Biography
UMWA organizer George J. Titler recounts his arrest at Stanfill on July 12, 1939, transport under military guard to Harlan County Jail and release after signing bond on July 18. He reports a July 15 hearing before Judge Cam E. Ball on sedition, forcible rebellion and an armed attack on a National Guardsman, with $21,000 total bond. July 26 indictments included aiding malicious shooting, hindering a military organization and banding/confederating. He says the cases were later dropped in a settlement but supplies no exact dismissal date. His wife was separately detained and rearrested; her first name remains unresolved. The source is Titler's first-person memoir. Source: https://carlestes.com/hellinharlan.pdf#page=205 (PDF pages 205, 206, 207, 208, 209).
Hevener describes guardsmen marching 227 arrested union members, including Titler and his wife, nine miles to Harlan County jail after the Stanfill confrontation. On September 29, 1939 Commonwealth’s Attorney Daniel Boone Smith moved to dismiss all Stanfill indictments and Special Judge J. S. Forester granted the motion. This adds the legal dismissal date; it does not replace Titler’s separately documented July 18 physical release on bond.
John Watts Hevener, A New Deal for Harlan: The Roosevelt Labor Policies in a Kentucky Coal Field, 1931–1939 (Ohio State University PhD dissertation, 1971), printed pages 316, 317, 323 (PDF pages 325, 326, 332). Source 805 SHA256 03766c260a4cf06629fb296358baf9e49448a191f9d290929ecd947963b0e125.
