John Henry

John Henry is one of the most towering figures, both figuratively and literally, in the history of the America. A hero to African Americans and laborers, his life has been immortalized in countless songs telling of his great triumph of strength against the coming of the Industrial Revolution.

## **Biography**

It ís unknown precisely when he was born given the strange nature of his birth. With the acquisition of California in 1848, the United States gained control of the peninsula of Brobdingnag, home to one of the last surviving populations of homo ingens. On the whole, the monarchistic Brobdingnagians had little love for the democratic Americans, and chose not to integrate. Some, however, decided to head east and put their enormous size to good use. These include such figures as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. However, it is hard to conclude what Henry's relation to Brobdingnag was. While certainly a giant, nearly all of the Brobdingnagians were light-skinned. Henry looked African. Also, he was considerably smaller than most other giants. The most likely theory is that he was the son of a Brobdingnagian immigrant and a black slave (while there ís no concrete evidence, itís safe to assume the mother was the giant). Since the US government did not keep solid records of the births of blacks or Brobdingnagians. He was officially dismissed by the government as a provincial tall tale. Henry's date of birth is unknown.

It is thought that he was born in Missouri sometime in the late 1840's or early 1850's. Since Missouri was a slave state, it is likely he was born into slavery, although no records of any slave named John Henry exist. It may be that his father had escaped bondage and fled with his young son. It ís said that it was as a child that he picked up his first hammer, and there his father saw that John Henry would be a steel-driving man.

As a grown man, surviving the Civil War, and seeing the end of Slavery, Henry's wife, a former slave herself who he had fallen in love with while the two lived side by side, forged their former chains into a pair Hammers. Henry joined Project S.T.E.A.M but retired upon the seeming second death of Lincoln. Henry went to work on the railroads. He quickly gained a reputation as America's strongest man. It was said that he could lay claim to nearly a fourth of all railroad laid in America during his lifetime. Most upper-class white Americans scoffed at the claim, thinking that no man, and certainly no black man, could do such feats.

So, his abilities were put to the test. In the mid 1870's, the heads of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway arranged a contest between Henry and the latest model steam-powered hammer to be held at the Big Bend Tunnel near Talcott, West Virginia. Henry and the man operating the drill were placed on the opposite sides of a stretch of un-spiked rail. From the starting point they would drive rail spikes until they reached the tunnel. Whoever got there first won the match. The race was begun with a gunshot, and both Henry and the steam drill began driving spike after spike into the rail. To the surprise of the C&O owners, and to the roar of the onlooking rail workers, Henry shot ahead, sweat flying off him with each swing. The last hit of the hammer was met with cheers. John Henry won, and collapsed to the ground. He had beaten the steam drill, but his heart gave out.

He was survived by two son, James Douglas Henry, who thwarted a scheme by the Villain Arliss Loveless to takeover America but had this action attributed falsely to James West, and the equally strong Conker Henry, who worked in a travelling circus. It was because of Conker that his story spread so quickly, a son's wish to honor his late father. After his death, folk singers across the country began to sing songs about him for over a century. Now there is hardly a man, woman, or child who doesnít know about John Henry, the steel-driving man, who died with a hammer in his hand.