"John Hardy: Negro; about forty years of age; black in color; from Virginia; worked as miner in coal-fields; had no family as known; killed another Negro in a crap game over 75 cents; another Negro named Guggins helped him escape and tried to wrest gun from sheriff to shoot, but both men were captured and returned to Welch. Guggins was given a life term for attempt to kill sheriff.

"Hardy hung in '94 in present courthouse yard, though not such at the time. At time of execution some white man in the crowd started a panic by yelling, 'O Lordy! O Lordy!' Officers had to jail some twenty-five or thirty men before execution could safely be concluded. Hardy lies buried in Woodmont addition to town of Welch."

The statement of R. L. Johnson, constable, who helped arrest Hardy, as compiled by Mr. Charles V. Price, shorthand reporter at Welch, W.Va., from a conversation between Johnson and Judge Herndon, was sent to me in the early part of the year 1917. It follows:

"I was at Keystone the morning that Hardy killed this fellow, but I couldn't tell you the fellow's name now. They were shooting craps at Shawnee camp, and he was crap-shooting, and Webb Gudgin was behind a rock with a Winchester, and it is supposed that if Hardy didn't get the man that he was there with a Winchester to get him. After he was killed they sent to Keystone, and me and Tom Campbell went down there to search the camps; and while we were searching the camps they said, 'Yonder they go, down the road!' and we got on the railroad and followed them to the old bridge below Shawnee, and they turned up the hollow, and I says, 'We will follow them up there.' Tom says, 'No, we can't follow them in the woods; they have got a Winchester, as good a gun as we have got.' So we went back and decided to watch the trains. Me and some one, I think it was Harvey Dillon, was watching Northfork station. They got on the train at Grover, and they got them; and when they went to handcuff Hardy, Gudgin was walking through the coaches, and every one went out to get Gudgin, and he made to jerk John off the train; but John held to him till they got the train stopped, and they sent a colored fellow back there to help him, and they put him on the train and brought him back to Keystone. George Dillon and I took charge of him. John wasn't able to stay up. We took charge of them and guarded them that night, and they come and threatened to lynch him, and we said they couldn't come up there, and Webb said if we would unhandcuff him and give him his gun nobody would come up there. We had him over Belcher's store.

"I believe I come down the next morning and put them in jail. I never knew anything more about the case until the trial. I was down here during the trial. After he was found guilty he wanted to be baptized. We took him down there to the river, and I was along with him when they baptized him. I forget what preacher baptized him. He had on a new suit of clothes, hat and everything, but he didn't like the looks of his shoes at all. I took them back and swapped them; and when he put them on and viewed himself he had on the best suit he ever had, the way I looked at it. He was about six feet two, I think, or maybe he might have been six foot three."

K

JUDGE HERNDON. Give his color, before you start on Gudgin.
MR. JOHNSON. He was black.

JUDGE HERNDON. About what age?

MR. JOHNSON. Well, I couldn't hardly tell you. I would figure him about thirty.

JUDGE HERNDON.

Now give a description of Gudgin.

MR. JOHNSON. Well, Gudgin, I believe, was a little taller than I am, I believe about six feet, heavily built. He wasn't so fleshy, but he was

heavy built, yellow.

JUDGE HERNDON.

Were you deputy sheriff at the time?

MR. JOHNSON. I was constable.

JUDGE HERNDON. Campbell was deputy sheriff?

MR. JOHNSON. Yes.

JUDGE HERNDON. And John Effler was the sheriff of McDowell County at that time?

MR. JOHNSON. Yes, sir.

JUDGE HERNDON. In the town of Welch now do you know about the spot where the scaffold was built?

MR. JOHNSON. Why, I could get out here and look it up, but it was right out here somewhere.

MR. DAVID COLLINS. It was right back of the old temporary jail.

JUDGE HERNDON. You say you don't remember the name of the man John Hardy killed?

MR. JOHNSON. No, I don't remember him.

JUDGE HERNDON. But do you remember what they killed him for?

MR. JOHNSON. They were shooting craps. It is my understanding they had had the crap game before, and this fellow had skinned Hardy, and he went back and started the crap game to get to kill him. That was the statement at the time.

Judge HerndoN. In other words, this colored man that Hardy killed had skinned Hardy in the game before that game?

MR. JOHNSON. Yes, sir, and Hardy goes down and starts a crap game, and Webb was behind this rock with his Winchester so if Hardy failed he would get him. That was the statement, what they claimed when they came after us, when we went down there.

JUDGE HERNDON. Where was he from?

MR. JOHNSON. I don't know. I might have heard, but I never paid any attention. We were out nearly all night that night. I recollect it well. I think it was about the first year John Effler was elected sheriff. My recollection is that the time Hardy killed the other colored man was along some time during the first of the year, in 1893, and that he was tried along about April or May, 1893, and hanged soon after his conviction, about sixty days.

Mr. A. C. Payne, English, W.Va., in a letter dated Oct. 16, 1917, writes me as follows:

"Just received your letter requesting information of a Negro named John Hardy. I was one of the jury that convicted him. He was a miner about 6 feet high and about 25 years old, as well as I could guess at him. He killed a Negro boy about 19 years old. And he was a very black Negro. That is about all I know about him."

The above-quoted statements seem to establish two groups of facts:

1. (a) That about the year 1872 there was a certain John Hardy employed as a steel-driller in railroad-construction in the southern part of West Virginia. This man was a very black Negro, six feet tall, or more, of splendid physique, a drinker, a gambler, a roué, and a fierce fighter.

(b) That later this Negro killed a man in an altercation of some sort in which gambling played a part.

(c) That the murder and execution took place in the southern part of the State, near the Virginia line.

2. (a) That in the year 1893 a certain John Hardy was employed as a coal-miner in the extreme southern part of West Virginia. This man was a very black Negro, six feet two or three inches tall, and a gambler.

(b) That this John Hardy killed a man over a crap game for the sum of seventy-five cents.

(c) That the murder and execution took place in the southern part of the State, near the Virginia line.

The identity of these two men is not established, but the inference that they are the same is extremely probable. That two men of the same name and race, so nearly alike in physique, habits, and characteristics, should meet the same fate, for the same crime, in the same locality, is hardly believable.

The consideration of the age of the Hardy of 1893 is important in determining whether he and the Hardy of 1872 are identical. The prowess of the steel-driller of 1872 indicates a man of mature age, let us say twenty-four or twenty-five. In 1893 he would then have been forty-five or forty-six. Three of the men connected with the trial of Hardy have given estimates of his age as follows: Tabor, assistant clerk of the Criminal Court, forty; Johnson, constable, thirty; Payne, juryman, twenty-five. The value of these estimates depends upon two things, first, accuracy of memory in recalling, after a lapse of twenty-four years, such details of feature as would enable one to judge of age; and, second, the ability of the witness to make such a judgment. Mr. Johnson says, "I couldn't hardly tell you about what age. I would figure him about thirty." The statement itself indicates much uncertainty about the matter. Mr. Payne says, "About twenty-five years old, as well as I could guess at him." Evidently at the trial Hardy's age was not brought out, or at least not emphasized enough to be remembered, and a guess by memory after twenty-four years may not be worth much. Mr. Tabor says, "About forty years of age." Mr. Tabor was deputy clerk of the court that tried Hardy, and is now engaged in civil engi

neering. His statements indicate a better-trained and more accurate type of mind than the others, and have a directness that is assuring. In any case, the judgment of the age of a Negro of the splendid physical type of Hardy is a difficult matter, hard to come at within ten years, and more likely to be underestimated than overestimated. In my judgment, the testimony may well point to an age considerable in excess of forty.

Mr. H. S. Walker, a man of mature years, a student in West Virginia University from Fayette County, through which the C. & O. runs, reports the following as a current belief where he lives:

John Hardy, a Negro, worked for Langhorn, a railroad-contractor from Richmond, Va., at the time of the building of the C. & O. Road. Langhorn had a contract for work on the east side of the Big Bend Tunnel, which is in the adjoining county of Summers, to the east of Fayette County; and some other contractor had the work on the west side of the tunnel. This was the time when the steam-driller was first used. Langhorn did not have one, but the contractor on the other side of the tunnel did; and Langhorn made a wager with him that Hardy could, by hand, drill a hole in less time than the steamdrill could. In the contest that followed, Hardy won, but dropped dead on the spot. He tells me, also, that there is a current report in this part of the State concerning a John Hardy who was a tough, a saloon frequenter, an outlaw, and a sort of a thug. He thinks this John Hardy was a white man, and he is sure that he was hanged later on for killing a man in McDowell County or across the line in Virginia. Probability indicates that these two stories are about the same For a white man contemporary with the steel-driller to possess the same name and attributes as he, to operate in the early part of his career in the same region, to drift later to the same locality, to commit the same crime, and to pay the same penalty, is not believable.

man.

There remains the belief that John Hardy died from the effects of the drilling-contest. In answer to inquiries concerning this, Ex-Gov. McCorkle writes, "You are mistaken when you say John Hardy died from the drilling-contest." In support of the belief, however, there is a ballad called "The Steel Driver," not as yet found in West Virginia, but reported by Shearin in his "Syllabus of Kentucky FolkSongs," p. 19, as follows:

"THE STEEL DRIVER, ii, 4a3b4c3b, 11: John Henry, proud of his skill with sledge and hand-drill, competes with a modern steam-drill in Tunnel No. Nine, on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. Defeated, he dies, asking to be buried with his tools at his breast."

The change of name to John Henry, and the victory into a defeat, is not significant, and is easily accounted for by oral transmission. The same process of reasoning as applied heretofore identifies John

Henry with John Hardy, who could not have died at the end of a drilling-contest. Most likely the ballad celebrating the prowess of John Hardy gradually, in its earlier making, enhanced that prowess, and, by the natural tendency to a tragic ending, finally sang of his defeat and death.

Whether the drilling-contest be fact or fiction, is not important. However, it could hardly have happened. A note addressed to the Ingersoll-Rand Company, to whom I was referred as authority on drills, brings the following statement in a letter dated New York City, Dec. 19, 1917:

"Your letter of Dec. 4, addressed to the Company at Easton, Pa., has been referred to us, and in reply we would advise you that, although we have no definite records, it is rather improbable that steam rock-drills were used in the building of the C. & O. Railroad. As you will see from the text of the attached advertisement, machine-drills were first used about 1866; but their use was very limited, and not at all general."

The portion of the advertisement above referred to, that is significant for this discussion, is as follows:

"The first time rock-drills were used in big work was at the Hoosac Tunnel, year 1866. Here the Burleigh drill failed because of great repair costs. Next came the Musconetong Tunnel, Lehigh Valley R. R., driven from end to end with the Ingersoll drill, which had been brought to a practical stage in rock-work on Fourth Avenue, New York, for the horse-car tunnel. This covers the period up to 1875, when the Rand Little Giant made a step in advance."

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was completed westward from Sulphur Springs to Huntington - that is, entirely across the State of West Virginia in 1873.

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Two versions of the ballad, with a total of five variants, have come to hand. Version a gives us something with the very atmosphere of the construction-camp, its rough gang of illiterate Negroes, its profanity, and its glorification of a gambler, a drunkard, and a murderer. With the exception of stanzas 2 and 3, the ballad deals with the episode of the hanging, in some way not clearly stated, and connected with gambling. The name of the place, Shawnee Camp, is exactly correct; but the number of men killed is increased to two, and the murderer is caught because he refused to run. Not only does the bulk of the ballad deal with this incident in the career of John Hardy, but the prominent places, the beginning and the end, are given to it. The older incident of the steel-drilling contest is, however, clearly remembered and vigorously expressed, though evidently on the way to forgetfulness. This version stands half way, as it were, between the "Steel Driller" listed by Shearin and version b.

In version b the steel-driller has dropped out of memory entirely. VOL. 32.--NO. 126.—34.