Appalachian History

The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG, LETCHER COUNTY, KENTUCKY.
THURSDAY JUNE 2 1927

"16 KNOWN DEAD IN FLOOD"

The death list of the terrific storm which swept Letcher County Sunday night has mounted to sixteen, with reports coming in which indicate that it may reach twenty.

Property damage cannot be estimated. Homes are destroyed, livestock and poultry drowned, and whole farms practically ruined. The fury of the flood far exceeded anything that has ever hit this area in its history.

Numbers of the dead have been found, but searchers are still at their gruesome task of tearing into drifts along the banks of the streams in hopes of finding bodies. Loved ones anxiously await some word from the searchers.

Mrs. Nannie Collins, on Rockhouse, died after her family had to be moved out of the home on account of rising water, but she was already at the point of death, and it is thought that the flood did not contribute to her death.

The bodies of the little Boggs child and Breeding child have not been found yet; but, so far as reports here go, all others have been recovered.

Original caption reads: Letcher County, Kentucky. Thunderstorm on Pine Mountain.

The storm has left desolation in its wake. A large number of homes that escaped the death toll do not have food or clothing, except as it is furnished by neighbors, the L. & N. railroad and the Red Cross.

Train service has been cut off, telephone and telegraph service is practically destroyed, and the North fork of the Kentucky River is in a world by itself. The extent of the storm cannot be determined.

Nobody is going hungry, so far as is known. There is enough food in the valley to last several days, and arrangements have been made by which more supplies can be brought in through the Big Sandy valley if they are needed before the train service can be restored.

Volunteers are busy with rescue and reconstruction work everywhere, and a heroic effort is being made to heal the wounds inflicted by the angry storm.

Red Cross headquarters at Washington, D. C., volunteered help; and the local committee, under the direction of Chairman C. H. Burton, is furnishing aid wherever a need can be found.

Elsiecoal was the first place to be reached. The work there was turned over by Mr. Burton to Dr. Collier, railroad surgeon, who is taking care of the situation at that place.

All mining work has been stopped, and many men are out of employment. It is estimated by the operators that the work will be held up from a few days to several weeks, depending upon the extent of the damage at the different places.

The greatest loss of life and property was in the heads of small streams. It appears that the rain Sunday night came in cloud-burst fury, flooding the narrow gorges and trapping people before they knew what was upon them. It is in these isolated places throughout the county that the greatest suffering will result, men who are studying the situation say.


source: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyletch/articles/flood.htm



Letcher+County+KY floods appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Relatives of the gone-away families often visited if they owned a car or could get a ride with someone who did have one. Susan's son Henry Hampton (by a former marriage) and wife Mint lived with their children in the Carcassonne community.

Henry worked in the mines and owned a car of what age, make or model I am not sure. I do know there were no late models in the community until many years later. We did the maintenance on our old models, tied them together with baling wire, cleaned the spark plugs and breaker points regularly, took up the slack in the adjustable tie rod ends so the driver need not give the steering wheel more than a full turn on the curves.

Before starting on a trip the trunk or back seat of the car should contain a water pail, hand tire pump, jack, tube patches and glue, three quarts of motor oil, a gas can, assorted tools, wrenches, hammers and screwdrivers. In the absence of stop-leak for the dripping radiator, dump in a handful of cornmeal which is sure to stop the leak and maybe the whole circulation system.

The motor gets hot. Can't hardly see the road for the steam boiling up. "You hear that noise out there? What is it? Sounds like a loose rod to me. I just tightened them all up last week. Guess I had better pull off to the side of the road, drop the oil pan and take out a few shims, it won't take long and we will save the oil to put back in when we get done."

Original caption reads: Letcher County, Kentucky. A road scene near foot of Pine Mountain.

Flat tires, motor overhauls and other repairs were common sights along our few winding and narrow highways of those days. Today's motorist would probably take a dim view of such modes of travel. But to those of us who owned one of these ancient vehicles, the door was opened to the outer world.

We could go to Whitesburg or Hazard and return the same day or even a hundred or more miles to visit gone-away relatives or friends. I have made trips to Tennessee and Ohio in trucks at that time that I would now not trust to get to Blackey and back - a distance of five miles each way.

In the late 1920's and early 1930's the route by car from Letcher County to Pulaski County was from Whitesburg across Pine Mountain and down the Cumberland River to Pineville on 119 which was a graveled road at that time. Highway 25 was blacktopped and led to the Bluegrass region.

On the outskirts of Pineville the Hamptons pulled into a small filling station for gas from the hand operated pump. As Henry pulled away from the station with a full tank of 17 cent-per-gallon gas, Mint leaned from the open car window and above the roar of the motor issued this invitation to the startled attendant, "Come and go with us, we are going to Pulaski County to see Henry's ma."

In the 1920's Uncle Tom Dixon, a brother of grandfather Wilburn, owned the part of Dixon Mountain which was across the road and opposite the cemetery.

In summertime anyone traveling along the rough and rutted dirt road through Dixon Mountain would most always come upon Uncle Tom seated by the roadside, leaning back against a huge chestnut tree, a big pile of shavings was around his feet - the result of much whittling as he eagerly awaited the next traveler. Uncle Tom was a great storyteller and philosopher and a firm believer in an unhurried lifestyle. A theory that I fully support.


source: Eastern Kentucky Mountain Memories, by Clifton Caudill, published by s.n., 1996; this excerpt from article in 'The Mountain Eagle,' at www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyletch/articles/dixon_mt_1920.htm



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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



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"I never spoke a word until I was nine years old. I only clucked and motioned for what I wanted. Lots of people thought I was an idiot because I could not talk. I may have looked like one, for I was a little old country boy that never cut my hair in those days only about twice a year, and I wore a big checked cotton shirt and old jeans pants made by my mother and old yarn socks, and 70-cent stogie shoes with brass toes. This was my winter suit and my summer suit was only a big yellow factory shirt and no hat or shoes.

"At the age of ten I was taken by my mother and uncle, Gid Hogg, to Whitesburg, Ky., the county seat of Letcher County, a distance of about eighteen miles. We rode an old mare named "Kate," without any saddle, and when I was taken off I could not walk I was so stiff, and that made everybody think I was an idiot sure enough.

"So when Judge H. C. Lilley opened court on Monday, February 12, they taken me before the judge. The judge ordered old Black Shade Combs, then the sheriff, to summon twelve jurors and two doctors. One doctor thought I had been born an idiot, and Dr. S. S. Swaingo, of Jackson, held out that I was all right of mind, and so the case was put off until 10 a. m. Tuesday.

"Then Dr. Swaingo got old Dr. McCray and gave me a thorough examination. The doctors found by examining my neck, where the small tits in one's neck are, that the tit in my neck had grown together. After the doctors cut the tit loose in my neck I began to talk and to have a good joke. The doctors took me to a one-horse barber shop and had my hair cut and fixed me up and presented me on Tuesday morning to Judge Lilley, and he was surprised beyond reason that I was Fess."

History of Corporal Fess Whitaker
Louisville, Ky, The Standard Printing Co., 1918.

Whitaker's claim to fame is his run for U.S. Congress in 1926, in which he was narrowly defeated. Fess Whitaker (1880-1927) began his career as a politician in 1917, when he was elected county jailer in Letcher County, KY. He likely held this office until 1921, when he decided to run for county judge. The New York Times reported that sometime around 1921 Whitaker participated in a street fight, a disturbance of the peace that led to his incarceration in the very jail he supervised and earned him the nickname "The Jailed Jailer." While imprisoned, Whitaker continued his campaign and was eventually elected. In 1922, Whitaker was again jailed, this time for possessing and transporting whisky for illegal sale. Nevertheless, he was re-elected Letcher County jailer in 1925. He died in a car crash in 1927.


source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/whitaker/whitaker.html