On Coke Ovens and The Fayette County Exodus

Coke ovens at Poland Mines 2009 courtesy Of SWPA Rural Exploration

In the Ten Mile Creek area, Marianna, the Champion Mine at Besco, Dilworth at Rices Landing and Poland Mines # 2 all had coke ovens operating at one time or another. At most mines, a coking operation was set up as an adjunct to the mine, most mines producing more coal than they could process to coke. At Besco, with 257 ovens, the entire output was made to coke and shipped out that way. All coke ovens on this side of the river were of the beehive type as were the majority in western Pennsylvania. The later rectangular ovens were invented by W.J. Rainey engineers starting around 1905 and were adopted at a dozen larger works in the Connellsville and Klondike regions. This type was more mechanized and required higher labor skills. The final answer was using by-product ovens that captured all the gasses for use and brought the coking process to it's ultimate efficiency. This kind of operation was done best, not on site, but in large, dedicated works like the Clairton Coke Works, opened in 1918 and still the largest in the world. In the 1970's and 80's, the company I worked for, Ohio Barge Line, had at least 5 big boats moving coal from Kentucky to feed the ovens at Clairton, each boat bringing over 22,000 tons a week. There were dozens of other boats, all towing coal to there from out of the Mon, Allegheny and Ohio river mines.
By-product ovens outpaced beehive ovens by 1919 and eventually replaced the beehive ovens in the region by 1925, although some continued to operate as late as 1960.
Many older folks remember the way the nighttime sky would be lit up from the rows of ovens. I remember, as a child, seeing the glowing ovens of Alicia reflected on the river above Brownsville as we drove up the river road.

In the early decades of the last century as the new mines opened in Washington and Greene counties there was what I choose to call an exodus of sorts from the Fayette county mines. Many folks in the Ten Mile area can trace family roots back to Fayette county patch towns. Modern patch towns with indoor plumbing, electric lights, porches, general improvements to roads and grounds must have been part of the attraction as well as the idea of starting out a new life in a new place. Mather , Crucible, Richeyville and Marianna with their movie houses, ice cream parlors, ball fields and playgrounds, all built by the company, looked pretty good to these, many of them first generation Americans, coming from the old worn out patch towns to the east. Marianna's and Clarksville's ( Williamstown ) brick homes even had basements, unheard of in most older patches. Also, some of the older mines were being played out after many years of mining. Modern technology was already beginning to displace workers, more mechanized mining and coking meant the loss of many jobs. A lot of young men, miners already themselves, took the opportunity to strike out from the old family home to start a new life on their own in a new patch.



















Map Courtesy Of coalcampusa.com

My Grandfather worked in Fayette for several years at East Millsboro for Hustead-Semens and moved to Clarksville in 1924 to finish his mining career in Clyde. All three of his sons became miners, two of them for their entire lives, my father in Clarksville and my Uncle George in Richeyville. My maternal grandfather worked in a lot of different mines. Arriving from the Tatra Mountains region of Poland in 1913, he, Thomas Krencik, went to work in a Fayette county mine and the next year sent money for boat passage for his wife and daughter. He and his wife Anna had 15 more children, four of which died in infancy. Of these, seven were born in Fayette county towns like Republic, Edenburg, Lambert and Helen. Around 1924 he moved his large family to Marianna, first to a farm and later to the patch. He wasn't finished roaming, by 1937 they were living in Ontario, near Cokeburg, from which mine he retired. By that time , several of his sons who took up mining had moved to Clarksville, Ellsworth, Marianna, Cokeburg and other area towns. Many of the older people that I have interviewed have direct ties to Fayette. Years of reading obituaries have shown me that if you come from this area and your roots go back to a couple generations of miners, odds are good that at least one side of your family came from the county to the east. In this way the already decades old commercial coal and coke industry in Fayette county significantly impacted on the later growth of the Ten Mile Creek area.

The 1850 US Census of Manufactures, the earliest Census reference to coke, listed Allegheny County as the only coke producer in the United States. By the 1860 Census, four counties in the United States that produced coke were listed. It should be noted that the Clinton furnace on Pittsburgh's Southside began using coke as its only fuel in 1859. By 1870 there were estimated to be 1,300 coke ovens in the United States. All of them were beehive ovens and all were in Western Pennsylvania, 1,063 in the Connellsville region alone. Of the 2,752,475 tons of coke produced in the US in 1880, Fayette Co. produced more than 45%. Westmoreland followed with 27%, and Allegheny contributed 3.5%. Combined, the three counties yielded almost 77% of the nation's total. In 1880 seventy-two percent of the nation's beehive ovens were within the same three counties. Connellsville coke was the unequaled fuel of preference for the iron and steel industry by 1890. The peak of Connellsville coke production was in 1916, when there were more than 40,000 active ovens.
Connellsville Coke Region Maps from National Park Service

The 1944 Emerald Mine Fire At Chartiers

It was a spark from a grounded trolley wire that started the Emerald Mine fire soon after seven pm on the evening of June 7, 1944. It fell into a load of hay, fodder for the horses that pulled the pitwagons. There was an attempt to push the burning car into a worked out section but the fire got out of hand and started burning the haulageway. The volunteer fire departments of East Bethlehem and Jefferson arrived as men women and children swarmed down the hill from the patch to see about husbands and fathers. East Beth Fire Chief Albie Tinelli sent four volunteers down the 400 foot shaft with hose but they had to return, the bottom was a raging inferno. Of the 157 men on the night shift all but 6 came out within a few hours, most of them by way of the Lippencott air shaft three miles away. Rescue crews from Tower Hill and Clyde went repeatedly into the mine but the flames drove them back. At the main shaft the women of Chartiers organized a canteen and were passing out coffee to the men as they worked.Mine rescue team of the 1940's
All the local mine officials were on hand, Thomas Lamb, superintendent of the Chartiers pit of Emerald, William G. Stevenson, general manager of the Hillman Coke Company, T.P. Latta, superintendent of Crucibile Steel's Monongahela River Mine, George O'Brian, superintendent of the mines at Allison and Tower Hill, Richard Maize, state secretary of mines, district inspectors from Waynesburg, Uniontown and Monongahela City, the Federal Inspector, U.S.Bureau of Mines engineers , William ( Billy ) Hynes, president of District 4 of the United Mine Workers, UMWA International board member Jock Yablonski and other union officials.

Emerald Mine Tipple at Chartiers 1930, looking north, MRy photo

Emerald is a gassy mine and as the flames spread the work became increasingly dangerous. After eighteen hours the state inspectors ordered the sealing of the mine to avoid further loss. If the fire remained unchecked it could start to burn into adjoining mines. Earlier when the Pike Run mine fire got out of control it burned for ten years. The old Coal Hill Mine on the southside of Pittsburgh caught fire in 1765, before they learned about sealing mines, and was still burning in 1820, looking "like the mouth of a volcano".

There was no hope to get the six men and thirty two horses who remained in the pit. Of the missing miners, three were unmarried, one was the father of five children. Another victim, Steve Barnish, a fifty-five year old machine operator, left nine children. Barnish had a home in Chartiers Village on the hill above the mine. Sixteen days after the mine fire a tornado came through, destroying many of the neat white colonial cottages of the patch. Among the dead were Steve Barnish's wife and one of his daughters.
It took twelve hours to seal the slopes and headings. They put in concrete blocks, covered them with a brattice and then plastered over the top. The mine remained sealed all summer and fall. When the mine was sealed, the adjacent Clyde Mines workings were shut down. For a while over 1900 men were idled in the Ten Mile Creek Valley, 640 from Emerald and the rest from the Clydes. By late December it seemed that the fire was out. It was risky to open a sealed mine because even if the fire is out the heat will have cooked a high concentration of firedamp out of the strata and nearly all oxygen would have been consumed. Of four Pa. explosions caused by mine fires, three were from sealed fires opened too soon.
When the inspectors got inside the mine, they found bodies identifiable only by lamp and check tag numbers. They were 2000 feet from the shaft and would have had time to escape through side routes but for some reason did not.
The clean up took several months and after almost a year after the fire, the Emerald mine was back in operation.

Blasting cap token, Emerald Coal and Coke Co., my collection


Tin sign courtesy unknown donor


Emerald's river tipple above the mouth of Ten Mile, on the present river bike trail. MRy photo

Emerald was originally called the Edward Mine and first opened in 1921. It was accessed by three mine shafts, two slope entries, and a bore hole 36 inches in diameter. The Chartiers Slope, Chartiers Fan Shaft, Chartiers Hoisting Shaft, The River Slope, and air vent, and the Lippincott Shaft. Coal was moved to the river tipple and also loaded onto railroad cars at Chartiers. When the 1944 tornado destroyed much of the original patch housing on Chartiers Hill Emerald Coal and Coke built the Burson patch. The Braden patch was another section of company-built housing for employees of the Emerald Mine, and is probably the last coal patch to be constructed in Pennsylvania. It was at that time a Hillman owned mine.
Renamed Gateway in 1963 by a subsidiary of the companies that used its output, this Morgan Township mine closed in 1989.

This Emerald Mine is not to be confused with the currently active Emerald Mine originally operated by RAG-Emerald and opened in 1977 in Franklin Township, Waynesburg Pa. It was first owned by Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. and has had several owners since.

Much of this is taken from the book Cloud By Day by Muriel Earley Sheppard.

Clarksville - Bridges and the Iron Furnace

Above is Center Street in Clarksville, looking north, soon after the turn of the century. The photographer has his back to the old covered bridge that spanned the south fork of the creek. The road to the left is Sugar Alley, now the Marianna road. The large lush maple trees line both sides of the dirt street. In the distance can be seen the iron bridge that crosses the north fork. This is my most favorite image of all I have collected. It looks exactly like what one would picture of small town America. Long time residents often described the effect of the trees in summer as " like walking through a tunnel." This is an old undated real photo post card that I purchased about 25 years ago and is a very rare view . This picture is on the cover of Randi Ross Marodi's book The History Of Clarksville Pennsylvania.



This 1930's view shows, in the middle ground, the covered bridge over the south fork. This wooden bridge lasted until it was replaced by the present bridge in 1943. While the covered bridge was being dismantled, it caught fire and burned causing much consternation in town.

According to newspaper clippings saved by longtime resident Stanley Fowler the earlier covered bridge at the same location was destroyed by high water and ice in the severe winter of 1918. The good Mr. Fowler's efforts at preserving photos and information have added much to our knowledge of Clarksville's past and his gift to us deserves notice, not to mention his many years of service to the community. Below is one of Mr.Fowler's pictures, an early image of the older south fork covered bridge, looking south from the square. This image likely dates to soon after the turn of the century and is certainly the bridge that was carried away in the 1918 flood .




Postcard Author's collection


Here is the iron bridge over the north fork and to Washington county, looking northeast. It was built by T. J. Barnard who was a Clarksville resident. The image above was probably made soon after the turn of the century. This iron bridge was dismantled and replaced with the present bridge in 1962. The hill in the background is now occupied by St. Thomas Catholic Church. The buildings that are visible in the distance are unidentified however they may be barns / outbuildings related to the coal mine. Older residents I have spoken to cannot recall anything but hay fields on the east side of the road all the way through Williamstown. Once the coal company came there seem to have never been any other buildings on that side of the road except for the church and the newer Washington Supply company store building. The land to build ( in 1935 ) St. Thomas was donated by the Hillman Coal and Coke Company. An exception also was the relatively modern Paletta discount house whose concrete block foundation still exists near the forks of the creek below St. Thomas Church.



This is from Caldwell's Atlas of 1876. This map implies a ford across the north fork ( at the north end of Center street ) near the forks of the creek. In the map's left hand edge, at the end of Main street is a small bridge that spanned Ten Mile and crossed to what was long known ( even into the late 1940's ) as the Corbett's Mill section which included the old stone ( these days called the Yablonski ) house.
This bridge was an iron truss type with a plank floor and it lasted until sometime after 1939. My opinion is that this was the site of the original, and likely for a time the only bridged crossing of the creek. I say that because of the extensive industries worked at Corbetts Mill, including a grain mill, a sawmill, a distillery and even for a time an iron furnace, all dating far back to the turn of the 19th century and owned at different times by several of Clarksville's leading businessmen. The Corbetts Mill area was therefore, for decades, the important "industrial suburb" of Clarksville. Both of the north fork bridges are visible below in this pre 1919 photo of the northern end of town.
In 1918-1919 the railroad ( PRR, then the Chartiers Southern Railway ) built two bridges, one across each fork of Ten Mile for trains. Two piers beside the north fork span remain, obviously built to carry but a single track.. Later, at a time not yet determined , the railroad built the present larger bridges, capable of holding multiple tracks. Also built at this time was the bridge over the tracks for the Dry Tavern road.


Ida Mary Wortman Haftmann Collection

Clarksville was the site of the only iron furnace in Greene county. It was across the south fork of the creek and several sources state all traces were covered by the railroad embankment. The earliest reference to it is 1794 as a " forge and furnace." The Henry Heaton family originally owned the land and operated the furnace and it was next known as Greene Iron Works, Henry Heaton owning one sixth along with with Jesse Bowell, Ephraim Coleman and forgemen Lock West, James Young and Henry Gillock. It was sold to James Robinson in 1805. A small town was actually laid out on these two acres with 6 house lots laid out to the southwest of " main street ." The establishment was abandoned before 1820, but the stack was visible for some time after 1840. Another source says it was out of blast in 1810. It was also known, as time went on, as Mary Ann Furnace, Clarksville Furnace, Greene Forge and Robinson's Furnace. A newspaper from Uniontown, the Genius of Liberty & Fayette Advertiser, ran the following ad on Aug. 4, 1810:
VALUABLE PROPERTY FOR SALE... THE IRON WORKS... on Ten Mile Creek, late the property of Capt. James Robinson, adjoining the town of Clarksville... and not distant three miles from the Monongahela River... One Hundred Acres of land, Ore Bank... signed Samuel Harper, Agent, dated Greene County, July 23, 1810.......This from the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania 1876-8:
Data on the ores used at Clarksville Furnace, Clarksville, Greene Co.... under the Waynesburg Coal bed in Greene county, the shales contain very moderate quantities of ball ore. Some of it was once dug, at various points in Morgan township, for the old Clarksville furnace.......





















Map of Greene Iron Works courtesy of Greene County Historical Library


Author


This 2009 image shows the area of the Iron Furnace and town of Greene Iron Works, looking more or less southeast, the tracks and trestle are behind the trees in the background. The old 1800's original road to Dry Tavern wound up the hill from this point. The oldest residents recall that this area above was known as Furnace Hill. Now locally known as South Clarksville, it's main street is Robinson Avenue, named after the Robinson furnace family.

The Patch At Marianna

Marianna was a new town when this image was done about 1908. Judith Florian wrote a concise history of the town, she had this to say of the miners patch :

The houses were 4, 5 or 6 rooms; the largest were permanent for mine bosses, or owners who might need temporary lodging. The smaller homes were for miners, as well as a 14-room boarding house erected on the hillside behind the mine shafts. The homes were made of yellow-color bricks, fired at Johnetta Plant of the United States Sewer Pipe Company (also owned by the Jones' brothers), and shipped by rail to Marianna. Within a few months, this former farmland area became not just a town, but the "model mining town of the world." A 6-room house rented for $6.00 a month; this included free water supplied by a company-built water reservoir to process water from Ten Mile Creek, free electricity provided by the Power Plant, and garbage removal. Each residence had indoor hot water and bathrooms, town sewage treatment, natural gas, and "landscaping" of 1 tree in each front yard. A modern 3-story brick school-house and the Marianna Arcade building were built in 1910' the Arcade had a drug store, ice cream parlor, bowling alleys, billiard tables, dance floor/skating rink, reading/lecture room, and an indoor pool.

Many modern photos of the mine and patch can be found here in a super website done by Chris DellaMea. On the internet there is a lot of reading available on the mine, the explosion and the town in general.

A simple shelter for passengers at this end of the line town. Coal was the real moneymaker here.

Every brick in every house was made just this way, marked for the Pittsburg- Buffalo Company.

Dedication of the Arcade, July4, 1910.

Mary Ann Feehan Jones for whom Marianna was named.

Marianna School class in 1922