![]() ![]() In 1897 the family returned to Lucas, where John worked as a miner and farm laborer, served as secretary of the new local of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) based in Chariton, joined the Masons, and performed in amateur theatricals at the Lucas opera house. During the mid 1890s, the family lived in Des Moines, where John finished elementary school and three years of high school. There had been a strike in Lucas, and he likely was blacklisted. In 1882 Thomas Lewis's family began to move from one Iowa coal town to another. His father was a coal miner and a Knights of Labor loyalist.Ĭleveland, together with the larger town of Lucas a mile to the west, was in 1880 a coal mining community, one of many that flourished from about 1875 to 1920 in an area radiating about 50 miles south and east from Des Moines. His mother was likely a Mormon, although Lewis as an adult showed little interest in religion. He was the first of eight children who survived infancy. –20th-century American labor leader-was born in Cleveland, Iowa, the son of Welsh immigrant parents, Thomas A. ![]()
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