Mining era leaders gathered to take a group photo

This story may be familiar to from when it first ran in April 2020. We’re rerunning it again because we now have the actual photo – not just the newsprint version.

The Webb City Sentinel, sometime in the 1940s, looked back to the county’s leaders during the peak of the mining era.

These Pioneers Helped Develop the Webb City-Carterville-Oronogo Mine District

OLD TIMERS – Past patriarchs of the Webb City-Carterville-Oronogo mining area are pictured here in a photograph taken 30 years ago at the county seat. The 17 men gathered were at the time the leading big business men of Jasper County

Note that Joseph W. Aylor, first left in lower row, is the one exception to the tendency of the old timers toward beards or other facial hirsute adornment.

Grant Ashcraft is the second to left, top row, standing; John Dermott stands next, third from left in rear row; these three are all widely remembered Webb City pioneers of mining.

Brick Hendrickson, Oronogo mining man and later Webb City resident, sits between Ashcraft and Dermott in the picture. Charles E. Elliott, Oronogo legislator and a presiding judge of the county court, is third from the right, in the rear.  Col. Bill Phelps with the goatee is fourth from left, back row next to T. N. Davey who was a Carterville mine operator. Next in order, rear row, are Maj. Joseph Herrin, S. B. Griswold, C.E. Elliott, Maj. C.O. Harrington, and Thos. K. Irwin who developed Duenweg into a mining camp.

In the center is J.A. Mitchell. The lower row, left to right, sitting, are Joe Aylor, Judge M.G. McGregor of circuit court, E. O’Keefe, Dr. A.H. Caffee, and G.A. Cassil.

Practically all of these had much to do with the development of the local mining district 40 to 50 years ago. J.M. Whitsett is first in the upper left corner.

Those not otherwise specified were pioneer residents of Carthage, and the Sentinel is indebted to the Carthage Press for the use of this picture-cut.