My maternal grandfather James Vaughan I [who was also Sarah Garbricks maternal great grandfather,& Audrey Bucks, Rachel Elizabeth Bucks, Joshua Bucks and Lori Buck Irvines paternal great grandfather] was an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America in the eastern Kentucky and West Virginia coal mines in the early part of the last century. In 1921, he was right in the thick the cleanup & pacification of an incident in the town of Matewan, West Virginia, about which filmmaker John Sayles made a movie called Matewan. There was an apocryphal story among the Vaughan girls (Lenore, Dora, Gertrude & Katherine, James Is daughters and our respective mothers/grandmothers) that is depicted in a scene near the movies end, where Sheriff Sid Hatfield, who has opposed the illegal evictions by the coal company of miners, is shot down on the courthouse steps by the companys detectives. In the film, two of Hatfields associates stand in shocked disbelief on the courthouse after the shooting, and one of those men was James Vaughan I, according to our family legend.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 10:01:43 +0000
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