1907 Monongah Coal Mining Disaster

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I realize that this post is a week late. I guess that the lack of assigned reading kept me from looking over the syllabus last week. Still, I figure that a research update could be helpful and maybe—I really hope it does—count as a blog post.

I’m currently half an hour north of Monongah. Initially, I had hoped to visit the town and see the historic mines, cemeteries, and memorials, but 6″ of snow and sub-freezing temperatures have kept me from venturing too far outside. Instead, to escape the cold, I’ve spent the last day in the warmth of the West Virginia Regional History Center. Though I’ve been able to gather some primary sources digitally, the best—that is, the personal letters, company records, and investigative reports from the disaster—are all housed in the Center’s archives. I’ve been lucky to peruse and photocopy the many of these. In addition to these primary sources, I have slowly been working my way through stack of secondary sources. I have found these to be the most helpful in narrowing my thesis.

Though my initial plan was to research the disaster’s death toll and the way it was falsified and reported, I’ve found in my research that not only is this question less feasible than other options. It’s also much less interesting. Plus, a number of scholars have written on the very topic in the last several years, leaving the question practically null and void. So, I have since changed my focus. By the end of last week, I had three “lenses” through which I planned to examine the disaster and find my thesis: gender, ethnicity, and class. Since nearly half of the victims of the disaster were either Italian-speaking immigrants or illiterate natives, uncovering the various views of the disaster from ethnically diverse perspectives would be unfeasible. Likewise, interpreting the disaster from the standpoint of gender would be difficult, considering the paucity of surviving letters and records of the women directly involved with the disaster, the 250 widows. So, by process of elimination, I have chosen class.

My research now focuses on the class tensions that arose during the hearings following the disaster and during the subsequent movement to reform West Virginia’s mining laws. Today, I read through the correspondence of West Virginia mining officials and Fairmont Coal Company owners to find primary sources from an “elite” perspective. Tomorrow, I will examine the letters and records of the miners themselves.

So, though I may be close to Monongah, I think that I am even closer to a thesis. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow, as I begin my drive back to Davidson, I will have stumbled upon it. Then, the process of writing really begins.

For those who heard the blast at mines No. 6 and No. 8, the number three hundred sixty-one bore a personal significance. Indeed, for many, it was etched in their minds like the mines themselves, cut deep into the grassy hillside along the Monongahela River. It was etched into the mind of Catterina Davia, who in honor of her late husband, Victor, hauled coal from the lowest mines to her house at the top of the hill—four times a day for twenty-nine years. It was etched into the mind of the poet Louise McNeill, who honored the ‘Hunkies,’ the ‘Tallies,’ the natives, and the boys who perished at “ill-starred Monongah.” And it was etched into the mind of Reverend Everett F. Briggs, who faithfully preserved the memory of the ill-fated, immigrant miners, who travelled far across water to die deep underground. For these and others, however, three hundred sixty-one spoke as much to lives lost as to lives never found, the names left absent from the ‘three-sixty-one’ reported dead at Monongah.

For my research proposal, I intend to examine the ways in which the death toll from the 1907 Monongah Coal Mining Disaster was determined, falsified, reported, and preserved to influence relief efforts and to create the mythos of the Monongah disaster. From local gravediggers’ claims of six hundred twenty bodies to the Italian commemoration of over nine hundred deaths, from the embellished casualty report of Mayor W. H. Moore to Reverend Brigg’s estimate of over five hundred lost, the death toll is as significant to the Monongah narrative as the “one survivor” folktale and the runaway minecart that—in regional legend, at least—caused the explosion. In my own research, I hope to contribute to the long-standing narrative of Monongah as well as the recent scholarship that has emerged since the disaster’s centennial in 2007.

Three questions will guide my research: Who were in the mines on December 6, 1907? Who of these persons—if any—were missing from the death reports? And how were these unknown miners remembered?

In my research, I will rely on a collection of both primary and secondary sources. Though the recent scholarship of regional historians Davitt McAteer and Joseph Tropea is most relevant to my proposed topic, I will consult a much broader list of secondary source material, including—though certainly not limited to—works examining the contemporary coal mining industry, the regional histories of immigrant populations, the philanthropic and legislative responses to industrial disasters, and the social histories of coal mining towns. For primary sources, I will likewise consult a breadth of materials. To uncover which miners were listed among the dead, I will consult the records of the Monongah Mine Relief Commission and the Fairmont Coal Company. To understand how the death toll was reported, I will examine national and local newspaper articles detailing the disaster. And to analyze the ways in which unlisted miners were remembered, I will review the poems, stories, songs, and paintings of those who commemorated the disaster. Such research, I believe, will not only shed light on the Monongah disaster narrative, but further explain the significance of ‘three-sixty-one’ in the minds of those for whom Monongah bears a personal significance.

Works Consulted

Briggs, Everett F. “Mine Disaster.” Science 146, no. 3640 (October 2, 1964): 14.

Gunn, Angus M. “Monongah, Pennsylvania, explosion.” In Encyclopedia of Disasters: Environmental Catastrophes and Human Tragedies, edited by Angus M. Gunn, 231-5. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008.

McAteer, Davitt. Monongah: The Tragic Story of the Worst Industrial Accident in US History. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2007.

McNeill, Louise. “Monongah (December 6, 1907, Marion County, West Virginia, on the Monongahela River).” In Hill Daughter: New and Selected Poems, edited by Maggie Anderson, 93. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.

Rittenhouse, Ron. “Catherine Davia’s Memorial Mound of Coal, Monongah, 1907.” 1907. In Italians in West Virginia, edited by Victor A. Basile, Judy Prozzillo Byers, 31. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2011.

Spignesi, Stephen J. “The 1907 Monongah Mine Disaster.” In The 100 Greatest Disasters of All Time, edited by Stephen J. Spignesi, 216-9. New York: Citadel Press, 2002.

Tropea, Joseph L. “Monongah Revisited: Sources, Body Parts, and Ethnography.” West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies 7, no. 2 (2013): 63-91.

——. Review of Monongah: The Tragic Story of the Worst Industrial Accident in US History, by Davitt McAteer. Appalachian Journal 35 (2008): 358-64.

“December 6, 1907: Monongah Twin Mines Disaster.” In West Virginia Disasters. Logan, WV: The Logan Banner, 2003.

Tag: 1907 Monongah Coal Mining Disaster

Close to Monongah, Even Closer to a Thesis: Research Update (3/5/14)

‘Three-Sixty-One’: Myth, Memory, and the 1907 Monongah Coal Mine Disaster