Clothier

Clothier. Logan County, West Virginia. , August 26, 1921 , In this union coal camp about ten miles south of Madison, a miner named Lewis White hijacks a C&O train at gunpoint and tells the conductor to take him to Madison. There, UMWA District 17 leaders Frank Keeney and Fred Mooney are urging the miners to disband. A few hours later, White passes back through Clothier again, this time on his way to Blair … with three hundred armed miners on the train, ready for a fight., August 27, 1921 , Keeney and Mooney have succeeded: miners are heading home. High on Spruce Fork Ridge and Blair Mountain, Sheriff Don Chafin’s entrenchments, recently bristling with machine gun and rifle barrels, now stand empty. The US Army's negotiator on the scene, General Bandholtz, returns to Washington DC. There will be no revolt, no bloodbath., But all of that is about to change., Sheriff Chafin makes a fateful decision. While tensions are still high, he sends State Police Captain James R. Brockus on a mission to Clothier with more than a hundred men. On the outskirts of Sharples, the state troopers battle with armed miners, killing two and wounding another. The troopers take five prisoners, and the miners capture four deputies., The news quickly spreads, sparking rumors among the miners that Chafin’s raiders were firing on women and children in Sharples, and soon thousands of homeward bound miners turn around to rejoin the fight., August 28 - September 2, 1921 , “I figure there were maybe seven hundred men in there, in Clothier, and Jeffrey, and Sharples, and Beech Creek, and Blair. To get those men in there, they took over the C&O rail train,” recalls Henry Clay Pettry Jr., a 16-year-old miner at the time., Pettry adds, “I rode that train myself. Now, let me tell you, we was in there for business. It wasn’t no cap-buster parade.”, Ramage, Jeffrey, Clothier, and Sharples become important operational bases for the Redneck Army as they assault Spruce Fork Ridge. Thousands pass through on their way to the front. Volunteer nurses set up field hospitals, and others set up kitchens and ammunition depots. A schoolhouse on Crooked Creek becomes a command post. The country roads are choked with marching men. More arrive in overflowing automobiles and hijacked trains from all over the state. They are organized in “companies” or “regiments” according to their local unions., Up the mountainside they go, toward the heavily armed defensive positions of the Logan Defenders.