BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COAL INDUSTRY OF WHITECOUNTY, TENNESSEE
1882- 1936
by Iris WebbGlebe
Coal was once King of White County, Tennessee. The coal mining industry had its start in 1882 when an ex-Confederate general, George G. Dibrell, who had also been a Congressman and president of the Southern Company, and his associates organized the Bon Air Coal, Land and Lumber Co. It was chartered by the state on Sept. 7, 1882. Some of the first workers were imported from the famed coal fields of Scotland to help getthe enterprise underway.
The company took its name from the old Bon Air Resort, located on or near present-day Rimrock Mesa, and was one of the earliest and most widely-knownresorts ofthe southinthe 1840s and 1850s. The original owner, Christopher Haupmann, built a large hotel, which he later soldto John Rodgers. Cottages were added and other improvements made, enough to accommodate as many as 500 guests - mostly the affluent of the deep south who escaped the heat and malarial conditions of their home states tor the fresh mountain air, magnificent scenery and healthful mineral springs of Bon Air Mountain. Local histories tell us that many elegant affairs took place, and the guest list sometimes included Andrew Jackson. The resort was destroyed by Scott's cavalry during the Civil war.
The mining company's initial land holdings comprised some 15,000 acres on Bon Air Mountain, land that the general had amassed over the years since the Civil War. From 1882 until 1888 Gen. Dibrell devoted his efforts to bringing a railroad to the mining area. Just 60 days before his death on May 9, 1888, the first carload of coal went out on the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad.
That same year a young man graduated from medical school and applied for a position as the company doctor. He was Dr. William B. Young, who would become the "coal czar" of White County and who was devoted to the industry until, and after, it drew its last breath in 1936. In his unpublished autobiography, Our Family Tree, Dr. Young described the new little mining town as consisting of about 11 cabins built on the slope of the mountain, and a boarding house with such wide spaces between the boards of the walls that he was covered with snow the first night he slept there. About 1891 the ground under the little camp began sliding down the mountain, taking most of the cabins with it. This brought about construction of a "new" Bon Air on the solid tableland above, a town with two to six room houses, wide streets, electricity, church, school, company office, barber shop, jailhouse, doctor’s office, and the "heart" of the town, the two-story brick company store. The store carried just about anything and everything a family would ever need, from diaper pins to coffins. Recreation facilities included a clubhouse and a ball park. Some of Dr. Young's fondest memories of those early years were of the Saturday night socials when he listened to the bagpipes and learned the Highland Fling and Scottish - also ofthe poignancy of the Scots singing“My Heart's In The Highlands."
In Bon Air, as well as the three subsequent mining towns that would arise, the company owned everything. Miners living expenses such as rent, fuel, doctor fees, etc. were deducted from their pay. The company issued its own money in the form of paper bills and "scrip" - metal coins - used for purchases of groceries and other necessities from the company store, thereby discouraging workers from spending in independent stores in Sparta, where goods were cheaper. To obtain scrip, the miner or a member of his family went to the "check" office. Before he could get the requested amount, the bookkeeper checked records to insure the miner had that much accumulated in wages, or else the request was denied. If anything was left over on payday, the men were paid in cash. But, according to one miner, little cash ever changed hands. At the same time the owners and operators exhibited genuine regard for the miners welfare. They seemed to want their towns to be ''model" coal camps, and put forth efforts toward that end. Some of the mines in other counties - notably Grundy and Fentress - used convict labor, a then-usual practice which sometimes led to bloody rioting, but the use of convict labor was never considered in White County.
At the time of Gen. Dibrell's death in 1888, the company was undergoing partial reorganization, and appointed J.M. Overton as Acting Manager. Mr. Overton was the great grandson of Gen. James White, for whom the county was named, and was also brother-in-law of Judge J. M. Dickinson of Chicago, one of the large stockholders in the company. Under Overton’s direction the first "drift" mine (tunnel dug on or parallel to a vein of coal which is usually exposed on the hillside) was dug on the western slope of the mountain about 100 feet below the plateau and just east of Sunset Rock - "Old Number One" it was called. Later “Old Number Two" and several others were dug. The railroad at that time ended at the mines, so a pulley/cable car contraption was the means of transport onto the plateau. In the late 1890s the railroad was extended to Bon Air about the same time the first "shaft” mine, the 210-foot “Carola,” was sunk on the tableland about two miles southeast of Bon Air. (A shaft mine is dug vertically, with tunnels then cut horizontally from the base. Rooms are cut on each side of the tunnel, leaving wide pillars of coal between them for support.) A second shaft provides air ventilation. Elevator cages lowered men and equipment, as well as mules for hauling coal from the rooms, to the work level.
In 1897 the Bon Air Coal, Land and Lumber Co. took over the Buffalo Iron Co., below Nashville, and the name was then changed to Bon Air Coal and Iron Co. By the turn of the century the company's holdings had increased from the original 15,000 acres to 38,000 - about 10,000 of which was thought to have good coking seams, and would lead to the birth of Eastland. Output had increased from 36,000 tons the first year to 240,000 and was reaching markets as far away as Florida and the Mississippi River. The company employedover 600 men at that time, had a monthly payroll of $18,000.00, and boasted 2000 town inhabitants. It was proud of its safety record, reporting that “only 6 men had been killed, and few injured.”
In 1900 a second shaft mine was sunk 6 miles northeast of Bon Air - the 174-foot “Peerless." Around it grew the town of Ravenscroft, patterned basically like the Bon Air community, but lacking electricity in the homes. And whereas the Bon Air homes were "whitewashed" and therefore white, the Ravenscroft homes were painted a dull red. The name of the new town possibly derived from the maiden name of the wife of one of the mining officials her middle name was Ravenscroft.
In 1902-3 the company opened mines at a third location some seven miles east of Bon Air, and the town of Eastland rose. In 1904 the railroad extended spurs to both Ravenscroft and Eastland; the Ravenscroft line was a straight one on which the trains had to back up to Bon Air, then go on to Eastland where there was a turnaround. The town of Eastland in all probability was named for Thomas Eastland, early English settler who came to Nashville in the early 18th century, and to White County in 1821. In time Eastland and his sons owned some 500,000 acres in White and surrounding counties, including of course the land on which the town of Eastland was built. In 1839 Thomas Eastland purchased the landsknown as the Clifty Homestead, on top of Cumberland Mountain some 12 miles east of Sparta, from James Simpson. Colonel Eastland's home, “Clefty,” was a stage station - also known as Eastland Stand - and a favorite stopping place for his friend, Andrew Jackson, according to the 1902 Sparta Expositor Souvenir supplement. Thomas Eastland and James Simpson became close friends and hunting companions. One day they were hunting deer on a hill or knob that rose above the others in such a perfectly rounded shape that they named it Dumpling Knob. From the hill they gazed at the beauties of nature around and below them, and vowed to each other that when they died, they wanted to be buried on Dumpling Knob. Today they lie there beneath large flagstones inscribed:
JamesSimpson Thomas Eastland
Born Nov. 30, 1768 Died Jan. 10, 1860
Died April 20, 1854 Age 82 Years and 18 Days
The Eastland venture proved to be a costly one for the Bon Air coal company. The coking seam which showed such promise on the surface, and led to the purchase and building of two large and expensive "beehive" coke ovens, turned out to be highly sulphurous, and had to be abandoned with considerable financial loss after two or three years. Although regular mining continued at Eastland, the setback with the coke ovens seemed to reverse the fortunes of the company and it went into receivership in 1911.
In 1903 another mine, unconnected with the Bon Air operation at the time, was opened adjacent to the Eastland property; bankers Jesse Walling of McMinnville and R. L. Hill of Sparta purchased a 5000-acre tract on Clifty Creek, known as the Col. John Savage tract, and organized the Clifty Creek Coal& Coke Co. Dr. Wm. Young resigned his position as physician of the Bon Air company to become General Manager of the Clifty mine. (One interesting aspect ofthe Cliftypurchasewas the amount of litigation that went on in clearing title to the deeds. The amount of paperwork in tracing abstracts alone numbers more than 400 typewritten pages.) In 1909 the Clifty companywaspurchasedby R. R. Moody of Springfield, Mass., and associates, plus a large tract of adjoining coal and timber land. The company was reorganized and renamed the Clifty Consolidated Coal Co., with Dr. Young continuing as manager.
In 1917 the war created an upsurge in the demand for coal, and Wm. J. Cummins and associates bought the old Bon Air Coal & Iron co. at a receiver's sale in Nashville. The company was then reorganized and renamed the Bon Air Coal & Iron Corp. The new investors, including Wm. J. Wrigley of chewing gum fame and hotel magnate John Bowman, poured over $6,000,000 into revitalizing the company. Mr. Cummins tried to persuade Dr. Young to leave the Clifty company and join the new corporation. Dr. Young, however, was not about to desert his beloved Clifty; he told Cummins in effect, “If I come, Clifty comes." This came to pass in 1919, and on Jan. l, 1920, Dr. Young assumed duties as the General superintendent of the coal division of the corporation with the understanding that he would remain Vice President and consulting director of the Clifty company, which at the time comprised 7500 acres in White County and coal lands near Clay, Kentucky. Thus in 1920 all four coal towns of White County - Bon Air, Ravenscroft, Eastland and Clifty - came together under one head. But trouble was brewing for the Bon Air Coal & Iron Corp., and would grow worse in the 1920s.
During the war the miners worked for the government-set wage of $3.20 per day, and did so in a spirit of cooperation and patriotism. After the war, however, John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine workers of America, renewed his efforts to organize miners and called for a nation-wide strike in 1919. The two-month strike resulted in a pay raise to $5.20 per day. When that contract expired in 1922, the coal industry was in a depressed state due to overproduction, loss of markets to other power sources, inefficiency of operations, etc., the company couldnot and would not grant another raise. It closed the Carola shaft permanently that year. Again in 1924 another nation-wide strike was called, and for 10 weeks hundreds of Bon Air miners were off work. Then the company and miners ignored the union and made their own contract, whereby the miners did go back for $3.20 per day. That same year, however, the Clifty mines ceased operations. The Eastland mines closed in 1926, the same year that yet another reorganization took place within the company; the Bon Air company merged with Chattanooga Coke & Gas co. and J. J. Gray Iron Works under the name of Tennessee Products Corp. Dr. Young retained his position as head of the coal division, which then consisted primarily of Ravenscroft.
The new company never had a chance to realize its potential before it was awash in the great depression. Coal prices dipped to the lowest point since 1900, and by 1932 the Tennessee Products Corp. coal operation was producing less than 1100 tons per day, down from its 24-year average of 2500 tons. Coal valued at $4.00 a ton in 1920 was going for $1.32 in 1932. Work at Ravenscroft was down to as little as two days a week at times, and some months did not operate at all. Of the approximately 1000 people onthe payroll in 1924, less than 1/3 were still working. The company tried various methods in an effort to keep going, including selling off some property, borrowing money and filing for bankruptcy at one point. In the midst of these struggles the operators, to their credit, tried to help the miners put food on the table. Men were urged to grow gardens and crops on company land. This entailed clearing timber, some of which the company bought from the men for use as mine timbers. In addition, men were supplied with seed, fertilizer, canning jars, etc.; they were loaned mules for working the crops; school books were bought for their children. All that was asked of the men was sincere effort on their part, and small repayments to the company if and when they were ever able.
In 1934 the company received what would prove to be its final blow, when the union-company contract expired. The workers wanted a raise, and the company wanted a 10% reduction in wages. Ensuing negotiations produced no agreement, and as the April 1, 1936, expiration of negotiations date approached, the men struck. Paternalistic Dr. Young appealed to them to take the 10% reduction and go back to work; the company was giving them everything it couldto keep the mines working. The men did not believe him. Not even when the mines were shut down and the tracks were being taken up did they believe; they thought new tracks were to be laid. When the water pumps were being pulled, they finally believed, but it was too late. The company pulled all equipment and abruptly abandoned Ravenscroft in 1936.
Writers Note: Many of the statistics herein quoted, as well as some other facts, were taken from Betty Sparks Huehls' superb master thesis, "Life In The Coal Towns of White County, Tennessee,” which I discovered in the Sparta Library in 1988. Although I had spent years collecting material on White County's coal industry - having been born in Ravenscroft, the granddaughter on the maternal side of one of Ravenscroft's general mine foremen, and granddaughter on the paternal side of miner, deputy sheriff, music teacher and boarding house operator in both Bon Air and Ravenscroft - Ms. Huehls' complete and compelling history filled in many blanks. My gratitude to her, wherever she is.