Kentucky Coal Museum--Benham, KY, July 25, 2019

As I mentioned in my previous blog post about our long road trip to Harlan County and beyond, my wife Candice and I toured the Kentucky Coal Museum in Benham, Kentucky, on July 25, 2019.  I am involved in a large research project about a particular coal camp town right now and I am deeply immersed in as much coal camp information as I can gather which has been reflected in many of my recent blog posts.  Even though it is a bit far flung from my main research interest, Candice and I both wanted to go to Harlan to the museum and thought the trip was worth while.  It really was worth while.  I have been fascinated and greatly pleased that a little over two  years ago the museum converted to solar power but I did not discuss it with the employee on duty since most of the early questions I asked her seemed to be a bit over her head.  That was the only negative aspect of the entire experience in my mind.  I would have loved to meet a docent who actually knew a lot about the museum, the industry, and life in the area as far back as 125 years ago.  The other biggest knock on the place is that, like most museums, art galleries, and zoos, you enter the place directly into the store area where they are hawking everything from soup to nuts.  

But the museum is located in an old store or office building has has four levels with displays.  There is the ground level, a mezzanine above that, a second story above that, and a basement which is primarily filled with coal mining tools and a facsimile mine.  I took as many photos as I could and they allow you to take photos freely which is great.  The collection is diverse, reasonably well curated, and organized into logical sections according to subject matter.  There are several photos and other material from Drift, KY, in Floyd County which was a surprise since that mine was near where I grew up.  There is also a fairly large display of Loretta Lynn material which has some logical connection because of her "Coal Miner's Daughter" record and book and the fact that she grew up in Van Lear, KY, a coal camp in Johnson County.  There is also a small museum in Van Lear which is not nearly as complete, well curated, or diverse.  I am going to add as many photographs to this post as I can logically and will, from this point on,  and will make only short explanatory notes where necessary.  I hope my readers will enjoy this blog post, tour the Coal Museum on your own, and read the other posts which I have provided links to in this piece.  

The mezzanine level, which we visited first has a large collection of memorabilia from the several local schools which existed in Harlan County before consolidation.  These are the schools which the children of coal miners attended until the mergers began.  This is a sports letter sweater from Lynch High School which no longer exists.   

ALL PHOTOS ARE BY ROGER D. HICKS AND ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED UNDER US COPYRIGHT LAW.  DO NOT USE ANY PHOTOS FROM THIS BLOG WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM ROGER D. HICKS. 

Lynch High School Letterman's Sweater--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

This is obviously a Lynch High School cheerleader's uniform which was worn by a girl named Joyce. 

Lynch High School cheerleader's uniform--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Car Decorator Plate from Benham, KY, the home of the museum--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Below we have a pre-employment warning sign which would have been posted near the entrance to the coal company employment office and harks back to signs which used to appear in New York City which said things like "No Irish Need To Apply".  In the early era of coal mining in Appalachia, companies could get away with all sorts of discrimination and maltreatment which would be crimes today. 

Pre-employment Warning Sign from Benham--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Life Sized Carved Wood Bust of a Coal Miner--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

I assume this sign, hand written with a finger in coal dust is authentic although I did not ask.  If you read it carefully, it says, "42 men alive in Left Mar 4, 1915 at 4:30pm

This is the coal camp church display in the museum.  Notice that the museum staff worked diligently to make the church racially integrated with an African American minister.  But most companies owned the buildings in which the churches were held or built racially segregated churches for both races and strictly controlled who could preach in them, what they could preach, and who they could preach it to.  For instance, read about the churches in the book I reviewed recently, "Coal People Life In Southern Colorado's Company Towns".  Also, some mention of this subject takes place in George D. Torok's book, "A Guide To Historic Coal Towns Of The Big Sandy River Valley" which is reviewed at this link.  While all the same practices were not followed from state to state or company to company, the companies universally used every device at their disposal in order to control every aspect of coal camp life.  Interestingly, in Eastern Kentucky and parts of Southern West Virginia and Western Virginia, the Old Regular Baptist Church was a big influence on the people of coal camps and always owned their own churches which were also always outside the city limits such asd the Steele's Creek ORB Church at Wayland where the moderator, E. Hawk Moore,  was also a miner and served as the funeral committeeman for the UMWA for many years.  But it is also necessary to note that the ORB church did not usually meddle much in coal company matters and their churches only held services on site one weekend each month which was throwback to the days of the circuit riding preachers in Appalachia. 

Here is a photo of a wonderful coal and wood burning cook stove on the floor of the museum which houses most of the items related to Loretta Lynn.  However, please note that nothing in the section particularly seems to be labeled as having been owned by Loretta Lynn or her family. 

Here is a wonderful Singer treadle sewing machine from the bedroom of that same section of the museum.  The bedroom suite of which the chest of drawers is partially visible appears to be from the late 1950's or early 1960's based on the type of drawer pulls it has.

The section of the museum which represents stores, both country stores and company stores takes me back to my childhood growing up in a country store.  They have a great collection of period appropriate items in the shelves along with a good scale from about the 1950's. 

I hope you have enjoyed this insight into the collections at the museum.  But please do not allow these photographs to prevent you from actually taking a trip to Benham, KY, to tour the museum.  If you have any interest in or connection to coal camp towns and coal mining, you will appreciate their collections. 

ALL PHOTOS ARE BY ROGER D. HICKS AND ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED UNDER US COPYRIGHT LAW.  DO NOT USE ANY PHOTOS FROM THIS BLOG WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERSMISSION FROM ROGER D. HICKS. 

"We Be Warm Til Springtime Comes" by Lillie D. Chaffin BOOK REVIEW

Until recently I had never read anything by Lillie D. Chaffin even though she was from Pikeville, KY, and had served as Kentucky's Poet Laureate in 1974.  She also has an Appalachian Literature award named for her at my Alma Mater, Morehead State University.  After having read her children's book, "We Be Warm Till Springtime Comes", I have to admit I had been remiss by not having read her work.  I strayed into the book during an expedition to a small antique store which a friend owns where I sometimes buy a few items for my personal collection.  On that trip, I bought a few books of Appalachian or Kentucky interest and "We Be Here..." was one of them.  It was published in 1980 by Macmillan and illustrated by Lloyd Bloom.  The copy I bought was in excellent condition with the dust jacket in nearly perfect shape, still contained the original poster of one of the illustrations by Bloom.  It also contained a signed letter and post card from Ms. Chaffin to the previous owner.  I would probably have bought the book even if it were not purely Appalachian.  

The book is intended for juvenile readers from about the third to sixth grade and is a most genuine Appalachian story about a poor family living in poverty in the mountains in the middle of a hard winter.  The family is composed of a mother, a son about ten years old, and a small daughter.  The family is facing an increasingly hard winter with no coal or wood to burn for heat.  The son makes a decision, over the mother's objections, to go to the coal bank on the hill behind their house to dig for coal to help them survive the winter.  This is one of the most genuine and authentic Appalachian stories I have ever read.  Although we never burned coal when I was a child, the family farm on which I was raised in Knott County Kentucky contained the remains of two coal banks where previous owners of the land had dug for what is known locally as "house coal".  

For those of you who have no knowledge of coal banks, they are small holes dug into a coal seam which is at or near the surface for purposes of gaining access to enough coal to heat a home and fire a cast iron cook stove or "step stove" as most of them were known. But after several years of digging, a coal bank might be as much as hundred feet deep inside a hillside.  Few of them ever had a solid roof and roof falls were numerous. I have never dug coal in a coal bank.  I was very lucky to have a family who lived somewhat above the level at which many of our neighbors did.  But I grew up with and went to school with several children, mostly boys, who had to dig house coal in order to facilitate family survival.  I went to high school with three children whose father whom I knew was killed accidentally by a mishandled charge of dynamite during an effort to obtain house coal from a coal bank.  

The inherent danger of digging in a coal bank combined with the hard winter and poverty work to make this a very tense book for a young reader.  But it is an excellent book for such readers at the same time since it focuses on the boy's self sufficiency, honor, and determination to help his mother and sister survive the winter.  His willingness to take a potentially fatal risk to assist his family is the heart of the story.  It is wonderful story and well worth reading.  I will take the time to find and read more of Lillie D. Chaffin's work and so should you.  

Lloyd Bloom's illustrations for the book appear to have been originally rendered in charcoal and present only a few shades of black, white, and grey.  In another setting, they might be considered a bit goth.  But they do an excellent job of increasing the tension of the book and stressing the dangerous potential of the effort.  Go online at a good used book site and find a copy.  You will enjoy this book a great deal.