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===John C. C. Mayo=== Following the Civil War, Thomas Jefferson Mayo moved to Paintsville to fulfill a role as a gifted and talented teacher. He fathered [[John C. C. Mayo]], an important figure in the development of eastern Kentucky. The county citizenry is divided on their loyalty to his memory. Some{{Who|date=August 2014}} would say he was a benefactor who assisted in the development of Paintsville, and as a result, Johnson County. That he helped develop banks, churches, streets, public utilities and railroad transportation. Others{{Who|date=August 2014}} would say he was directly responsible for the huge influence coal companies had over the county's vast coal resources and the reason the region remains so economically depressed to this day. [[File:John C C Mayo procession.JPG|thumb|left|The funeral procession of John C.C. Mayo through Paintsville in Johnson County, 1914.]] Coal was important for Johnson County and the rest of eastern Kentucky even before the Civil War, but its development halted at the start of the war. Financing was slow to return to the coal industry in eastern Kentucky and this inhibited development in Johnson County. The people were suspicious of outsiders and Mayo, a school teacher, was a known quantity and one of their own. So he was invaluable in helping the coal industry to gain a firm foothold in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky and to the industrialized north which spurred the development of railroads in the area. Carpetbaggers from the North became a common sight in the area. It was during this time that many of the citizens of Johnson County were given misleading information and sold all mineral rights to their property for pennies on the dollar of what the rights were worth. In some cases, for a new shotgun. It was also during this time that many people lost their property due to a strange rash of fires in several county seats, destroying deeds and records of ownership, which paved the way for land-grabbers to take what the owners did not want to relinquish. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway first opened its Paintsville depot on September 1, 1904, following 25 years of work connecting it to [[Lawrence County, Kentucky|Lawrence County]]. The rails were paid for by donations, stocks and bonds, and the hard work of local citizens.{{citation needed|date=August 2014}} History shows that the rail companies leaked information and frequently changed planned routes to create bidding wars and to finance the rails. Following the development of the railroad, tens of thousands of tons of coal were being transported out of eastern Kentucky by 1910. Mayo went on to be a political lobbyist, and eastern Kentucky's only member of the [[Democratic National Committee]]. He had influence in electing Kentucky's [[governor]]s, [[United States Congress|members of Congress]] and the election of [[Woodrow Wilson|President Woodrow Wilson]]. He died on May 11, 1914, after becoming ill following a trip to Europe. During his life, he built a historic mansion in Paintsville which has become known as [[Mayo Mansion]].<ref name="johnsoncohistory" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Johnson County Historical Society |title=John C. C. Mayo |url=http://www.johnsoncountykyhistory.com/people/mayo.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010106102800/http://www.johnsoncountykyhistory.com/people/mayo.html |url-status=usurped |archive-date=January 6, 2001 |access-date=June 5, 2007}}</ref>
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