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Marietta
Daily Leader 10/7/1897
Denver,
Colorado
Oct. 6 – Cursing the officers who held him in custody and threatening to take
their lives at the first opportunity, Jay Draughon, alias Hirma
Baker, the wounded Kentuckian, has been taken to the depot on a stretcher and
placed on a train.
He is now on his
way to Paintsville,
Ky.,
where he is wanted for killing Ben Cunningham and wounding Sam Rice.
The officers who have charge of him are John A. Draughon, his cousin, and
Sheriff Bays, of Johnson county,
Ky.
Some weeks ago Jay Draughon killed R. A. L. Draughon, the father of John
A. Draughon, near Grant,
Col., and in the fight was himself
seriously wounded, a bullet having broken his left shoulder.
He was exonerated by the coroner’s jury.
The Chronicle Telegram (Elyria,
OH)March
15, 1932
1855
– William E. Connelley, noted
Kansas
authority on the Indians and author, born in Johnson Co., Ky.
Died in
Kansas,
August 16, 1930.
7/19/1935 Beckley
Post-Herald
One
by one the bodies of seven of the nine victims of a coal mine gas explosion were
brought back to their wives and children today.
Two other victims still lay a mile and a half back under
the hills, with gas and debris delaying recovery of the bodies.
Twenty-seven children were left fatherless by the
disaster, as all nine miners were married and but one had children.
Mothers, wives and sisters who had waited in a brilliant
moonlight last night, sobbed as ambulances bore the bodies to Paintsville in
preparation for private funerals.
Children romped around at play on the hillside unaware
of the full meaning of the tragedy that plunged this little company owned mining
town into mourning.
John F. Daniel, chief of the state bureau of mines and
minerals and representative of the United States
bureau of mines began an inquiry into the cause of the disaster.
The nine men who were killed were in mine No. 5 of the
Consolidation Coal Company.
“The explosion was due to the release of accumulated
quantities of gas,” Daniel said.
“What ignited the gas we don’t know, but we intend to
find out.”
He said the investigation probably would last several days.
Rescue squads reached the first two bodies this morning,
those of Virgil Clay, 21, and Roy Murray, 38.
Several hours later they came upon the bodies of William
Kretzer, 31; his brother, Charles Kretzer, 46; J. E. Vaughan, 52, Derwood Litz,
34; and Sherley Hereford, 38.
The two bodies that were blocked off were those of John
G(ee?)l, 56, and Frank Tuzzy, 45.
Most of the men had been crushed by falling slate and
rock.
But Daniel and Frank Price, chief clerk at the mine, expressed the
belief they met instantaneous death from the gas.
The tragedy was the first of a serious nature at the
local mine in many years.
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