Was John Henry a real person?
no dear,,,,John Henry is an American folk hero, famous for having raced against a steam powered hammer and won, only to die in victory. He has been the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels. Like other “Big Men” such as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, John Henry also served as a mythical representation of a group within the melting pot of the 19th-century working class. In the most popular version of the story, Henry is born into the world big and strong weighing 33 pounds. He grows to become the greatest “steel-driver” in the mid-century push to erect the railroads across the mountains to the West. When the owner of the railroad buys a steam-powered hammer to do the work of his mostly black driving crew, to save his job and the jobs of his men, John Henry challenges the owner to a contest: himself alone versus the steam hammer. John Henry beats the machine, but exhausted, collapses and dies. In modern depictions John Henry is often portrayed as hammering down rail spikes,
