The Hocking Valley Coal Strike of 1884 Part 1

Thanks to those of you who are here on such short notice and the fact that it's a Monday morning and there's a staff meeting in a few minutes. I appreciate you coming here. Thanks especially to Andrew and Quinn and Andrew's mom for making this possible for coming here and doing this especially on such short notice. I also want to mention there's an annotated bibliography here for anyone who wants one I can make more copies, too. Just so you can see what sources they used to do their presentation, it's really quite impressive. During the afternoon of May 23rd, 1888, 14-year-old John Jones of Minersville, OH and his 20 year old big brother, Reese Jones were working side-by-side, by themselves in a coal mine in Shawnee, Ohio. When the 14 year old, John, heard a loud noise followed by a human gasp nearby, he turned to his brother and asked what had happened. Only to find that it was his brother laying there on the floor of the mine, struggling to breathe as a 500 pound piece of the mine ceiling lay on top of him. John ran for help, brought men back, who, in turn, understanding already that young Reese was dying, sent the younger Jones boy home. As the 14 year old later concluded in his testimony to the coroner: "My brother was lying there, still alive when I left, but he was dead when they brought him home." Even though you can't find this sad story in a history book or newspaper, I didn't make it up. Rather, it's one of the undoubtedly countless stories of coal mining and about family life in the coal mines of South Eastern Ohio that one could find looking through the primary sources related to South Eastern Ohio coal mining that we have here in the Mahn Center and are located in other parts of South East Ohio. We derive this particular story from using a combination of the Perry County death records and Perry county coroner's reports. Now, if Andrew and his mom were not right here to hear me and refute me, I'd be telling you that on one cold, dark, blustery day back in December, aught 6 Andrew and Mrs. Gibbons came crawling to us, confused about their project, up to the Mahn Center on their last gasping intellectual legs, starving and begging us for a topic for History Day. Then I would embellish the story further by telling you that it was we in the Mahn Center, we heroic archivists, that saved the day for the Gibbons family and others. That it was we who were successful for Andrew's and Quinn's great success with their project. However, the truth of the matter is that by the time they got to the Mahn Center this past December, Andrew already had a pretty good idea of what his topic was and where they were going to go with it and all we did in the Mahn Center was supply them with another piece of the puzzle. Andrew and Quinn did all the rest on their own possibly with the help of some parental chauffeuring. By the way, the rest is pretty impressive. The History Day competition, which used to be held here on OU's campus down in Clippinger Hall, has taken place every Spring for the last 11 years down at the University of Rio Grande.\ It's an event which high school and middle school\ students from around the region present projects on a wide variety of historic topics. The competition is divided into age groups: students in grades 6 - 8 in one group, students in grades 9 - 12 in another. The competition is further divided into groups for the types of projects they're presenting. The different types of projects include exhibits, performances, documentaries, papers and presentations. Student's can do their projects in groups or individually. So in this past March of 2007, all of Andrew and Quinn's hard work payed off as their historical skit depicting the lives of South Eastern Ohio coal miners and the formation of the United Mine Workers Union, won them first place in the regional History Day competition down at Rio Grande. Then they won third place at the state competition at Capital University in Columbus, just one place shy of going to the nationals. So the real story is that we have a couple of really impressive middle school scholars from our area who have taken a great interest in the life and history of coal mining in South East Ohio and who have turned all their hard work and researching that history, history such as that tragic family disaster which I began this introduction with, they've turned that research into these rich stories of local coal mining and into an award winning skit. We are proud to say that they did some of their research here, initially, in the library's Mahn Center, but they've also traveled all over South Eastern Ohio to find little pieces of their story. Then they probably had to do the hardest, and most painful thing of all. If any of you have ever had to edit your own work from, say 30 pages down to 5 pages, you'll know what I mean. They had to take this story and condense it down to 10 minutes of this skit because those were the rules of the contest. So I'm so pleased that Andrew and Quinn so generously agreed to come here on such short notice to present their skit. But more than that, I want to thank them because all of their fine work has made all of us who helped them locate materials all around South East Ohio, look good. So now before my introduction gets longer than the actual skit, please let me introduce Ms. Quinn Westenbarger and Mr. Andrew Gibbon performing their 10 minute skit on South Eastern Ohio coal mining. And by the way, I think that Mr. Gibbons has a few words of his own to say about their project, so I'm just going to let them take off with that. OK, go ahead. (applause) I'm Andrew Gibbons and I'm Quinn and I want to say a few words about our project. We were looking for a local topic and a local librarian pointed out a book called 'Smoke in the Valley' which was a novel by John Wittenberg. It was like a fictional novel about this family growing up in South Eastern Ohio and the coal mines. My grandfather, who is now 100 years old, worked in the mines for over 50 years and so it is kind of part of my background. Quinn: We went to New Straightsville *** visited Robinson's Cave Miner's visited that spot. You'll learn more about that in our skit. Andrew: We were really intrigued by the fire in New Straightsville and Robinson's cave was where the two unions united because there was a lot of competition going on between the two unions. Let's see, we went to lots of places like Murray City, Ohio, we went to a train, the coal mining museum, some coal depots, I guess, that's about it. I hope you enjoy our presentation.