Local historian and author Vince Hydro offered a glimpse into the past in his latest presentation, “Anthracite Coal Mining, Northeastern Pennsylvania,” earlier this season at the Nesquehoning Historical Society Museum.
Hydro was joined by singer and musician David Matsinko, who wove folk songs about mining and the miners into the presentation.
“We tried this last Christmas, and it was received well,” Hydro said.
The program was divided into four segments. During each of the three breaks, Matsinko performed a variety of songs on guitar and mandolin. Songs from England, Ireland, and Wales; jigs and hornpipes and polkas; some older songs from the 1800s and some more modern selections.
The presentation featured a look at the history of anthracite coal in the area, and Hydro shared photos and drawings from the 1800s and 1900s.
“The first authentic account we find of the practical use of anthracite coal is in 1768-69, when it appears to have first been used by two blacksmiths from Connecticut – Judge Obadiah Gore and his brother, who had settled in the Wyoming Valley,” Hydro said.
While there are accounts of other people finding and using coal, the first local person to discover coal in the Carbon County area was Philip Ginder, who opened a quarry in 1791 on Sharp Mountain in Summit Hill, just west of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.
“Historians generally agree,” Hydro said, “that it was (Philip) Ginder’s discovery on Sharp Mountain that really led to the commercial success of coal, because it led to the formation of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, and it led to the formation of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, who got enough coal to Philadelphia that consumers were willing to change from coal and charcoal to anthracite coal.”
One aspect of coal mining is that children, some as young as 9 or 10 years of age, worked in the mines. Boys were employed as nippers, drivers, spraggers and breaker boys. Nippers operated the doors inside the mines, allowing for control of air flow through the mines. Drivers took care of guiding the mules that pulled the coal cars. Spraggers would stop coal cars by using logs or “spraggs” to shove into the wheels of the coal car to stop them. Breaker Boys (Slatepickers) manually pulled pieces of slate out of the coal.
According to an article in the Mauch Chunk Democrat, July 24, 1875, “over 120 youngsters from Tamaqua are engaged in picking slate in the collieries near Summit Hill.”
It was an extremely dangerous life. In the Feb. 7, 1885 edition of the Mauch Chunk Daily Times was an article: “Freddie Foulk, son of Mr. Adam Foulk of Summit Hill, a boy about 10 years old employed as a slatepicker at breaker No. 6 near Lansford was caught in the breaker rolls this morning and his legs and body were badly crushed. When taken to his home he was still alive, but he is not expected to live.”
A number of laws were passed to prevent kids from working in the mines. The laws usually failed because they were either declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, or they were just ignored by the parents and the kids, or the parents forged documents to make it so the kids could work because the families needed the money.
Robert Klotz of Mauch Chunk, who was elected in 1843 as the first Register and Recorder of Carbon County, was the first miners’ advocate in Pennsylvania. In March 1849, Klotz spoke to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives about a bill for the protection of miners and laborers.
In addition, Klotz also protested the fact that the miners would only be paid after the railroad companies satisfied their other obligations; the miners were last to be paid. If there was not enough money, they did not get paid.
An unnamed miner, buried in St. Gabriel’s Cemetery, Hazleton, summarized the brutal life of a being a miner with this verse engraved on his tombstone:
“Forty years I worked with pick & drill
Down in the mines against my will,
the Coal King’s slave, but now it’s passed;
Thanks be to God I am free at last.”
Hydro is scheduled to do two Christmas presentations – at 6 p.m. Monday and 1 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9 at the Nesquehoning Historical Society Museum, 157 West Railroad Street, Corner of Ratcliff and Railroad Sts. in Nesquehoning.
See the historical society’s Facebook page for more information: www.facebook.com/NesquehoningHistoricalSociety/.
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Read More: Photos, stories, songs dig up coal mining’s past – Times News Online