Biography
Edgar Combs was a union miner in the West Virginia mine wars. Edgar Combs was the only man to serve a long sentence out of the more than eight hundred indicted after the 1921 armed miners' march on Logan County (the Battle of Blair Mountain). Convicted of the murder of a deputy in the Sharples raid that preceded the march, he was sentenced to life — later reduced to eleven years — at the Moundsville penitentiary (no. 13381). The ILD carried his letters in Labor Defender until Governor Gore's reprieve freed him on 5 January 1927.
The International Labor Defense holiday roster in the December 29, 1925 Daily Worker lists this prisoner, printed as Edgar Combs, at Moundsville West Virginia. Its printed identifier is 13381; this is a prison number or mailing designation, not a year or a custody date. This documents confinement at the roster’s reporting time, without establishing an admission, transfer, release, new conviction or complete duration. Existing independently sourced custody chronology remains separate. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n297-NYE-dec-29-1925-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
Printed page 174's Lives of Young Workers profile attributes his prosecution to refusal to become an informer, describes deputies planting whiskey followed by arrest and beating, and says a ninety-nine-year sentence was later commuted to eleven years. It dates the episode 1923, differing from the existing 1921 mine-war account. The narrative is preserved as attributed retrospective evidence; neither the eleven-year imposed term nor the publication date proves a new arrest or uninterrupted custody after his independently documented 1927 release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n09-sep-1932-LD.pdf
In a first-person Moundsville prison letter published in the September 1926 Labor Defender, Combs gives his birthday as March 6 without a year. He describes the effect of his imprisonment on his family, saying that his children had been taken out of school to work in shops, and contrasts rank-and-file prisoners' lack of support with the legal help provided to union officials. He reports receiving few letters and asks that labor supporters remain in contact. These are his contemporary descriptions; no birth year, release date or custody duration is inferred.
Labor Defender, September 1932; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.