Samuel Dixon was born on November 14, 1856, in Skelton, Yorkshire, in England, the son of an ironstone miner. At the age of 21 Dixon left Yorkshire and immigrated to the United States to work for his uncle, who owned a coal mine in Fayette County, West Virginia.
By 1893 Dixon had become the President and general manager of the MacDonald Colliery Company and began amassing coal properties throughout West Virginia, merging them all into the New River Company in 1906. The company also operated coal yards in cities across the east to market the coal he produced in West Virginia.
In order to get his coal to market, Dixon built railroads in southern West Virginia to transport it to the Kanawha River, from where it could be shipped to cities in the Midwest via the Ohio River.
In order to operate his mines and railroads Samuel Dixon brought in workers from around the country and the world, including blacks from the deep South and immigrants from eastern and central Europe. The New River Company paid the transportation costs of these new workers and Dixon expected to be repaid his investment in them, which leads to April 11, 1908.
On that day, one hundred thirteen years ago, Samuel Dixon, along with six other men, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Huntington on 23 charges of peonage and conspiracy.
You see, Dixon and other coal and timber operators, had hired agents to procure labor for their operations, and had agreed to advance those workers the costs needed to move to West Virginia. When they arrived, these men found that conditions were not what they were told they were. For example, two men from Pennsylvania, John Payton and William Griffiths, were hired by the White Oak Coal Company, owned by Dixon, on a promise they could make between five and six dollars a day mining coal. When they arrived they found the pay to actually be two dollars a day, paid in scrip instead of money. And the scrip was discounted at the company store by 20 to 30 percent, leading them to get even deeper in debt. But the two couldn’t simply quit and leave, for they had those debts to repay by mining coal. They eventually managed to escape the armed guards surrounding the mine, walking 230 miles to Washington, D.C., where they told authorities their story.
After a trial that spring Samuel Dixon and three of his employees, A. L. Feltz, John Wilson and M. L. Parker, were acquitted of all charges after jury deliberations that lasted but a few minutes.
Dixon named several towns in Fayette County, West Virginia after places in England, including Carlisle, Scarbro and Kelton.
He died on July 6, 1934, after a lengthy illness, with all the news reports of his death noting it occurred “at his palatial home.”
