John Henry

A story that will always be questioned as fiction or fact is the story of John Henry. Was John Henry an actual man? Or was the story just a tale to inspire others to work hard and triumph the world ahead of them? Nelson reasons in “Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry the Untold Story of an American Legend” were that John Henry was no myth. Nelson a professor of history at the College of William and Mary researches and finds evidence that leads up to the possibility that John Henry was indeed a real man. He speaks with archivist, reporters, researched articles, visited the Virginia Penitentiary where John Henry was imprisoned, and the place where he supposedly died. Nelson found an “archivist who agreed to let him examine the sealed records of the penitentiary” (pg. 38) the inmate’s description was John Wm. Henry, #497. The information included his sentencing to ten years in jail for housebreak and larceny, his height, age, complexion, color of hair, his full description to the tee. The prison records that Nelson rounds up at the penitentiary is not enough proof to say that was possibly The John Henry, the steel drivin’ man. John Henry was a common name and hundreds of the convicts, was named John Henry as well. Nelson believes since all the description matches what Henry was told to be, he was in fact a real man.
John Henry was sentence to ten years in jail by a man named Charles H. Burd, a “second lieutenant from coastal Maine” (pg. 41) Burd ran the Freedman’s Bureau in the Prince George County and was desperate to raise revenue for himself. On April 26, 1866, John Henry was accused of stealing groceries out of the Wiseman Grocery and was sent to jail. Later, Henry and other prisoners were turned over from Burd to the county magistrates, when on March 10; Henry was set to go on trial. His crime unfairly went from a misdemeanor to a felony under the “black codes” and this is what sentence Henry to jail for ten years. “Whatever John Henry’s crime, the punishment