Coal mining

Review: 40 Patchtown

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40 Patchtown, Damian Dressick. Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog Press, 2020.

Summary: Set during a coal strike in Windber, Pennsylvania in 1922, captures the hardship striking miners faced in their resistance to mine owners, their efforts to form unions and gain better wages for dangerous work.

My family and that of my wife traces its history to towns between Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Youngstown, Ohio. Many had associations with either the coal or steel industries. I was reminded in reading 40 Patchtown of the stories we heard at family gatherings of mine and mill owners, strikes and strike-breakers, Pinkerton’s, the hardships and the violence that came with encounters between powerful corporations and workers who risk their lives to dig coal out of the earth and to forge the steel that built the nation. There were the ethnic rivalries between eastern Europeans who arrived earlier, and Italians who came later. Company housing, rooming houses, and camps for evicted strikers. Finally, I encountered words I used to hear as a kid, but rarely since like studda-bubba (old woman) and dupa (your butt).

Damian Dressick, a writing professor at Clarion College (Pa.), grew up in coal country and through interviews with retired miners and their families and archival research, captures the hardships, the dangers, the family bonds, and the struggles to maintain worker solidarity during a grinding strike. His novel is set in Windber, Pennsylvania, a small mining town three miles south of Johnstown, in Somerset County during a coal miner strike in 1922. The novel opens with main character Chet Pistakowski joining his older brother Buzzy and a friend to go after “scabs” being brought in to take over the jobs of strikers. Buzzy ends up killing one of the men. The death of this replacement worker intensifies the conflict between the strikers seeking recognition for their union and the company. A train with more replacement workers is surrounded by armed guards who violently suppress and disperse the workers. Meanwhile, Chet struggles in his conscience over the killing of the Italian “scab,” who didn’t know he was taking the job of another.

After Buzzy is apprehended and killed, Chet’s family faces eviction. Dressick takes us into the worker camps and the efforts of union organizers to support the workers and the grinding poverty into which they descended. Chet takes over Buzzy’s job hauling bootlegged alcohol, running risks both with law enforcement and the bootlegging gangs themselves. The job brings in a lot of money, but the illicit activity, what his family and girl friend think of what he is doing, and the time it takes away from the union creates tension within Chet. This all comes to head with the death of a union organizer, confronting him with choices that could change his life or end it.

Dressick tells a riveting story that evokes the conditions of this era without becoming a documentary. The novel raises questions about the moral choices facing those subject to the overwhelming use of power and violence. Do oppressive conditions justify violence? Is violence folly when the oppressor has overwhelmingly superior force? Our understanding of how terrible the conditions these miners faced is intensified when we realize that it is a fourteen year old Chet who must wrestle with questions like these.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Mineral Ridge

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Main Street in Mineral Ridge c. 1915

It is not even a village with its own post office any more. Officially, it is a Census Designated Place. Located along Rt. 46 between Austintown and Niles, as part of Weathersfield Township, many people may not realize what a significant role Mineral Ridge played in the rise of the iron industry in the Mahoning Valley, paving the way in turn for the steel industry.

The name gives a clue. Farmers who settled in the area knew there was coal in the ground. Some had their own small mines for heating and to sell. The coal and iron industry really took off however in the 1850’s when John Lewis, superintendent of the Mineral Ridge Coal Mines, discovered seams of particularly valuable ore, black band iron ore, running through the area. Between 1856 and 1858 Mineral Ridge was transformed from a sleepy little farming community to a boom town with a number of coal and iron ore companies connected David Tod’s mills in Brier Hill and other mills in Niles. The presence of soft coal, block coal and black band iron ore made Mineral Ridge a critical raw resource center for the Valley’s industry. The resulting iron was known as “American Scotch Pig” and “Warner’s Scotch Pig.”

Mineral Ridge map while it was still a village

By the 1880s, many of the mines were closing, though some continued into the 1900’s and were even mined during the Depression for heating. Mineral Ridge ceased to be a village in 1917, becoming unincorporated in February of that year. Nancy Messier, a blogger growing up in Mineral Ridge provides interesting accounts of what it was like to grow up there in the mid-twentieth century, including a list of Mineral Ridge High School graduates from 1881 to 1954, with graduation programs listing local businesses.

The farming history of the community is remembered by the Moss Ancestral Home, a brick salt box structure that was the home of the Moss Family from 1859 to 1899. The mining history is mainly remembered whenever there is a mine collapse. Like much of Mahoning and Trumbull County, not all of the mines have been mapped and sometimes subsidence occurs in locations not previously known of.

The area has not seen the drastic population declines of some areas. The 2000 population of 3,900 has declined slightly to 3,783 in 2020. While Mineral Ridge no longer has a post office, as of the summer of 2020 it has a Post Office Pub. According to a Business Journal story, three local residents, all area business owners, recognized the lack of a family-oriented dining establishment in Mineral Ridge. They built a new restaurant on the site of the old post office, serving an “Americana menu–affordable family dinners with Italian, Irish and Greek influences.” The three owners hope that word will get out across the Valley.

Mineral Ridge played an important role in the Valley’s industrial history. The minerals from which the area gets its name and the workforce they attracted is worth remembering. The Mineral Ridge Historical Society is a local organization formed to preserve and promote the area’s history. Perhaps the next time you are driving on Rt. 46 between Austintown and Niles, you might take some time to notice the place that played such an important part in the Valley’s story.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Coal Mining

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W._Va._coal_mine_1908

Early coal mine (from West Virginia), Public Domain via Wikipedia

My mom always used to talk about how Youngstown was “riddled” with coal mines underneath the city and that people did not know where all of them were. I never saw a mine entrance, and this actually wasn’t part of life growing up. “Riddled” may have been exaggerated, at least in parts of the city, but the mines are a continuing reality the city and surrounding area must deal with.

In the summer of 1977, after the heavy snows of the previous winter, a series of mine collapses occurred. One home owner discovered that the floor of her two car garage at 535 Hylda Avenue in Fosterville was gone. Another mine shaft collapsed in a backyard, creating a huge hole. A third collapsed under the weight of an in-ground swimming pool. All these were over 100 years old, and virtually nothing was known about them or the location of other mines.

The presence of high quality coal as well as iron ore is one of the reasons for why Youngstown became an early site of iron and later steel manufacturing. Significant seams of high quality coal were mined in the area of Mineral Ridge, the Brier Hill area, above Lake Glacier, in the Kirkmere area, and significantly in the Fosterville area, as well as other areas in and around Youngstown. In fact, Fosterville gets its name from Colonel Foster and the Foster Coal Company which sank a number of mines on the South Side. The coal was known as “block” coal which could be used as is in iron smelting operations. It is also known as Sharon coal. There is an estimate that nearly a million tons of coal were mined on the South Side, a quarter of that from the Foster mines. Before Volney Rogers helped form Mill Creek Park, there was the Mill Creek Iron Furnace, near Pioneer Pavilion. The furnace dates back to the 1820’s and was excavated by anthropology professor Dr John White in 2003.

After the 1977 mine collapses, another Youngstown State professor, Ann Harris, in the geology department, undertook the mapping of mines around Youngstown, eastern Ohio, and western Pennsylvania. In Mahoning County alone, she found over 270 mine sites, which she has catalogued. Information for some sites includes a Google map pinpointing the site. One of the Foster shafts, was filled in part by two old Fords! Many were filled in with various forms of refuse. This information is available at the Abandoned Coal Mines website. A 2011 Vindicator article indicated that Harris, now an emeritus professor, was working with a university archivist to preserve two rooms of records including mine inspection reports and county histories.

All of this is a priceless contribution not only to the Valley’s past but also its future. It both tells the nearly lost story of Youngstown’s coal industry, and helps locate abandoned mines, which could save homeowners and builders much grief. It is important as well to contemporary efforts in recovery oil and natural gas from shale deposits in the same areas many of these mines were located. Long before Youngstown was the Steel Valley, it was the Coal Valley and it was coal which contributed to the early growth of the Valley, and still impacts its geology.

[Note: Apologies for the links which no longer work in this article, written in 2017. Anne Harris’s work was invaluable and I hope someone has continued it.]