Appalachian History Series – Paint Creek and Cabin Creek: West Virginia’s Coalfield War, 1912 to 1913
In the spring of 1912, two narrow valleys south and east of Charleston became the center of one of the most violent labor struggles in Appalachian history. Paint Creek and Cabin Creek were not simply scenes of a wage dispute. They became places where miners, coal operators, private guards, state militia, labor organizers, women, children, and federal investigators all collided over the meaning of work, law, and freedom in the West Virginia coalfields.
The strike began on April 18, 1912, after Paint Creek operators rejected demands from union miners who wanted wages equal to those paid in nearby unionized fields. As the conflict spread into nearby Cabin Creek, the issue grew beyond wages. Miners wanted recognition of the United Mine Workers of America, the right to organize, the right to speak and assemble, an end to blacklisting, fair weighing of coal, and the removal of armed mine guards from their communities.
Paint Creek and Cabin Creek Before the Strike
The coal camps of southern West Virginia were built around company power. In many mining towns, the operator owned the houses, controlled the stores, influenced local law enforcement, and decided who could work, live, travel, and organize. That system made a strike more than a refusal to work. When miners challenged the company, they often risked losing their homes as well as their wages.
Paint Creek already had union organization, but its miners were paid less than other union miners in the surrounding Kanawha field. Cabin Creek, by contrast, had lost much of its union strength after earlier organizing battles. When Paint Creek miners walked out, the fight quickly became a test of whether unionism could survive in one of the most heavily controlled coal districts in the state.
Baldwin-Felts and the Guard System
The coal operators answered the strike with force. They brought in strikebreakers and hired hundreds of Baldwin-Felts mine guards. The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency had already become infamous in coal country for its role in protecting company property, breaking strikes, evicting miners, and intimidating union supporters. In Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, guards helped turn the valleys into armed camps.
Evicted miners and their families moved into tent colonies, including the camp at Holly Grove. Those camps became both shelters and symbols. They showed the cost of resistance in a company-controlled landscape. The conflict was no longer confined to the mine mouth. It entered porches, creek crossings, railroad lines, roads, tents, and family life.
Mother Jones Comes to the Creeks
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones arrived in West Virginia as one of the best-known labor organizers in the United States. She had worked with miners before, and she understood that a coal strike was never only about the men underground. It was also about wives, children, food, shelter, and the right of a community to exist outside the operator’s control.
On August 15, 1912, Mother Jones spoke on the steps of the state capitol in Charleston. Her speech accused the coal companies of using armed guards to deny miners and their families basic rights. She asked Governor William E. Glasscock to disarm the guards and restore the rights of citizens in the coal valleys. The surviving text of that speech is one of the strongest primary sources for the language and spirit of the strike.
Mother Jones’s presence gave the strike a national voice. She did not create the grievances on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, but she helped carry them beyond the coal camps. Her speeches joined the miners’ local struggle to a larger American argument over private power, public law, and the rights of labor.
Martial Law in the Mountains
As violence increased, Governor Glasscock declared martial law in the strike district. State troops entered the region, disarmed miners and guards, and placed civilians under military authority. At first, some miners preferred the militia to the private guards because soldiers were at least formally responsible to the state. That hope did not last. Under martial law, miners were restricted from gathering, and civilians were tried before military commissions while civil courts still existed.
The West Virginia Mining Investigation Commission records remain especially valuable for this period. The collection includes proceedings from Charleston in 1912, military commission material from Pratt in 1913, military orders, clippings from the Labor Argus, names of people who appeared before the commissions, and extracts from speeches, including speeches by Mother Jones.
The Bull Moose Special
The most notorious episode came in February 1913. After renewed fighting near Mucklow, coal operator Quinn Martin, Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill, deputies, guards, and railroad police boarded an armored train known as the Bull Moose Special. The train had iron plating and machine guns. On the night of February 7, it moved through Holly Grove with its lights out and fired into the tent colony where striking miners and their families lived.
Francis Francesco Estep, sometimes identified in sources as Cesco Estep, was killed while trying to protect his family. His death became one of the most remembered tragedies of the strike. The attack on Holly Grove showed how far the conflict had moved from a wage dispute. It had become a war over who controlled the coal valleys and whether miners’ families had any safety when they resisted company rule.
The Arrest of Mother Jones
Mother Jones was arrested in February 1913 and held at Pratt in Kanawha County. She refused to recognize the authority of the military court that tried her. She was sentenced to twenty years, but instead of being sent to the state penitentiary, she remained confined in a boarding house that became known as the Mother Jones Prison.
Her imprisonment did not silence her. While confined, she smuggled a message to Senator John W. Kern of Indiana. Kern used her message in the push for a federal investigation. In May 1913, the Senate passed the Kern Resolution, which authorized an inquiry into conditions in the Paint Creek district.
The Senate Investigation
The federal investigation produced one of the most important primary-source records of the strike. The Senate hearings, published in three volumes as Conditions in the Paint Creek District, West Virginia, include testimony, exhibits, and maps from the 1913 inquiry. The final Senate report appeared in 1914 as Investigation of Paint Creek Coal Fields of West Virginia.
The hearings opened in June 1913. West Virginia Public Broadcasting notes that the inquiry marked the first time a congressional committee investigated the actions of a state government. The final report criticized living and working conditions along Paint and Cabin creeks, coal industry practices for weighing coal and paying miners, and the actions of state and military officials who had violated constitutional rights and denied due process.
Governor Hatfield and the Settlement
By March 1913, Henry D. Hatfield had become governor of West Virginia. He traveled to the strike area, visited Mother Jones while she was ill, and pushed for a settlement. The agreement became known as the Hatfield Contract. Paint Creek miners accepted it in May, though Cabin Creek miners continued resisting into the summer. The settlement included some gains, but many miners believed it fell short of what they had fought for.
Hatfield also pardoned many people convicted under military rule, but he kept some radical strike supporters in jail and sent the National Guard to close Socialist newspapers in Charleston and Huntington. Those actions helped keep the federal inquiry alive and deepened the belief among many miners that state power had been used to protect coal operators more than workers.
What the Strike Changed
Paint Creek and Cabin Creek did not end the mine wars. In many ways, they began them. The strike created a generation of leaders and organizers who would shape West Virginia labor history for years. Frank Keeney and Fred Mooney, both tied to the rising rank-and-file energy of District 17, became central figures in the later struggles that led toward Matewan and Blair Mountain.
The strike also exposed the weakness of civil rights in company-controlled coal country. A miner might have constitutional protections on paper, but those protections could disappear when the company owned the house, controlled the road, hired the guards, influenced the law, and could call on the state during a crisis. The Senate investigation mattered because it placed those realities into the federal record.
Remembering Paint Creek and Cabin Creek
The Paint Creek and Cabin Creek strike remains one of the defining events of Appalachian labor history. It belongs beside Matewan, Blair Mountain, Harlan County, and other places where coalfield people fought over work, power, and survival. Its story includes armed miners and private guards, but it also includes families in tents, women testifying, children living through hunger and fear, and communities trying to defend themselves against a system built to control nearly every part of life.
Paint Creek and Cabin Creek were small places with national meaning. In those valleys, miners challenged not only their employers but also the larger order that allowed private companies to rule public life. The strike showed how quickly an industrial dispute could become a constitutional crisis. It also showed why the West Virginia Mine Wars were not isolated explosions of violence. They were the result of years of pressure in a coalfield world where ordinary people had to fight for the right to live, speak, organize, and be heard.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor. Conditions in the Paint Creek District, West Virginia: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, Sixty-Third Congress, First Session, Pursuant to S. Res. 37. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008606894
United States Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor. Investigation of Paint Creek Coal Fields of West Virginia. Senate Report No. 321. 63rd Cong., 2nd sess. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914. https://printedephemera.lib.wvu.edu/?f%5Bcreator_corp_names_sim%5D%5B%5D=United+States.+Congress.+Senate.+Committee+on+Education+and+Labor.&f%5Bsubject_corp_names_sim%5D%5B%5D=United+Mine+Workers+of+America.&f%5Bsubject_topical_sim%5D%5B%5D=Paint+Creek+Strike%2C+W.+Va.%2C+1912-1913.
United States Congress, Senate. Investigation of Conditions in Paint Creek District, West Virginia. Senate Report No. 52. 63rd Cong., 1st sess. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913. https://www.congress.gov
United States Congress. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 1st sess., May 27, 1913, 1765–1779. https://www.loc.gov
West Virginia Mining Investigation Commission. Report of West Virginia Mining Investigation Commission, Appointed by Governor Glasscock on the 28th Day of August, 1912. Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Co., 1912. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008910210
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “West Virginia Mining Investigation Commission, Records, 1912–1913.” A&M 2036. West Virginia University Libraries. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/5802
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “William E. Glasscock (1862–1925), Governor, Papers.” A&M 0006. West Virginia University Libraries. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/2348
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Richard M. Hadsell, Collector, Records Regarding History of Coal Industry.” A&M 2122. West Virginia University Libraries. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/subjects/128?filter_fields%5B%5D=published_agents&filter_values%5B%5D=Evans%2C+D.T.
Jones, Mary Harris “Mother.” “Speech at a Public Meeting on the Steps of the Capitol, Charleston, West Virginia.” August 15, 1912. Voices of Democracy. https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/mother-jones-speech-at-a-public-meeting-speech-text/
Jones, Mary Harris. The Autobiography of Mother Jones. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1925. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html
Jones, Mary Harris. “Chapter 18: Victory in West Virginia.” In The Autobiography of Mother Jones. Industrial Workers of the World Archive. https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/18/
Mooney, Fred. Struggle in the Coal Fields: The Autobiography of Fred Mooney. Edited by J. W. Hess. Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, 1967. https://archive.org/details/struggleincoalfi0000moon
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Fred Mooney Manuscripts.” West Virginia University Libraries. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/5676
O’Reilly, Mary Boyle. “Mothers and Babies Were Victims of the War in the Kingdom of West Virginia.” The Day Book, June 17, 1913. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
Chaplin, Ralph. “Violence in West Virginia.” International Socialist Review, 1913. https://www.marxists.org
Kintzer, Edward H. “The Battling Miners of West Virginia.” International Socialist Review, 1912–1913. https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-from-the-international-socialist-review-the-battling-miners-of-west-virginia-by-edward-h-kintzer-part-i/
Young, Art. “The News Poisoned at the Source.” The Masses, July 1913. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/masses/
Library of Congress. “And She Became Mother Jones.” Inside Adams, March 20, 2020. https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2020/03/mother-jones/
West Virginia History OnView. “Browsing West Virginia History OnView: Paint Creek Coal Mining Strikes.” West Virginia University Libraries. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/catalog.html?f%5Bwvcp_subjects_sim%5D%5B%5D=Strikes+and+lockouts–Coal+mining–West+Virginia–Paint+Creek.&per_page=24
National Park Service. “Paint Creek and Cabin Creek Strikes.” Last updated September 27, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/paint-creek-and-cabin-creek-strikes.htm
National Park Service. “Mother Jones.” Last updated September 27, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/mother-jones.htm
National Park Service. “Mother Jones Prison.” National Historic Landmarks Program. Last updated August 29, 2018. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/mother-jones-prison.htm
Barkey, Fred A. “Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. February 8, 2024. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1740
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “The Mine Wars.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. February 22, 2024. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1741
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “The Bull Moose Special.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. December 18, 2025. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/674
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. February 16, 2024. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/308
West Virginia Public Broadcasting. “June 10, 1913: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Hearings Begin.” June 10, 2020. https://wvpublic.org/story/radio/june-10-1913-paint-creek-cabin-creek-hearings-begin/
West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. “Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912–13 to Be Discussion Forum Topic at Archives and History Library Sept. 22.” September 11, 2012. https://wvculture.org/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-13-to-be-discussion-forum-topicat-archives-and-history-library-sept-22/
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Major Coal Strike One Hundred Years Ago.” West Virginia University Libraries, December 2, 2013. https://news.lib.wvu.edu/2013/12/02/major-coal-strike-one-hundred-years-ago/
Ayers, Ginny Savage, and Lon Kelly Savage. Never Justice, Never Peace: Mother Jones and the Miner Rebellion at Paint and Cabin Creeks. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2018. https://wvupressonline.com/node/759
Green, James. The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom. New York: Grove Press, 2015. https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-devil-is-here-in-these-hills/
Steel, Edward M. The Court-Martial of Mother Jones. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813190327/the-court-martial-of-mother-jones/
Steel, Edward M., ed. The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. https://upittpress.org/books/9780822953984/
Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p067389
Corbin, David Alan, ed. The West Virginia Mine Wars: An Anthology. Charleston, WV: Appalachian Editions, 1990. https://search.worldcat.org
Lee, Howard B. Bloodletting in Appalachia: The Story of West Virginia’s Four Major Mine Wars and Other Thrilling Incidents of Its Coal Fields. Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, 1969. https://search.worldcat.org
Hufford, Mary. Landscape and History at the Headwaters of Big Coal River Valley. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, 1995. https://www.loc.gov
PBS American Experience. “The Mine Wars.” PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/theminewars/
West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. “For Your Research.” https://wvminewars.org/research
Author Note: This story matters because the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek strike was not only a labor dispute, but a fight over power, law, and daily life in coal country. I wanted to treat it as part of the larger Appalachian mine-war story, while still keeping the miners’ families, tent colonies, and local communities at the center.