Audio
Oral History Project - Whittington, John Luther 1980
Transcript
Interview NRGNPP 006
File NRGNPP 006-T
TAPE SIX
|
Mr. John Luther ' 'Bud" Whittington |
Interviewer : |
|
|
|
Paul J. Nyden |
|
|
|
Beckley, W. Va. |
25801 |
September 20, 1980
PN: Let me start off by asking you what year you were born, and where you lived when you were growing up.
JLW: Well, I was born in Surry County, North Carolina, around Pilot Mountain. And, October the 17th, 1895. And, when I was five years old, times got hard down there. My daddy had some friends that had come over into West Virginia and Virginia, and they'd come back on a visit and told such fiery tales about how people could make money over there on the New River. And there was lead mines across over there in Virginia.
And he took out over there and got him a job at that lead mines.
PN: What town was that?
JLW: Oh, it was about 1899 or 1900.
PN: What was the town that the lead mine was in? Where was it located?
JLW: In Carroll County, just down river, just a little ways from Ivanhoe. And we lived over there for a couple of years, and he got lead—poisoned, working at that, where they taking the lead out of that rocks and stuff.
They had a big blast furnace there, and they'd haul this here stuff out of there and pour It In a bin up there, and had a big furnace there, and it'd heat it, and the lead would run out of them rocks, just like water, pretty near. And it would run into a bin there. A they had in a big building there that was, they had sand / layers in the bottom there. And they made little places all along, clean out places there, and they'd have, they call them "old sow and her pigs They'd run this lead into chunks, about that long, about that wide; they'd be about that deep [indicating, with his hands, pieces about 12" x 6" x And they'd run it down along that deep, and they'd get them pigs filled in there, and they'd put in a couple of hours in cleaning it out. And hauling it out in wheelbarrows and stacking it up. And later they'd load it into box— cars and ship it on the railroad somewhere. And working around that lead, he got sick. And a man come from West Virginia, and he was wanting coal miners. And he's telling them about what they can make; down there about a dollar and a quarter a day was big money, you know, back them days.
PN: What were they making at the lead mine?
JLW: They just get that stuff out of them rocks there, and run it into , they called it pig iron, little things, 15 pounds apiece.
PN: How much money would your father make a day there?
JLW: About a dollar and a quarter a day.
PN: Then he could make more money in a coal mine?
JLW: Oh yes. He could make more money in the coal mine in a week than he could there in a month.
PN: Really?
JLW: Yea.
PN: Wow. What would they pay him once he came up to West Virginia?
JLW: We come to Powell ton, you know, on Armstrong Creek in Kanawha
County. We moved from there to Powell ton and went to work in the mines.
And he worked in the mines until he died. It's all he ever done any more after he started. I never got started in the mines until 1902,
between two and three; I was between seven and eight years old. And a there fellow come down around on Kanawha River telling big tales about how good mining was, how much money they could make on New River. And he wanted people to come to Thayer down here, and work in the mines. And my daddy come up here, and we come and moved up to Thayer, and went to work in the mines.
PN:In 1903?
JLW: About 1903, or something like that. And after, you know, once we got up here, back them days, you know, men had to carry picks and shovels and augers and tamp bars and needles and things like that.
PN: Tamp boards?
JLW: To work in the mines with, you know; he had to furnish all, every— thing. And he wanted me to go with him to help him carry his tools up, up on the mountain to the mines. So I went up there with him, help him carry it up to the mine, and took them into the shop there to get them sharpened and worked over so they'd be in good shape to work with. And the old boss come around, and got to picking at me, and he asked me, he said: ' 'How would you like to go to work in the mines. ' t "Well, " I said, don't know. I never been in them yet. And I said, t 'I believe I 'd like it. Anyhow, 1 'd like the money 1 can make at it." He said, “I need a trapper.” And I asked him, I said, ”What's a trapper?" "Well, " he said, “ in the mines,” he said, “we have trap doors to regulate the air, keep the air going around in the mines.” And he said, "We have to have trappers to watch them doors. When they see a driver coming, with a mule and a car, why, they open the door and let him through and go ahead, and keep the door, shut the door back after him.” And he said, "When he comes back, you open the other way, with the empty car.” He said, “You're right there to open and close it when he goes through.” And 1 got started working in the mines right there, and I was at seven years old.
PN: At Thayer?
JLW: Yea, old Thayer there. And I worked there till, we stayed at Thayer,
I guess, about three years. And I don't know what happened, they, something happened that they couldn't sell their coal, or something or the other, and they got down to about one day a week. And some of them said over at Layland , there's a they called it Gentry then.
PN: They called Lay land Gentry?
JLW : Uh, huh. It's Layland now, but it used to be called Gentry. They named it after the old superintendent; I think he was a manager of it or something. And we moved over there, and we stayed over there until 1908. And my mother got sick, and we had to take her to the hospital; and when they take her to the hospital, she never did come back. She died; they had to take her down to Shelter Arms Hospital down there on the Kanawha River there, between, I believe it was between Montgomery and Charleston, along the river there.
PN: What was the name of the hospital?
JLW: Shelter and Arms.
PN: Shelter Arms?
JLW: Shelter and Arms, Shelter Arms, or something like that. And I think it's maybe still a hospital there yet, maybe, I don't know. I ain't been down there for a long time.
PN: When did you move away, or where did you move to when you moved away from Layland, back to the New River?
JLW: No, we moved over here to Stanaford.
PN: Stanaford?
JLW: It's been called Stanaford 3 lately, but it used to be called Riley. The post office was Riley, and people got it, all the people working there, they just said they lived at Riley. Up there was Stanaford 3 mines was, and they hauled the coal from up there with a dinky down, going from here out through that way, you cross the old tram road. They tore that track up, and it's, they got a little kind of a, oh just a, not a very good road that people goes from down there around Standford 4 and back up, up and down along there, there ain't much of a road there anymore. But there ain't no tram road there any more either.
PN: What was a dinky, a little car that would go along a wire?
JLW: They used a dinky with a, it's just looked like a, built the same shape of a locomotive, an engine, only it's a whole lot smaller. And it would take the coal down around the side of the mountain there, dump it; and they'd run it right straight down the mountain there to Piney, Piney River there to the railroad, and put it in the railroad cars. They run a lot of coal there. And we finally got down there at Terry, and Royal. We worked at Royal for a while.
PN: What year was that?
JLW: Oh, it must have been, I worked at Royal when I was about 18 years old. It'd have been around 19 and what, 14 or 15.
PN: When you lived in Thayer, around 1903, 1904, do you remember what the town looked like then?
JLW: We lived on top of the mountain, and the only time we'd come down off of the mountain was to, women had to come down to the store down
there on, right by the side of the C & O Railroad at Thayer. And people often, they had, I guess, a hundred or more families lived on top of the mountain around close to the mines. And they all had to come down to the, off of the mountain to go to the store to get something to eat. They had a truck that they'd run up and down the mountain to haul the men up the hill and down from work.
PN: A truck?
JLW: Yea, they called it “the truck”. And it was about that high [indicating about 12 inches with his hands] in the up the hill place. In other words, it, going up the, steep as the mountain was, the truck, the bed of the truck was level. It was about, it'd be seven or eight feet high on that lower end, and only about a foot high on the upper end, and that give you a level place to ride on, coming up.
PN: What did you go up on, railroad tracks?
JLW: They had, they had a narrow—gauge track up through there to run the monitors on to haul the coal down the hill.
PN: They had a truck that went up on the monitor track then?
JLW: No, they had a special track for that truck. It was off, around by
the side of the monitor track. It, I reckon they made it separate because women and children rode that truck up and down the hill all the time. And that way, it didn't interfere with the mines any way.
PN: How many, were there houses also along the bottom?
JLW: They had a bunch of houses on the bottom.
PN: How many were there?
JLW: Oh, I don't know how many it was, must have had a hundred down there, I guess.
PN: So, there were about a hundred on the top and another hundred on the bottom?
JLW: Yea about like that.
PN: What did the houses look like?
JLW: Oh, them down at the bottom there at Thayer was nice—looking
houses. But them on top of the hill, they was more of a Jenny Lind style.
PN: On the top?
JLW: On the top. Just anywhere they could find a flat place, they'd chop the trees down, and build a house.
PN: The houses along the bottom were better built?
JLW: Oh yes.
PN: What did they look like. Or, how many rooms did they have?
JLW: Oh, there's some of them looked like they had six, eight rooms. Most of the houses on top of the hill just were about four rooms. And on they was built more/ Jenny Lind style. They'd take boards, widen it, board ‘em up that—a—way, and then, two boards going together, they'd put about a four—inch strip over the crack, and it didn't cost so much to build them.
PN: And the boards in the houses, they were about two feet wide, you
were saying?
JLW: The boards in the houses?
PN: Yea, about two feet?
JLW: No, they, 12 to 14 inches wide.
PN: When you lived in the Jenny Lind house on the top of the hill, what
did you use each of the rooms for?
JLW: Well, they'd have generally about three bedrooms, and a kitchen and dining room. And they about five rooms to them, and an outside toilet. You never heard tell of a bathroom; if you wanted to take a bath, you'd take a washing tub and get you some water and take a bath.
PN: Where did you get the water from?
JLW: You'd get a well—digger to come in there and drill wells. And they'd put a pump in it, so you could get the water out.
PN: Did you have a pump in the back yard?
JLW: They'd put a pump, drill a well out, oh, every, every, oh every two or three hundred feet, they'd dig wells, so people wouldn't have so far to carry their water.
PN: Let me ask you about the furniture in the different rooms. In the kitchen, what would you have in your kitchen?
JLW: You'd have a little, put some boards up in the loft there to, right over the petition, so they'd have a good foundation under it. And way up next to the top of the room, why, they'd build a chimney from there up, let it go, stick out up the top of the house. And you put your stove pipe up in the ell—point, run it into, run it into that chimney, they called it.
PN: Was that a wood stove?
JLW: No, a coal stove. Yea, most of them, they'd use coal.
PN: Yea, what else did you have in the kitchen?
JLW: Well, you'd put in whatever you had, a table. Most people had a cupboard, or something like that, to keep their dishes in, things. What they didn't, some of them would have closets in them to, little room in the corner somewhere there to store their food stuff in, try to keep the rats out of it, eating it up before they got to it.
PN: What did you have in the dining room, a table and chairs?
JLW: Table and chairs, about all.
PN: And the other three rooms would be bedrooms?
JLW: Uh huh.
PN: Did you buy most of your food at the company store, or did you raise some of it.
JIN: They raised what they could. And what they couldn't raise, they had to buy at the company store.
PN: What types of things did you raise?
JLW: Oh, potatoes, and beans, and corn, and punkins, just like most farmers would raise.
PN: Did you have any animals?
JLW: Well, back them days, you could keep about all the chickens you wanted, but they [the coal company] didn't care nothing much about your keeping a pig, unless you would fix you a pen, and pen it up, and it wouldn't bother nobody.
PN: So most of the miners would only have chickens?
JLW: Chickens, and some of them had em a cow. You could let, just in the mountains, you know, you could let your cow run loose. And he wouldn't bother nobody.
PN: But if you had a pig, they wanted you to make a pen for him?
JLW: If you had a pig, you had to build you a pen, so it wouldn't root up nobody else's ground.
PN: Back then, in 1903 and 1904, what did you do for entertainment, or fun?
JLW: Well, they'd, there just wasn't much fun to be had [laughs]. Now down at Thayer, when we lived down there, they had a saloon down there at the bottom of the hill. And the fellows would go down there and get
'em a quart or a pint, whatever they could spare money to buy it with. And a bunch of em get out and sit around and play cards, to entertain their selves.
PN: When would they do that? Every night, or just on the weekends?
JLW: Just of the evenings and Saturday nights and Sundays. There wasn't no churches much at that time.
PN: If somebody wanted to go to church, where would they go?
JLW: Sometimes they'd have to leave, leave home and leave the camp what they was in. And some of the camps, after they got started pretty well, they'd build em a school house. And I don 't know, some of them claimed that the companies would donate a little money towards hiring teachers for the school. But back them days, the county didn't furnish no schools around the coal camps.
PN: Was there a schoolhouse in Thayer when you moved there?
JLW: Yea.
PN: But there were no churches?
JLW: No, they'd use the schoolhouse to have prayer meeting, and once in a while, a preacher would come in and preach 'em a sermon.
PN: When were the prayer meetings? During the week or on Sunday?
JLW: Well, they'd have them Sunday, and maybe one night a week, about the middle of the week.
PN: You were talking about card games. What types of card games did miners usually play?
JLW: Oh, setback, pinochle, and just whatever they knowed how to play .
PN: Did they play poker ever?
JLW: Yea, they played poker.
PN: Did people usually bet on it?
JLW: Oh yea, they'd, playing poker they'd a, sometimes a fellow' d win much as a dollar in a whole evening 's playing. Maybe play a half a day on Sunday, and he'd either lose or win —— one, you know; hardly ever more than a dollar changed hands. Cause they just didn't have it. When he lost his money, he had to get up and leave.
PN: When you lived in Thayer, were there many Black miners that lived there. Or were they all white?
JLW: I don't think there was many at that time down there. A few' d come up, come up the mountain; there was no colored people on top of the mountain at that time.
PN: How about immigrants from Europe, like Hungarians, or Italians, or Polish people?
JLW: Now, Layland had a lot of them. But over there at Thayer there was no, I don't know that they, they just didn't have no foreigners over there.
PN: Around Thayer?
JLW: No, I don't remember seeing one while I was over there, when we lived at Thayer.
PN: You were talking before that the houses at the bottom, or in the bottom land, were better than the ones at the top of the mountain. %at, were there any differences in the people that lived in the top and the bottom? How could you move to the bottom? Or what was the reason that you lived in one place, as opposed to the other?
JLW: Well, the a, at the bottom there, the superintendent and the general manager and bookkeepers and store clerks and others like that, they lived at the bottom. And they had a whole lot better houses than the coal miners did. Even them, the few miners that lived down at the bottom, they didn't have as good a houses as the outside employees had.
PN: What was the company that owned that town then?
JLW: At Thayer?
PN: Yea.
JLW: Ephraim Creek Coal and Coke Company. And I don't know where they got that "coke company" in it, because I never seen a coke oven down…. They had coke ovens at that time around down on Kanawha River, down there at Cabin Creek Junction, and across the river from Cabin Creek, over there on the K & M side, they had coke ovens down there. But they wasn't none up around Thayer. Well, in fact, I reckon that they just didn't have the ground for em; the river went down through there and then the railroad there on the bank of the river. And they just wasn't nowhere left for to build coke ovens, I reckon's the reason they didn't have 'em.
PN: They had some up at Sewell, didn't they?
JLW: Sewell; I think that's about as far up as they come.
PN: Did you, you lived in Thayer even later, do you remember any sports teams or baseball teams that the miners would have?
JLW: No, I don't remember them having any ball teams. Only the kids were playing around the schoolyards, and they played a little ball.
PN: But there weren't any, back at that time there weren't any organized baseball leagues?
JLW: No, I never seen any.
PN: Were there any later, when you lived at Terry?
JLW: No, the, Terry 1 don 't reckon ever had enough players to play ball, and there wasn't no place down down there for them to play anyway, right on the bank of the river. You could stand on the store porch, and throw a rock in the river.
PN: Were there any roads, in Thayer or Terry, were there any roads that went through the town, or dirt paths, or what?
JLW: Yea, they had a road that you could go from McCreery down to Terry.
And if you want to, you could go on down, and go plumb on down to the old Gwynn place. There were two brothers owned property down there, the
Gwynns. One of them was Louis Gwynn, he was a, he was a good carpenter. He done the carpenter work in that Terry mines. And Loomis, his brother, lived on down on down the river about two miles below Louis. I never knowed of him working any. He just laid, he had a pretty good farm down there on the banks of the river and a lot of girls and boys there to work it with. And he just depend on farming. And I guess he made a better living than most of them did that was working in the mines.
PN: What town was that, that he lived in?
JLW: Oh, about 1904, 1905?
PN: What town was that?
JLW: Huh?
PN: What town, was that Prince?
JLW: No, it was down the river below Prince. It was between Prince and Thayer . In fact, it was down, it's down there across, Loomis lived right straight across the river from McKendree Hospital. The only hospital there vas from Thurmond up, between Thurmond and Hinton, I reckon, was that hospital there. It was built on one of them benches on the side of the mountain.
PN: How did you go from town to town? If you wanted to visit somebody in another town, how would you go?
JLW: Well, there's, according to, some people had a horse or a mule they'd ride. Others had to go on foot.
PN: Did the train bring you?
JLW: You could go up and down the river. There was a train went down just a little before dark; and there's a train went up early of a morning, I believe it was called Number Four. And Number Two went up along about six or seven o' clock of a night. And they called them "fast trains"; they didn't stop, only just at certain places. And then about the middle of the day, there at Thayer, about middle of the day, two trains, passenger trains, they stopped at every station; and one of them was, I believe it was Thirteen a 'going down, Thirteen 'd go down; and Fourteen would come up.
PN: Cars?
JLW: The number of the train. That's what they was called —— Thirteen and Fourteen. Just one went each way. And they'd generally pass each other somewhere right around, from around between Quinnimont and Thurmond. There was a double track, you know; they had a double track down on the New River.
PN: What is the first memory you have of the United Mine Workers?
JLW: 1902.
PN: Maybe you could talk a little bit about that. How active was the union then?
JLW: Well, down along Kanawha River, they had a pretty strong union down there. But up in the mountains, along New River, they didn't get the union started in there until, oh, I done got old enough to work in the mines, and I was loading coal, braking on the motor, and one thing and another.
PN: What year was that?
JLW: It must have been somewhere in the teens.
PN: Is when the union first came into New River?
JLW: Yea.
PN: Why, would you say, it was stronger in a place like the mines up along the Kanawha River, and not as strong in the towns along the New River? What was the reason for that?
JLW: Well, I don't know. Unless it was, they just opened up earlier, and had more time to build up. Down around, well, you might say from Charleston up the river, there was several mines along the river there, on the Kanawha River, and they, they worked the mines and got the coal out, and they'd run their coal through screens and get the dust out of it and small coal out of it. And they'd put it in the coke ovens and make coke out of it. And then the coal that they put in the railroad cars and shipped it was big chunks. They'd run It through over screens and get all the fine, small chunks.
PN: And make coke out of the small chunks and then ship the big ones?
JLW: Yea.
PN: Where did they ship the big ones to?
JLW: I don't know. They'd ship it off out, probably out west somewhere.
PN: For steel mills, or for heating?
JLW: I don't know what they done with it. When people were buying coal to burn, you know, the lump coal would bring a while lot better price than the fine stuff.
PN: Was the union broken in 1922, during the big strike?
JLW: Well, it was. I don't know whether it got plumb broke or not, but they gave it an awful beating.
PN: When did it come back then?
JLW: Generally, I don't know whether I was right or wrong, but the way it looked to me like there was so much meanness a going on around when they didn't have no union. And the coal companies just looked like that they'd let ‘em have the union to keep 'em quiet and work, so they'd work every day. And they got organized around, and they used to get a better class of men working in the mines.
PN: With the union?
JLW: Having the union.
PN: Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you meant by the “meanness" that was going on.
JLW: There was a lot of places back in them days, where they had Baldwin—Felts detectives. The company would hire them, keep them on the job to keep peace. And instead of keeping peace, they just started meanness a 'going on, because some coal miners get up on the side of the hill, high—powered rifles. And he'd kill him two or three of them Baldwin men before they'd know he was there [laughs].
PN: Did they have the Baldwin—Felts then in Terry and Thayer and the different towns there?
JLW: Yea, they had them all over the country at one time down there. Down along the Kanawha River there, they had a lot of them. I worked along in some of the mines down along the river there for, they'd have two and three they'd call them detectives at each mines to look after the camp. Then even at Layland there, one time that I remember, they had, they had two they wasn't Baldwin Felts men, but they was company—paid . The company paid them, run, run 'em over the payroll just like they was a 'working in the mines. And they'd, did you ever hear of that fellow Payne. He used to be a head man of the Baldwin—Felts detectives. His name was Payne. He was about six foot and, oh, eight or ten inches; he was an awful big man, but he wasn't fat. He was poor and skinny. He's just a big man, that's all. And him and John Kaylor, John Kaylor was a mainline motorman. And I don't know, he got in with Payne some way or another, and they's travel together of a night. And he finally got a, left over at Layland and went to Eccles.
PN: Who did? Kaylor?
JLW: Kaylor. He went to Eccles. He was, I don’t know, I liked him. He’s just a daddy to me. We lived right close to him at a house there at Leyland. And my mother died there at Leyland; we were at Leyland when she died. And my daddy, he went off to work. I don’t know why he left; I reckon he was just lonesome for my mother. And they tried to get him to come; they moved to Eccles. And they tried to get me to come; they moved to Eccles. And they tried to get me to come over there at Eccles and just make my home with them.
PN: Who did, the Kaylors?
JLW: Mm. Mm.
PN: What was he doing there? Was he a miner, or was he working for
Baldwin—Fe1ts ?
JLW: He just worked for the coal company. He didn't have nothing to do with the Baldwin—Felts. But he was the law, and they kept them on there.
PN: The law for who? The company or the county?
JLW: The company, the coal company. I used to, I went over to his house and stay a week at a time. He'd take me out with him of a night, and let me see what he, how he done it [laughs].
PN: What did he do, just check to see nothing was happening?
JLW: That everybody went along quiet, and didn't, he just tried to keep peace. Or at least that's the way Kaylor worked at it.
PN: Did he get paid a little bit extra by the company for that?
JLW: Yea. he got a good salary from the company.
PN: Did he work in the mines during the day too?
JLW: No, he didn't, he didn't work, it was a 24—hour job with him.
PN: Is there anything else you think is important to say?
JLW: Huh?
PN: Is there anything else you think is important to say?
JLW: Well, not to me, it ain't.
PN: So the union, you say was there in 1902. And the union stayed there in most of the New River fields until 1920s; then it was broken a little bit?
JLW: Yea. Along, I can remember back when they turned the union loose, and they quit talking about the Baldwin—Felts [referring to the reorganization of the UMW in 1933 after passage of the National Recovery Act]. 1 think the coal companies, they just found out it was easier to pay the men a better wage than it was to spend so much for Baldwin—Felts men. I know one time down there on, we'd been down in Virginia, down around Dorchester in Wise County there. And I got, I wanted to come back to West Virginia [Laughs], and I come back, you know, on Cabin Creek there. And I got me a job and went to work on Cabin Creek there, and I 'm, I liked that and was doing pretty good, making pretty good money, making six, seven dollars a day loading coal. And then pay day come, I 'd draw my money, and I 'd draw more money than I could spend from then to pay day again. And I thought I was just a 'doing fine. And I was a 'boarding with a man come to find out, the fellow I was a 'boarding with was an old—time Baldwin—Felts detective. But he was a nice fellow
PN: Was he working in the mine then?
JLW: He was working in the mines then? Yea. And I’d been there, I boarded with him, and he was a nice fellow to be around. And he could, he told some awful stormy tales about that Baldwin—Felts people.
[End of Tape]
Description
Coal mining - Thayer 1903-05, Terry in the 1910s, Unions in 1921-22
Date Created
09/20/1980
Copyright and Usage Info