” (heart attack).272 At the time of his death, Zeddie lived with his niece in Harlem Heights. Zeddie Whittaker never married and apparently had no children. His final resting place is in Harlem Heights Cemetery.

Figure 92: Zeddie Whittaker’s death certificate.

269 U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Town, Raleigh, West Virginia; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 0022; FHL microfilm: 2342287 www.ancestry.com.

270 U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Adkin, McDowell, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04421; Page: 11A; Enumeration District: 24-11. www.ancestry.com.

271 Raleigh Register-Herald (Beckley, WV), November 18, 1951. www.newspaperarchives.com.

272 Beckley Post Herald (WV), February 6, 1953. www.ancestry.com; WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1953. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=2146942. 143

Figures 93 & 94: Zeddie Whittaker obituaries.

144

15.16 Charles H. Willis (male, b. 1882 – d. 1966)

Stake marker on the grave of Charles H. Willis. Charles Howard Willis was born on December 5, 1882, in Amherst County, Virginia, to parents Elisha B. (Lish) Willis (age 42) and Ella Willis (age 43). Elisha Willis was a day laborer. In 1900, Elisha and Ella lived in the town of Amherst in Amherst County with their large family which included: son Charles H. (age 16), daughter Willie A. (15), son Clifton (14), daughter Emma (8), son Bernard O. (9), son Homer G. (2), and grandson Clarence Branum (4). Clifton, Emma, and Bernard attended school, and could read and write. Elisha Willis could read and write according to the 1900 census, but there is no indication that Charles had attended school or was literate.273 As the oldest child in the family, Charles likely left school at an early age (if he attended at all) to help support his family. A later census record indicates that Charles H. Willis (and his wife Irene) had a fifth grade education.274 Interestingly, the Willis family is categorized as being Indian (Native American) on more than one early twentieth century public document (i.e., census data, military registration, death certificate). For example, on the death certificate for Charles H. Willis’s older brother Powell Willis (born 1881 – died 1923), his race was changed from White to Indian.275 Without DNA testing, it is impossible to ascertain the actual ethnicity of the Willis family.

273 U.S. Census, 1900; Census Place: Court House, Amherst, Virginia; Page: 6; Enumeration District: 0008; FHL microfilm: 1241699. www.ancestry.com.

274 U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Cabin Creek, Kanawha, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04412; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 20-11. www.ancestry.com.

275 Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Deaths, 1912-2014. www.ancestry.com.

145

Figure 95: Powell Willis’s race was changed from White to Indian on his death certificate.

On September 11, 1908, 26-year-old Charles H. Willis married 22-year-old Charlotte Irene Leftwich in Lynchburg, Virginia. Irene was born in 1886 in Bedford County, Virginia, the daughter of R. and Marie Leftwich. Not long after their wedding, Charles and Irene relocated to West Virginia in search of a better life. In 1910, the couple lived at Slab Fork in Raleigh County, where Charles worked as a coal miner in the Winding Gulf Field.276 In 1918, 36-year-old Charles registered for the military draft, as required under the Selective Service Act of 1917. He and Irene lived at Huntington in Cabell County, where Charles worked as a laborer for building contractor Henry Persun.277 Charles listed his race as Indian on his registration card.

276 Ancestry.com. Virginia, Select Marriages, Lynchburg, 1908. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. www.ancestry.com; U.S. Census, 1910; Census Place: Slab Fork, Raleigh, West Virginia; Roll: T624_1695; Page: 18B; Enumeration District: 0176; FHL microfilm: 1375708. www.ancestry.com.

277 Registration State: West Virginia; Registration County: Wayne; Roll: 1992488; Draft Board: 1. www.ancestry.com. 146

Figure 96: Charles Willis’s race is listed as Indian on his military registration card. The whereabouts of Charles and Irene Willis in the 1920s is unknown. However, in 1930 an African American couple named Charles and Irene Willis lived and worked for the family of 30-year-old lawyer Harry A. Hall and his 25-year-old spouse Florine Jones Hall at 859 Chester Road in the upscale Edgewood neighborhood on the West Side of Charleston. Harry Avis Hall, was the second of five children born to Anna and Grant P. Hall, a prominent local attorney and realtor who served as mayor of Charleston (1919-1923) and State Tax Commissioner (1923- 1930). Harry Hall graduated from Charleston High School in 1920 and attended Washington & Lee University prior to practicing law in Charleston.278 Charles Willis performed labor and wife Irene was a domestic servant for the Halls, who lived in the Craftsman-style main residence built around 1925. Meanwhile, Charles and Irene resided in a garage apartment at the rear of the property. (Both structures still stand in 2019.) The Halls left Charleston and moved to Tennessee by 1935, and then to Washington, D.C.279

278 Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, Charleston, WV, 1930-1934. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com.

279 U.S. Census,1920; Census Place: Charleston Ward 14, Kanawha, West Virginia; Roll: T625_1958; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 112; U.S. Census, 1930; Census Place: Charleston, Kanawha, West Virginia; Page: 5B; 147

Figure 97: Former Hall residence at 859 Chester Road, Charleston. (Googlemaps) By 1935, Charles and Irene Willis had moved to the vicinity of Boomer in Fayette County, a coal mining region between Smithers and Gauley Bridge, where Charles mined coal. Within a short time, the couple relocated to Hugheston, a coal town in eastern Kanawha County opposite the mouth of Paint Creek.280 Reporting an income of $707 in 1939, Charles Willis earned a meager sum (equal to about $13,000 in 2019 dollars) that fell below the poverty line. The 1940 census reveals that Irene did not work, while 57-year-old Charles, who had been unemployed for the previous 35 weeks, was searching for a job.281 The difficult financial situation they experienced was not unusual at the time. Thousands of miners were thrown out of work in the late 1920s and ‘30s as coal demand lagged behind pre-war levels. Fortunately, production began to climb in advance of U.S. entry into World War II. On April 27, 1942, 59-year-old Charles Willis registered for the military (but he did not serve), as required under the Selective Service Act of 1940. He participated in the Fourth Registration, often called the "old man's draft," because it registered men who were 45 to 64 years old.282 At the time, the Willis’ lived at Page in Fayette County, where Charles worked as a miner for Page Mining Company.283

Enumeration District: 0029; FHL microfilm: 2342271; U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia; Roll: m-t0627-00556; Page: 81B; Enumeration District: 1-104. www.ancestry.com.

280 U.S. Census, 1940; Census Place: Cabin Creek, Kanawha, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04412; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 20-11. www.ancestry.com.

281 Ibid.

282 Fold3 by Ancestry. “World War II Draft Registration Cards.”

283 The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of West Virginia; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System, 1926-1975; Record Group Number: 147; Series Number: M1937. www.ancestry.com. 148

Figure 98: World War II draft registration card for Charles Willis. Charles Howard Willis retired from the rigors of a coal miner’s life before 1950, at which time he and Irene relocated to Harlem Heights where they remained for the duration of their lives. The historical record yields little about the last two decades of Willis’s life, but the obituary reveals valuable information about his death. He passed away of “arteriosclerotic heart disease” (heart attack) on Thursday, February 10, 1966, while visiting DeLuxe Barber Shop at 310 Elizabeth Street just north of the Washington Street intersection on Charleston’s East End, about three blocks from the State Capitol.284 Willis’s death certificate lists his race as “Amer[ican] Indian.” The 83-year-old was in Charleston serving as an attaché for Thomas Eberly (T. E.) Myles, a Fayette County delegate to the West Virginia Legislature. The nature of Willis’s work for Myles is a mystery. Willis was survived by wife Irene, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Dodd- Payne Funeral Home in Fayetteville handled arrangements, and the funeral took place at New Testament Church in East Oak Hill where Charles was a member. Rev. Sam Belmont of Riverside conducted the services. Charles Howard Willis is interred in Harlem Heights Cemetery.285

284 Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, Charleston, WV, 1958. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com; WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, Kanawha County, 1966. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcdetail.aspx?Id=762116

149

Charles’ widow, Charlotte Irene Leftwich Willis, died on September 2, 1977, at age 91.286 She and Charles were together 58 years in life, so it is logical that they share a gravesite in death. However, Irene has no marker in Harlem Heights Cemetery, and her final resting place remains a mystery.

Figures 99 & 100: Charles Willis’ death certificate and obituary.

285 Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), February 11, 1966. www.newspaperarchives.com.

286 U.S. Social Security Administration. www.ancestry.com. 150

At the time of his death, Charles Willis served as an attaché for Thomas Eberly (T. E.) Myles, a Fayette County delegate to the West Virginia Legislature. Myles was born in Fayetteville, W.Va., in 1922, and a 1940 graduate of Fayetteville High School. He received his AB degree from W.Va. Tech and law degree from the WVU College of Law. Myles flew 33 combat missions as an aerial gunner in World War II and was a POW. Myles practiced law in Fayetteville and served in the House of Delegates as House majority leader. T. E. Myles passed away on August 3, 2013, in High Point, North Carolina, at age 90.287

“Myers Enters Race” article from Beckley Post Herald & Register, February 5, 1956.

287 Dodd-Payne Funeral Home. Accessed August 22, 2019. https://www.tributes.com/obituary/show/Thomas-E.- Tommy-Myles-96226687. 151

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Virginia Department of Health. “Marriage Requirements.” 2019. Accessed June 29, 2019. http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/vital-records/marriage-requirements/. WebMD, Lung Disease & Respiratory Health. “What is Silicosis?” Accessed June 25, 2019. https://www.webmd.com/lung/what-is-silicosis#1. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. “Awards and Decorations of U.S. Armed Forces.” Accessed June 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards and decorations of the United States Armed Forces. ______. “3rd Armored Division (United States).” Accessed June 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_Armored_Division_(United_States)#Spearhead. ______. “152d Depot Brigade (United States).” Accessed July 12, 1019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/152d_Depot_Brigade_(United_States)#cite_note-14.

Newspapers and Periodicals U.S. City Directories, Charleston, WV, 1917, 1922, 1926, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1958. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com. Anderson Herald Bulletin (Indiana), December 31, 1952. www.newspaperarchives.com. Beckley Post Herald (West Virginia), 1945, 1947, 1949-1953, 1957, 1964. www.newspaperarchives.com. Beckley Post-Herald & Register (WV), 1956, 1957, 1964. www.newspaperarchives.com. Beckley Register Herald (WV), 1963, 1990, 1992, 1997, 2005. www.newspaperarchives.com. Beckley Sunday Register (WV), January 13, 1929. www.newspaperarchives.com. Camden Morning Post (New Jersey), 1918. www.newspaperarchives.com. Charleston Daily Mail (WV), 1944, 1954. www.newspaperarchives.com. Charleston Gazette (WV), 1944, 1964. www.ancestry.com. Logansport Press (IN), December 31, 1952. www.newspaperarchives.com. Raleigh Register (Beckley, WV), 1944, 1946, 1949, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1966, 1969, 1975, 1995. www.newspaperarchives.com. Raleigh Register-Herald (Beckley, WV), 1951. www.newspaperarchives.com. Ancestry.com; U.S., School Yearbooks. School Name: Collins (WV) High School, 1957. Accessed August 10, 2019. www.ancestry.com. ______. School Name: Pemberton (NJ) High School, 1966. Accessed June 6, 2019. www.ancestry.com.

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Census Records U.S. Applications for Veteran’s Headstones. Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774–1985, Record Group 92. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. www.ancestry.com. U.S. Census, Agricultural Manuscript Census, 1880. www.ancestry.com. U.S. Census, Manuscript Census, 1880, 1900 – 1940. www.ancestry.com.

Maps TopoQuest.com. USGS, 7.5 Quad Maps, Fayetteville, Beckwith, Oak Hill, Thurmond Fayetteville. 1976. https://www.topoquest.com/. West Virginia, Fayette County, Assessor. “Interactive GIS Map: Fayette WV Parcel Viewer.” http://agdonline.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=40e83dc58c0e4b77b8ef8db 4b78edc58.

Military Records Fold3 by Ancestry. “WWII Draft Registration Cards” [database on-line]. https://www.fold3.com/title/816/wwii-draft-registration-cards/description. National Archives, Military Records, “World War I Draft Registration Cards” [database on-line]. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww1/draft-registration. National Archives, St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for West Virginia, 10/16/1940 - 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. National Archives, St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of West Virginia; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System, 1926-1975; Record Group Number: 147; Series Number: M1937 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. www.ancestry.com. U.S., National Archives. Military Records: World War I Draft Registration Cards [database on- line]. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww1/draft-registration. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. Provo, UT, USA. www.ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2005. www.ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. www.ancestry.com.

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Vital Records North Carolina, Rockingham County, Marriage Records, 1741-2011[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA. www.ancestry.com. Ohio Department of Health; Columbus, Ohio; Ohio Marriage Index, 1970 and 1972-2007. [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. Ohio, Perry County Marriage Records, 1774-1993 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. www.ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. www.ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Birth Records, 1912-2016 [database on- line]. www.ancestry.com. Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Deaths, 1912-2014 [database on- line]. www.ancestry.com. Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Marriages, 1940; Roll: 101168628 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Marriages, 1936-2014; Roll: 101176679 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia Marriages, 1957; Roll: 101168433 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. Virginia, Goochland County, Select Marriages, 1785-1940. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. Virginia, Select Marriages, 1785-1940. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. West Virginia, Deaths Index, 1853-1973. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. West Virginia, Marriages Index, 1968. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011 [database on-line]. www.ancestry.com. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Births, Fayette County, 1950. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Births, McDowell County, 1919. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Deaths, Fayette County, 1944, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1966. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Deaths, Kanawha County, 1931, 1966. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx.

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West Virginia Vital Research Records, Deaths, Mason County, 1961. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. WV Vital Research Records, Deaths, McDowell County, 1918. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Deaths, Raleigh County, 1940, 1966. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Deaths, Raleigh County, 1966. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Marriages, Fayette County, 1934, 1949, 1965, 1968. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Marriages, Kanawha County, 1923, 1925. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Marriages, McDowell County, 1917, 1921. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx. West Virginia Vital Research Records, Marriages, Raleigh County, 1940, 1946, 1948. http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx.

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