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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 26, 1921
Williamson, West Virginia – Trial of Sid Hatfield and 19 Matewan Men Set to Start
From Indiana’s Logansport Pharos-Tribune of January 25, 1921:
TWENTY MEN GOING ON TRIAL FOR THE KILLING
OF MINE GUARDS AT MATEWAN
—–FRIENDS AND FOES MEET IN WILLIAMSON, W. VA.,
AS POLICE CHIEF AND 19 CITIZENS FACE COURT
—–
(N. E. A. Staff Special.)
WILLIAMSON, W. Va., Jan. 26.-Friend and foe rub elbows here, as miners and Baldwin-Felt guards assemble for the trial of Sid Hatfield, chief of police at Matewan, and 19 of his fellow citizens charged with killing seven Baldwins in a street battle.
Five Baldwin-Felts detectives engaged in the same battle will be tried under change of venue at Lewisburg, Greenbrier county, in April.
Tom Felts, chief of the guards and man-hunter extraordinary is here in Williamson. With him are his most trusted men. He has an intimate personal interest in the case, for two of the slain Baldwins were his brothers.
At Matewan, which is ten miles from here, the bullet-spattered wall of the hardware store still gives evidence of the terrific battle that day last June [May] when the Felts brothers fell at the head of their forces.
The miners call it “the battle of Matewan” and regard it as a defensive combat that ensued after the Baldwin men attempted to evict the families of striking miners from the company houses.
But Tom Felts calls it the “massacre of Matewan,” in which, he says his men had no chance for a fair fight, but were slaughtered after being ambushed.
But the seven guards were not all of the dead. Three citizens of Matewan were killed in the exchange of shots.
Attempt to Arrest Chief
Among them was C. C. Testerman, the mayor of Matewan and the town’s leading business man.
Witnesses say the guards started to arrest his chief of police, Sid Hatfield, on the ground that he had attempted to interfere with them in the discharge of their duties as licensed constables [deputized company gunthugs, a common practice.]
The mayor, it is said, warned them not to take his chief of police away from the town. Nobody tells exactly the same story about what happened after that.
A shot was fired and Mayor Testerman fell. Then there began the general shooting
Other guards who survived fled, some swimming across the Tug river to Kentucky. These have been summoned as witnesses by the prosecution…..
The enclosure in the court room reserved for judge, jury and defendants will be filled with the numerous defendants, at the head of whom sits Sid Hatfield. In the auditorium gather the friends and foes of the accused men.
In the friendly delegation from Matewan sits Sid Hatfields’s wife. She was the widow of Mayor Testerman, killed in the gun fight. The chief of police married her a few weeks after the mayor’s death.
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[Emphasis added.]
[Details from sketches above:]
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SOURCES
Quote Sid Hatfield, per R Minor, Liberator p11, Aug 1920
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/liberator/1920/08/v3n08-w29-aug-1920-liberator.pdf
Logansport Pharos-Tribune
(Logansport, Indiana)
-January 25, 1921
https://www.newspapers.com/image/24848951/
IMAGES
Matewan Trial, Sid Hatfield etc, Bismarck Dly Tb p2, Jan 27, 1921
(Same drawings as from article above, better copy.)
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042243/1921-01-27/ed-1/seq-2/
See also:
Tag: Sid Hatfield
https://weneverforget.org/tag/sid-hatfield/
Thunder In the Mountains
The West Virginia Mine War, 1920–21
-by Lon Savage
University of Pittsburgh Pre, Sep 11, 1990
(source for spelling of names in tags below)
(search separately: defendants in matewan trial; “charges dropped”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=u-n7AwAAQBAJ
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Sid Hatfield-The Southern West Virginia Coal Wars
Written by David Grubb and Alan Johnston
Sung by Alan Johnston and Jessi Shumate.