Growing Up in a Coal Mining Camp

coal camp

   Dehue coal mines    

Dehue Hollow after you go under the coal mines

               

  Dehue Grade school

The house where my sisters and I grew up in Hutchinson (1951--1959)

I was born April 18, 1941 in Logan, West Virginia in Hutchinson up Rum Creek Hollow just before World War II. I decided to write a blog and tell others a little about my home town, and what it was like to be a coal miner's daughter growing up in a coal camp. My family got tired of me telling them about my life so one day my husband said since we are all tired of listening to you talk about your life why don't you write it down, and I thought why not...so here is my life as a coal miner's daughter:


Logan, Logan, Co., West Virginia


Logan County was created from Cabell, Giles, Kanawha and Tazewell counties by the Virginia Assembly on January 12, 1824. Logan is a small town but today there is not much there, the buildings are still standing but most are empty. Someone came in bought up the town and moved all the stores to a Shopping Center on Corr-G, which is Rt. 119 between Charleston, WV and Williamson, WV. My mother's parents moved to Rum Creek Hollow from Beauty, KY in 1925 where Mom went to eighth grade at Dehue school. My father's parents moved from Ashland, KY to Buffalo Creek in 1919 then moved around to different parts of Logan, Co. They moved to Dehue in 1929 and Dad went to work for Dehue Mines at the age of 12 yrs.old. My father went to Dehue school for only two years, he was in fourth grade when he stopped and went to work for the coal mines.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, Logan was a booming coal town. The population in 1940’s was 67,768 and at its highest in 1950’s was 77,391 persons. After the coal mines shut down in 1957 the population was less than 37,710. People started to move to bigger cities to find jobs and feed their families.

The streets of the town always had a crowd of people going to and from the stores and theaters. Today the population in the town of Logan is 2,206. I never went into Logan by myself until I got in high school, I remember when i was 7 yrs old i got to ride in my cousin's, Buster, new first car - a 1940's Chevy Coupe.

My mother's mother lived across the creek from our house up against the mountain and her house was the only one over there so my mom would make my sister or me spend the night with her. Grandmaw would always talk to me and tell me stories; so this one night she told me about a woman who donated the land that our courthouse sets on. She made one condition to the donation in the 1800's, that there is to be no more men hung from the tree that sets on the front lawn of the courthouse. My Grandmaw said there was a lot of men hung from that tree. (The new courthouse doesn’t have any lawn).

When there was an affair, like judging a contest going on… people would gather in front of the Courthouse. I can recall a particular Halloween night when my sister, Shirley, and I was out with a group of other kids to see what trouble we could get into because it was all mischief for us, no one gave out candy...anyway mom had come looking for Shirley and me (I was 13 and Shirley was 16.) up the hollow. When she found us; Earl, who was a friend of both my parents, stopped his car (only because mom was with us) and was telling us about this contest that they were having in Logan at the Courthouse for best costume and he ask if we would like to go and watch. We all got in his car and went to Logan to watch the contest, we didn't have a costume on ourselves.

The public buses run regular up every hollow so it was no trouble to get to Logan to do your shopping and home again. It cost a nickle to ride the bus to Logan, but you had to have cash which most people didn't have. I remember this one time when I took the bus when I was about 11 years old and my mom was taking me to Logan to visit her sister, there was this lady breastfeeding her baby, she was sitting there with her boob uncover in the baby's mouth. This was not a shock for me, I had seen many women breastfeeding the same way, it was just that she was sitting behind the driver and it was the first thing I saw as I was getting on. In those days, all the colored people had to go to the back of the bus and on this particular crowded bus there was a fat colored lady, she had a bunch of chickens with her that she was taking somewhere. The other passengers where getting upset with her because the chickens were making a lot of noise so they were hollering back and forth at one another, however, most of the people on the bus were ignoring them.

It will be a shame to let the city of Logan fall into ‘ruins.' So many memories will be gone for those of us that were born and raised there. Already most of the coal camps and small towns have disappeared. But there is a lot of others things that we didn’t have in the 50’s that are there now… like fast foods and Laundromats. And a great many thanks should go out to the group of people that are trying to make Logan into a tourist town, and I know that everyone past and present is hoping that they succeed.

I also went to Logan high school the first year that it opened in 1957 on the Island. It is called the Island because that is where the Indians first settle when they first came to Logan and water runs all around the land. The school was bigger than our other high school it had to be because it was the first high school in Logan in which black and white children went to the same school from grades 9-12. Because I didn't have no money of my own or food that I could take for lunch, I would leave school at lunchtime and walk around the streets in Logan. I always stopped at the fence of Courthouse to look at the two Indian graves that were buried in the yard. I like to go and look at their headstones and wonder what kind of life they had and if there was really Indians buried there - one of the graves stone had name Aracoma she was an Indian Princess and the daughter of Chief Cornstalk, her life is similar to Pocahontas.

Speaking of graveyards, Logan County is the burial site for Devil Anse Hatfield, one of the family leaders in the famous feud between the Hatfield s and the McCoy. Devil Anse Hatfield and my uncle were good friends, I will talk more about them later on.

Logan has a new (to me) state park, that they call Chief Logan State Park, that wasn’t there in the 50’s and I ask my Aunt Belvia, what used to be there and she told me it use to be Henlawson Hollow. The Park took up most of what used to be the hollow. A lot of kids that I went to school with in Logan came from Henlawson, that was a big hollow but now a lot of the homes were gone. But it is one of the most beautiful Parks that you will find in any state.

There is a statue of Chief Logan in the Logan Park and at the bottom of the status is written a letter that he wrote after his family was murder.
"I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate of peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed at me as they passed and said, "Logan is the friend of white men." I had even thought to have live with you, but for the injuries of one man, who the last spring in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relatives of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it, I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."

He was later believed to have been killed by another Indian over a disagreement.