BIG SHOAL, KENTUCKY
James Hatcher Birthday Party
The entire population of Big Shoal, Kentucky, turned out for “Uncle Jim” Hatcher’s birthday party on September 22nd, 1919. The party was attended by many of his Floyd County friends and relatives. Hatcher can be seen in the center of the group wearing a black hat and a boutonniere. Sitting in front on the left is Reverend M. C. Reynolds, a revered Methodist minister of Coal Run, Kentucky. The James Hatcher Coal Company, operating at Big Shoal near Pikeville, produced Aladdin Coal, widely sought by buyers.
Photo courtesy of William Pruitt of Abbott Creek.
Coal chute is at left; three-story boarding house for out-of-town miners is in the background, 1945 (below)
Big Shoal Tipple on Fire (below)
End of Day Shift, Teddy and Avalene Compton, Circa 1947 (below)
My great aunt, Octavia Gilliam Smith(aunt Tave) and her husband, Arthur Smith, ran the Boarding House at Big Shoal for several years, until her husband died of acute appendicitis. Aunt Tave cooked, cleaned and packed the miners’ lunch buckets for the miners staying there and working in Big Shoal mines. My father, Charles McCoy Steffey and my grandfather, Francis Miller Fife, both, worked at Big Shoal mines. I have a brother and sister buried there, both died in infancy.