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HENRY BAILEY
is the president of the Little Muddy Fuel Company, a corporation operating mines at Sunfield and Tamaroa, Illinois, and has all his life been connected with the mining industry in one capacity or another. He was born in Perry county, on March 23, 1879. Coal mining no doubt came to him quite naturally, as in addition to being reared in a community where that was the principal industry, he is the son of Joseph Bailey, himself a practical coal miner of Monmouthshire, England, who was born there in 1834 and came to the United States as a young man. On arriving in America he first stopped in the fuel region of Youngstown, Ohio, where he remained for a time and then continued on until he came to Illinois. He settled in the vicinity of DuQuoin and died at Sunfield, in 1883. He was married in 1863, in Youngstown, Ohio to Rachel Owens, and in 1911 Mrs. Bailey passed away at Marissa, Illinois. The issue of their union were: John, who lost his life in the mines at Sunfleld in 1889; Joe, an officer of the Little Muddy Fuel Company, and who married Lizzie O'Keefe; Robert, a Sunfield miner and is married to Della Cytrall; William married Belle Payne and
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is identified with the Sunfield mine of the company; George, one of the brothers who comprise the firm, resides at Sunfield, and is married to Mary Terry; Henry; Charles, who grew up in and about the mines owned and operated by members of his family and who is now identified with the company, is the husband of Minnie Bishop; Mary, the widow of James Lockhart, is a resident of Sunfield.
Henry Bailey and his brothers were educated in the common schools and he began his career as a miner at Sunfield with one of the local companies. He began with the simplest manual labor and steadily advanced until he held the position of chief to the commissary of the company. In 1900 he and his brothers came into the possession of the property by lease, and operated the mines at Sunfield as the Bailey Brothers Coal Company, he being chosen as chief officer of the company. The lease covers three mines in this section, and they have a heavy interest in the Pond Creek Coal Company at Herrin, Illinois, of which compa~iy he and his brother Joe are directors, the latter being secretar of t e company as well. The Sunfield and Tamaroa properties have united capacity of something like fifteen hundred tons output daily, and employ a working force of three hundred men.
The marriage of Henry Bailey took place at DuQuoin on Decepiber 23, 1900, his wife being Lizzie, the daughter of B. A. Terry, a miner of English birth. Mrs. Bailey was born in Perry county on May 1, 1882, and she and her husband are the parents of three children,�Harley R., Hazel and Ray.
Mr. Bailey is a Republican, as are the other members of his family who are voters, and he is a Master Mason and a Pythian Knight.