The negative to produce the image below was found on the 2nd floor of a two story brick mining company store, at the mouth of Blackleg hollow, in 1954, by Harold Bates. This building sat on the west side of KY SR 854, across the street from the current Rush KY Post Office and just beside the train depot at Rush. Harold was 15 years old and lived very near this store building. This was the company store for the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway (AC&I) and later its corporate derivative, Ashland Iron and Mining (AI&M).
The mining company had abandoned this structure a couple of decades before, after which the Ratliff / Chapman families ran a general store there. But, by 1954, the Ratliff / Chapman families had also abandoned this building for a better location on US 60 at the nearby community of Coalton.
Harold Bates indicated that he found a box of glass negatives and several mining company ledgers in this abandoned building. He just looked at the ledgers and left them there. Harold carted several of the glass negatives to his home darkroom and made contact prints. Most of the glass negatives depicted only one person, but not the same person, and Harold asked Rush locals if they might know who these people were, without success. Harold returned the glass negatives to where he had found them.
Because of Harold’s inability to identify those in his prints from the glass negatives, he only retained this image with the three miners as he thought it was a nice historic depiction of local miners.
It is highly likely these miners were local and worked at one of the AC&I / AI&M mines at Rush, Coalton, or Grant, and that the photos were taken by a company hired photographer. The miners are wearing oil mining lamps that went out of vogue in about 1900 to 1910 and were replaced with far more efficient carbide lamps. So the photo is most likely taken before 1910.
The rocks buttressing the timbers at this mine entrance are likely local brown sandstone.
A big thanks to Harold Bates for his kind and focused help.
Enjoy! Lon
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The tall miner on the right looks very much like a Ferguson. I can not say for 100%. His features and build are very much like ours.