Hello. I am new to this list, and my knowledge of VA history is pretty spotty. Nonetheless, I have a deep interest in aspects of it. As some of you may know, historian Scott Reynolds Nelson, College of William and Mary, has advanced the hypothesis that the legendary steel-driving man was John William Henry, a black convict leased from the Virginia Penitentiary, Richmond, to work on the construction of the C & O, 1868-73. Nelson represents John William Henry as dying at Lewis Tunnel, VA, probably in 1871. The evidence is presented in two publications (same evidence): Nelson, Scott Reynolds. "Who Was John Henry? Railroad Construction, Southern Folklore and the Birth of Rock and Roll." Labor: Studies of Working Class History of the Americas 2. Summer (2005): 53-80. Nelson, Scott Reynolds. Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. I do not agree with the identification of John William Henry as the legendary steel driver. My candidate is John Henry Dabney, an ex-slave from Copiah County (Crystal Springs), MS, who was working as a steel driver at Dunnavant, AL, in 1887 when he raced a steam drill, won, collapsed, and died. I have presented some of the evidence in my paper Garst, John. "Chasing John Henry in Alabama and Mississippi: A Personal Memoir of Work in Progress." Tributaries: Journal of the Alabama Folklife Association. Issue No. 5 (2002): 92-129 and I have since found much more, which I hope to include in the book I am writing at present. My opinion is that the evidence for AL is much more compelling than that for VA. Of course, the time-honored, and very popular, story is that John Henry was at Big Bend Tunnel, Summers County, WV. This was endorsed by rivals Guy Benton Johnson and Louis Watson Chappell in their books, *John Henry*, published in 1929 and 1933, respectively. There is a strong local John Henry tradition in WV, and a large fraction of the recovered texts of the ballad, "John Henry," place him at Big Bend, on the C & O, or both. For me, that is weak evidence. Indeed, I believe that the incoherent testimonies obtained by Johnson and Chappell from me who had worked on the construction of Big Bend Tunnel come close to ruling it out as the John Henry site. Nelson rules it out on spurious grounds, that steam drills were not used in boring it - Johnson and Chappell both knew this, but they accepted testimony to the effect that a steam drill was brought to the Big Bend site for a trial. Even if the legendary John Henry were John Henry Dabney, the Mississippian who died in Alabama, there would be a strong connection with VA. When Thomas Smith Gregory Dabney and his brother Philip Augustine Lee Dabney moved their families to MS in 1835, they joined a group of Virginians in Hinds County, MS, that continued in their VA customs and attitudes. These VA transplants and their children maintained close ties with their friends and relatives left behind in VA. When Gus Dabney's son Frederick Yeamans Dabney decided to join the Confederate military, he and a few friends and relatives went to Richmond to enlist. Things didn't work out quite as planned, and Fred wound up in Dement's (1st Maryland) Artillery for a while, before he was detached and sent to Port Hudson, LA, as Chief Engineer (in charge of defenses). I have not presented or discussed any evidence here, pro or con, relevant to VA or AL as the John Henry site. My purpose is to introduce my interests and to ask whether anyone on the list thinks they have ideas that might be useful in getting to the truth about John Henry. ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html