What Became of John Henry? - Chappell 1932
Close up of Oak Mountain Tunnel, Alabama with John Henry as part of the Mountain
[This is Chappell's next to last chapter and begins on page 61. Warning! Watch out for falling texts. Parts of this chapter have raw text and have not been edited!!!
R. Matteson 2014]
WHAT BECAME OF JOHN HENRY?
If the famous steel-driver was a real man, a flesh and blood man, and actually took part in a drilling-contest at Big Bend, as the testimony shows, one would like to know what became of him. The witnesses do not know. Miller and Gilpin seem to think that he died at the tunnel. John Hedrick is quite certain that he did not, and says that he "went away somewhere."
A strong belief in Henry's death at Big Bend is shown by the popular reports presented in the second chapter of this study. The ballad mentions his death there. Among the Negroes of the community nothing seems more real than his ghost. The ghost's driving steel in the tunnel is highly significant of the manner as well as the fact, of his death, and modern ghosts are not supposed to have such values. [1] Bridge and tunnel ghosts may not always be, if ever, full adoptions, or made from the whole cloth. And building Big Bend tunnel made possible the only plausible occasion for starting such a belief, factual
or fictitious. The character of the tradition seems to favor his actual death there, from a drilling-contest, or in some other way.
The witnesses for Henry are certain of their acquaintance with him at the tunnel, and the conclusion that he died immediately after, and as a result of, the drilling-contest, that reported by Miller and the Hedricks, would seem to dispose of their -testimony as lacking authority. This does not necessarily follow.
Among them only Gilpin claims the sort of acquaintance with the steel-driver that would make a confusion between him and another Negro at Big Bend hardly possible, and Gilpin was late in getting to the tunnel, probably almost a year after it was begun. If the drilling-contest occurred, early in the work there, as shown by the testimony, and Henry died immediately as a result of it, the steel-driver who took his place among the tunnel Negroes might have resembled him very closely, and was almost certainly called John
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1) A case in point was reported for a tunnel in the state about six months before Big Bend was begun. Hempfield tunnel, near Wheeling, was "full" of ghosts of murdered men. They were reported as having been seen in the act of being murdered, as the men killed there were. At the mouth of the tunnel in a sequestered spot known as Berry's Hole. Its name is significant, as its record shows it to be the watery grave of many poor fellows. In the memory of many of our readers the history of Schaffer, the blood-thirsty and brutal murderer, who expiated his crimes on the scaffold at Parkersburg, is still fresh. The slaughter of one of his victims took place in the tunnel is wel known and is supposed to have immediate reference to the appearance of the ghost last week . . . Other deeds of this kind [in this tunnel] are too well "known to bear repetition."
Wheeling Intelligencer, July 19, 1869.
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Henry. He would have been the only John Henry there known to Gilpin and Jenkins, and eventually best known to Miller and the Hedricks, and they might easily have accepted him as the hero of the contest because they had had no particular reason to observe the original John Henry at all closely. Tragedies at the tunnel were not matters for open discussion, and this might explain the failure of Gilpin and Jenkins to hear anything said about the contest. This might also explain Gilpin's failure to remember any stanza of John Henry song mentioning the fact of his death, or to remember a single stanza of the ballad.
The theory that John Henry died in a second drilling-contest at Big Bend seems less probable, and could hardly have happened without the knowledge of the witnesses for the steel-driver at the tunnel. The introduction, however, of a second machine before the tunnel was completed would have meant a second drilling-contest if Henry won the first without any serious injury to himself, provided he was there at the time.
The drilling-contest established at Big Bend by the testimonial data probably occurred in the summer or fall of 1870. The first work was done on the tunnel in January of that year, beginning the last few days of the month, and J. M. Logan states that he worked four months there before the shafts were in and then returned to Ivanhoe and that he heard of the contest between Henry and the steam drill when he went back to Ivanhoe. His departure from the tunnel, therefore, was in the summer or early fall, and he heard of the contest soon after. The fact that it occurred at the east end of Big Bend, according to the testimony, shows that it took place- early in the work on the tunnel, and that was the first section of the tunnel completed. Between the summer or fall of 1870 and the completion of the tunnel in June, 1872, was a period of practically two years which a second drilling-contest could have taken place.
The steam drill was at Lewis Tunnel in January and November and possibly in April, of 1871, and also very probably in 1870 about the time it was being tried at Big Bend. The probability is that the drill characterized as a failure it Lewis Tunnel, but mentioned as being in use there on three occasions covering a period of almost nine months, was not the same drill but two or more drills of different makes, or the same drill operated each time with a different compressor, by way of experiment. Such tests, as well, may- have been carried out at Big Bend. The two tunnels were constructed by different men under different contracts, and their character differed through obstacles offered tor the machine. Big Bend was drilled through "hard red shale", and Lewis Tunnel through "hard sandstone with some little slate."[2] The failure, therefore, of the drill at Lewis Tunnel would not have meant its failure at Big Bend; and the second drilling-contest there, with the death of the steel-driver as a result, was at least possible and may have occurred.
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2) Tunnelling, p. 965.
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In an effort to account for the discrepancy between the testimony and the popular report of Henry's death as a result of the drilling-contest, the theory that the steel-driver met his death in some other way at the tunnel and that the report of the event became confused with that of the contest through oral transmission seems more probable. It leads to an inquiry as to the actual conditions under which the tunnel was built.
The testimony is highly suggestive but inadequate for a full understanding of the tragic circumstances at Big Bend, as becomes increasingly evident as one examines the construction of heavy tunnels in Europe and America during the second half of the 19th century.
The startling number of casualties from building Mt. Cenis and the Hoosac tunnels [3] indicates the incorrectness of such a statement as that of John Hedrick that none was killed in Big Bend. Miller's report that bodies of Negroes killed in the tunnel, along with that of a mule, were buried in the big fill at the east portal is much less improbable.
Many of the foremen and other officials on the road had been in the Confederate Army. It was not always convenient there to bury the dead properly, or to advertise the casualty list as a means of keeping up the morale of the forces. That it was necessary to protect the morale of the Negroes at Big Bend and that those in charge were not always equal to the task can hardly be doubted. A brief account of the circumstances there will show that the place was not in the least inviting. Miller's statement that all the Negroes refused to go into the tunnel for several days on one occasion seems to be common knowledge in the neighborhood. It was the only detail the widow of Jeff Davis, previously mentioned, could remember at all distinctly about the construction of the tunnel when, I visited her in September,
1925 [4].
Nordhoff states that the laborers on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway were mostly Negroes, ignorant, and "much crowded together" the tunnels. [5] The number of such laborers in Big Bend during
the two years and a half of its construction was probably about 1,000. The number for Muscsnetcong Tunnel was 1,000,[6] and that for Hoosac 900.[7] Big Bend is about one-third longer than the former, and one-third of the length of the latter. But the labor of Hoosac Tunnel was "chiefly of the kind termed 'skilled labor', the underground workers being, for the most part, regularly bred miners (a large proportion of them being of the very best Cornish miners)."[8] Big Bend was built with ignorant, superstitious Negroes "much crowded together" in the tunnel.
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3) p. 69.
4) A similar act on the part of laborers at Midland Tunnel was noted in the Wheeling Intelligencer, March 8, 1871.
5) New York Weekly Tribune, Oct. 18 and Nov. 1, 1871.
6) The Railroad Gazette, VII (June, 1875), 247.
7) Journal of the Franklin Institute, XCI(1875), 148.
8) Ibid., XCI, 148.
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The following lines, under the title "Big Bend Times", [9] with apologies by a local newspaper about six months after
the road was completed across the state, was written presumably by an employee at the tunnel, and is the only published account from the Big Bend known to exist:
Big Bend times now pass before me,
Tunnel scenes oi long ago;
With the loose rock hanging o'er me,
More dangerous far than human foe,
Days that knew no time of leisure,
Days from working never free;
When the hopeful dreamed of pleasure,
When the tunnel through should be,
Fancy hears the hammers ringing -'
Sounds that now my dream annoy - -
And the miners hoarsely singing
'Can't you drive her home, fly boy?'
Hears the bosses loudly swearing
At some idler whom they see,
Who plainly is not caring
When the tunnel through should be.
What though looser roofs beset fie,
Though down deeper shafts I go;
Yet I never will forget thee,
Number two, of long ago.
And when railroad life is ended,
Oh! what pleasure we could see,
If we owned the means expended,
That the tunnel through should be'
That Big Bend was not altogether a pastoral scene has support from the inside of Mt. Cenis. In that tunnel "one was almost
smothered so great was the heat; the smoke from the blasts became so thick that the light of the lamps was visible no farther than a few steps." The writer describes blasting there: "Suddenly an infernal noise burst upon us from the end of the gallery. One would have said that ten thousand hammers were falling simultaneously on their anvils. A sharp whistling sound made itself heard above this clamor piercing you to the very marrow." [1] Clouds of "yellow smoke come pouring througth the tunnel in such density and volume as to be positively painfull." [11] Teh inferno of St. Gothard was hardly more inviting: "as work progressed the temperature rose and the air became more vitiated, until visitors were rarely permitted to enter because of the sheer danger of being in such an atmosphere, and the horses on the job died at the rate of ten a month. The scene in the scantily, lighted tunnel grew to resemble an inferno, men going about
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9) The Mountain Herald, Hinton, W. Va., Jan. 1, 1874.
10) Every Saturday, Oct. 14, 1871
11) Wheeling Intelligencer, Dec. 30, 1870.
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naked in the intense heat.[12] In such tangible darkness, heat, noise, and smoke, the loose rock overhead would seem
to promise immediate relief and nothing "haunts the mine worker more than a fall of the strata which he calls the roof.[13]"
Drinker explains that "no man but a tunnel engineer can appreciate the difficulties of tunnel construction --it is not a question of calculating certain strains and allowing certain factors of safety but a very vying with the unknown powers of darkness, all the more to be feared because one can never know what a day's advance may bring forth." [14] Of these uncertainties, tunnel-sickness blasting, and the roof seem to offer the greatest dangers to life and Big Bend had a full share of all three.
In the St. Gothard tunnel, "men died in large numbers of a peculiar disease, called tunnel trichinosis ... Three or four months'
labor in the tunnel brought on the disease." [15] It is not certain that this disease affected any of the Virginia Negroes on the Chesapeake and Ohio, but the fact that horses on the job at St. Gothard died at the rate of ten a month suggests the great probability of deaths at Big Bend from some kind of sickness. The statement that "foul air gives much trouble and there is a great deal of sickness among the employes" of Big Bend [16] is significant, and very much so when John Hedrick, one of the tunnel officials, admits that one died there from foul air. Twenty-three suits, alleging damages amounting to almost five hundred thousand dollars "for death, injury, or sickness" of workmen on a tunnel under construction in the county adjoining
that in which Big Bend lies, are awaiting trial at the present time. "'5ilicosis fnom dust particles" seems to be the basis for the complaints. Six are already dead.[17] What are the probabilities for Big'Bend?
Foul air was one of the greatest tunnel problems of the period, and nothing very effective was done about it. The practice of pumping fresh air to the drillers was, it seems, first emphasized at Arlberg Tunnel, which was begun in 1880. Stone dust, to which "Miners' consumption" was largely attributable, was checked even later by the introductiron of hollow drills with a small stream of water running through them. In Mt. Cenis "one was almost smothered so great was the heat"; in st. Gothard the men went "about naked from the intense heat"; and in Big Bend the steel-drivers worked with their "shirts off." Blasting and the crude ways of lighting tunnels at the time added to their foulness.
An idea of the amount of explosives for blasting and of candles for lighting used in Big Bend Tunnel may be had from an examination of their use in the Hoosac Tunnel. The records show that "during
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12) New York Times. March 16, 1930.
13) G. G. Carson. Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite miner, p. 151.
14) Tunnelling, p.480.
15) Tunnelling (3rd ed., 1893), p. 362.
16) Wheeling Daily Register, May 21, 1971.
17) Morgantown Post, Sept. 6, 1932.
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five years time, about 444,735 lbs. of nitroglycerine and about 100,000 1bs. of mica powder [mica impregnated with nitroglycerine] were used in Hoosac, [18] making about 500,000 pounds of pure glycerin used in the tunnel in five years. The assumption that half of this amount of nitroglycerin was used at Big Bend during two years and a half it was under construction gives 250,000, pounds for that wqrk, approximately equal to 500,000 pounds of dualin or 3,250,000 pounds of gunpowder in explosive force, a daily amount of 333 pounds of nitroglycerin or 4,333 pounds of gunpowder for 750 days. The record for 2,720 pounds of candles used in one heading of the Hoosac Tunnel during a period of seven months, from April 1 to November 1 of 1865, [19] gives a basis for the amounts used in the eight headings of Big Bend during two years and a total of more than 87,000 pounds, a daily consumption of more than 115 pounds.
That nitroglycerin, dualin, and gunpowder were all three used in Big Bend is quite certain. They were used together on the road for blasting in other tunnels. Drinker gives "powder, trinitroglycerine and dualin emplroyed" at Lewis Tunnel and "nitro-glycerine and powder emplroyed for blasting" at Stretcher's Neck.[20] There seems to be no basis for the relative quantities of these explosives used in Big Bend Tunnel. That candles were the main source of light in Big Bend is very improbable. Like hand drills, "lard oil and blackstrap" are too well connected with the tunnel to be only incidental to its construction. Any concession, however, in quantity or quality of materials for lighting added to the darkness or to the general foulness of the place, and possibly to both.
In Big Bend Tunnel the vitiated air, from unusual heat, blasting, burning blackstrap, and from other sources, became a serious problem for the engineers of that work and delayed the drilling there "considerably"[21] a situation to say the least very harmful to the laborers and may have resulted in heavy casualties.
Blasting was the second great danger to life in Big Bend Tunnel. The employment of explosives, even where the greatest care is exercised in handling them, rarely fails to take its toll. The press records of the second half of the 19th century for users of blasting agents are not unlike those of the first quarter of the 20th for aviators. Gunpowder, mica powder, dualin, dynamite - - all have their records. The most dangerous explosive used in tunnels during the period was nitroglycerin, so dangerous in its liquid state that the Nitroglycerin Act was passed in 1869, by which "act the use of nitroglycerine per se was absolutely prohibited, but power was reserved to the Secretary of State specially to license any substance having nitro-glycerine, in any form, as one of its component parts." [22]. As
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18) Tunnelling, p. 244.
19) Ibid., p.87.
20) Ibid., p.965.
21) Greenbrier Independent, June 1, 1872.
22) The Library Magazine, I (1883), 410.
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as 1871 the editors of the Scientific American were hammering against the general and indiscriminate use of nitroglycerin
in the United States, and added that its "black record will keep increasing so long as nitro-glycerin is used as a blasting agent.[23]" Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Swedish manufacturer of explosives and philanthropist, invented dynamite in his factory at Glasgow, Scotland, in the late sixties, by way of escape from the unavoidable contingencies upon the indiscriminate use of the liquid material, particularly from the results of its poisonous character through actual contact with the substance and from the danger of its "liability to percolate through fissures in the rock, and to give rise to subsequent ts when the escaped liquid was struck by a pick, perhaps at a considerable distance from the original hole." [24] To avoid these objections to the use of nitroglycerin, the substance was supplied in frozen form for the miners at Hoosac Tunnel, by G. M. Mowbray, an experienced chemist, who manufactured the explosive at the tunnel [25]. That such precautions were taken against the dangers of
Nitroglycerin in the hands of Negroes "much crowded together" in Big Bend Tunnel and elsewhere on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad seems to lack support from the records of that work.
Falls of rock present a third great danger to laborers in building tunnels. Falls in the tunnels on the Cincinnati and Southern were very heavy, from seven tunnels on the line amounting to 81763 cubic
'u) Board Tree Tunnel on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
t"est Virginia is notable in that respect. ('The treacherous character
ffir roof of this tunnel led to rmary accidents from falls cost
y lives, and maimed many of the men. These casualties seemed
more particularly to the miners and laborers.",?) In this
ion one of the reasons given for the expensiveness of the
on the tunnels of that road in West Virginia was the "difficulty
maintaining a supply of suitable skilled labor in the face of th'e
risk of life and limb."
That Big Bend was equally dangerous, if not more so, can be
y shown. The tunnel was aonstructed through c(hard red shale
ing ,oll exposure" .za) A local newspaper states: d(On last
ay morning there was a great slide in the West Portal of the
Bend Tunnel. The slide is estimated at 8,000 cubic lards." zs;
'& treacherousness of its roof is noted in another report soon after
hdns began to pass through Big Bend. ((The cars run slowly through
runnel, as rock is constantly falling from the unfinished portion, and a few days ago the timbers fell in with such force as to destroy
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23) Scientific American XXIV (Jan. 14, 1871), 36.
24) The Library Magazine , I, 410 ff.
25) Ibid., I, 412.Journal of the Franklin Institute,
XCI 148
26) Tunnelling, p. 966.
27) Ibid., p.958.
28) Ibid., p.965.
29) Greenbrier Independent, June 1, 1872.
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the rai1s."[30] The failure of the timber arch to hold up.the roof of the tunnel was the reason for replacing it with a brick arch beginning in the eighties. [31]
In addition to tunnel-sickness, blasting, and falls of rock, many other dangers faced the steel-driver at Big Bend. A local newspaper on one occasion mentions that "two negro men were found dead in the woods near that place ... Greenbrier seems to be full of dead negroes. They are doubtless men who having been paid off by the C. and O. R. R. are murdered by their companions on their way home, to secure their money." [32] The steel-driver might have been killed in pursuit of his white woman in the neighborhood by getting stabbed in a fight, or possibly in a "drunken brawl" at the tunnel.
Although liquor was supposed to be prohibited by contract around the tunnels on the Chesapeake and Ohio, aa; its free use at Big Bend added to the unfavorable circumstances there for safety. Gilpin says that he dipped the liquor for the steel-drivers when they opened the tunnel from.uti-.nO to shaft one, and Jenkins says that Captain Johnson gave a barrel of liquor 'q1r.n,.itrey knocked through.t-:'t
ireading fiom shafts two to three. On the occasion Gilpin.'menti::i
;;r.u.rif parties were severely stabbed", sal .and one might- infer t:'a:
gre ,,parties,, *.t. intoxicated ftnm something. T[.. occasion Jenkr:'
mentibns gains -favor from ((Number two" -bf 'lBig Bend. Tim*"
j.tt wurhi"ngton ruyr that-{'every bunch of grass in the neighborhc.:':
had a bottle t[ 11ir' ss) When t-he "headings between shaft one a- L
two were driven together all parties repaired to head quarte:;
rh.t. a barrel of oid Burbon whiskey, was rolled out and a genel"a
joilification .ntu.d . . " Though a few-knives and pistols, boney fi':-:
lnA strong sinewy arms were flourished we have n0 casualties 1'
rePort.tt sa;
' Liquor among these ignorant Negroes d'much crowded together" I
gig Be;tO enhancEd the dingers to 1iTe there, and rendered them m']::!
*,&. fikely victims of the unexpected explosions in the tunnel a::
the threat,ining-io.k "bou. their heads. Arnericans, white and black handle themselves with abandon in such an environment, and yet "no casualties to report" characterizes the press accounts of the laborers at Big Bend from first to last. I have failed to find a record of a single death inside the tunnel.
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30) Railroad Gazette, Nov. 2, 1872.
31) J. P. Nelson, in The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway p. 27, says f fiie -ilriO, ,,The rock formaiion is very hard, blt disintegrated
'"ita"i ttr"e- weathEr, so much so that at the time of the construction oI ll--
b;i;k ui.rt, fiig. duuiti.r, sometimes lifty feet {gpp, were found aPove : -'
ti;6; Judge Miller who lived a long life in-the larger Big Bend Neighborhood, called the tunnel a "death-trap". J. H- Miller' History of Summers CountY, P. 487.
32) John Hgnry, p..30.
33) Tunnelling,"Appendix", I, X.
34) p. 53.
35) p. 73.
36) John Henry, p.5.
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The press of Virginia and West Virginia, which apparently remained silent on casualties in the tunnels of the New River region, was able to give startling numbers of deaths from the construction of tunnels farther away. A local newspaper, published on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia, carried the casualty list for the Hoosac: "a hundred and thirty-six men have been killed by casualties in the course of construction of the tunnel." [37] Another newsspaper of the state has the following to say of deaths at Mt. Cenis Tunnel: "It has been told that more than 1,000 workmen have lost their lives up to 1870; but the guides and directors declare that not more than fifty or sixty had been killed outright, though a number of others had been seriously wounded. It is not improbable that... at least 1,000 men have lost their lives."[38] The Scientif ic American gives a similar list of deaths for Mt. Cenis: "Many lives have necessarily been lost during this great work, but far less than one would suppose; probably from 600 to 800 in all, so far as we have heard from time to time." [39] After making an examination
"government statistics", a more recent writer says, "We kill in coal mines more than three times as many per thousand employed as are killed in France or Belgium, and nearly three times as many are killed in Great Britain in spite of the fact that the coal of the United States may be more easily worked and with less danger than those of any other coal-producing country in the world." [40]
That dangers to life in any European tunnel or coal mine per square inch were greater than those in Big Bend would be hartl
shorv. That a heavy casualty list belongs to the construction of
the tunnel seems most certain. It follows that John Henry had about an equal break at Big Bend, and might have died there from disease, from falls in the heading, or from one of a dozen other dangers, with the strong probability that the account of his end from any of these
rvould have been confused with that of his drilling-contest in
rn report. If he was actually killed in the tunnel, and if his
seemed to threaten the morale of his gang, and eventually that
oilhers, almost a certain consequence of the event, the management
M probability encouraged such a consummation by way of diverting
mtention of the community from the tragic possibilities of the
Henry's death in this way would more likely have occurled
the time the tunnel was completed. The dangers from foul air
r{asting increased porportionately as the work progressed farther
farther from the shafts, and fr'om the ends of the tunnel. The
from falls in the heading became greater and greater as' the
red shale crumbling on exposure" had time for disintegration.
of the steel-driver at this time from any of the tunnel dangers
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37) Kanawha Chronicle, Dec. 77, 1873.
38) Wheeling Intelligencer, Dec.30, 1870.
39) XXIV, 55.
40) Letters from a Workingman (1908), by An American Mechanic, p. 153 ff.
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would satisfy the belief of Miller and Gilpin, two of the important witnesses for his presence at the tunnel, and would not be in conflict with the actual knowledge of either of the other three witnesses, Jenkins and the Hedrick brothers. His end in the tunnel would satisfy the local fear of his ghost, and the confusion of the event with that of the drilling-contest in common report would satisfy popular belief in his death as a result of the contest.
The recent report, before the Interstate Commerce Commision [41] of the original cost of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, with its antecedents and subsidiaries, failed to take into account the waste of man power in building the road, and may be regarded as an official expression on the question of deaths at Big Bend. John Hedrick who had some responsibility in building the tunnel, is quite certain that nobody was killed there, and insists that John Henry "wen'l a'ilt'lultt
somewherei'. While the construction of BiS Bend Tunnel u'iti r ,iirr
casualty list can be explained only 4s a miraculous performanc. .f,
possibility that Henry left the tunnel at some time subsequent :: llllrluh
drilling-contest'may be considered.
Foltrowing his trail from that locality, however, seems i-;-'dll'ul'
possible, and actually finding him at best not unlike drairi:s ,lur
;,perfect hand,, in bridge, an enorrnous uncertainty for the _indr',l
player. The problem lvould be sufficiently challenSi"g- if . there ;iin'rytl
bnly one John Henry, and he a'man of highly domestic habits. In;:iryfr',.
the country is full of ,men narned John Henry, actual and alleged EIruill
they have travelled everywhere, as the second chapter of this :;"ti.*lu
indicates.az) Many ,of the laborers on the Chesapeake and -,r'rltntrtt:
Railroad in West Virginia were Virginia Negr'oes, and possibl" 'ltstur
steel-driver came from that state.
F. R. Pyle, contractor of Huntington, STest Virginia, repc ni MUl
aunt, widow of Contractor Mclntyre who had a hand in buildi:; :tllrur
Chesapeake and Ohi'o Railway, as "confident that there was sr:-l ,ilr
negro at the tunnel, but that his n&IIl was John Henry H::3" ""'
He adds:'dA man by the name of Banks whose father was a fc:::;irimt
at the tunnel says that the negro was born at Winchester, \fir: r,,ili
Dn the Henry plantati'on, passed to a rnan by the name of Ha:fil
who married in the Henry family, and that he was an illegi--.::ni:nu
child, and sometimes gave his narne as Williamson - - not Willi:T,!' '''
J. A. Williams, Negro of Lynchburg, Virginia, ((knew all the lim!
structi,on gangs in the South a quarter of a century ago, and b"i:u "
and has this to say about Henry:
The steel-driver's name was John Henry Mundy, of Louisa County, Virginia. He has several relatives about there now. His pal was Lewis Thursty, and he had a brother named Bob Thursty, from near Knoxville Tennessee, or from Alabama. Henry was large frame man, and light red color. He died in Kentucky on Big Sandy Railroad, or L and N.
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41) Valuation Dockets 457 and 477.
42) Cf. John Henry, p. 12ff.
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I expected some trouble with Henry's irregular family connections at Winchester, but the "several relatives" in Louisa County should know something about him. Their complete silence, however, is not unlike that of his several relatives in Henry County of the same state where he is supposed to be John Henry Martin. Henry's relation to Hardy, Mundy, and Martin may develop into something eventually, but at present it seems rather - dubious. He is sufficiently difficult without such relationships.
An example of what one may expect to find on the trail of John Henry can be shown fr,om invesiigations-in Norfolk, Virginia' Three
fffntg.b.t with the hero's name wete mentioned as bjingahere at som'e
flii Auring the constructi,on of Big Bend Tunnel. The Federal Census
tprrt of "1870 for that city give"s the name of a Negro boy John
iMffir', fifteen years old. The local newspaper,mentions a John Henry
,o, tt*"d, different ,occasions. On the forrner, "John Henry, negro seaman on the brig S. P. Brown, charged with mutiny, 'lrras furned over to
illr captain?, 43] On the latter, a John Henry, negro, was arrested
late Tuesday evening upon complaint of another negro named Frank
ilMen, wtto cttatfeO irim with stealing -a boat belongyg to- him. Henry
rurlul the thefti unA alleged that hJ borrowed the boat fro;m another
r.-. -During th! night hJ aftempted t9 break out of the watch house.
We tore off one of ?he planks ln ttre bunk, and with it endeavored to
furse the iron bars across the window, but vithout success." [44] The
*fry ,fit..tory of Norfolk and Portsmouth for 1900 contains the name
d'"n. Negio John Henry, and for 1920 two Negroes n-arned Joln
imq"'*. Liv"ing in Norfolk-Fortsmouth in 1927 were two Negroes by
& ""*. of lohn Henry, one fro'rn North Carolina and one from
5lu.h Car,olini, and a tfiii'O by the name of Jack Henry, tlotr King
Wtil"* County, Virginia. Tirey were all three heads of families,
d claimed no kinship with each other.
.Mention of nine by the name of John Henry indicates the
WsslUitity of a much large-r number in that locality during the period'
h the summer of 1927: I got on the trail there of an old N9s1o
nnuned John Henry, famed f,6r his prowess in breaki{S l'!ofd.iron" for
ft ,,junk housesi'' on S/ater Street. I soon found that this John
Um".t: was confused with two other old Negroes by the same name
in that immediate section. One of them had distinguished himself as a watermelon-catcher in untroading boats at the docks just b,elow ]vatgr
fteet. The other was a rival iil breaking old iron on Water Street,
fu T. M. Cashin, N. Block and ComPanY, and the Eagle--lron Works,
,nd for M. T. Caihin at the foot of Roanoke Dock, near Water Street.
The two old iron-breakers were known by the people they worked
fu. and those they worked with, by various- names, "Old Henry," "Big Henry," "Black .Henry," and "John - Henry", and
*.-.lonuily by other names to distinguish one from the other.
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43) The Norf olk Virginian, Nov. 3, 1870.
44) Ibid., June 29, 1871.
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Charlie Shaw, who appeared to be an important man in M. T. Cashin's junk yard, made a typical report of the two men:
There were two old men around here who used to break up old iron. Both of them were real black men. I call one of them Daddy, and it hasn't been so long since he worked for us. His name was Robinson, but I don't know the rest of it. I think he lived over in Berkley. I called him Daddy and the other fellow John Henry, but he was bigger than John Henry. He's weigh 27O pounds and John Henry about 200.
John Henry has been dead 12 or 15 years. He was just naturally better man than anybody I know of. He could do more work, and do it easier.
We used to give him a job breaking up old iron, and he'd go out and look it over and sit there and think about it, and then go home sometimes and not do a lick of work that day. Next morning early he'd go at it and have it done and be sitting down looking at it as pleased before you'd think he'd hardly begun. He'd look and plan, and he didn't lose any licks. I have seen him break iron 12 inches thick. He'd knock big wheels and anchors all to pieces. He could break more iron in two hours than anybody else in a day. He worked by the job or by the ton, and I never knowed him to do any other sort of work.
He'd always sing about the steel-driver John Henry when he was breaking iron. He was called old Henry, Big Henry, or Black Henry as well as John Henry, and he said he,d been everywhere.
I don't know anything about him when he wasn't around here. He'd come around about once a month to see if he could get a job. Daddy has left town and gone out in the country to live, and I don't know where he is. John Henry was 45 or 50 when he died. I don't know, where he died, but somewhere in town here. He died from drinking too much liquor.
Mr. Shaw displayed the hammers or sledges these iron-breakers used when they were working for M. T. Cashin. Daddy's was a
twenty-pound sledge, with a four-foot handle; and Henry's a thirty pound sledge, with a three-foot handle. T. M. Cashin displayed a seventy-pound sledge, with a three-foot handle, which he claims John Henry used to break old iron for him; but T. M. Cashin, like several others on water Street, did not distinguish between the two old Negroes in his references to John Henry.
while the Negro Mr. Shaw characterizes as John Henry is not altogether unlike the steel-driver of Big Bend fame, his age and his singing of the "steel-driver John Henry" seem to bar his identification as the original John Henry. When Mr. Shaw made his report, in 1927 , he was quite certain that the iron-breaker was not more than fifty years of age at the time of his death.
The trail of the steel-driver leads to another example at first gf greater promise, but ultimately of greater disappointment. In February, 1929, J. S. Barker[45] "investigated pretty thotoughly among
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45) St. Albans, W. Va.
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older employees of the Chesapeake and Ohio" who were then living in St. Albans, West Virginia, "to ascertain the
reality of a John Henry." Mr. Barker writes:
There is a Jeff Washington here now who is quite a personage in connection with early employees of the C. and O. Ry. Jeff left his home in Charlottesville at the age of 18 years and, together with John Henry who was a few years his senior, employed themselves to a C. and O. contractor, a Mr. Johnson, who was clearing away the timber from the proposed right-of-way at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. This was about 1868, and Jeff continued without break or blemish in the employ of the C. and O. for 50 years. He is now on the retired list of the C. and O. at a comfortable salary Jeff said that John Henry lived at the little town of Keswick iust east of Charlottesville and has a sister who now lives in Charlottesville. He also says that there was a John Hardy who worked with them in the Big Bend tunnel. John Hardy died while they worked at the Big Bend, and John Henry died while they worked at the Lewis Tunnel.
In my conversation with Capt. Mallory, who also worked for the C. & O then and until he reached his retiring age, said that while he could not positively identify John Henry as having worked at this particular place and time, he recalled having heard his men, who worked under him, sing that song, 'You kilted John Henry, but you won't kill me.'
The Captain also recalled that it was here at these places where the Burley Diamond Drill was first used and with steam power.
The story as related to me by Frank Crosby was that this man John Henry and his helper had become expert with the hammer and drill, and they challenged the steam driller for a contest hole, in which John Henry and his helper won out, but John Henry lost his life. John Henry was six feet tall, yellow, and powerful physically.
Some time ago the Charleston Daily Mail, in one of its Sunday issues, in an article on the early history of W. Va. denied that there really was a John Henry who had worked for the C & O at the Big Bend tunnel.
Jeff Washington and Frank Cosby, both of whom worked for the C & O in the Big Bend at the time of its construction, say that there was a John Henry.
About two months after getting this report, I visited Jeff Washington at his home, a very old man whose mind seemed to
"come and go". Occasionally he was seemingly reticent about Big Bend affairs, but for the most part talked rather freely, and at times rather inconsistently. He remembered the tunnel as a good place to save money because there was nothing in the neighborhood to spend it for, but later stated that the younger men, including himself, wasted all the money they got there, and added that "every bunch of grass in the neighborhood had a bottle in it."
He repeated the story of his going with John Henry from Keswick, near Charlottesville, Virginia, to work on the Chesapeake and Ohio in West Virginia. He said that he and Henry first worked "bushing" on the road near White Sulphur Springs, then in Lewis Tunnel near
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there, and eventually went farther west to work on Big Bend, that Henry kept a piece of ribbon tied on the handle of his hammer, and that nobody could get it off. He described Henry as not real black of average height, and weight about 160 pounds. He said that he did not see a steam drill on the road, and that he knew nothing of Henry's drilling-contest. He was certain that he knew nothing of the death of the steel-driver at Big Bend, and that he has not seen Henry or heard anything from him since they were together in the tunnel. He remembered hearing at Big Bend about the time it was completed that Henry had been killed there and his body thrown into the big fill. He seemed very anxious to be reported as not believing the story of Henry's burial. Yet he explained that a "great man were killed in the tunnel and buried anywhere around there."
Jeff Washington made no reference to John Hardy in giving account of John Henry. Then I inquired of his acquaintance with
Hardy at Big Bend. He answered that he had never seen Hardy on the road or elsewhere, but that he had heard of him. Later, however, he used the name Hardy two or three times for that of Henry in speaking of the steel-driver, seemingly a clear case of confusing the two names after Hardy had been mentioned. He recalled having heard of the article which Mr. Barker read in the Charleston Daily Mail and which on the authority of hearsay had substituted the name John Hardy for that of John Henry as the famous steel-driver at Big Bend Tunnel. In all probability the name Hardy was brought into the conversation Mr. Barker had with Jeff Washington soon after the article appeared, resulting in the incorrect report the former man from the latter of Henry's and Hardy's death.
While John Henry seems not to have a sister living in Charlottesville, Jeff Washington's account of Henry's connections there offers something definite for further inquiries. There are three Negro families by the name of Henry in the section, with five members named John Henry: one family with three now living who are descendants of Adam Henry, a slave of Garrett White, of North Garden, ten miles from Charlottesville; another family with two, father and son who were slaves of Professor John Staige Davis, of the University of Virginia. The first three were not old enough to help build the Chesapeake and Ohio across West Virginia. The other two were fifty-five and thirty-one respectively when the road was begun in 1870.
Charles James, [46] of Keswick, who talked volumes about slavery and Civil War times, says:
Noah Reasby and John Henry were friends in tunnels and other work. Noah Reasby drove steel last in the Catskill Mountains bring water into New York City.
I had a niece and uncle who lived at Whitehall, New York state my niece owned a place, right where the water tunnel was made, and she was paid and water put in her house. Uncle lived in Whitehall, and was a blacksmith.
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46) Testimony obtained in Aug., 1929.
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Uncle was named John Henry after his father who was John Henry. His mother was named Judy Henry. She had one son named Charles James, and he was my father, and then she married John Henry and had a son John Henry. Uncle John Henry was bound to Professor Davis in the Uiversity of Virginia, and his mother was too.
Uncle worked on the C and O Railroad, and I did too, when they were Building it, a long time before he went to Whitehall. He was at Big Bend tunnel, but he won't the great steel-driver there. That John Henry got killed. I didn't see him when I was there, but Dick Morris and Noah Kasby did. They said that John Henry was a great steel-driver at Big Bend, and talked about him as long as they lived. They both died about ten years ago here near Keswick.
Although Mr. James was certain that his Uncle John Henry was not the great steel-driver at Big Bend, the statement that he worked in the Chesapeake and Ohio in West Virginia made an investigation at Whitehall necessary and a letter to Mr. H. E. Sullivan, of the Historical Society of Whitehall, brought the following answer:
This day I interviewed the daughters of John L. Henry and found as follows:
The head of the family never came to Whitehall, but his wife Judy visited here about 1870 for six weeks. Judy was married twice. By first husband she had a son Charles James and three daughters. By the second she had John Lewis Henry and William, who lived at Charlottesville, Va...
John L. Henry, son of John and Judy, Was born in east room of u.
Ur- Aug. 15, 1839 and. d. at Whitehall June 24, 1911. He learned the
Hecksmith trade and is said to have worked in a Confederate arsenal.
l[,.mer he became the body servant o{ Lieut. \Mm. Boyd of this town who
'h,ought him to lirhitehall on his ireturn in 1865. He worked at his trade
lh'e from 1867 until his death and was considered the best in town.
I Lnew him well. He always shod our horses and did any other work
h his line which we had. He was, with his family, a member of the
Methodist Church and was a good man in every way and was highly
mspected,
May 18, 1867 he married Emma Baltimore, daughter of George and
Jenett Jackson Baltimore, and they had the following children:
Marietta B. b. MaY 17, 1868
Julia b. Nov. 26, 1870 d. June 10, 1880
Georgiana b. Aug. 18, 1874 d. January 7, 1894
Isabella V. b. Nov. 24, 1878
Robert Lewis b. Sept. 17' 1880 d. March 30, 1882
Marietta (Matey) and Isabella (Belle) live in the family homestead, purchased 1867 . . . Both are cripples . . .
There is no large water system so far north . . .
Mr. James says that his uncle was at Big Bend before going to
New York, but Mr. Sullivan takes him out of the South five ]years before the tunnel was begun. Developments from trying to clear up the confusion by writing letters resulted in a trip to Whitehall in the spring of 1930 and a second to Keswick in the summer following.
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It seemed important to determine whether this John Henry was actually in the South during the construction of the tunnel.
In Whitehall I failed to find anything of a documentary sort to show that he returned to Virginia after leaving in 1865. The family letters had been destroyed, and no newspaper files for the period seem to exist. His two daughters, Matey and Belle, were certain that he did not return after his trip north with Boyd, and their neighbors, those around sixty or seventy years of age agreed, with varying degrees of sureness, that he could not have been at Big Bend-Tunnel. However, Joseph Chapelle and George Brown, older residents of Whitehall, claimed that they knew him well, and thought it quite probable that he returned to the South to work on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, at least during winter - - - about half of the year in Whitehall in the seventies,[47] - - - in his greater effort to pay for the home he had recently bought. Mr. Chapelle worked around 1870 for the National Transp,sltation Line, on the canal through Whitehal
He said that Henry shod mules for the same company at the t-3t
and that activities were suspended there during winter. He said ::u"
Henry's shop was often closed in winter around 1870, but faile'C I
remember how long it stayed closed. He was not certain that it w i-r
always open in thJsu,mmer, and knew that the company's mules u arl
shod at other shops as well as at Henry's.
Nobody in Vhitehall seemed to know a great deal about He::'
not even liis ttny,o daughters. They knew that he had received iil*l
treatment from being -bound out as a slave, but they klg* not:q
of the circumstancesl They knew that he had some trouble rvit:r :-i,
back, ancl that their mother "rubbed it". A large number of :r:
there, who as boys had ('brushed flies" for Henry whjle -he "n":-:
shoeing horses, remembered that he had trouble with his back. S: *'r
of their thought that marks on his shoulders and back were callc:"*,
from wearing: a yoke to pull a plow or to carry water -when he ro; ;...,
bou,nd out, and others were quite sure that the marks were r:. ''r
prominent muscles. They had seen Henry working in the shop 'a-:::
iris shirt open and his sleeves up, and all agreed that he was a 7:'
strong man. That he had lifted a mule on his shoulder on -:Irl
occasion was a ,matter of common report. Mr. Su'llivan thcuS*:.
perhaps, while Henry was very reticent about his early life, and : "
bt tris particularly intimate affairs, that he talked somewhat freelv ',", ;:
two old "rounders" with whom he associated a great deal be: -t
becoming a member of the chu'rch. But these two men are gone f from Whitehall.
Such closeness on the Part of Henry to old "rounders" would
seem to upset Mr. Sullivan's earlier statement that he was a "good man in every way," but this report was based on the later Years of Henry's life. Nobody in Whitehall, of course, reported Henry as a bad man at any period of his career. He was known to play cards
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47) Mr. Brown says that he worked only six- months a year at
that time, and lived through the winter on his savings from the summer.
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and drink occasionally, but never seen gambling or drunk; and on occasion to forget his domestic obligations, but not in any way that would characterize him as lacking real manliness. His associates were largely white people, and they held him in high esteem from the time of his arrivat in Whitehall. He was "never ugly or boisterous," and after joining the church he always spoke of the devil as "Mr. Satan." He had "good manners," although he never learned to write, and his letters were always written by some member of his family.
Henry was in the habit of singing as he worked in the shop such songs as "Old Black Joe" and "Shoo Fly. He often chanted "tunes" to his hammer and anvil, and was greatly attached to them.
His younger daughter remembered that he spoke of working on the railroad at some time, but knew nothing definite about the matter, but they both insisted that he did not work on any road in the South after going to Whitehall in 1865. The older was less than two years when Big Bend Tunnel was begun, and the younger was born after its completion. The former can not be considered an
uul:.:rity on the activities of her father while she was only two or
":1r:.r yeurs old, and hardly better than the latter who can report
r1r. hearsay for the early seventies. Their lack of definite knowledge,
,ilil;- from hearsay reports in the family, of their father during the
uirr", .:ities and eighties, as well as his earlier life, no doubt because
:rni :.s reticence about such matters, 'rnakes possible his consideration
riuuii ::e original John I-lenry" S,everal definite connections seem to
l*r.:'r between the two.
,lf his four daughters, the second was named Julia, born about
'luil -.: months after \)f . R. Johnson got the contract for the construction
r.- 3:g Bend Tunnel, and the third was narned Georgiana, -born about
1rh . ,Iears after the tunnel was built. In about half of the texts of
illr: lallad, t'Julia Annto appears as the steel-driverts wife, woman' or
lluri.i,,'. The t'white houset', from which the steel-driver is taken to the
ru:::l to drive and to which after the contest he is taken injured or
ulrt;t. may be a variation of Vhitehall, the home of John L. Henry
im ::e time. Moreover, his singing ((Shoo Flyt' and other tunes as
ililr ,',',:rked in his shop, his attachment to his hammer and anvil, his
,',,tu-,:d mannerst', association with white people, Superiof strength,
-ruo:i of ability to write, - - all are in keeping with the direct and popular
'rnr:i-tS for the original John Henry, who sang "Shoo Fly" at Big
$u:j, associated with white people, and got the Oilpin family to
r'rrr1l::. letters for him to his family in Norlh Carolina, possibly a
ru:i.lsion with New York. He required t'good mannerstt for his
lu:"::cts at the tunnel, aS Mr. Gilpin represents him, and something
of the sort, echoed in the Henry tradition, almost certainly contributed
to the belief in the great steel-driver as a good nl4nr not infrequently
rr,. good for anything of consequence. Doubtlessly such apparent
connections would be sufficient for the identification of Chaucer's Wife of Bath.
fi hen Big Bend was begun in 1870, John L. Henry was thirty-one years old, weight around 170 pounds, height about five feet eight
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inches, and almost black. At his home I was able to get a photogragh, made about 1870, of him in his "Sunday clothes", and presented a copy of it to Mr. Gilpin and the Hedrick brothers for their judgement of him as the steel-driver. After careful examination they agreed that it was not altogether unlike the Negro they knew at the tunnel, but only his face and hands we're exposed in the photograph.
they remembered him most distinctly as a man of energy, a man of action, with full chest and muscled arms and shoulders. Besides, he was not quite tall enough for Mr. Gilpin and George Hedrick,
slightly too stout for John Hedrick. The writer then sought the
opinion of Jeff Washington, who gave it with little more than a
glance at the photograph. The feet seemed to amuse him, and l
they are very good Negro feet, as good or better than Jeff's i'rq
Nevertheless, he was certain that they were not the feet of the
Henry he knew on the Chesapeake and Ohi,o.
The identi,fication, therefore, of John L. Henry as the steel-dn
would no longer seem possible, although his trail promised a E:
deal. The wise thing, perhaps,'for the investigator was to accept fr
the first the report of Charles James, that hi,s uncle was not the
but the existence of the criminal element in the Henry tradition
to the suspicion that the whole story had not been told. The fi
of Mr. James to remember a proper amount of detail aboui
career of his uncle, along with his history in full of the Cir-il flf
added weight in that direction. But this trail, like that followed einrh
at Norfolk, leads only to disappointment; and the testimony of Charles James for the steel-driver may be placed among the popular re
of the seoond chapter of this study, and, after a necessary explanr
that of Jeff Washington may be placed among the direct testimony of the third chapter.
Not a little chagrined at the failure of Jeff Washington to consider the photograph in a more serious manner, I took plans to
remind him that John L. Henry seemed to be the only member of the Henry families around Keswick, or in the larger Charlottesville district, who could qualify as the steel-driver, and that he did not have a sister there or elsewhere. Jeff continued his good-natured attitude, and readily shifted ground in two important particulars. Instead of repeating his earlier report of first coming in contact with John Henry at Keswick, a depot on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad about ten miles east of Charlottesville, he stated that he first knew the steet
at Ivy, a depot on the same road about ten rniles west of Charlottesville. He explained that Henry's sister lived, not in Charlottesville but "back on the ridge of the mountains above Hinton."
Virginia. U7hile the first shift may have no positive val;le"
second is highly significant, in that Jeff placed the sister rr
immediate section where the steel-driver's white woman lived. a
to Miller, Scott, and Gilpin. At the time the tunnel was txii,fr
section was not a Negro conununity, and in all probability not a
Negro there. Henry's sister and Henry's white woman, theno a:t fl
and the same, and Jeff told more than he meant to. His amusement,
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therefore, at my failure to find Henry's sister in Charlottesville seems obvious.
The trails of John Henry have brought unsatisfactory results and the question of what became of him is still not answered. His
leaving Big Bend neighborhood was certainly not to the tune of a brass band, and it is very doubtful that he left at all. He had about equal chance to go or stay. The fear of his ghost in the tunnel and the wide popular belief in his death there, where escape at best was only a gambling possibility, may be regarded as lending some value to the ballad record of the event. Fortunately, a full account of the career of John Henry is not necessary for an answer to the question of his existence and the reality of his drilling-contest.