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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 4, 1921
Buskirk Cemetery, Kentucky – Sam Montgomery Speaks for Hatfield and Chambers
Double Funeral Held for Miners’ Heroes,
Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers
August 3.-The double funeral for Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers was held today in a drenching rain, at Buskirk Cemetery, on the Kentucky side of the Tug river, just across the bridge from Matewan. Sam Montgomery delivered the funeral oration and said, in part:
We have gathered here today to perform the last sad rites for these two boys who fell victims to one of the most contemptible systems that has ever been known to exist in the history of the so-called civilized world. Deliberately shot down, murdered in cold blood, while they were entering a place which should have been a temple of justice, and by whom? Men who are working under the direction of and taking their orders from coal operators who live in Cincinnati, Chicago, New York City, and Boston.
Sleek, dignified, church-going gentlemen who would rather pay fabulous sums to their hired gunmen to kill and slay men for joining a union than to pay like or lesser amounts to the men who delve into the subterranean depths of the earth and produce their wealth for them. At the same time these same men prate of their charities, their donations to philanthropic movements, act as vestrymen and pillars of the churches to which they belong.
Even the Heavens weep with the grief-stricken relatives and the bereaved friends of these two boys.
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SOURCES
Struggle in the Coal Fields
The Autobiography of Fred Mooney
-ed by J. W. Hess
West Virginia University Library, 1967
(search: funeral “samuel b montgomery”) -pages 88-89
https://books.google.com/books?id=nE3tAAAAMAAJ
William Sidney “Sid” Hatfield
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9980/william-sidney-hatfield
Edward W. “Ed” Chambers
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/102732077/edward-chambers
IMAGE
Matewan Defendants Sid Hatfield & Ed Chambers,
WV Hx Center, see also UMWJ p14, June 15, 1921
https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/004216
See also:
Tag: Sid Hatfield
https://weneverforget.org/tag/sid-hatfield/
The Wheeling Intelligencer of Aug 4, 1921
-sadly difficult to read, have attempted to improve, see below:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092536/1921-08-04/ed-1/seq-1/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092536/1921-08-04/ed-1/seq-14/
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“Sid” – Alan Cathead Johnston, Jessi Shumate, Nathan Lawson (banjo)
Lyrics by David Grubb and Johnston