Special thanks to Sandy Newsom for sharing photos of her family.
The original story was written by Alice J. Kinder, Mountain Roots, News-Express, July 6, 1883
In 1967 Pike Countians read this astounding news in the newspapers: One of the largest transactions in the recent years of Pike County’s history took place when 2,600 acres on the Bear Branch of Robinson Creek of Shelby Creek were transferred from the Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, to the Amos Newsom Coal Company of Robinson Creek. Also involved in the purchase were 3,206 acres of mineral rights. The purchase price was not disclosed by Amos Newsom of Robinson Creek, owner and operator of the coal company.
What made the news astonishing to many was the fact that a lot of folks around Robinson Creek remembered tall, lanky, brown-eyed Amos Newsom when he worked for small wages as a common miner 15 years in mines at Ligon on Left Beaver Creek. To supplement his income then, he often carried 10 dozen eggs from home to sell for company script.
His folks recalled that he started working in the mines under his father at 18. They remembered that he was born in a weatherboarded farmhouse up Robinson Creek and that he never went beyond the sixth grade in school. Sixty-one-year-old Amos Newsom had climbed many achieving steps by 1967 to attain a top rung on the success ladder. He kept climbing and although retired now from activity in his coal and mineral business, today at 77 he is still climbing mountains of work and and achieving.
Amos Newsom, the son of George A. Newsom and Lizzie Anderson Newsom, was born January 1, 1906. Even at birth he liked to get an early start by being punctual so as to get ahead and not miss anything in a new year of opportunity!) His pater-na. grandparents were Robert and Phena Brown Newsom. His maternal grandfather was William Anderson and his maternal grandmother was a Mullins before her marriage.
Amos was one of 14 children. Three died in infancy. George and Lizzie Newsom raised 11 children.
Today Amos has one brother living, Roland Newsom, who lives above Virgie. His three living sisters are Martha Bentley of Little Creek and Bessie Newsom and Dona Newsom of Robinson Creek, Kentucky.
George A. Newsome, the father of the large household, farmed and ran a sawmill and a gristmill for grinding corn. He worked some in the mines. Under his wise leadership and training, 18-year-old Amos was taught the beginning steps in the vocation that led to his success. As a boy hoeing corn on the hillsides and attending the small one-room school, though, he had no inner inkling of the profitable career that would someday be his. “I never got any further in school because Dad always needed me at home to pull fodder, dig potatoes, or do some other farm Job, Amos disclosed the very night Lawrence and Bill Newsom took my husband and me to visit Mr. and Mrs. Amos Newsom in their lovely brick home on Little Creek.
The school may not have provided the boy Amos a lengthy academic education, since his feet didn’t remain under the desk long enough for him to receive a certificate of merit or an eighth grade diploma from teachers like P.K. and Ballard Damron or Bessie Elliott. At the school, though, he and the girl of his life furthered their acquaintance and romance that would result in a marriage certificate which has stood the test of time over half a century now.
Seventy-seven-year-old Amos Newsom looked across the room at his wife, Draxie, as he remembered with a sparkle in his eyes, we played round town ball together ate the school. Draxie was really a good catcher in those days!”
Draxie, born November 20, 1910, was the daughter of Anthony and Delphia Newsom Hampton. She and Amos were married November 18, 1926. “I don’t believe God could ever have given me a better wife, ” Amos testified positively. “In all these years she’s gone along with me and stood behind me in all I undertook.”‘
Eliza Ellen (Bill) Newsom declared, “So all your success and wealth started with Draxie!”
“I tell everybody I got the cream of the crop when I married Draxie!” Amos replied heartily.
The young people had no claim to wealth and material success on their wedding day, however. Amos would soon reach his twenty-first birthday, but his petite, brown-eyed bride lacked two days being 16.
“I had twenty dollars, which I sent by my dad to get the marriage license,” Amos remembered.
“He bought the license and kept the rest of the money. My Grandpa Anderson married us free. Draxie and I were broke without a penny to our name. We stayed with my brother six months while I worked in the mines Then we set up housekeeping in the head of Robinson Creek at Biscuit, Kentucky, where we lived 18 years.
Not long after we married, hard times really came head on with the Depression in 1929. In that time I bid a dollar and a dime once to get the mail route from Biscuit to Virgie. I failed to get the bid but wanted it bad enough, because I was willing to do anything to pick up an extra dollar or two”.
Draxie remembered some of their early years of struggle, too, as the young couple made a home and liv-ing. Their son, Tivis, was born May 8, 1930. Draxie recalled her days as a young mother bringing up their son and remaining at home to keep the home fires burning .
Amos remembered that he promised his young wife a fancy saddle horse. Instead, she had to be satisfied with a mule, he said!
After working 15 years in the mines run by Salisbury at Left Beaver. he sold mining timber to mines at Wheelwright and Jenkins five or six years. In 1944 then he bought a dairy from F.A. Hopkins and ran it around a year and a half. In addition to the cattle obtained from Hopkins, he increased his dairy’s capacity by buying 20 additional cows from the Thomas Dairy in Pikeville.
After selling his dairy business, Amos Newsom next did trucking for the Utility Esco Company a few years, where he augured on Esco leases. When Esco sold out, he began working on the Forsyth lease. He leased coal there also. The next step in his career lay in working for the Virginia Iron and Coal Company and leasing coal from this company. In all these ventures he kept building up his own mining company, and in 1967 then he bought the enormous tract of land on Bear Branch of Robinson Creek.
Fourteen gas wells were drilled on the purchased property. There are 19 now. “My son, Tivis, worked with me all through the years except for one period,” said the father. “It’s been great to have a son working with me and one to be trusted. I retired from mining and gas wells in the 1970s. Tivis runs the business to-day.”
Although Amos asserted this he is retired, I found the fact hard to digest, As the two Newsom families, my husband, and I walked across the spacious lawn (neatly mowed) and viewed the many young apple trees heavily laden with healthy apples and the productive garden, the view was living proof that work lay behind the verdant growth. Amos has two huge gardens. In one the rows are 165 feet long; the other contains rows of 265 feet long.
What attracted my attention most were the six to eight long rows with eight-toot posts and wire tor running peas and beans. Amos Newsom never attended an agricultural college, but he surely uses practical horse sense and has an analytical mind for concocting new ideas in the garden world. At this point could name some of my favorite and most esteemed gardeners and say, “Watch out! Amos Newsom may yet pass you in the garden race’-but maybe Id better not!
The proof is in the pudding, though, the proof in this case being that Mr. Newsom picked five bushels of peas from one row. Final evidence lay in our seeing the Newsom freezer filled with large packages of peas recently put up by Amos and Draxie.
As we returned to the house we saw the large lawn Amos mows and again, the productive orchard he tends. In the house once more, we talked and looked at pictures as the Newsom couple continued their story. They told us about the two big farms they once owned in Clark County and Mt. Sterling.
“I bought the farms after my retirement, thinking I’d retired from hard labor and would go to the Bluegrass to take it easy more or less, said Amos,. laughing. “No such thing! There just simply is no way to retire on a farm. We had five or six hundred cattle and then I invested $100,000 in steer cattle and built two big silos. There’s work, believe me, in wearing high boots and wading mud to tend cattle, having your water pumps freeze, planning for market day and buying and selling. That period was five hard years of work for us.”
“We sold the farms,” Draxie summed up the story. “I still remember the 100 little calves we had once, though.” Amos and Lawrence next remembered their boyhood days when as cousins they played checkers and ball games together.
Amos recalled walking five miles to play a ball game once and playing hard then to make the points that beat his opponents, Lawrence said Amos was an expert marksman with a gun as well as a good ball player.
“He turned a gun upside down one time and snot a bull’s eye, Lawrence recalled. “And he shot a turkey once with its head sticking out of a box from 75 yards away. o’s a champion horseshoe pitcher Amos Newsom, in a horseshoe game, can easily make 22 ringers out of 24 pitches. He owns a winter home in Okeechobee, Florida, and last winter Elder Grover Adkins was his guest there.
“Grover and I played horseshoes a lot” said Amos. “In a month he didn’t win a game. I told him I won a regular routine by going to bed early and being an early riser! I always got up early on my mining jobs.”
“To what do you attribute your success?” Lawrence thoughtfully asked his cousin at this point.
Amos Newsom was thoughtful too as he replied, ‘1 know that for years I neglected God, but He was always up in front, leading me all the way. I learned to put Him first, and then as the Bible says, earthly material things are added to us. I feel the Lord led me into what I did and I learned to trust Him.”
After working 15 years in the mines run by Salisbury at Left Beaver. he sold mining timber to mines at Wheelwright and Jenkins five or six years. In 1944 then he bought a dairy from F.A. Hopkins and ran it around a year and a half. In addition to the cattle obtained from Hopkins, he increased his dairy’s capacity by buying 20 additional cows from the Thomas Dairy in Pikeville.
After selling his dairy business, Amos Newsom next did trucking for the Utility Esco Company a few years, where he augured on Esco leases. When Esco sold out, he began working on the Forsyth lease. He leased coal there also. The next step in his career lay in working for the Virginia Iron and Coal Company and leasing coal from this company. In all these ventures he kept building up his own mining company, and in 1967 then he bought the enormous tract of land on Bear Branch of Robinson Creek.
Fourteen gas wells were drilled on the purchased property. There are 19 now. “My son, Tivis, worked with me all through the years except for one period,” said the father. “It’s been great to have a son working with me and one to be trusted. I retired from mining and gas wells in the 1970s. Tivis runs the business to-day.”
Draxie showed us a plaque her husband received from the Salem Million Ton Club. The plaque read:
Presented to Amos Newsom 1968 in recognition of mining a million tons of coal with Salem Coals Recovery Drills. The Salem Tool Company. James H. Wilson, president.” “How many dozers did you have through the years?” asked Lawrence.
Amos mediated. “Guess I had one million dollars of equipment when I retired, ” he answered. “I had three augers at one time. I remember when we would auger land where I played as a boy that I’d think of my dogs running rabbits there long ago In the mining business one can’t just say he’ll stand still and get no bigger. You’ve got to venture out and move on. So I kept buying more equipment. It would break down on me and need repairs. I decided then to buy new augers and dozers instead of sinking money in the old ones. I put the old ones up as a down payment and my decision paid off. I had to learn to make decisions and trust my own judgment. And I didn’t just stay in the office. I went out among the men working and supervising and learning what needed to be done.”
“Education most often begins out of school,” commented Lawrence Newsom
“I worked hard with my men and they were willing to work because I worked,” Amos informed us. Hurshell Shell, who worked for me, was a fine man to lead the men under him. And he knew how to get work out of the dozer. And there was Silas Tackett, my bookkeeper, one to be trusted and the finest in the country. And I must give credit also to my daughter-in-law, Bernice. When Tivis and I needed parts or material she’d go after them for us. She sells my apples for me too!”
As a young man and thereafter Amos had experience with danger in the mines. He wanted to make his mines as safe as possible for his employees. He put into action three rules for safety and production. He saw that air was provided, kept the water down, and installed good timbers above to support the roof. In all his expansion and mining ventures he had the feeling and compassion for his men.
“I tried hard never to have a man killed and never did,” he said in humility and thankfulness. “Coming up the hard and dangerous way myself, I knew how it was.” Amos and Draxie, while they showed us family pictures, spoke of their family who are their life and fulfillment. Their son married Bernice Justice, whose parents were Abner and Delphia Justice. Tivis and Bernice have one daughter, Sandra, who married Alvin Newsom.
The young couple are the parents of Sherry Lynn, age 12, Kathy Lee, 10, Kristi Love, four, and Stephen Kane, seven months-the great-grandchildren of Amos and Draxie. All these live near the new brick home Amos and Draxie built 12 years ago on Little Creek. In retirement today, the older couple, who started out housekeeping themselves as a 21-year-old man and 16 year-old girl, can watch the younger generations as they grow and carry on the family.
But wait, did I say “retirement” again? Once more, the word doesn’t apply to Amos nor to Draxie Newsom. For Amos continues to garden on a huge scale “orchardize” and mow grass. If he can’t find anythıng else for his itching-for-work fingers, he gets out his wheelbarrow and loads up rocks to remove from his garden!
A very important facet of the Newsoms’ schedule is their church work. Draxie uses a large portion of the food she cans and freezes for church associations and dinners. Amos said that although he felt his sins were pardoned years before, he wasn’t baptized into the Old Regular Baptist Church until 1963. Since then he has contributed generously to the church.
He gave $50,000 to the New Salem Association on Left Beaver at Minnie, Kentucky, and donated $7,000 for chairs. He and Freddie Coleman aided the Old Regular Baptist Church at Fords Branch by helping pay off the church debt.
At his home church on Little Creek, Mr. Newsom gave $10,000 to a bridge and wall by the church, $5,000 for seats, and $6,000 on the lunchroom. He and his son, Tivis, contributed $12,000 for paved work around the church, bought tables and chairs, and contributed for parking space.
These and other gifts to the church have surely helped mountain churches in Pike County in their growth.
Once when Amos and Draxie were traveling home from Florida, Draxie left her pocketbook on top of their car after she had taken out her camera for pictures. It fell off but was found by honest people who returned it to her with all her money and the contents.
“I feel that God worked in this incident as He does in all things,” said Amos Newsom in simple faith and trust. It showed me He hadn’t forgotten Draxie and me and that he was caring for us to help carry on His work.”
Yes, Amos Newsom is a wealthy man, rich enough to give to the church and other worthy causes. But he remains a simple country boy at heart, loyal to family and friends and the Pike County hills, where he can recall! seeing his dogs chase wild rabbits into the deep coves and hollows. He remains loyal to the land for which he assumes the role of a good steward, as he delights in growing vegetables and fruit.
As Lawrence Newsom, his cousin, said, the story of Amos Newsom can be compared to the Horatio Alger stories of the 19th century, in which poor boys with faith and courage climbed steps of honor, dedication, and hard work to places of high esteem.
Amos Newsom, with only a sixth grade education in the one-room country school, can well be cited as a 20th century Horatio Alger in the Eastern Kentucky mountains who has climbed the success ladder through his Christian faith, the help of his Lord, his own good judgment, application, and hard work. And, oh, yes, because he was lucky enough to make Draxie Hampton his wife!
“She stood by me in all my decisions and undertakings,” Mr.Newsom said.
