In 1870 the formerly enslaved John Henry was employed as a steel driver by the contractor charged with building the Great Bend Tunnel in Talcott, West Virginia for the C&O Railway. Victorious over the machine, the legend goes that his heart gave out from the strain and he died with the hammer in his hand. His strength and skill were measured in a race against a steam-powered rock drilling machine. John Henry, A Folk-Lore Study, by Louis W.African American John Henry was known as the “steel driving man”. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1929) Sources: John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend, by Guy Benton Johnson. Chappell wrote with more conviction than Johnson about the certainty that John Henry was a real person and not just a legend. Chappell’s work was much more thorough than Johnson’s, drawing on many contemporary newspapers, scientific journals, treatises on tunneling, and reports from the construction of other tunnels, as well as on the oral and written reports from his many informants. Many rare book collectors today feel Chappell produced the superior work, which easily brings $250 a copy in the rare book market. After Chappell’s work began to circulate in unpublished form, prior to 1929, Johnson took up Chappell’s position for his study, without crediting Chappell. Now, Guy Johnson was a highly respected scholar who had co-authored several works on African American song, but a bit of controversy surrounds his work with John Henry, as Chappell was quick to point out.Īccording to Chappell, Johnson at first thought that the character of John Henry was totally mythological, and that he may have hailed from Georgia or the Carolinas. Gilpin said, “The last time I saw John Henry was when some rocks from a blast fell on him. The boys around the tunnel told me he was later killed in the tunnel. ![]() Neal Miller had told Chappell, “he didn’t die from getting too hot in the contest. But his book, “John Henry, a Folk Lore Study,” didn’t make it to press till 1933. Louis Chappell of West Virginia University had also interviewed Miller about the John Henry story, two years earlier. Blankenship, about 1900.įolk historian Dr. I often saw John Henry, as he was on the gang that I carried water and drills for.” I would take the drills to the shop and bring them back after they were sharpened. I carried water and steel for the gang of drivers at the east end. In the fall of that year I began work at Big Bend. ![]() “I came here when I was seventeen,” said Mr. As well as I remember, though, he took sick and died from fever soon after that. (Neal) Miller told him “Now some people say John Henry died because of this test. Johnson spent four days in Talcott, WV in June 1927 interviewing still-living men who were likely to have seen the event with their own eyes. Johnson, of the University of North Carolina, in the mid 1920s when he was collecting research for his forthcoming “John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend.“ Johnson’s 1929 work was the first published book-length study of John Henry and the John Henry legend. Lynn of Rome, GA, sent her copy of the Blankenship songsheet quoted above to Guy B. It stands in Memorial Park above the east portal of the Big Bend Tunnel near Talcott, West Virginia. I n 1972, Michigan sculptor Charles Cooper completed this eight-foot bronze statue of John Henry. That he died from over exertion in the contest seems somewhat less likely, if eyewitnesses are to be believed. That he drove steel against a steam drill and beat it seems likely. That he drove steel in Great Bend Tunnel (as it was then called) in the early 1870’s seems certain. ![]() That John Henry lived seems beyond doubt. He was the best steel-drivin’ man to ever grace the mountains of West Virginia, say the songs, working on the largest tunneling project in American history at the time. The legend of John Henry began in Big Bend Tunnel, in Summers County, WV, which CSX Railroad still uses today. He’s an American folk hero, the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels. He hammered his fool self to death.” -stanza 7 from one of the earliest written copies of the John Henry ballad, prepared by a W. “John Henry was hammering on the right side,īefore that steam drill could beat him down,
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