The Legend of John Henry - Johnny Cash - Live

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- Las Vegas, 1979.
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- STEEL DRIVIN' MAN: JOHN HENRY, THE UNTOLD STORY OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND

According to the ballad that made him famous, John Henry did battle with a steam-powered drill, beat the machine, and died. Folklorists have long thought John Henry to be mythical, but historian Scott Nelson has discovered that he was a real person—a nineteen-year-old from New Jersey who was convicted of theft in a Virginia court in 1866, sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary, and put to work building the C&O Railroad.

There, at the Lewis Tunnel, Henry and other prisoners worked alongside steam-powered drills. In his book, Nelson pieces together the biography of the real John Henry. It is also the story of work songs, songs that not only turned Henry into a folk hero but also, in reminding workers to slow down or die, were a tool of resistance and protest. This lecture complemented the VMHC exhibition Organized Labor in Virginia. Scott Reynolds Nelson teaches history at the College of William & Mary.

https://virginiahistory.org/learn/historical-media/steel-drivin-man-john-henry-untold-story-american-legend

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1. The Lewis Tunnel?

Wasn't it the Big Bend Tunnel?

My great-uncle, Grover Allen, had his farm on top of the Big Bend Tunnel and was paid by the C&O to open and close an air vent every day.

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2. There's been some controversy about the actual tunnel, you

can read about it here, including research by Scott Nelson, the author of the article above.

WikI, John Henry, Click *FOLKLORE... According to legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam-powered rock drilling machine, a race that he won only to die in victory with hammer in hand as his heart gave out from stress. Various locations, including Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia,[3] Lewis Tunnel in Virginia, and Coosa Mountain Tunnel in Alabama, have been suggested as the site of the contest.

.. According to Nelson, objectionable conditions at the Virginia prison led the warden to believe that the prisoners, many of whom had been arrested on trivial charges, would be better clothed and fed if they were released as laborers to private contractors. (He subsequently changed his mind about this and became an opponent of the convict labor system.) In the C&O's tunneling records, Nelson found no evidence of a steam drill used in Big Bend Tunnel.[9]

The records Nelson found indicate that the contest took place 40 miles (64 km) away at the Lewis Tunnel, between Talcott and Millboro, Virginia, where prisoners did indeed work beside steam drills night and day.[10] Nelson also argues that the verses of the ballad about John Henry being buried near "the white house," "in the sand," somewhere that locomotives roar, mean that Henry's body was buried in a ditch behind the so-called white house of the Virginia State Penitentiary, which photos from that time indicate was painted white, and where numerous unmarked graves have been found.[11]...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)#:~:text=In%20the%20C%26O's%20tunneling%20records,steam%20drills%20night%20and%20day.

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3. Ah. Thank you.