"They even shot up my father's funeral a few days later," Mr. Estep reported bitterly. He enjoyed the 1975 memorial picnic and died two years later with the knowledge that his father was no longer a forgotten hero of the early struggle.
Dave Tamplin of the Fayette County town of Boomer also remembered those bloody days on the two creeks. He was interviewed in April 1973 as part of Marshall University's Oral History of Appalachia program. Mr. Tamplin had lived in Boomer since his birth in 1894 and was an independent businessman there.
"Those on Paint Creek came out on strike in 1912," he recalled. "There was a few of them that went back to work but most of them didn't. The union was strong in the Valley, but not up New River and not up the creeks. So, they were trying to organize up Paint Creek.
"No organizer for the union or any person at all, if you didn't work up the hollow, was allowed to go up through there and go on company property," Mr. Tamplin continued. "They had militia all up there. They were all practically kids around 17, 18 and 19 years old, and getting a kick out of belonging to the militia."
Tamplin remembered that a Colonel Ford was in charge of the militia. "He knew that the miners at Muckow and Mahan and those places were getting food and ammunition from somewhere else besides getting it up through Paint Creek. What was going on, the miners from Boomer and this vicinity were going up Morris Creek and over the mountains to Paint Creek and taking them ammunition and supplies.
"Nobody had any use for the militia," Mr. Tamplin said, "because they were considered mine guards in those days." He went on to compare the militia to Pennsylvania's notorious "Coal and lron" police. "They was the ones that run the bullpen at the mouth of Paint Creek. If they caught a man attempting to go up the creek and organize, they would put him in," he added. "They had a fence around it, made of barbed wire. They'd fence him in the bullpen, kept them in there maybe for two or three weeks at a time." Tamplin credited Hatfield with rectilying the situation. "That was the first act that Governor Hatfield did when he came in. He sent Colonel Abe Lilly, which was our attorney general, up there to tear that bullpen down. So Abe Lilly came up to the mouth of Paint Creek and they did away with the bullpen."
John T. Walton, born in Kanawha County mining camp of Black Cat in 1904, supplies another firsthand account of the Paint Creek mine wars. Mr. Walton grew up in a series of mining camps including Mucklow, Kayford and Quarrier in the Paint-Cabin area. His father operated company stores in these coal camps. The Walton family later moved to Lewisburg and then to Huntington in 1923. He was interviewed in May and June 1976 in Huntington as part of the Oral History of Appalachia program.
"Mother Jones came into our camp on two occasions," Walton recalled. "I did see her up on the stand addressing the men one time. The other time may have been over at Smithers." Walton was aware of the revered labor leader's fiesty reputation. "They'd wrote bad things about her in the paper," he said. "Sometimes she had said these things and sometimes she hadn't."
Mr. Walton also recognized the mine guards' role in the labor war. "The Paint Creek strike had been coming up for some time. For several months production was down in the mines and everybody was on edge and the tension was high. Finally the coal operators decided they'd bring in the Baldwin-Felts guards. Well, I think if they'd left those fellas out of there things would've been a whole lot better.
"The mine guards stayed at what we called the clubhouse at the upper end of the camp." Mr. Walton said, referring to the camp at Mucklow. "I think it must have had 14 or 16 rooms in it. It was a good-size thing and this lady ran it for a number of years. She took care of visiting officials and the guards who also ate over at the clubhouse. There were about 15 guards in all. They didn't bother anybody, of course, but some of the teenagers would hurl some very nasty remarks in their direction. The fact was, the store man was in between the company and the men all the time. You had to please the company and you had to please the people. We just kept right in the middle of the road. But the men respected my father. There was just no two ways about that."
John Walton turned in his memory to the Battle of Mucklow' in the summer of 1912. "Well, about two days before the battle it seemed that everybody just evaporated from the camp," he said. "A lot of men took their families out on the train as the trains ran steadily up and down the creeks.
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