What should be made of the following?

Chappell includes the following in his book (p 37ff).

"...William Lawson...reports his age as eighty-five and the place of his birth as Laudin County, Virginia...During the Civil War he was on both sides...but regards himself first of all as a farmer:"

Chappell doesn't date Lawson's statment, but 1926 is a reasonable guess, so if he reported his age correctly, he would have been born about 1841. He would have been about 30 in 1871 (Big Bend Tunnel construction) and about 46 in 1887 (Oak and Coosa Tunnel construction). These are both plausible ages for a laborer on a railroad construction project.

Lawson says that he went to Big Bend "in the spring" of "the year they put the hole through" to drive steel with his brother Armstead at the east end of the tunnel. He describes how Armstead was killed in a gunfight arising from a dispute over who had made the first opening when the two sides, one tunnelling from the west and the other from the east, met. "He fell on his face. Then C. R. Mason come. They buried him on the mountainside in a government graveyard."

Lawson:
    "The hole had been put through there three or four months when John Henry was killed. He was the best steel-driver I ever saw. He was short and brown-skinned, and had a wife that was a bright colored woman. He was 35 or 36, and weighed 150 pounds.
    "When I went there they had a steam drill in the tunnel at the east end. They piped the steam in. They had a little coffee-pot engine on the outside. They didn't use it in the heading, but on the bench and on the sides.
    "John Henry drove steel with the steam drill one day, and beat it down, but got too hot and died. He fell out right at the mouth of the tunnel. They put a bucket of water on him.
    "His wife come to the tunnel that day, and they said she carried his body away, I don't know. I never saw anybody buried at the tunnel except my brother...
    "The time John Henry killed his self was his own fault, 'cause he bet the man with the steam drill he could beat him down. John Henry never let no man beat him down, but the steam drill won't no good nohow.
    "John Henry was always singing or mumbling something when he was whipping steel. He would sing over and over the same thing sometimes. He'd sing
       'My old hammer ringing in the mountains,
         Nothing but my hammer falling down.'
A colored boy 'round there added on and made up the John Henry song after he got killed, and all the muckers sang it.
    "C. R. Mason was the boss man at the tunnel. He was a good-hearted old man, but he was a tough man. He'd spit on you all the time he was talking to you...."

Chappell doesn't hold Lawson's testimony in high regard. C. R. Mason did not built Big Bend Tunnel. He built Lewis Tunnel, 50-60 miles to the east of Big Bend, in Virginia, with Virginia convict labor. Steam drills were used at Lewis but there is no evidence of their use at Big Bend. There is no "government graveyard" at Big Bend. Perhaps Mason had some kind of graveyard at Lewis. Chappell thinks that the opening of which Lawson speaks occurred in February, 1872, not the time when Lawson said he was there. Besides, Chappell reasons, a poor dirt farmer like Lawson could not have afforded to have been away from his crops from spring to fall, as he claimed.

At age 85, Lawson is recalling, in considerable detail, events from about 55 years earlier, if Big Bend or Lewis is the tunnel involved. Was it common in 1926 for an 85-year-old black laborer to have sure recall. I suspect not, as the discrepancies in Lawson's testimony show.

Even so, there is an element of his story that disturbs me.

Compare C. C. Spencer's testimony: "When the poor man with the hammer fell in the arms of his helper in a dead faint, they threw water on him and revived him, and his first words were: 'send for my wife, I am blind and dying.' They made way for his wife, who took his head in her lap and the last words he said were, 'Have I beat that old steam drill?'" Although Spencer doesn't comment on it, it is held in the tradition around Leeds, Alabama, that the contest took place just outside the east portal of Oak Mountain Tunnel.

Lawson and Spencer have in common:
(a) the contest was outside the east end of a tunnel,
(b) John Henry fell,
(c) they threw water on him, and
(d) his wife came.

Like Spencer's, Lawson's account is quite detailed. Unlike Spencer's, Lawson's important details are wrong or suspect. Unlike Spencer, Lawson does not explicitly claim to have seen any of the John Henry events that he describes.

Even so, I remain unsettled about the correspondences between their stories of the contest. Some "John Henry" ballads have his woman coming to him after he fell, but I'm not aware of any (off the top of my head) than mention throwing water on him to revive him, nor do any mention the contest being held outside the east portal of a tunnel (again, off the top of my head).

Could the events Lawson describes have occurred in Alabama, the story come to West Virginia, and Lawson incorporated them into his "memories"? Could the reverse have occurred, with Spencer retelling a story from West Virginia? Could Lawson have worked on the C & W construction in Alabama and got his memories mixed up?

I think I've disregarded Lawson's testimony because Chappell thought so poorly of it. Still, the overlap between his account and Spencer's disturbs me.