Did John Henry Really Exist?

John Henry is an American Folk Song that has at least a million verses.  It tells the story of a contest between man and machine. Evidently there was a contest between a steam drill and a man with a hammer.  The man won the contest, but died from the effort.
    His story has been sung by thousands of Old Time, Bluegrass and Blues musicians over the years.  
   The Rockridge Brothers from Sweden (who of course come to Morgantown to play with us in the summers) play a great version.  Kristian (Mr. Rachel, that is) Herner plays banjo, Pontus Juth (bass), Peter Frovik (guitar), and Ralf Fredblad (fiddle).   

Rockridge Brothers John Henry

   Another of my favorite versions on youtube.com is from a professional street musician from Germany, GeeGee Kettel.

John Henry Gee Gee Kettel

    I have always liked that song, maybe because I keep figuring that somewhere among those million verses is one in which John Henry wins the contest and lives instead of dying at the end.  Plus, it is a song about the American working man and woman (John Henry's wife, by the way, "could drive steel like a man, Lord, Lord."  So it was one of the earliest Woman's Liberation songs!).  In my heart of hearts I will always have faith in the workers of this great country. I am sometimes less than thrilled with the leadership of our country.   I may be old fashioned, but I still believe that Americans are supposed to build railroads, and make steel and be an industrialized nation.  

   OK, well, back to John Henry.  I always thought that the whole thing was made up, but listen to this clip from famed American blues singer and guitarist Leadbelly (Leadbelly, by the way, is the person who turned me on to the extra low tuning for the 12 String guitar, B-E-A-D-F#-B). 

   There is an interview recorded for the first 1:30 or so, in which Leadbelly claims that John Henry was a real person, born in Newport News, Virginia.  Moreover, he says that he and John Lomax (the greatest historian of American folk music in that period) had identified the house John Henry was born in.  
   Leadbelly sings about

...that Big Bend Tunnel on the C & O Road,

It is gonna be the death of me, Lord Lord...

     Now the C & O is a real railroad which runs from Newport News, Rhode Island all the way to Cincinnati Ohio.  The Bend Tunnel is located in Talcott, West Virginia (see illustration).  In order to blast through the mountain, someone needed to drive a hollow shaft into the rock with a hammer, so that a charge of dynamite could be used to blow a hole in the surrounding rock. This should not be confused with the process of laying down track and pounding spikes to hold the rails to the wooden ties.  It's pretty clear that the John Henry story has to do with pounding holes for dynamiting through the mountain, rather than laying down track. 

   Leadbelly himself was emphatic that John Henry was born in Newport News, Virginia, and that he and his sponsor John Lomax had toured the place where John Henry was born.  There is some tendency to discount what Leadbelly says since he was not a scholar, but the man was certainly not an idiot, and he worked for the greatest American folk music historian of that generation.  So, very likely Lomax was convinced that John Henry was from Newport News, but I can not say what evidence he had.  

    Incidentally, Leadbelly also was friends with Woody Guthrie, one of the most famous American folksingers of the day, who also had a version of the song. 

Woodie Guthrie and Leadbelly.

  The  historicity of John Henry was first described by in Guy B. Johnson's of the University of North Caroline in  John Henry:  Tracking Down a Negro Legend (1929), and later by others including Louis Chappell of West Virginia University  John Henry:  A Folklore Study (1933) and Paul Garon.  Scott R. Nelson, a historian from William and Mary College found that there was in fact a John Henry who was a Union solider imprisoned at the Virginia State Penitentiary and assigned to work for the C & O railroad as part of his sentence.  Nelson thinks that the Lewis tunnel might be more likely than the Big Bend, and moreover suspects that John Henry might have been buried in a nearby graveyard with a number of other prisoners near the prison.  I'm not wild about the second part of the theory (just because they found a graveyard doesn't mean that that everybody was buried there).  Paul Garon has recapitulated the major positions online, which you can access here: 

http://hq.abaa.org/books/antiquarian/news_fly?code=49

Ultimately none of this is for certain, given that the records were not well kept.  But the story is an important one.  As Leadbelly says, "Now, "John Henry", you know, it's made up about a hard-workin' man, folks, don't forget it."

D---    D---    D-CG    A---
D---    G---    D---       A-D-
D---    A-D-

When John Henry was a little baby,
Sittin' on his mama's knee,
said That Big Bend Tunnel on the C and  O Road

It is gonna be the death of me, Lord Lord

It is gonna be the death of me.

Well the captain said to John Henry,
Gonna bring my steam drill round,
Gonna bring a steam drill out on the job,
Gonna whop that steel on down, Lord, Lord,
Gonna whop that steel on down.

Well John Henry said to the Captain,
A man ain't nothing but a man
But before I let that steel drill beat me down,
Gonna die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord
Gonna die with a hammer in my hand.

Well John Henry hammered in the mountain,
His hammer was catching fire,
You could hear John Henry a mile or more,
You could hear John Henry's hammer ring, Lord Lord
You could hear John Henry's hammer ring.

John Henry was hammerin' fifteen feet,
The steam drill only made nine.
But he hammered so hard he broke his poor heart
And he laid down his hammer and he died Lord, Lord
He laid down his hammer and he died


Well they took John Henry to the white house,
and they buried him in the sand.
Now every locomotive that goes round the bend
says yonder lies a steel driving man, Lord Lord
Yonder lies a steel driving man.

(approximately 1,000,000 additional optional verses)