Step back in time to the rugged Appalachian mountains, a place where families like Harrison Mays’s lived off the land, connected deeply to the wilderness. Before the turn of the 20th century, life in these isolated Kentucky hills was guided by tradition, hard work, and the rhythms of nature. But as the coal industry exploded, bringing new jobs and company towns, a profound change began. Discover how the promise of progress reshaped generations, pulling proud mountain men from their ancestral farms into the dark depths of the earth, fundamentally altering their way of life.
Harrison’s own father, once a truly free man of the forest, faced an impossible choice, trading his mountain ways for the miner’s lamp and a lifetime of coal dust. At just fourteen, Harrison’s dreams of becoming a preacher were replaced by the perilous reality of the coal mine, working dangerous hours as a coupler boy. This is a powerful American story of sacrifice, resilience, and the relentless spirit of those who built our nation through unimaginable hardship. Join us as The Appalachian Storyteller J.D. Phillips shares this unforgettable chapter of coal country history.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
My name is Harrison Mays, and I was born just before the turn of the century, in 1898. Our cabin was located on a place called Barren Creek, just below the Kentucky-Tennessee state line. Like most folks back then, Ma and Paul spent most days scratching out the flinty soil on the rocky hillside farm, growing just enough food to raise their eight children. Seems everyone had large families back then. Heck, a man needed all the help in hands he could get. How else were the chores is going to get done? Like milking the cow and collecting the chicken eggs, or the young ‘uns tote of water from the creek to the homestead.
Not that us kids minded, though; it seemed like a privilege to help out our Paul. He was a hard-working, God-fearing man. And what I remember the most about him is it seemed he always had a lot of worry written across his face and behind his eyes. Not that he ever said any of it out loud, but we all knew it was there. He spent many a night standing on the porch, studying the position of the moon or the shapes of the clouds. He always seemed to know exactly when he was going to rain, and he could predict a bad winter coming months in advance. In many ways, Paul would one of the last truly free men, men that were part of the wilderness itself. Just like his father and his grandfather before him, Paul had never worked a day in his life for money. He had never clocked in or out. Instead, he lived as one with both the forest and the wild beasts that inhabited it.
The turn of the century brought many changes to everyone who called these isolated mountains home, including my family. You see, the coal industry was born out of the ashes of the War Between the States, and for the first time, jobs found their way into this remote region. Within a few short years, company towns had sprung up all up and down the hollers, and they needed all sorts of workers: Loggers to clear the land, hands at the sawmill, carpenters to build the shack-houses, more men to build a new railroad. But most of all, they needed men willing to work in total darkness for twelve hours a day, deep inside a hole, dug for more than a mile deep into the side of a mountain, armed with little more than a pickaxe. What they needed was men to dig the coal.
One by one, men moved their families out of their ancestral cabins and away from their hillside farms that they had worked all their lives, and they moved them into these coal camps. And by the time I was five years old, my Paul traded his life as a mountain man for a lifetime of coal dust. Paul moved us all a few miles outside of Hillsboro, Kentucky, where he was hired on at the Fort Mountain Coal Camp. For the next several years, I spent most of my days attending the company school and helping Ma around the house.
Most of my siblings were old enough to work in the mine with Paul, but me, no. I love school. Bible study was my favorite part of the day, and our teacher, Miss Sally, would even let me take home a few sheets of scratch paper each day for me to practice writing Bible verses. I hoped I’d grow up and become a preacher. I spent most nights after supper using small pieces of coal that Paul had brought home, drawing pictures with Bible verses underneath them to show Miss Sally the next morning.
One day, on my fourteenth birthday, Miss Sally made cookies for me at school, and she gave me a big hug. She told me she would miss me. ‘Oh, Miss Sally, I ain’t going nowhere,’ I replied. ‘But Harrison, don’t you know you’re fourteen now?’ A voice. ‘Schooling is done when he turns that age.’ ‘Well, what will I do now?’ I asked. ‘Why? You’ll work in the coal mine!’ ‘Of course, you don’t need no more school into work in the mine. But Miss Sally, all my life I’ve been aiming on the ‘cocome.’ I’m a preacher, not a miner.’
The young teacher paused for a moment of reflection, and then she spoke, ‘Son, you don’t have to be a preacher in a church to spread God’s message. Just trust in the Lord, and He’ll show you the way.’ And just like that, in that moment, my school days were over, and in many ways so was my childhood. And I didn’t know it at the time, but I would spend the rest of my life working in the darkness of a cold, damp coal mine. So there it was, just barely a teenager, but somehow a man at the same time, working twelve hours a day for the same coal company as my father.
They called me a coupler boy. You see, electricity had come to the coal mine, and no longer did mules carry the coal carts out of the mine. Instead, there was a metal cable pulley system pulled an endless train of coal carts, each full with over a ton of coal, up to the mouth of the mine. Each of these carts were coupled together with a pin that had to be removed at exactly the precise moment to separate the cart from the cable pulley system. The cart would continue down the tracks, and the pulley would roll up and back into the mine and start the process over again. Removing that pin and precisely the right moment was risky business, to say the least. My friend Tommy and I, we saw many boys lose fingers, and even one boy lost an arm when he got caught between the carts. It seemed it wasn’t a matter of if you would get hurt; the only question was when. I still remember that Friday morning like it was yesterday. My Paul and all my brothers and me, we set out for the mine in a light mountain rain.
As we all entered the mine, my Paul looked back at me as he grabbed his coal tags and his lunch bucket. ‘Be careful today. That rain is going to make everything slippery, and we can’t afford for you to get hurt.’ ‘Yes, sir, Paul,’ I replied. And slippery it was that entire morning. All us boys were slipping back and forth, and the muck and the mud uncoupling those cars. My buddy Tommy suddenly yelled out, ‘Harrison, help me! My overalls are caught in a pinch!’
When we come back, what happens next in that mine? Here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and all of our history stories are brought to us by our generous sponsors, including Hillsdale College, where students go to learn all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that matter in life. If you can’t get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale.edu. That’s Hillsdale.edu. And we returned to Our American Stories and the story of Harrison Mays. When we last left off, Harrison, who wanted to become a preacher before becoming a miner, found himself in a dangerous situation with his friend Tommy in the mine they both worked in. Tommy’s overalls were stuck in a pulley cart system. Let’s get back to the story.
I looked up. He was being drug alongside a fully loaded cart that he had uncoupled. Both the cart and Tommy were barreling full speed down the track right at me. However, Tommy was holding on tight to the side of the cart to keep from getting ran over, while screaming the entire time. His weight made the cart unsteady, and it looked as if the cart was gonna tip over just enough to make the coal jump the tracks. I stood frozen for a split second. I didn’t know whether to run helped Tommy or get out of the way. In the blink of an eye, I heard the crashing sound of the cart jumping the track, tearing up the side of the wall as it raced towards me. I took one step in the mud and I slipped and fail. There was no time to escape. I kicked my legs frantically trying to move out of the way. By now, Tommy had freed himself, and he had jumped off the coal cart, and he was yelling, ‘Harrison, get out of there quick!’ I had nowhere to turn, and the entire cart barreled into my chest. I broke nearly every bone in my body, and folks who saw it said my eyes popping right out of their sockets. And desperately, the miners began to dig me out of the rubble.
As the company doctor arrived on the scene of the accident, I had lost consciousness, and I was just laying there, a heap of broken bones. When they pulled my body out of the mine, the doctor shook his head, and he told my Paul, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but there ain’t near a chance that he’ll make it through the night. Ain’t no sense in trying to get him to a hospital in this weather; he’ll never make it. Best thing to do is to take him home, call the family in, and say your goodbyes.’
As I laid there, lifeless on that bed, I could feel my family all around me, but I couldn’t make out what any one of them were saying. I just remember my Mama’s tear-stricken face. And then I turned my head, and I realized I was looking down on my lifeless body from up above. I was caught somewhere in between this world and the next one, that instant when a soul separates from its body. I didn’t feel any pain, but I felt like I wasn’t done. My life hadn’t even begun yet. ‘God, please, please don’t let me die! I promise, if you’ll let me live, I’ll spend all of my days telling the world about you. I promise, I’ll tell the entire world far beyond those mountain ridges. Just let me live, and everyone will know your name!’
Now I need to pause here for just a moment. You see, there was no way Harrison Mays should have ever survived that accident. No man could have lived through it, much less a young boy. But sometimes when we least expect it, even when there’s no other possible explanation, God can do the impossible. That’s right! Harrison did survive, and within three days he climbed off his deathbed, and he dedicated the rest of his life to telling everyone he could about God. Once Harrison returned to the coal mines, he was a changed man in his mind. He had to get busy in a hurry telling the world about God.
Now, back in those days, one of the biggest events to happen in rural Appalachia was when a tent revival came to your town. Everyone and their brother would go to these events to see and hear everything from preaching, singing, hambone, dancing, and everything in between. Harrison figured the Lord said to make a joyful noise, so he first tried his hand at singing. The only problem was, well, he couldn’t sing a lick, and though he was making a joyful noise, well, it was just noise that most folks could do without. When the next tent revival came to town, he tried his hand at preaching, but his combined fear of public speaking and the blank looks on the faces of the churchgoers told him that preaching wasn’t exactly his call in either.
One day, the up-and-coming preacher was sitting on the front porch asking the Lord for a sign on what to do, when a new idea came to him. Literally, there standing right in front of him was his pet hog, Isaac, just standing there looking at him. Harrison quickly ran to the lean-to shed, and within a minute he re-emerged with a bucket of white paint and a paintbrush. He dipped his brush into the paint and began painting ‘Sin Not’ down each side of the black pig, since pigs were freely back then fattening up on chestnuts. Within a few days, everybody in the mining camp had read those words, ‘Sin Not.’
Harrison knew he was onto something, and he began painting his simple message on the sides of mountains, rocks, trees, barns, and even on coal cars bound for faraway places. He soon resorted to making signs out of wood, cardboard, and oilcloth, carrying messages such as ‘Get Right with God’ and ‘Jesus Is Coming.’ To fund his ministry, he began working double shifts in the coal mines, one for his family and one for the Lord. All the miners knew of his signs, and some would laugh, while others would shake their heads in disbelief. However, they admired his effort, and every now and then they would donate a load of coal towards Harrison’s ministry. Heck, even the mining company let him use an abandoned building on the property as his workshop.
By 1940, Harrison’s father had passed away from the dreaded black lung. As was a common practice back then, the loving son made his father’s tombstone out of concrete right in the backyard. He was in that moment that Harrison had another aha moment. He began making concrete crosses and hearts, weighing as much as fifteen hundred pounds, and placing them on the side of highways for all to see. He first began by placing them in nearby states: Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, and within a decade he had signs in nearly every state on the East Coast. He’d work in the coal mines all night and build crosses in his backyard all day.
Once he had five or six ready, he would rent a truck and a driver, and together the two would strike out until he found a spot that looked good to him. He would simply pull up and dig a hole, and using a the pulley system that he had built on the truck, he would lower the 1,500-pound cross into place. Many times property owners would run out and yell, ‘What are you doing? You can’t leave that here! Get off my property!’ Harrison would simply load up in the truck and make his getaway. Nearly every week he would get a legal notice demanding that he come back and remove a cross, but he never would. He had the most trouble in Virginia. Lawmakers there were fed up with its religious signs, and they passed the law stating that all roadside signs must be licensed and taxed by the state. Once the new law was passed, the Virginia Highway Department dug up thirty-nine of its crosses, drove them to the Tennessee side of the Cumberland Gap, and dumped them right on the side of the road. For their trouble, they sent Harrison a bill of $39.
During the years 1920 through the 1980s, Harrison planted thousands of crosses in forty-four states across the America. He created signs on the side of mountains near airports stating, ‘Prepared to meet God.’ He mailed and estimated fifty-eight thousand empty whiskey bottles containing scripture in fourteen different languages the whole over the world. His bottles have been found in the Philippines, the Netherlands, and even Africa. It’s estimated that Harrison Mays spent $100,000 of his own money funding his ministry during his lifetime. As he would say, ‘Every penny I ever made, it’s God’s anyway; I’m just 126 pounds of mud.’
Harrison Mays never drove during his life, and he walked and rode a bike everywhere he went. He even walked to and from his marriage to his wife Lily, who supported him his entire life and supported his ministry. Harrison was at home at any church, and he spent his entire life telling anyone he met about the Lord. Harrison Mays went on to glory and met his Maker in 1986. Three months later, his wife Lily joined him there. However, today, if you look hard enough, you can still find many of his roadside crosses and hearts dotted throughout the South. There’s even a permanent collection of his work at the Museum of Appalachia and Tennessee. ‘Till next time, my friends, in the words of Harrison Mays, ‘Get right with God, because Jesus is coming!”
A beautiful piece of storytelling by J.D. Phillips, known as The Appalachian Storyteller. He is a YouTube channel that’s phenomenal. Such respect and regard for this part of the country. Not enough stories on this show told about this part of the country, and we’re fixing that. The story of Harrison Mays: a classic American story about faith and so much more here on Our American Stories.
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