What’s the connection between Jesse James and Coal Creek?

In his book, Sorrows End, Maurice Stanley describes how his grandfather, Henry Baker, rode with Jesse James.  Baker was eventually caught and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor at the Knoxville Iron and Coal Company (KICC) convict mine in Coal Creek.  Henry escaped by jumping from a train in route to Knoxville after miners captured the convict stockades during the Coal Creek War in July 1891.  He changed his name to Tom Stanley and began a new life.

In the fall of 1876, the Welsh miners went on strike for higher wages, but KICC management halted production rather than negotiate.  The winter of 1876/1877 was particularly bitter and public sentiment turned against the striking miners when homes and businesses in Knoxville ran out of coal to burn.  In the spring of 1877, KICC management proposed the idea of replacing the Welsh miners with convicts from the state prison.  Local newspapers and the general public supported the move and the first convicts arrived in the summer of 1877.

The mortality rate for the convict miners was high because they had no experience in mining.  Also, there was little financial incentive to provide safe working conditions for them.  If a mule died while working in the coal mines, a new mule had to be purchased. If a convict miner died, the state would furnish a new convict to replace the convict who died at no cost to the mine owner or the state.

Coal Creek miners at Thistle Switch awaiting the arrival of Governor Buck Buchanan on July 16, 1891 

Governor Buchanan gave his Commissioner of Labor, George Ford, the task of investigating the claims about the poor working conditions of the convict miners. Commissioner Ford inspected the mines and found that working conditions in the KICC Mine No. 1 were acceptable.  His report noted that the convict stockade housed “sullen” white miners on one floor and “jovial” African-American miners on a separate floor.

Commissioner Ford determined that the Tennessee Mine in Tennessee Hollow was unfit, as follows: “At one place a gang of seven or eight convicts were gathered in the passageway, with their lamps suspended from their caps, and one of them handling a can of powder, pouring it out of the can in a dangerously careless manner.  It seemed as if a single false step might send the whole crowd to their maker instantly.  In conclusion, this mine is found to be in worse condition than any mine in the State that has been inspected, of which we can find any record; and it is shameful to think that any class of men, whether free men or convicts, are compelled or allowed to work therein.”

Coal Creek miners during the Coal Creek War
from “History of Tennessee” (Bluebook)

Fort Anderson on Militia Hill as seen looking up from the
KICC convict stockade (from Harper’s Magazine, 1892)

Due to public sentiment for the free miners, the governor was not re-elected in November 1892. The new governor, Peter Turney, abolished the convict lease system in Tennessee.  The remaining Southern states soon followed Tennessee’s lead and abolished the convict lease systems in their states.

Ironically, Governor Turney abolished the convict lease system because he found a more profitable alternative.  In 1893, he enacted legislation to build Brushy Mountain Mine and Prison in nearby Morgan County.  Coke ovens were built by the state to increase the value of the coal mined there and convicts were able to reduce their sentences based on how much coal they mined.  Convicts with mining experience worked in the mine and the remaining convicts operated the coke ovens or farmed the land to feed the prisoners.  From 1903 until 1917, the state realized a net profit of almost $1.7 million from Brushy Mountain.

KICC Mine No. 1 closed soon after the convict lease system ended, but its legacy continued.  On May 19, 1902, the adjacent Fraterville Mine exploded, killing over 200 men and boys.  Mining engineers attributed the Fraterville explosion to methane gas that had accumulated in the abandoned KICC Mine No. 1.  Convicts had apparently mined off the lease of the Knoxville Iron and Coal Company and onto the lease of the Coal Creek Coal Company, the owner of the Fraterville Mine.  When the Fraterville Mine expanded to the boundary with KICC Mine No. 1 in 1901, miners intercepted the abandoned works of KICC Mine No. 1.

“Coal Creek Belle” - from the archives of the
Tennessee National Guard, Souvenir of
Company "C", Coal Creek War, 1892

At the inquest following the Fraterville explosion, J. E. Hightower reported: ”I ran the old Knoxville Iron Company mine about 14 years.  It generated gas, had an explosion there once, 2 years after the convicts came there, on a Monday morning.  A convict, who had missed a shot, ran in ahead of the mules, doormen had not gone in yet, and was blown 40 feet.  The mine was very badly torn up, worse than Fraterville in this last explosion.  There was no dust, it was all wet… The convicts did slip over on the side next to Fraterville, reports show on State’s books, and were punished for cooking on gas.  Had a crack along the airway and I have never seen the time you could not stick your lamp into it and set it afire.”

Jenny Phillips, Jacob Phillips, and Cassie
Phillips (left to right) at the abandoned KICC Mine
No. 1.  In 2006, they researched prison records
and found the names of 130 convicts who died
at KICC Mine No. 1.  Some are buried in
unmarked graves on the hillside above KICC
Mine No. 1, while the graves of other convicts
are marked by simple fieldstones.