Appalachian History

John C.C. Mayo (1864-1914) was born a poor mountaineer in Paintsville, KY, and by the time of his premature death at 49 of Bright’s Disease, had amassed a fortune in the neighborhood of $20,000,000, making him Kentucky’s wealthiest man.

Mayo became a teacher at age 16, interrupted his classroom activities to enroll in Kentucky Wesleyan College in Millersburg, and later returned to Johnson County to resume teaching at Paintsville, for $40 per month.

At college he heard geology lectures by visiting professor A.C. Sherwood, and learned about east Kentucky’s vast mineral resources. Some day, he felt, somebody would want that coal, and whenever he could get a little money saved up he would buy an option on a piece of land. He read geological surveys made by William Mather, David Owen, Nathaniel Shaler, and John Proctor and filled notebooks with mineral data.

He abstracted titles and paid a few dollars each for options to buy minerals underlying tracts of land. He pledged fifty cents to five dollars per acre if the option was later exercised.

In time Mayo saved $150 and with partners he formed the trading firm of Castle, Turner & Mayo, capitalized at $450. Mayo continued to teach and bought out his partners. At twenty six he engineered changes in the state’s land law. He read law and was admitted to the bar.

By the late 1880’s Mayo spent his days traveling around to purchase land for coal rights. He paid little attention to Alice Jane Alka Meek, who worked as a telegraph operator at the Alger House in Paintsville, other than when he wanted to send a message by telegraph to his sweetheart. But according to Carolyn Turner, co-author of the book John C. C. Mayo: Cumberland Capitalist, Miss Meek never sent those messages. When Mayo became deathly ill with pneumonia not long after they met, Miss Meek nursed him back to health at the hotel. Eventually, the two fell in love and were married in 1897. She was 20; he was 33.

When the constitutional convention met in 1890, Mayo knew many of the delegates, whom he lobbied to drop from the new constitution the ‘Virginia Compact provision’ that shadowed the title to hundreds of thousands of acres of eastern Kentucky land.

Mayo hired Floyd County attorney F.A. Hopkins to draft the broad form deed, and used this form in mineral buying to sever title to mineral rights from the remainer of the land title, making mineral rights dominant and residuary rights subservient ‘forever.’

Until the Mayo children were born, Mrs. Mayo traveled with her husband on business trips, often stashing gold – used to pay for mineral rights – in a specially made riding skirt ordered from Pogue’s, a store in Cincinnati. The gold could be tied to straps hidden underneath the skirt, and as much as $10,000 could be carried at a time.

The Mayo Mansion in Paintsville, built between 1904 and 1909.

Mayo had been collecting options for almost twenty years when he made his first sale --- a big parcel of coal land to the Merrits of Duluth. From them he took $200,000 in notes, and had these discounted. The Merrits failed, and he took it upon himself to make these notes good.

It was not until about 1901 that he began to be a really wealthy man, as the value of his land was still rather problematical. But he got Peter L. Kimberley, president of Chicago’s Sharon Steel Company, Frank Buell of Sharon, PA, and several other capitalists to help him form the Northern Coal and Coke Company in the beginning of 1902, and they started coal operating on a big scale, branched out into the Elkhorn field of Kentucky, and started the town of Jenkins. This concern finally sold out to the Consolidated Coal Company, in which Col. Mayo became a big stockholder.

"While never holding office, Col. Mayo always took a keen interest in politics," observed his obituary in the NY Times. "He was National Democratic Committeeman for Kentucky, and in the last presidential campaign took an active part and was a liberal contributor. Friends say his most remarkable trait was his personal magnetism. He was essentially a man of peace.

"In a lawsuit, he never settled by fighting it out, but always by compromise, instructing his attorney to see that the other fellow got what was due him, and a little more. To educational and charitable institutions in Kentucky he was a liberal contributor, and his private benefactions were large." At the time of his death his holdings included 75 companies.


source: NY Times, May 12, 1914 online at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9407E5D8173DE633A25751C1A9639C946596D6CF
Alka Mayo: Mountain matriarch, by Diane Comer, Ashland Daily Independent, October 29, 1985 – Page 8, Today’s Living online at http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/r/e/Clara-Preston-OH/GENE11-0169.html
The Kentucky Encyclopedia, by John E. Kleber, University Press of Kentucky, 1992
www.johnsoncountykyhistory.com/people/mayo.html

Jenkins, KY didn't come into existence by steady settlement over a period of years. Jenkins was planned and built by Consolidation Coal Company [Consol] for men who came to mine its coal-- what was to become known as the best coal in Kentucky.

Mrs. G. C. Johnson: I came from Pikeville. My husband was here--he worked in the store. I came to Hellier by train and got off at 8 o'clock, and got on a hack -- a thing with four seats in it, driven by mules and had a driver. And it took until 5 in the evening to get here.

Photo caption reads: Two couples sitting on steps. Circa 1916.

We come up here right in the creek. I was the only woman on the hack and there was a big keg of beer. They had to bring beer in here for all those people. They had to have their beer.

On Cove Avenue are the oldest houses in Jenkins. They were built in 1911 when I first came here, and the architect and the head man in the office and the auditor and I all lived here on Cove Avenue. I lived in the first one. They all lived here until they began to build the houses around High Street, then they began to move off and move in those houses. Then they built the next row of houses right below and there wasn't any school or church or anything in that area, but the old Jenkins Hotel, where the Bradley-Johnson apartments are now. The hospital was the second building above that.

They hadn't started the dam when I came here and the water we had was from deep wells. You could let it set up over night and then roll the skim off of it and then they put in a dam and that was the first good water we had. The machine shop was where it is now. The recreational building was where the depot is now, just a boarded-up building, and they had all their recreations and preaching services here because there were no churches.

The store building was right between where the post office and the library is now. You see, the water comes out of the dam and goes under there and there was a branch, a little walk, where you could cross it. There were the office buildings. Where Dr. Perry is was a hill. They graded all that down before they built on it. After I came here, they began to build a sewer down Main Street. The railroad came in here in 1913. I left here in 1912 and had to go back to Hellier the way I came.

Consol had a saw mill. They had an ice plant right above where Wilfong's store is now. A little make-shift ice plant and the man that made the ice was Limon Goodson. That is where the Christian Church is now. It was a little make-shift bakery and they made bread. They would go in with a shovel and they would bring a dray--- a wagon with two horses--- over from the store.

That's the way they delivered their groceries. They would go over there and put a clean wrapping paper in the bottom and shovel it in with a shovel. There wasn't any bread wrapping or anything. That's where you got your bread. There wasn't any dairy at that time.

The superintendent at #1 mines when I worked there was Walter Shunk. He stayed there for about two years and then the fellow that took his place was A. B. Thomas. Then they had several different men until they got hold of another Thomas and he stayed here for five or six years, W. H. R. Thomas. When I came here, John G. Smith was manager of the whole thing. He stayed somewhere because his wife wasn't here.

I had four children. Williams was my first husband's name. He worked at the store. He worked for $45 a month and we paid $4.50 for house rent and coal.

Consol would pay their expenses to get in here and then after they went back to work, they would pay them back.
The Elkhorn Hotel was located in Mudtown and I can't think what the name of the one where the Bradley-Johnson apartments are now. I lived on this hill, you know, where the Griffin house was and I would carry soup to the hotel and they kept the dining room door locked until they got a meal on the table and when they would unlock that door, it sounded like a stampede of horses. Food was scarce and so was a place to board.

Anyone that had an extra bed was supposed to keep somebody. I kept Harry Moore and Jimmy Hughes for ever so long. They used outlaws and anything they could get. There were a lot of foreigners that couldn't speak a word of English, and an interpreter would come in to tell the clerk what they wanted.

Photo caption: Recreation building interior, circa 1916. Sign on column says, "Please don't spit on the floor."

I had one friend that said she spoke seven languages. Her brother had a store here then and there used to be a store they called Begley's about where Ransom Jordan's garage is. He owned about three acres in there and they wouldn't sell it to the company and they had their own little store. The company didn't want the people to buy there either.

These fellows came in and they were trying to jew her down. But they turned around and spoke in another language, "now we can get that down at Begley's cheaper." But she knew what they had said. When her brother came in, he said, "I feel like slapping you. If you would keep your mouth shut, you would learn a lot." She spoke their language and they didn't know it. They had said that to each other, and she thought it was too good for her to keep so she told them what they said.

Interview with Mr. and Mrs. G. C. Johnson

The History of Jenkins, Kentucky
Compiled In Honor Of The Sixtieth Anniversary Homecoming Celebration 1912‑1973
Sponsored By The Jenkins Area Jaycees
Elizabeth Wassum Dramczyk, ed. Charles Dixon, project chairman

Source: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Kentucky/Letcher/Jenkins/_Texts/HJK/home.html



appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Consolidated+Coal+Company Jenkins+KY +Letcher+County+KY