Tag: Coal mines

April 25, 2018 Dennis Ayers

The oldest daughter of James and Sarah Jackson was Myrtle Louise, born March 1, 1889 in Greene County, Tennessee. From the very beginning, Myrtle knew only a hard life. Born into a large family with meager resources, she was raised under far different circumstances than her Great-Great-Grandfather, William Jackson, who just four generations earlier was a wealthy land holder and slaver owner.

 

Myrtle Jackson 1930s

By age 12, Myrtle was turned out to work as a live-in servant to a local merchant in the Greeneville area. If there was any compensation at all, no doubt it was passed on to her father and mother. The family she lived with was John and Elizabeth Burkey who had two very young children. Myrtle years later recounted that the family treated her poorly and didn’t feed her very much. She had dark hair and light blue eyes and must have been very attractive as a teenager. She certainly caught the attention of a local young farmer named Tom Derrie. She and Tom were married in August of 1904 when she was just 15 years old and he was 6 years older. Ten months later they had their first child whom they named Lillian Mae.

 

        Myrtle Jackson 1940s

Then shortly thereafter, as mentioned previously, Myrtle’s brothers moved to Campbell County to work as coal miners. Her father and mother joined them as did Myrtle and Tom, who also found work as a coal miner. They moved to a home in Jacksboro and their second child, Alma Bernice, was born in November 1909. Their third child, Melda, born in January 1912 only lived for five weeks before dying of Whooping Cough. They continued to have another 8 children, but only son Alvin (called Bud), and daughters, Helen and Veatta lived to adulthood. The others were tragically lost at young ages. Also, tragically, Tom Derrie lost his lower left leg in a coal crusher machine accident around 1915. These unfortunate events had a terrible and lasting effect on the family. Myrtle and Tom’s difficult life in the years following the accident can be reviewed in the story about Thomas Derrie which can be found in the Derrie chapter of this family history. Myrtle died on February 9,1956 from a heart attack at age 66 and is buried with Tom in the Jacksboro Cemetery.

 

Grandma Myrtle, Daughter Veatta Derrie, Granddaughter Carol Ayers – 1955

My mother, Helen Derrie Ayers, loved her mother very much, and often told me sad stories of her hard life. One story was that Myrtle had to feed her family only biscuits and gravy nearly every meal when there was no money for other food. Living 500 miles away, we didn’t get to see her very often. The times we did see her was on summer vacations when our family jumped in our old car and trekked to Tennessee to visit all the relatives. Then we’d only see her a few days. I believe there was just a single occasion when Myrtle visited Maryland, and that was when she came along with her daughter Lillian’s family in June of 1955. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough contact with her for me to have many memories. The few that I have are of a small sweet woman with gray hair who seemed to me to be very caring. I also remember some unpleasant habits like her using snuff, now called smokeless tobacco, and drinking a little to much. Once at her house I woke up one morning and couldn’t find my shoes. It turned out that Grandma had gotten a little tipsy and stolen them from me to wear while cooking breakfast. She thought it was funny, but I didn’t at the time.

 

I was only 13 when Grandma died. The strongest memory that I have is of my mother crying during the entire long drive to Tennessee for the funeral. I wish there were more memories of Grandma Myrtle, but we barely knew her.

Tom & Myrtle’s Headstone
April 21, 2018 Dennis Ayers

On the morning of May 19, 1902, the community of Fraterville lost all but three of its adult males. A devastating explosion in the Fraterville Mine killed 216 miners of which only 184 were ever identified. The cause of the explosion was never identified, but it

          Fraterville Coffins – 1902

was most likely due to a build up of methane gas resulting from poor ventilation. At the time, the miners were working about 3 miles under Cross Mountain. Most were killed instantly, and 26 later died of suffocation before rescuers could reach them. Some entire families were lost. It was the worst mining disaster in Tennessee’s history and among the top five in the nation.

 

The miners were a mix of itinerant workers, expert miners and local men and boys. Most of the itinerant miners were never claimed and were buried alongside the nearby railroad tracks. The others were buried in local cemeteries with 89 being interred in Leach Cemetery in a spot called Miners Circle.

 

Due to this tragic loss of so many lives, the disaster created the need for replacement miners in the following months. This need is strongly believed to have been the reason for the entire Jackson family to relocate to Campbell County around 1905. Fraterville was located near the town of Coal Creek (now named Rocky Top) bordering Campbell and Anderson Counties. The distance to Jacksboro where many of the Jacksons moved is about 7 miles.

April 19, 2018 Dennis Ayers

James Henry Jackson was born in 1862, in the middle of the Civil war, as the third son of John and Peggy Jackson. He was raised working on the farm next door to Peggy’s parents. James left home early though and, as mentioned in the last post, was married in 1879 to Sarah Malinda Chandler. He was 17 and Sarah was just 15 years old, but they soon established their own household and James became a farm worker. Neither James nor Sarah could read or write and they rented their home as they would continue to do for the rest of their lives.

 

James was tall with red hair, while Sarah was of medium size with dark hair and blue eyes. As typical of families in earlier times, they proceeded to have 12 children over the next 18 years. As chance would have it, 6 of the children had red hair and 6 had dark hair. By 1900 the family had moved a little south to Greene County, TN. The reason is unknown, but perhaps it was to find better work since James had become a day laborer. They already had their first 10 children, and it seems the family had fallen on hard times.  The three oldest teenage sons were also working as day laborers,  and they were forced to let their oldest daughter, Myrtle, work as a hired servant at only 12 years of age.

 

Then around 1905 the whole family, including the 5 adult children and spouses, all moved 50 miles west to Campbell County. What was the reason for such a major event?  Well, evidently, it was to obtain employment in the coal mining industry in that general area. With the single exception of James himself, all the men became coal miners. The first to move seems to have been the oldest son, John, who married Melda Roberts in Campbell County in June 1904. Others soon followed and by 1910 all were living in the Jacksboro area.

 

My mother, Helen Derrie, remembers her grandfather being known as Jim rather than James. It is not clear why Jim didn’t become a coal miner also, but it may have been because he was already in his 40s by the time of the big move. He became a farmer worker again and settled down in Caryville. He lived another 30 years until he died at age 75 in January 1936 from a cerebral hemorrhage. Sarah lived even longer and died in February 1944 from complications resulting from a fractured left hip received in a fall. She was I month short of her 80th birthday. Jim and Sarah are buried together in the Harness Cemetery in Caryville on a hilltop overlooking Cove Lake.

March 6, 2012 Dennis Ayers No comments exist

As mentioned earlier, Robert and Sarah Derryberry/Derrie had three daughters and four sons.  Their oldest son was my grandfather,Thomas Washington Derrie, who I knew only briefly before his death.  Sadly, Thomas never knew either of his two grandfathers. Both were killed in the Civil War fighting for the South before he was born. The death of his father’s father, James Derryberry, at age 25 in the battle of Atlanta was described in an earlier post. The death of his mother’s father, George Washington Clowers, at age 34 in the battle of Winchester, VA, will be described in a future post when I discuss the Clowers. I wonder how many other children have lost both grandfather’s to the devastation of war?

 

Thomas Derrie was born in 1883 in Greene County, TN. Tom, as everyone called him, grew up working on his father’s farm near Warrensburg. He only attended school until the second grade and by age 18 he could not yet read or write. In 1903 he lost his own father, Robert, and in 1904 at the age of 22 he married Myrtle Jackson. Myrtle was born in Washington County, TN, in 1888 but her family had moved to neighboring Greene County. Coming from a large and poor family she was turned out at a very early age to be a live-in servant to a local merchant. Tom must have met her when he went to the store where she lived. They married when Myrtle, with black hair and light blue eyes, was only 15 years old. She must have wanted to get away, because she later said that the family she had worked for treated her poorly and didn’t feed her very much. By 1910 Tom and Myrtle had started their family and moved to Jacksboro in Campbell County, TN, perhaps because Myrtle’s father and mother had earlier relocated there.

 

Tom Derrie was of medium height and a somewhat stout man. He had brown hair and brown eyes. In his early 30’s, he worked in the nearby Caryville coal mines until around 1915 when his left lower leg was severely mangled while operating a coal crushing machine. The story is that after the other miners freed him from the machine, they took him to his house where the doctor cut off his leg just below the knee while he laid on the kitchen table. How painful that must have been, but there were no hospitals in the county. He must have received a cash settlement from the coal mines, because in 1917 he and Myrtle purchased a house in Jacksboro for $300. However, continuing to make a living with only one good leg became extremely difficult.

 

Altogether, Tom and Myrtle had eleven children between 1905 and 1927. Unfortunately, only five of them grew to adulthood: Lillian, Alma, Alvin (Bud), Helen and Veatta. Most of the others died at birth or at a very early age, but nine-year old Dorothy died after the doctor lanced her tonsils and she bled to death. There is also the story that they lost two young ones during the great Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1919 which cost millions of lives around the world. Tom had to dig the graves while he too suffered from the flu. There was always sorrow in their household from the many lost children.

 

1913 Model T Touring Car
1913 Model T Touring Car

In an attempt to support his family after losing his leg, Tom bought an old Model T touring car with button-down side window curtains, and became a taxi driver. Fixing constant flat tires and making frequent repairs on that old car trained him to be especially good at fixing autos. As a result, he eventually gave up the taxi and became an auto mechanic. Perhaps seeking more work around 1923, he moved the family five miles down the road to LaFollette to a house on Tennessee Ave, which they rented for $10 per month. By 1937, the family moved into a house about a mile outside of town on Highway 25W at Coke Oven Hill which they rented for $5 per month. This house was unpainted and very drafty. In 1945, they were somehow able to purchase the house and property which had 160 ft of road frontage for $150. Tom then built a good-sized garage next to the house to repair cars. Unfortunately, business was not very good, and due to various reasons the years in LaFollette were not kind to the family as they often lived in great poverty with few clothes and barely enough food to eat.

 

Tom suffered continuously with his amputated leg, and his crude, wooden artificial leg never fit well, always causing sores on the stub. That together with his inability to make a decent income and his family sorrows, caused him to become a bitter man and a heavy drinker over the years. His drinking problems also eventually dragged down Myrtle, and others close to him into the same sad and deplorable situation. The heavy drinking only made their financial condition worse. Finally, in 1949, Tom suffered a ruptured appendix and after three days in the hospital died from complications at age 65. He was taken to a mortuary on the second floor above a furniture store. His oldest daughter, Lillian, had heard there were rats in the building and stayed with his body all night for protection. Tom is buried in the Jacksboro Cemetery.

 

Myrtle remarried in 1951 to Henry White, sold the house at Coke Oven Hill, and moved into his small house in LaFollette proper. It was a marriage of companionship and they lived comfortably for a few years. In 1956, she apparently developed breast cancer, but before treatment she died from a heart attack at age 66.  She is buried next to Tom in the Jacksboro Cemetery.

 

April 23, 2011 Dennis Ayers 1 comment
Ira Ayers ca 1935

Ira Lawson Ayers was born in 1913 and raised on Walnut Mountain in Campbell County, TN, in an area called Stinking Creek which later came under the Pioneer, TN post office. He was the oldest son of Martin Ayers and Hannah Depew. His middle name supposedly came from the doctor who delivered him. This is probably true since there was a Dr. Alonzo Lawson living in that same district in the 1920 census.  Where his given name came from is a mystery since Ira was not a common name in the South.  Perhaps it was a mistake of some kind since all his folks called him “Arie”. No original birth certificate was ever recorded.

 

As expected, Ira grew up working on the farm and attending school, but after his mother died of TB when he was 12 years old, he had to quit school to help take care of his two sisters and brother. Even after his father remarried and had still more children, Ira was heavily depended on for help with the younger ones. He developed a stern temperament like his father. His youngest sister, Geneva, likes to tell the story about the time their father went to town and left Ira in charge of the others.  The children had a pet chicken named “Dooty Hicks” which they took into the house and put in the room where Ira was napping.  The chicken jumped on the bed waking him which made Ira very angry, much to the amusement of the children.

 

Ira had brown hair and brown eyes. He eventually grew to be 5 ft. 10 in. tall and was very slender as a young man weighing about 155 Lbs.  Strangely, his friends in the area nicknamed him “Hoss”, perhaps because he was such a hard worker.

 

In the 1930s, America was in the grip of the Great Depression with over 25 percent unemployment.  As one of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCCs) was established in 1933 to give employment to young men and to help develop and preserve natural resources. So, in June 1935 when he was 21, Ira left home for the first time and joined, along with two and a half  million other young men, the CCCs which some called “Roosevelt’s Tree Army”. In the CCCs he earned $30 per month plus room and board. The government sent $25 of his pay home to the parents, but his father saved half for Ira to have when he returned. After the first issue of free clothing, he had to buy any replacements needed.  It was a military style life with barracks, mess halls, exercise and work.

 

Back on the farm, Ira had cut down many trees and split a lot of logs.  As a result, he had become skillful wielding an ax. This despite an accident one time in which his swing got misdirected by a tree branch, causing him to cut into his left calf muscle rather deeply.  So in the “Tree Army” he was naturally put to work using an ax.  His first nine months were spent in the Smoky Mountains National Park near Seiverville, TN where he helped clear land for roads and tourist areas. He then got transferred closer to home to the CCC camp at Lake City, TN near the Norris Dam which had just been completed in the previous year.  There he spent seven months clearing land for campgrounds around the Dam. However, once again he fell victim to a similar accident with the ax as before, and severely chopped his left foot.  He was sent to the Army hospital at Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia (near Chattanooga, TN) for recovery which took about three months. He then returned to the camp at Norris Dam for the last eight months of his tour and was honorably discharged from the CCCs in Sept 1937.

 

Looking back, Ira always said he enjoyed his time in the Tree Army. The thing he remembered most……. “they always had plenty of food to eat”.

 

Later after coming back home, he and his brother Addison worked for a time in the coal mines at “Charlie Hollow”.  Aileen remembers Ira onetime getting frost bite on his ears walking to the mines early in the morning in the winter. They paid some board to their father and saved most of the rest of their pay. Their brother Tom remembered them counting their savings on the kitchen table.