Utah Mine Disasters Then and Now

My grandmother’s first husband was killed in the Scofield Utah mine disaster on May 1, 1900. (See the URL after the fourth paragraph.)

A coal dust explosion ripped through the Winter Quarters Number Four mine located west of Scofield. Many miners were killed directly by the explosion. Other miners, working in the Number One mine connected to the Number Four mine, died from deadly carbon monoxide gas or "afterdamp."

These men heard the explosion, but not knowing where it occurred, they tried to exit by the shortest route—through the Number Four mine—where they encountered the deadly gas and perished. Some 200 bodies where removed from the mine with another 50 or so never recovered. There were twenty young boys and sixty-one Finnish immigrants among the dead. My could-be grandfather was Welch.

"At 200 dead, the Scofield disaster was the most tragic coal mine disaster, in terms of the number killed, to that time in American history. Subsequent disasters killed 362 at Monongah, West Virginia, on 7 December 1907; 239 at Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania, on 19 December 1907; and 263 at Dawson, New Mexico, on 22 October 1913. The dead at Scofield included twenty young boys and sixty-one Finnish immigrants." See http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/s/SCOFIELDMINEDIS.html

"The Pleasant Valley Coal Company provided each of the dead men with burial clothes and a coffin, and gave each man's family $500. The company also erased $8,000 in debt that the dead miners had accumulated at the company store. Other private donations came from a number of communities within and outside the state.

"One hundred forty-nine of the dead were buried in the Scofield cemetery with two graveside services: one conducted in Finnish by A. Granholm, a Finnish Lutheran minister; and the second by LDS Church apostles George Teasdale, Reed Smoot, and Heber J. Grant. The other fifty-one victims were returned to their hometowns for burial.

"The tragic disaster led to calls for greater safety in the coal mines and for better treatment of coal miners. The disaster became one of the causes of a labor strike the following winter, which centered in the Scofield area, as well as a countywide strike in 1903-04 when Utah miners made their first unsuccessful attempt to win recognition of the United Mine Workers of America in the state." (ibid http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/s/SCOFIELDMINEDIS.html)

Both of my grandfathers were Utah miners. My paternal grandfather, born in Llandudno, Conwy, North Wales, went to work with his father in the coal mines when he was about nine years old. My grandfather said that he became angry when his schoolmaster who had hit him with a board and he threw his slate (writing board) which met the schoolmaster’s head just as he turned back to the class. Grandfather was not finished. He went outside and threw rocks (used to repair the road) through the schoolhouse windows.

That night, the schoolmaster met with my great-grandparents and suggested that grandfather would be better off in the mines. My grandfather said that the schoolmaster was rewarded by the mine owners for providing such child workers.

I remember the stories about the mines and how frightened that grandfather was of the rickety ladders and the dripping water. My great-grandfather was a powder man and grandpa helped drill the charge holes. He became a powder man himself and worked in coal mines in Pennsylvania where family tradition says that he met John L. Lewis who left the mines saying he was going to get educated and never work in a mine again.

Grandfather was seriously injured while quarrying granite for the Salt Lake Temple in Utah. A delayed explosion trapped his leg between blocks of granite. He was given a blessing by the Patriarch of the Mormon Church saying that his leg would heal. His brother, also a powder man, helped him walk to Porterville, Utah.

I have walked that trail many times and I wonder how they ever made it. He healed in two years with one leg being two inches shorter than the other. As a boy, my grandfather use to wake me up in the middle of the night to rub his leg to try to get circulation back into it. It was not the first time my grandfather was injured at work. As a teenager he was leaded (lead poisoning) in a mine in Wales and later in Utah.

My paternal grandfather met his future wife in Porterville but had to wait eight year for her to grow old enough to marry.

My maternal grandfather (who replaced my grandmother’s first husband killed in the Scofield explosion) was also a miner in the Utah mining towns. My mother was born in 1901 in Silver City, Utah and lived in Bingham and several other mining towns. Her father died when she was a teenager.

My grandmother never got over losing her first husband at Schofield. There were two children from her first marriage. My uncle of that marriage was gassed during World War I and died tragically when I was a boy.

I always ask myself this question: If my grandmother’s first husband had not been killed, would my mother ever have been born?

Would I exist at all?

The loss of those miners in 1901 created thousands of situation that actually changed history. When people die in war or in such disasters before finishing their reproductive history, their families’ lives are changed for ever.

I continually think of those men entrapped in the cold dust and darkness right now in Utah. I think about their families. With yesterday’s news of the loss of three more miners trying to rescue their friends and the serious injuries of six others, I mourn for them and their families too.

The emotions that occur in mining families after such a disaster never goes away.

Even the unborn are effected.

The End

copyright©2007 John T. Jones, Ph.D. (Taylor Jones the Hack Writer)
John T. Jones, Ph.D. (tjbooks@hotmail.com), a retired college professor and business executive, Former editor of an international engineering magazine. To learn more about Wealthy Affiliate University go to his info site. If you desire a flagpole to Fly Old Glory, go to the business site.

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