(Taken from a copy of the Knoxville Sentinel, June 7, 1936)

"FRANCIS 83 today.  Rose to mining heights after start as a bound boy.  Man who became noted expert, went back to work when 80 years old." Philip FRANCIS is 83 years old today.  A man in his late 50's would consider himself fortunate to look and feel like Mr. FRANCIS does at 83, yet he says he did not attain his age by conserving his strength, but by working hard, even when it was no longer necessary.

Mr. FRANCIS spent 72 years mining coal.  He mined coal with his tools even after he had risen to be a mining expert and manager.

Of Welsh parentage, he was born in Pennsylvania in 1853.  His father died two months later and at the age of four Philip FRANCIS was an orphan, bound out, as was the custom, to a family of the mining town, Wadesville, now called Wade.  He had a sister, but he never saw her again until after he was grown.  He doesn't know where his parents are buried.

Ends School at Eight

He received a few months of schooling about this time, but by the time he was 8 he had done with formal education.  He ran away and went to work at less that 20c per day as a fan boy and slate picker in the mines.  Often he went hungry for days at a time.  His friends, the miners were English, Welsh, Irish and German.  Others had not begun to trickle into the Pennsylvania anthracite coal fields at that time.  It was in the early days as a coal miner that he first escaped death by a small margin.  This escape was to be followed by many others.  Two others drove him and his buddy away from their choice station and a few minutes later the one who was standing where young FRANCIS would have been, was killed by a falling block of coal.  I walked home thinking I'd never go back in a mine, he said.

Just the Beginning

Unnerved though he was, Mr. FRANCIS did return to the mine.  His career under ground was just beginning.  At Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, he married Annie MEYRICK, January 9, 1875.  A year later he left his wife in Pennsylvania while he came to Tennessee, and Knoxville, with another man from Pennsylvania.  Strike and labor disorders had made mine life in Pennsylvania very difficult.  Mr. FRANCIS was impressed by Knoxville and its people.  He liked the country.  Pennsylvania was rocky and severe, but grass and evergreens grew on the hills of East Tennessee.  He loved to walk up the hills of East Tennessee.  He loved to walk up the hill to the mines of Fort Sanders.  The old fort and the cannons were still there, he said today.  You can pick up musket and cannon balls.  But he did not stay long in Knoxville.  Caryville was his next destination.  The East Tennessee Coal Co., was operating a little mine there.  He worked there four or five months.  Then the state brought in convicts to work the Fraterville Mine and Mr. FRANCIS returned to Pennsylvania.  But Tennessee had left an impression with him which was to be transfigured into a desire to return.  From the mining standpoint, Tennessee was superior to Pennsylvania for the mines were safer.  The gas problem was not present.

Tried Colorado

He was not satisfied in Pennsylvania and left his family to go to Leadville, Colorado, in 1877.  Mr. FRANCIS walked the 100 miles from Denver to Leadville and was not to return for three years.  During that time he prospected on a grub stake and climbed 14,000 feet searching for silver and minerals.  Again he returned to the mines of Pennsylvania in his longing to see his wife and children.  But foreigners were invading Pennsylvania coal fields and native miners didn't trust them.  In the mines the safety of your life on me and mine upon you was evident.  If one man was careless all might be killed, Mr. FRANCIS explained.  We didn't trust the foreigners.

In 1883 he came to Jellico, Tennessee.  He mined for the East Tennessee Coal Co. three years and one day he was made foreman.  Later he invested $1500 in the mine which was in bad financial condition.  It looked like I'd thrown it away he recalled.  But the condition of the mine improved and he was made General Superintendent of the Company.  He was with the Company for 13 years.  Then he went to work for the Proctor Coal Company and was there nearly 22 years as General Superintendent of their mines.  He was out of the Company's employment for a while, when in 1900 he was employed by John D. WHITE, eastern millionaire, to buy up all coal lands in eastern Kentucky and eastern Tennessee by the $100,000.00 at a time.