Tom's Creek is a short distance from downtown Coeburn in Wise County, Virginia. My grandmother on the Kilgore side of the family spent some of her younger years living in this small coal mining town. She has described Tom's Creek to me as "a good place to live. You knew everybody. Everybody was pretty good people...For the most part they were good, honest, hard working people." From baseball to the company store, Tom's Creek as explained to me by my grandmother was a place of camaraderie and community. She speaks of Tom's Creek as one who knows; one who experienced firsthand life in a coal camp.
Presbyterian missionary to the mountains, Edward O. Guerrant (1838-1916), knew something of Tom's Creek, too. Guerrant was born between the bluegrass and the Appalachian foothills of Kentucky. He was trained in medicine, fought for the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and eventually entered seminary at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. It was at Union that Guerrant sat at the feet, so to speak, of the well known southern Presbyterian theologian R.L. Dabney. As Mark Huddle notes of the two men, "Guerrant and Dabney...established a close personal and professional relationship that lasted throughout their lives."
By the kindness of some of my ministerial brethren,
I was permitted to preach a week recently in the mining
camp on Tom's Creek, in Wise County, Virginia.-Some
account of that interesting field may not be without its
lessons to those unacquainted with their neighbors.
I left my home on Tuesday, October 3d, and passing
through the Cumberland Mountains at :Middlesboro,
arrived on the second day, at Norton, Virginia, above
Big Stone Gap. Here I was met by Rev. F. E. Rogers,
the evangelist in charge of this field.
If you don't know how a pelican of the wilderness
feels, go as an evangelist to the mountains, one hundred
miles beyond all who know and love you. I need
not say we were glad to see each other. "Sheep among
wolves" need no introduction. But I was not quite so
much a stranger as I thought, when a bright young fellow
walked up and shook hands with me and said his
name was Reese Bowen, son of Col. Tom Bowen and
Augusta Stuart, and grandson of Gen. Reese Bowen,
of Tazewell County, Virginia. Some twenty years ago,
when he was a lad, I preached his little sister's funeral
at his grandfather's old home, at Maiden Spring, Virginia.
I was surprised and gratified that he remembered
me. I guess heaven will be full of such glad surprises.
After dinner, Brother Rogers and I set out for
Tom's Creek, twelve miles farther down the Norfolk and
Western Railroad, among the red mountains of old Virginia.
If you were never in a coal-mining camp, you will
have to go there, for a description of the dust and smoke
from two hundred and fifty coke-ovens, and of the noises
from engines and cars, and dinkeys and larreys, and tipples,
and men and horses, and mules, and three thousand
people of all colors (white is not a color) and sizes and
tongues. The little and big houses were scattered for
two miles in the narrow valley and along the mountain
sides along Tom's Creek, which is the name for a river
of black coal-dust. We were fortunate enough to get
our room at one house, and our meals at another; one
of Dr. Barr's flock, who has wandered away into these
mountains.
There is not a church here (for three thousand people),
and no place to preach, except under a chestnut tree, or
in a little school-house. We took the school-house, only
because we couldn't warm the other place. It was half
a mile of railroad tracks, and cars, and locomotives, up
to the school-house, but many of the people came farther,
and we did not complain, or get killed. Some thirty
came out the first night, but they gradually filled up the
little school-house, though many had never learned to
go to church, for want of opportunity. The religious
destitution was pitiful. In twenty-two families, I visited
one day, I found only about a dozen persons who
had ever belonged to any church. They received me
kindly in their humble homes, for most of them were
Virginians. Indeed, of the fifteen hundred men there at
work, only some thirty are foreigners (Hungarians).
Brother Rogers worked faithfully under the greatest
disadvantages. The men were at work from 7 A. M. to
6 P. M. in the mines and ovens, and digging and hauling,
and building two hundred and fifty new coke-ovens.
Everything was in a rush, except the church. Money,
and not souls, was the object of all, but a few, a remnant
of Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal. A
little prayer-meeting at 9 :30 A. M., of half a dozen good
women, held in one of the cottages, helped us preach at
night. The congregations and interest increased from
day to day, in spite of the dark nights, and the tired
bodies of the laborers, and the little uncomfortable
school-house, without a breath of ventilation. Some of
the wandering sheep were gathered back into the fold,
the seed sown in many a heart that responded its acceptance,
and all the results left with God, whose word never
returns to Him void. The harvest will come bye and
bye. Pray for God's faithful laborer in this great and
destitute field; he needs much assistance and encouragement,
and I am sorry I could not remain with him a
month instead of a week. A month's work here would
doubtless gather a rich harvest of immortal souls; but a
place must be provided for the preaching, and earnest,
prayerful effort made to reach these multitudes of
neglected people.