Pure D Coal Company   Harlan County, KY

      The Pure D Coal Company has always been a mystery to me.

 
      The Mary Helen Coal Corporation was the real mine that had the big rail mine on Turtle Creek of Martin’s Fork (of the Cumberland River ) at Coalgood, in Harlan county, KY.  It had succeeded my grandfather’s Lena Rue Coal Company (1607A) in the 1920’s, and was large multiple seam deep mine served by the L & N Railroad.  It employed several hundred men, with a large camp and commissary (KY 609 A-C) that operated up until the 1960’s, when it was purchased by the Sigmon family from North Carolina.  The Mary Helen Coal Corporation was (and still is) owned by the Gravatt family of Blackstone, VA, William M. “Bill” Gravatt, Jr. being the principal in those years.

 
      During the 1980’s, Bill Gravatt’s son, Mayo Gravatt, a lawyer, gave me an uncirculated set of Orco-minted Pure D scrip (KY 609 E), but he knew nothing about he company or the scrip.  Most of the coal lands on Turtle Creek are, or were, owned by my family, Hall Land & Mining (now part of Kentucky River Coal) or Mary Helen.  Neither the Cawood’s nor the Hall’s records reflect that they ever leased or consented to a sublease of Pure D.  The Kentucky Department of Mine & minerals files reflect no record of a license ever being issued of Pure D to mine coal, at Coalgood or elsewhere.  The Mary Helen commissary, a large concrete and brick two-story building, was the only store on Turtle Creek.  The L & N’s records reflect no shipping point for Pure D Coal Company.

 
      But it did exist, at least numismatically (as many of us have its scrip in our collections), and legally, as well.  Articles for the Pure D Coal Company were recorded with the Harlan County, KY, Court Clerk on August 6, 1960, and with the Kentucky Secretary of State the day before. The incorporators were recorded as James (“Jim”) Samson (deceased, the leading coal lawyer in the Harlan area of that day), Burnice Ray (unknown to me), and W. M. Gravatt, Jr.  (Mary Helen’s Bill Gravatt).  

 
      From what I know, though, the Osbourne Registar Company (Orco) was not even making scrip in 1960 … or was it??

 
      Stuart E. Brown, in his seminal work, Scrip, on pate 168 quotes a DODRILL arricle in the December 1970 Scrip Talk for the proposition that Orco-4 pieces were made “as late as “1958”.  Gordon Dodrill, himself, in his classic 20,000 Coal Company Stores, on page 208 in the date column, shows “1951- “ with no figure for the number of employees.  Edkins Catalog, in describing Orco-4, merely gives a range of 1939 to 1958.  I do not have Keystones that cover the 1950’s and 60’s.

 
      So, this is as far as the story goes for me.  No coal leased.  No production records.  I’ve never seen any Pure D scrip that was well-worn, let alone any that had been dug up.  Was this one of the last orders for Orco?  Was this an ill-fated attempt to produce the Darby seam (the D in Pure D) without a union contract, Mary Helen historically being a UMW signatory?

 
      Does anyone know the rest of the story?

Stephen Cawood, submitted 12/07