Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency
Among these incidents are the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912 in West Virginia, 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield War (which notably included the Ludlow Massacre in 1914), and the Battle of Matewan in 1920.
After founding the Baldwin Detective Agency, he then moved to Roanoke, Virginia, to oversee security operations in the Norfolk and Western Railway's coalfield district.
[2] Little is known about this chapter in the history of Baldwin–Felts, but it is known that the company provided guards for railway and mine payrolls and accompanied coal trains into the coalfields.
The agency rose to national prominence with the pursuit and capture of the fugitive Floyd Allen and members of his family who were involved in a courtroom shootout in Carroll County, Hillsville, Virginia.
Five people died and seven were wounded, including Commonwealth Attorney William Foster, Sheriff Lewis F. Webb, and Judge Thornton Lemmon Massie.
At the time, Virginia law required the local sheriff to head the criminal investigation and pursue those suspected of committing the killings.
Recognizing the need for immediate action, assistant clerk S. Floyd Landreth sent a telegram to Democratic Governor William Hodges Mann which read: Send troops to the County of Carroll at once.
Most of the Allens and their relations were arrested by a posse of Baldwin–Felts detectives, who chased down the fugitives in a relentless search that was carried out regardless of weather conditions.
An informant (Maude Iroller) tipped the agency as to the men's whereabouts, and the fugitives were arrested and brought back to Carroll County before the end of the year.
Baldwin–Felts was allowed to maintain such operations because public law enforcement and the maintenance of order in labor disputes were often left to company owners.
Their thuggish behaviour and their known propensity for violence led the former Attorney General of West Virginia, Howard B. Lee, to remark in his 1969 book that Baldwin and Felt were the "two most feared and hated men in the mountains.
Charles Lively, who infiltrated the UMWA in West Virginia and other states, was tasked with spying on the miners in Colorado and killed a man, for which he pleaded self-defense.
[5] The events culminated in the violent confrontation known as the Ludlow Massacre, when the Colorado National Guard used machine guns to kill 21 people, including miners' wives and children.
A confrontation between locals and agents resulted in the deaths of two miners and Matewan's Mayor as well as seven Baldwin–Felts detectives including Thomas Felts' brothers, Albert and Lee.
[7] As the agents walked to the train station to leave town, Police Chief Sid Hatfield and a group of deputized miners confronted them and told them they were under arrest.
[9] Sid Hatfield became an immediate legend and hero to the union miners, and a symbol of hope that the oppression of coal operators and their hired guns could be overthrown.
In late June state police under the command of Captain Brockus raided the Lick Creek tent colony near Williamson.
[11] Both sides were bolstering their arms, and Sid Hatfield continued to be a problem, especially when he converted Testerman's jewelry store into a gun shop.
[17] In the midst of this tense situation, Hatfield traveled to McDowell County on 1 August 1921 to stand trial on charges of dynamiting a coal tipple.
The largest collection of extant files is housed at the Eastern Regional Coal Archives, in Bluefield, West Virginia.
