Samples Funeral
Services Pending
Andy Howard Samples, 73 of Crab Orchard, died at 6:15 a. m.
Tuesday in a local hospital.
He was born Nov. 28, 1898, at Pear, a son of the
late Gus and Annie Plumley Samples.
He had lived in Crab Orchard for 10 years
and was a member of the Little Laurel Church of Backus Mountain. He was a
retired coal miner.
Survivors include his widow Susie Thompson Samples; one
daughter, Mrs. Easter Condon of Cincinnati, Ohio; two step daughters, Mrs.
Dorothy Harrah of Beckley and Mrs. Ann Ping of Crab Orchard; one son, Charles of
Elmhurst, Ill.; four stepsons, Lewis Shifflett of Backus, Bill Shifflett of
Pineville, Davie Shifflett of Sophia, and Johnnie Duty of Midway; four sisters,
Mrs. Annie Redden of Meadow Creek, Mrs. Sadie Smith of Charleston, Mrs. Myrtie
Armbruster of Ghent, and Miss Martie Samples of Detroit, Mich.; one half
brother, Bill Payne of Sprauge.
The body is at Wallace and Wallace Funeral Home
in Rainelle. Funeral Arrangements are incomplete.
Beckley Post-Herald, Beckley,
W. VA, Wednesday Morning, April 19, 1972

Samples Funeral Services
Friday
Funeral services for Andy Howard Samples, 73, of Crab Orchard, will be
held in the Little Laurel Community Church at 2:30 p. m. Friday at Backus
Mountain with the Rev. Shirley Donnelly officiating. Burial will be in the
Harrah Cemetery at Backus.
He died at 6:15 a. m. Tuesday in a Beckley
hospital.
Friends may call at the Wallace and Wallace Funeral Home in Rainelle
after 2 p. m. today. The body will be taken to the church one hour prior to the
funeral.
Beckley Post-Herald, Beckley, W. VA, Thursday Morning, April 20,
1972

Yesterday And Today Column
Trip Up Backus Mountain Hazardous
By
Shirley Donnelly
When the journey to Backus Mountain was made on April 21, we
rushed in where angels fear to tread.
To get to Backus Mountain the traveler
takes a right hand turn off U. S. 19 a couple of miles or so above
Prince.
There had been a huge landslide a few days before and it nearly
destroyed the pencil-mark hard road that extends to Backus.
There was nothing
in the way of a sign to warn that the road was in bad shape, so – like Columbus
when he set sail in 1492 to the west in high hopes of finding the Indies – we
took a chance.
Only the luck of the Irish and the protection of guardian angels
enabled us to get up the steep mountain road! Heavy slides were passed before we
reached a huge sign that read “ROAD CLOSED.”
The return trip required a 25-mile
detour via Meadow Bridge and Danese. Thinking back over that precarious trip up
the Backus Mountain road brought to mind the a heavy slide swept over a train on
the Sewell, Cliff Top and Landisburg Railroad, destroying it and killing a
number of passengers.
IN THE GROUP attending the funeral of Andy Howard Samples
in Little Laurel Community Church on April 21 was Mrs. Nina Goins Sawyers of
Meadow Bridge.
In the course of a little chat with Mrs. Sawyers, the subject of
the grist and saw mill explosion, which occurred not far from the church some
years ago, came up for airing.
In that explosion, the story of which was
chronicled in this column some time back, one of the persons killed was the
young son of Mrs. Susie Thompson Samples, widow now of Andy Howard
Samples.
Young Thompson, son of Mrs. Samples by her first husband, is buried in
the Harrah Cemetery in an unmarked grave. We went to the grave as Mrs. Sawyers
and I talked of the mill tragedy.
Then we went on to the grave of her father,
Samuel Goins (June 4, 1872 – October 9, 1930) who owned and operated the
ill-fated mill. By his side rests his helpmeet, Mrs. Mary S. Sawyers (Jan. 30,
1875 – August 9, 1932).
FATE HAS dogged the steps of Mrs. Nina Goins Sawyers,
it seems. As we stood in the cold rain at the tomb of her parents, Mrs. Sawyers
pointed to a couple of granite gravestones near the graves of her father and
mother.
Inscriptions on them read ominously as follows: “Brenda Sue Goins. June
17, 1944 – September 1, 1962” and “Sandra Ann Sawyers, October 3, 1941 –
September 1, 1962.” Noting that the death dates of those two girls were
identical, the question of “How come?” was put to Mrs. Nina Sawyers. The answer
was that Brenda Sue Goins was her sister and Sandra Ann Sawyers was her
daughter. They were both killed in an automobile accident on the West Virginia
Turnpike of Sept. 1, 1962.
HARRAH CEMETERY looks to be from an acre to two
acres in extent. Never have I seen as many dornicks in one graveyard as there
are in this one.
A glance over the long rows of such fieldstone markers without
data on them placed the estimate at well over a hundred. There is a long
unbroken row of them and scattered ones all over the top and sides of the knoll
where this cemetery is located.
The sight of all those unmarked graves left me
wondering if they do not nark the last resting place of some of those 112 men
who were killed when Layland Mine No. 3, just over the hill from the cemetery,
exploded on March 2, 1915.
THAT SAD DAY was the worst day in the history of
coal mining in Fayette County. The Layland mine explosion was the worst from the
standpoint of casualties of the 13 major mine disasters experienced in that
great coal producing county of West Virginia.
There are a number of Bennetts
buried in Harrah Cemetery. The first dead man that rescuers came upon in the
Layland mine after the explosion was Fred Bennett.
He was reached by Bob Muir,
the state mine inspector, and the late Charles H. Walters (Sept. 29, 1888 – May
5, 1971). They found the dead man at the mouth of Mine No. 4.
Beckley
Post-Herald, Beckley, W. VA, May 2, 1972 pg 4