There is something I have been meaning to do since a year ago this past July: go through a baggie of items I collected while exploring the area around Penland in North Carolina. I originally kept what I found to use with the photos I took in the spaces where I had actually found the objects….then I realized that really didn’t make any sense!
At any rate, while I was in an abandoned building next to the Penland Post Office, I found an old filing cabinet full of business records and letters. I pulled out one file folder in particular, which begged to be kept. I finally got around to looking at it a little more closely today (my second snow day) and it is definitely as interesting today as the day when I found it. It contains letters (and a few records) between two men who go by Harry and Mac. I think Mac is actually E.M. Murray from the Atlas Powder Co. that used to be in Greensboro, N.C. Harry is Harry Bailey from the Jefferson Distribution Co. in Penland. I did a quick search on Google, but didn’t find much. I only found one reference in the book Mines, Miners, and Minerals of Western North Carolina: Western North Carolina’s Hidden Mineralogical Treasurs by Lowell Presnell. This book mentions only Harry Bailey as the individual who started the Carolina China Clay Co in 1931.
The letters span 1948-1954 (I found them in perfect chronological order) and detail both a personal and a business relationship between Harry and Mac. In between talking about rail orders, blasting caps, and dynamite, they discuss illness, alcoholism, family, and aging. There is also some interesting language usage, abbreviations for phrases, and spellings. I can only imagine that the letters stop because Mac, who mentions in the last letter a trip to Asheville, NC where he spent 10 days in the hospital where he though his “number was up”, died shortly after writing it. Both men mention having multiple lung x-rays, I assume from being in the mines.
The building itself was incredibly interesting…so many items left behind there…
ttt
My grandpa was a coal miner for a short time. Most of his older brothers died from lung related illnesses.