Governor William M.O. Dawson arrives in D.C. for the national river convention. Governor Dawson conferred “with river enthusiasts from many States and is rejoiced at the enthusiasm…”. (FWV 12.5.07 pg. 1)
Former West Virginia Governor and current Fairmont Coal Company associate, A.B. Fleming, is also at the convention in D.C. (FWV 12.5.07 pg. 1)
In Grafton, WV:
Sam Furk has been arrested in Grafton by local authorities for crimes associated with the Black Hand. Furk is described as a “tough-looking” “big Italian”, believed to be “king of the Black Hand society of this section of the country”.
“Nothing concerning where Furk came from can be elicited from any of the local foreigners and all of them seem to be afraid of him. He arrived here a short time ago and has been spending his time among the foreigners.”
Furk is charged with extorting other Italians for money around the Grafton and Fairmont areas.
“From what could be learned of the matter from the foreigners, most of whom were so badly scared they would not talk, it appears that Furk, since he came here, has been posing as the ‘big man’ in the ‘Black Hand’ society and in making his demands upon the foreigners has emphasized his remarks by the flourish of a big revolver.”
Many local terrorized Italians are “afraid that if they do appear against the fellow that he should not be held for court that he would kill them as soon as he could find them after being released.”
“…Furk was not given a hearing yesterday, but he will probably be arraigned today.” (FWV 12.4.07 pg. 2 & 6)
At the Monongah mines:
Day shift worked at mines #6 and #8
Fred Stubbs is among them but this will be his last day of work for the rest of the week because his wife is very sick at home. At this time, a system known as “miners freedom” allows Fred to choose if he wants to work, rather than requesting the time off.
It is the first day on the job for 3 Russian immigrants: Paul Goff, John Goff, and Frank Kreger.
Fred Vandatti works the gathering motor in #8: 4th right, 2nd north. Hugh Reese (brakeman) was his helper.
Motorman driving a gathering motor.
In #6:
James Rogers (assistant foreman in #6 and foreman in #3) is working in #6. This will be his last day of work this week due to illness.
George Simko works in #6: 2nd right, E face, room 8. This will also be his last day of work this week due to sickness.
Libberato Delasandro is working in #6 and finds gas accumulation earlier in the day at 2nd right off of D face, in rooms 2 & 3. However, it was only a slight trace – normal and relatively safe—so he does what most miners do: he takes off his coat and waves it around, fanning the gases out of the air and working space. Later, he will find gas and dust accumulation on 2nd right of G face in #6. At one point a foreman comes into where he is working, notices the gas and shouts at Libberato to lower the flame on his cap and so he does. (Inquiry, McAteer)
In Fairmont, WV:
The Fairmont West Virginian reports the weather as: Snow tonight. Thursday fair. Minimum temperature tonight about 15 degrees.
Fairmont Coal Company and Consolidated Coal Company President Clarence Wayland Watson is world-renowned for his show horses. 14 of C.W. Watson’s show horses arrive in Fairmont on train No. 7., care of the US Express company from New Haven, Conn. (FWV 12.4.07 pg. 5)
Night
In Monongah:
A meeting of Monongah mine foremen & superintendents is held in J.C. Gaskill’s office. The meeting is called to go over things regarding safety of the mines.
Fairmont Coal Company supervisor David Victor, Tom Donlin (foreman at #6), and foreman Pete McGraw are present for the meeting.
Gaskill asks McGraw and Donlin about conditions inside and about the mines and they replied that it was good in both cases. “…McGraw said he had a little bit of shooting off the solid that he had not been able to eliminate. He was instructed to eliminate all of that and that he must get rid of the men who had that practice.” (Inquiry– Victor)
James Rogers, assistant foreman in #6, talks with foreman Tom Donlin in the company supply store about watering the mines tonight.
At the mines:
Night shifts work and, per usual, the main-ways of the mines are watered, but not the branching off hallways and rooms. (Inquiry, McAteer)
Very icy conditions – “The walking…was very treacherous and many people got falls” (FWV 12.4.07 pg. 8)
Mrs. Jacob M Watkins of 5th ward fell and broke her wrist.
Miss Edith Frey slipped on icy pavement on her way to school and broke her elbow.
Mrs. Ellis Billingsiea fell and was unconscious for some time. No broken bones.
Mr. Crawford M. Shaw, a well-known B&O Engineer, fell on icy pavement and broke his arm.
Mrs. J.M. Watkins fell at home on Locust Ave and broke her wrist.
Afternoon
The Women’s Auxiliary of Christ Episcopal church routinely shift hostesses for their meetings. Today the collective leaves Fairmont on the 2:00 pm trolley headed for Monongah. After about a 20 minute ride, they meet up with their hostess, Mrs. Ruckman at Monongah. (FWV 12.2.07 pg. 8)
Night
In Viropa (mining town one mile north of Shinnston):
Fire destroys the houses of five miners. “As there was no means of fighting the fire except by volunteer bucket brigade another house was dynamited to prevent the flames from reaching a large boarding house and the mine tipple.” (CDT 12.4.07 pg. 8)
The houses actually belong to the Fairmont Coal Company. “The company’s loss is between $3,000 and $4,000, but the property was fully insured. The houses were occupied by foreigners who saved most of their household goods.” (CDT 12.4.07 pg. 8)
Both #6 and #8 mines are working
Ben Coon is working as the stable boss at #8 with Charlie Dean having general supervision over the work.
Leo Dominico notices a toad hole in the roof while working in #8 mine (Inquiry)
William May, whose brother was one of those entombed in the Naomi mine is held up by 3 masked men on his way to the disaster scene. William did not hear about the Naomi disaster until Monday night. 3 men stopped him on his way to the streetcar, held him at gunpoint, searched his clothes, took his money and a gold watch. William had to go back home to get more money before going to disaster scene. (FWV 12.4.07 pg. 4)
How Death Gloated! is a collection of numerous resources and publications on the history of the Monongah Mine Disaster. They are arranged and presented in the form of a timeline of events as this better helps my own organization when it comes to working on my historic fiction about Monongah.
The title is taken from a newspaper article published on December 10, 1907 in the Cumberland Evening Times.
This timeline is not to be blindly trusted and is constantly subject to future change as I come across any new information. However, as far as I have found in my few years of formal research on this topic, I have yet to come across anything like a detailed timeline of events so I felt obligated to share this form of organizing my research despite the fact that I don’t think it will ever be a finished product.
I’d like to inform you of specific choices I made for How Death Gloated! so that it may help you navigate the information better:
Certain events included in this timeline may have only come with time stamps like “this afternoon,” or “early morning”. In these instances I would do my best to consider the context of the original source, cross check with other sources for anything which may conflict or concur the event being described, and then do my best to estimate the approximate time this event may have occurred based on what information I had to that point. Sometimes an event could get more accurately placed later on when more information is obtained, and sometimes it will remain in its ‘best guess’ slot.
I have not included ALL of my information. Some events which matter very much to the research for my historic fiction but are not necessary to the format and purpose of How Death Gloated!, have been omitted…for now. Almost all of these are just waiting for more clarification on where they should be placed, while the others have more of a storytelling/narrative intent and will not be included at all. For many of these issues, I will be making and posting separate journal entries about the problems they pose.
When considering my sources and their provided information, I often gave greatest partiality to the people of Monongah and the stories I heard through my life about the disaster. They often discussed the wrong information which was spread vs. what they knew or grew up hearing themselves.
These resources include contemporary newspaper, journal, and magazine accounts; photographs from various points in time; documentaries; published texts; personal accounts, etc. They will also be consistently updated.
In less formal lingo, please cite the source I cited for this information whenever possible.
If you have any questions about any of the information or a citation is unclear or missing, please contact me and I will do my best to answer any of your questions, point you in a possible direction for more information, or clear up something I probably just overlooked.
Please feel free to leave comments or discuss the events with myself and others here or on other media platforms. I welcome conversation and discussion on this matter as I feel collaboration on historic matters is absolutely vital.
“As an individual, you have had a very limited set of experiences. And the limitation on your experiences may have then set a limitation on your thinking—may have narrowed your thinking. And to recognize those limitations—to recognize that you may have been limited by your family, by your education, by your church, by the class to which you were born—to recognize the limitations of your personal experience, is to then enable you to perhaps go beyond those limitations.” – Howard Zinn, The Lottery of Birth
What is privilege?
Today in the 21st century most people directly associate it with wealth, comfort, inherent advantages, and power. To be privileged is to be of your paradigm and never question what lies beyond; to never see it for what it is. Because what it is, is familiar and comforting so where is the want to change that?
Those are, indeed, privileges. And there is nothing wrong or bad about any of them.
Though, they were not mine.
My privileges included: childhood poverty lingering into adulthood despite never-ending work; inherent disadvantages based on my simple lottery of birth which have allowed others to look down on my home and proudly say, “at least we’re not them”; learning very early on in life that the color of my skin might be the only inherent advantage I have; Stockholm syndrome from a narrative designed to get you to accept oppression as a universal reality so you will oppress yourself and others making everyone too afraid to leave their paradigm despite its obvious toxicity; and the discomfort of knowing that I lived, played, and went to school atop one of the worst disaster sites which gave the U.S. so many of its privileges—that the reason I and every other child across the country got to do those things was because innocent adults and children were slaughtered beneath my very feet, including my very own great-great grandfather.
Or do all U.S. teachers, parents, and religious leaders get that kind of ammo?
That was my paradigm and that of hundreds of other children and adults all around me in the little town of Monongah, West Virginia.
And it was, indeed, a privilege.
“There is a very partial window that is opened for you and that partial window numbs you to the impact of your actions.” – Vandana Shiva, The Lottery of Birth
What matters is the influence made by these privileges and what one does with them. There is nothing bad about privileges; we all have more than we realize. But, do we share those privileges to gain perspectives from experiences which we can’t possibly have ourselves—to gain enlightenment from one another—or to create a hierarchy of these perspectives in order to continue oppressing ourselves and one another?
Privileges explain who we are individually and as a collective, but they turn bad when they become an excuse for why we should stay within our respective paradigms. If I allowed my privileges to be my excuses, I would have been in my grave over a decade ago—just another statistic in the opioid epidemic. But they do explain who I am and I am not ashamed of them nor will I deny or desire to change them just because openly acknowledging them forces others to uncomfortably address their own unacknowledged privileges.
Instead, I choose to share those privileges and expose the true value of them. I choose to give you the privilege of knowing just some of the things I know, but never occurred to you that you should know. And what better place to start than with my biggest inherent privilege of all? One over which I had absolutely no control.
It is a very elite few who win this lottery of birth; a very elite few who got a lifetime of listening and learning; a very elite few who get to have a relationship with this event and its people as more than just an “historic subject”; an even more elite few who were privileged to perspectives, knowledge, experiences, and insights on this event and place which no historic scholar could ever possibly have or find.
I am a born and raised Monongah Lion which gives me more connections to this place, these people, and this event—personally and intellectually—than any official historian or scholar I have yet come across. I was not just privileged to live where I lived but to be exposed to the people and their cultures, to care about them and their stories as part of my own. It is also a personal lucky privilege to have always been one who loves stories. I paid attention when people told their stories to me as a child and, at 35, I have surprisingly retained a lot of them.
The disaster was over a century ago but an odd heaviness still hangs in the air of Monongah. Anyone who was raised in it will begin to question it at an early age or simply learns to ignore it. My husband felt it the first time he came back with me for a visit, though he did not know of the disaster at the time. I was lucky enough to be one of those who questioned it early on. Though, I can’t tell you that I have any answers yet or that there even are answers to be had.
Answers really aren’t what matter. Answers won’t change the events, they can only influence our perspectives and understanding of events. But they can also influence the perspectives and understandings we have of the people involved in these events and the perspectives we hold of ourselves. The change that gets made is up to each and all of us and what we choose to do with this privilege.
There is no one living today who can be held responsible for what happened in Monongah’s gloomy past. But everyone living today is inherently accountable for the memory of that past and how we use the privileges we have gained from events like Monongah. Being privileged to this rare lottery of birth, I accept my inherent accountability and responsibility to share this privilege with you.
It will not be a comfortable experience. It will include the truths and the falsehoods, the mistakes and misunderstandings, the corrections and oversights humans are prone to make. There will be stories without endings or closure, people who play but minor roles yet their perpectives matter all the same, valuable information which doesn’t really have a ‘place’, and accounts which can only be verified by the long since dead.
There is no running narrative; no grand thesis or conclusion. This isn’t an academic adventure where I am trying to force you to see something that probably isn’t really there. Maybe you will see something, maybe not.
It will be confusing, overwhelming, and intimidating as I have no intention to lead you in any one specific direction or tell you what you should think. I hold an unyielding conviction that it is impossible for anyone to be an expert on much of anything in this world—even one’s own experiences. That all history is in the perspective of the historian is an unfortunate truth which I openly claim.
Though I have collected this information because I am working on an historical fiction, all good historic fiction is just 98% truth and 2% fictional filler. The narratives that are currently out on Monongah, even those from accredited historians, do not come close to that percentage simply because the conflicting information we do have left from this event and the way we are compelled to formally present information forces one to choose a narrative—to discredit one in favor of the other. I have done my best not to do that except where it helps eliminate redundancy. I feel it is important for you to be as jumbled and conflicted as they were on these matters. It is important that you attempt to fill in those blanks for yourself, to look for more information yourself and to make your own choice: will you take the information for simply as and what it is or will you challenge and omit that which disrupts the easier narrative?
This work I am presenting is not a formal research project, nor is it presented as one. My own narrative of this event will come in good time, but I will not attempt to masquerade it as nonfiction like so many others.
All I can do is share my research and knowledge with you for what it is.
Top: Monongah around 1907. Bottom: Monongah around 2007
“I think the key to any progress is to ask the question ‘Why?’ all the time. Why is that child poor? Why was there a war? Why was she killed? Why is he in power? And those questions can get you into a lot of trouble. Because society is trained by those who run it to accept what goes on. And if you keep asking questions its very destabilizing. And yet, you have to do it. Without questions we won’t ever make any progress at all.” Tony Benn, The Lottery of Birth
Sometime between 7:15pm – 7:30 pm, the Naomi mine explodes “with a roar that shook the whole countryside.”1
“The explosion was caused by gas being ignited by an open light or an electric spark or flame from the electric wires, and it was greatly augmented by coal dust.”4
Fires inside the mines immediately follow the explosion. The Sunday night shift is relatively small so it is believed some 30 – 60 miners are entombed underground where the fires steadily consume all breathable oxygen and replace it with toxic gases known as black damp.
“Within a few minutes hundreds of people surrounded the pit mouth. The screams were indescribable. Wives and children and friends of the men entombed wrung their hands and begged piteously for rescuing parties to enter the mines and bring out their loved ones. All night they refused to leave the pit mouth.”1
“After a brief examination of the conditions, the impression prevailed among the inspectors that no one would be found alive in the mine, as the after damp would in all probability have smothered those who were not burned by the gas or hurled to death against the sides of the mine by the force of the explosion. The miners, most of whom were foreigners, were at work almost a mile from any entrance.”4
“Only one man, an unknown foreigner, (out of 34 employees), reached the surface after the explosion occurred, and as he reached the open air he fell unconscious from inhaling the gas fumes and died in a few minutes.”4
Governor Dawson leaves for Washington D.C. to attend a meeting of rivers and harbors congress which will be in session for several days. (FWV 12.4.07 pg. 4)
Welcome to Bloody December.
1907 is considered the deadliest year of the mining industry in the United States.2The month of December produced 5 separate major disasters and numerous accidents which cost the lives of over 800 men and boys, the majority of whom are minorities and immigrants.
This month will be the real catalyst to a decades-long fight to bring an end to negligent labor practices across the country. Bloody December is so horrific that the American public finally lets its government and its industries know that they have had enough. The devastating and very preventable loss of life sparks a heavy push for government regulation in private industry and labor practices.
There are several reasons why Appalachians have their own special language about their land. The most prominent reason is that ‘proper’ English simply isn’t good enough to help with navigation. Those basic terms work just fine in the foothills and the flatlands, but deep in these ranges and forests we need to get a little more specific so we don’t end up on the wrong side of the mountain. So, we tend to make up our own words or adapt existing words to take on a new or more specific meaning which is why terminology will differ depending on where you go in Appalachia.
Terminology matters just as much today as it did in the times before GPS and vehicles. Mostly because this terminology is included in the names of many places, like Mill Fall Run, and if you lose your satellite reception (which will happen in certain parts) knowing your terminology can help you “get to where you need to get” all on your own just like the early settlers or those on the Underground Railroad.
The layout of Monongah and its surrounding area is a perfect example of the terminology and its relevance. I am a ‘visual’ person so I will use lots of pictures to get you familiar with our terminology as it applies to this little town, its people and the surrounding areas.
GEOGRAPHY
Land
Well, just in case you didn’t already know, we are located in the Appalachian Mountain range which extends from the deep south all the way up into Canada on the east coast. West Virginia is the only state completely engulfed by this range. Even when we were part of Virginia, they still referred to us as “Western Virginia” and, basically treated us with the same indigence. We were those rugged, backwoods “Mountaineers” who lived off the land with only the very basics and enough to ‘care for our own’. The proper English folk of the Colonies had no use for us if they couldn’t profit from us so, the area was mostly neglected and remained severely isolated from ‘society’ until coal was discovered. By that time, we had developed our own complex language and various dialects to accommodate our environment. Despite the best efforts of the “Americanization” process of the early 20th century, that language still thrives today and it helps to know the very basics.
This photo is of the Morgan Cabin at Prickett’s Fort State Park only a few days after an arson incident when the old pioneer house was set on fire.
The Valley
Valleys are elongated lowlands between other uplands along major waterways and typically play permanent host to major cities or towns. Therefore, they are more populated and hold most of the resources for the area. Monongah sits in a valley along the West Fork River. At the time all of the ‘official’ mapping and naming was going on, we were included as part of the Monongahela/Tygart Valley Region. This probably explains why most of Monongah’s earliest settlers got their land by tomahawk rights.
If you love history and old photos, I highly suggest browsing the extensive online collection of the West Virginia & Regional History Center at WV Dept. of Arts, Culture, and History
When it comes to the time of tales like ‘Coffin Hollow’, this place was still just a collection of isolated farmers in a small hollow known as Briar Town. Once transport to and from the hollow was established via railroad, bringing industry and a population boom to the area, her status was upgraded to valley and the hollow known as Briar Town became the town of Monongah – a suburb of the city of Fairmont.
These are screenshots of a map of the area from 1886. The East side of Briar Town is in the Grant District. The West side of Briar Town is in the Lincoln District. Link to the website where these maps can be viewed or purchased are in description
The Hollow
Hollowsarevalleys – an area of land that has been drained or irrigated over time by a water system which may or may not still exist; the second definition of the word valley. The key difference is that a hollow is located on higher ground within the landscape surrounding what is considered to be THEvalley. Though the ‘mouth’ of the hollow may be located in thevalley, it’s typically not the only way in or out. It’s simply the most direct way into the hollow from the main road or path which almost always follows along the main valley and its waterway, hence the term ‘mouth’.
It’s all about navigation.
The most important thing to know about what constitutes a hollow these days, is its road system. In a city, rather than walking all around the block to get to the next street, you may try to cut through an alley or ‘backstreet’ because the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? But, you will use caution because alleys are notorious for their potential dangers and a wrong turn can send you in the worst direction. Hollows are just like alleys.
Hollows can usually be determined by the width and conditions of their roads. An existing and mapped road wide enough for two cars to pass side by side, though it may be a tight squeeze, is your typical hollow road. The ‘mouth’ of the hollow is often paved but it doesn’t always stay that way throughout. Main routes which pass through hollows are paved, painted, and mapped by Google Earth like any typical road these days.
Manley Chapel Rd. is a hollow road which also functions as a main route.
However, Country Roads, like the CR56s in and around Monongah, are a hit-or-miss; if they are paved, they probably don’t have lines as they typically get the most minimal of maintenance and the Google Maps car probably can’t get clear pictures on such bumpy roads. A real Country Road is more like a permanent scab of compressed dirt and gravel where the space for 2 cars means someone’s tires are riding the ditch.
If you watch this YouTube video of Hall Family Roadtrips you can see first hand how easy it is to get mixed up on these roads without some kind of navigating system or existing knowledge. I love this video for so many reasons:
Being from this area, the first part of this video pleases me so much as the driver ‘hits every light’ at just the right time along Fairmont Ave. You don’t realize how rare that is until you’ve worked food delivery service in that place.
It is a brilliant live example of what I’m trying to explain. If you look at the far right of the map above, where the yellow line turns over the word “Fairmont”, and start this video at 2:06 you can follow along on the map as they drive. Except…
This poor driver gets sucked into the “Country Club Trap” at 3:28. Now, this is great for you and me because it gives you a glimpse of what I mean by “hollow-holler-hollow” road systems. Notice how the road changes with its surroundings. The deeper you get into the hollow the more it starts to resemble a holler as the road narrows, the lines go away, and forest surrounds you more than residences.
Snapshot from the Hall Family video
Then, at 4:40, we get dropped back out next to the West Fork River on Rt. 19, exactly where we would have ended up minutes earlier if the driver had just stayed straight at the light and not turned right onto a hollow/holler road.
From there, you are on your way into the west side of Monongah. At 5:20, the driver passes the ‘mouth’ of Mill Fall Run on the right. At 5:32 of this video, you pull into Monongah where Rt. 19 is known as Camden Ave (because it predates the existence of Rt. 19) and it really is a blast from the past. Below is a postcard of Camden Ave around the turn of the 20th century on top of a snapshot of Camden Ave today.
Snapshot from Hall Family video
At 5:50, the driver stops to turn on GPS or at least check a map right smack in the middle of Monongah, which isn’t uncommon. Monongah itself is so twisty and turny with so many ins and outs that travelers tend to get wary about making another wrong turn beyond this point. We have a saying that, “all roads lead to Monongah; you just gotta know where to turn”.
Hollow roads are sometimes several miles long and if you can navigate these Country Roads just right they can be a shortcut to the other side of the county, they can connect to other hollows, or they can take you to someplace even more awesome…
Along Manley Chapel Rd., another road branches off to the left. This is Manuel Dr. – a holler road.
A holler is a very special place. One can only get to a real holler in a vehicle by correctly navigating the hollow. Sometimes you can only find the holler if you have been personally invited by its occupants as only they know the ways in and out. Other times, you may need to hike, bike, and/or boat your way there.
The holler is just an area past the hollow. The holler is a far more isolated place because it sits deeper in the mountains, typically below the hollow but still above the valley and can be impossible to navigate. In the right areas of the state, you can find hollows or hollers with a full rapid river, like Ten Mile in Buckhannon. In the greater Monongah area, our hollers are more likely to have nothing more than a crick which may be elevated to creek status only after heavy rains.
Where valleys typically have rivers or streams, a hollow may have nothing more than a run or brook/creek, and a holler will usually only have a crick– which, in some cases, is only around after heavy rains as it is nothing more than a natural drainage path for runoff rainwater.
Manuel Dr. is a beautiful example of a holler road
You may have heard that the holler gets its name from the fact that all one must do to talk to your neighbor on the adjacent hill is simply “holler” at them. Well, that can happen in hollows too. That factor is more of a coincidence which just helped the term stick as a general title. True, in the average holler you can talk to a neighbor over hundred of yards away as if they were on your own porch, but this isn’t true for all hollers or hollows.
In a steep valleyholler with a large waterway, like those in the southern part of the state near the New River Gorge, it doesn’t work as well. The white noise of the flowing river paired with the air currents of the valley can ‘take your words with the wind’. However, in small ‘backwoods’ hollers where the natural landscape mimics that of a Greek or Roman amphitheater, voices or other sounds can carry with such ease that hollerin’ is unnecessary overkill.
In the early years of my childhood, before the days of 24 hour news channels and shows like America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries, being a kid meant being home by the time the streetlights came on and always staying within “hollerin’ distance”. The landscape of any area will determine what counts as “hollerin’ distance” – the distance a good hearty shout will travel across the landscape to the ears of another person. Basically, if the adults couldn’t hear you and you couldn’t hear them, then you were out of “hollerin’ distance” and you were in real trouble.
The Waterways
We have the same types of terms everyone else has for their natural water systems. But, naturally, we have a hierarchical system in place so we can get quite specific with them too as it is another special part of our navigation system.
Though West Virginia can boast many lakes, both natural and man-made, our most important water sources are our rivers.
The River
Rivers were the main navigation tool in the mountains from the earliest days. The Ohio River makes up our western most border, the Potomac defines our eastern panhandle, but it is the Monongahela River which is believed to have flowed the first of the indigenous groups (Native Americans) into the north central mountain area from the Delaware region centuries, possibly even thousands, of years ago.
Monongahela is a very specific and descriptive word on its own. Surprisingly, Wikipedia has the best and most concise description of this word:
The Unami word Monongahela means “falling banks”, in reference to the geological instability of the river’s banks. Moravian missionary David Zeisberger (1721–1808) gave this account of the naming: “In the Indian tongue the name of this river was Mechmenawungihilla (alternatively spelled Menawngihella), which signifies a high bank, which is ever washed out and therefore collapses.”[11]
The Lenape Language Project renders the word as Mënaonkihëla (pronounced [mənaoŋɡihəla]), translated “where banks cave in or erode”,[12] from the verbs mënaonkihële “the dirt caves off” (such as the bank of a river or creek, or in a landslide)[13] and mënaonke (pronounced [mənaoŋɡe]), “it has a loose bank” (where one might fall in).[14]
Monongalia County and the town of Monongah, both in West Virginia, are named for the river, as is the city of Monongahela in Pennsylvania. (The name “Monongalia” is either a Latinized adaptation of “Monongahela” or simply a variant spelling.)
A “high” “loose” “falling” bank along a river where the dirt “is ever washed out” and therefore “caves in” and one treading along it “might fall in” to the river below. Yep, sounds like the West Fork in Monongah!
Oddly, Monongah does not sit along the Monongahela River. She is tucked away in a little and hard to access valley along the West Fork River which was only passable by anything more than a small boat during flood seasons until the railroad came along. However, her luck of having such abundant coal reserves and being so close to the Monongahela River, yet still so very isolated from ‘society’ in Fairmont, made her the “gem” of the Fairmont coal field.
Some rivers are calm, others are rapid like parts of the Tygart Valley River which flows through and continues to carve the falls at Valley Falls State Park
The Stream
Streams are just smaller and more narrow rivers. In the mountains, a stream could be a few different things. It could be the classification given to a section of a major river which is just so low at a certain point that the river bed can be seen and the water literally streams at a slower rate, causing the river rocks to create tiny rapids, like in the photo of a section of the Potomac River above. This could be the norm for certain parts of rivers due to their natural elevation or it could just be as a result of drought and, therefore, only temporarily low.
The photos above are an example of a stream being a small runoff branch of a larger and more powerful river nearby. In areas around the Valley Falls portion of the Tygart Valley River, these little streams can be found cutting into the landscape here and there along the banks. They often have a steady supply of water but some will travel up the landscape and then they could turn out to be something else…
The Run
Castleman Run branches off of Buffalo Creek in Bethany, WV. This is where I would come to study while attending Bethany College.
A run is a just a small stream which holds a very special quality: its path stretches up from the main river into the higher landscape surrounding the main valley. A run is sort of half stream-half brook; it has a ‘mouth’ in the valley fed by the flow of the river like a stream but, it’s areas of higher elevation are natural rainwater runoff paths which act more like brooks carrying rain water down to the ‘mouth’ to be dumped back into the river. As a result of this natural drainage system, runs can be notorious for flash floods.
A run can take you deeper into the landscape or lead you out which explains why many hollows follow along runs- it runs water in a more direct path from higher elevations to the valley below. That is also why the word “run” is typically included in the names of places like this but, at one point, runs in these mountains took on a very special alternative meaning to certain people.
Due to their nature, runs were very significant in the times of the Underground Railroad when survival or freedom meant knowing that you need to follow the brook to the run through the hollow then wait at the ‘mouth’ to the river in the valley. Follow the creek or crick by mistake and you could end up going deeper into the landscape and fall into the hands of the wrong neighbor who will have no qualms about letting bounty hunters know about this secret little ‘through-way’ for escaped slaves.
The Brook/Creek
Brook is often interchangeable with creek but, again, in the mountains we have to be a little more specific sometimes. Brooks and creeks are just small streams. They can be their own entity and carry water from a highland directly down to the valley below or they can feed into a run or stream. There is no exact science in determining the difference between a brook and a creek other than observing elevation and even that is hit-or-miss depending on the landscape.
However, if you had to try and take a guess and determine if you are beside a creek or a brook the first thing to do is look and listen to the water. Does it look like it is flowing with gravity? Does it sound like a cup that’s slightly overflowing in your sink, the little trickle of water falling down sort of ‘babbles’ as it runs down and hits the bottom? Then it’s a probably a brook.
Or, is the waterway rather level for the most part? Does it serpentine through the landscape, occasionally rising and falling while it twists and turns? Does it sound a little more like water pouring out of a hose than a container overflowing? Then it’s probably a creek which is typically found on slightly lower elevations and it’s flow has less to do with gravity and more to do with water pressure.
The Crick
Last but not least we have the crick. Now, cricks aren’t always there in the form of water but their path is still a permanent gouge in the landscape. More often than not, cricks only really flow after heavy rains.
My friend, Becky, evaluating the crick below. If you look closely, you can see there is some water in there but the gap that remains in the land is the real reason for the footbridge
In Appalachia, we consider our folklore and oral storytelling traditions to be very credible sources of information, often more credible than any ‘official’ report on an event. In places where ‘official’ reports mean revealing only the information which has been ‘company approved’ (like accurate reports on the number of victims in mine disasters) and especially in times when the company owned you as much as it owned the house in which you and your family lived, oral storytelling tradition was known to be the real and trusted account of how it went down, told by the people who lived it or knew those who did.
For example, in the case of the Monongah Mine Disaster which occurred in West Virginia on December 6, 1907, we now know that the accepted ‘official’ number of 365 fatalities, including their names, was given by the coal company and it is nothing more than the list of those on the payroll at the last pay period of the month prior. Though the list does include miners who were lost, like my great-great-grandfather, the ‘official’ list does not include those who worked off-the-books as subcontractors for payroll miners (many of whom were boys as young as 10 or 12), those who were hired onto payroll in the few weeks prior or those known to have gone into the mines looking for work that day, nor does it even include the names of B&O Railroad employees on loan to the coal company or the insurance salesman killed inside the mine while selling life insurance to the miners. Thanks to Davitt McAteer’s 20+ years of detailed research and subsequent book, Monongah: The Tragic Story of the Worst Industrial Accident in U.S. History, we know that the most accurate count of victims came not from the experimental American Red Cross survey, or the ‘official’ coal company reports or surveys, but from the surveys done by the local parish priests of the Italian and Polish Catholic churches.
“… independent surveys by the parish priests of Italian and Austro-Hungarian members of the two immigrant churches was 410. When added to the ‘Americans’, both black (11) and white (74), and the Turks (5) the total comes to 500, so it is reasonable to conclude that the disaster at the Monongah mines certainly claimed in excess of 500 lives and probably more than 550 men.” (McAteer, pg. 241)
However, this total of at least 500 lives is no shocker to the people of Monongah. Ask anyone who grew up there or has heard tales of the disaster from family elders. We have always known. For us, it is historical fact that the number of dead, especially our dead children, was far higher than the company ever wanted to publically admit. To the rest of the “outside” world, it’s whatever the ‘official’ sources say and what exactly counts as an ‘official’ source could change depending on where you are in the country or in the world. There are areas of Italy where Monongah is still a familiar name, but they may also claim that over 1,000 people died in the disaster. Misinformation over the better part of the last century has led many in other countries to believe that Monongah’s Breaker Boys were located inside the mines, not across the river in the tipple.
So, how do you know what or who to believe? Well, that’s always a difficult question, but getting to the truth inside the tales of mountain people really just takes a little extra effort in understanding. Your starting perspective will always make a difference when it comes to analyzing anything unfamiliar as it reflects your personal biases.
To “outsiders”, mountain people are famous for “tellin’ tales” or “spinnin’ yarns” – a phrase which likened our oral storytelling tradition of history lessons with important messages of morality to the way one weaves a long thread from many small fibers. Eventually, it was turned into a phrase conveniently synonymous with “lies” that worked so well during the 20th that many of the local people now think of them as nothing more than “tall tales” like those of Paul Bunyan and his giant blue ox, Babe.
To the mountain folk, “outsiders” are notorious for being over-privileged and dismissive – with access to better education and living resources, they are more likely to side with and willingly listen to those who match their own standards, like those of the non-mining middle class or the elite extraction barons. Even Ruth Ann Musick acknowledged this suspicion as a significant barrier in her process of collecting WV folklore. In her introduction of The Tell Tale Lilac Bush, she discusses that the, “…elderly people will often hesitate to make known to a stranger what they might willingly tell a younger friend or relative.” This is why she credits every book and so many of the tales to students whom she had to enlist in order to collect these tales from their rural home towns. Despite Musick’s love and respect of the place and its people, she was an “outsider”, an “academic”, the type of person who typically exploits our traditions and perspectives to enforce common stereotypes for personal gain as if we are some new zoological study.
Even I, an educated Millennial, today, would trust my 5 year-old nephew with certain local tales that I wouldn’t dare share with an academic peer from the “outside” and my reasons are all based on personal experience of being dismissed by these same types of academics for no other reason than they are convinced that their way is the ‘right’ way and any other way of thinking is a “lesser than”.
If you want to believe from the get-go that the only sources of information which are credible are those which are documented by ‘educated’ or ‘trained’ sources making them “more reliable”, that is your liberty. But, it also means you are only willing to consider the things which are easiest for you to understand in the manner of thinking which you already possess.
As one who grew up in Monongah and its public schools then proceeded to get an advanced ‘credible’ education, I have a perspective which the average ‘credible’ outside source does not – one that learned to find the truth within the tales before learning the forms considered to be standard or ‘credible’, which makes me a translator of sorts.
But, if you are willing to try just a little harder to call out and then put aside your biases, to use your basic education as a guideline rather than a rule book, you will start to see between the ‘yarns’ and begin to tell the difference between the tiny fibers of fact and fiction.
A mountain local will probably ask, ‘Who do you really want to believe? The people who knew them in life, buried their bodies and mourn them still, or a company who, for the first time ever in Industrial history, was suddenly coming under a real public outrage at the staggering loss of life and demanded the company be held financially accountable for everysinglevictimand was beginning to be used as reason to establish federal regulation laws on mine operators and their practices?’.
Or, to put it in a more relevant example, if the current administration and other sources considered ‘credible’ told you that the death toll in Puerto Rico was still under 1,000 when the locals and other on-site sources are telling you it is over 3,000 at this point, who do you want to believe and how does that influence your starting perspective on finding the truth of the situation in Puerto Rico?
Excerpts from published articles on Monongah were frequently used in the Progressive movement over the following 20 years in attempts to abolish Child Labor in America. Unfortunately, since the ‘official’ report does not claim any victim this young, despite this being taken from news reports on-site and local people confirming his identity and age, it is considered vintage “fake news”.
My name is Katie and I was raised in the tiny town of Monongah located in the hills of West Virginia. I started this page as a way to simply organize my thoughts and some of my research pertaining to the Monongah Mine Disaster of 1907. I am working on a personal project about Monongah and decided to create a space to share some of my research and reflections on what I have found.
Monongah has a very rich history and very few realize the critical role it played in creating some of the major cities and lifestyles of the average American today.
Though this blog is about research into an important event in American history, it is not intended to be formal. My posts could vary in length and there may be a time or two where I simply journal on some ideas and the views expressed in them will be entirely personal. I will do my best to cite any information or direct readers to places where they can find more information on the topic.
I’m still rather new to this whole blog thing so, I appreciate your patience with any beginner’s mistakes I make (it will happen) and apologize in advance if I left out any important information or posted something wrong.
That being said….let’s roll!
Back when Monongah was all I knew….
I spent the first five years or so of my life in a large house at the end of a ‘rural road’, now called Pine Oak Lane, on top of a large hill, now called Shenasky Hill. Though this area is generally considered to be part of west side Monongah, it’s actually located just past town line in an area known as Thoburn.
I attended Monongah Elementary, Monongah Middle, then graduated from North Marion High School in 2002.
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I was on one of the local T-Ball teams.
The only girl – that’s why I chose the #1
I participated in Little Miss Monongahfest pageants.
I was raised Roman Catholic and was baptized and received First Communion at St. Peter’s in Fairmont. We switched to Holy Spirit in Monongah once it got a new priest.
I briefly took dance lessons at Movements in Dance in Fairmont.
I attended the Governor’s Academy in Middle School.
I was a North Marion “Noteable” for a few years.
No, I do NOT want to sing “Country Roads” and please don’t give me grief if my eye twitches uncontrollably as you sing away.
And though prom wasn’t my bag, I still love my dress.
I attended Marshall University in Huntington, WV for my freshman year of undergrad. But, money was just too tight for me to continue school so far from home so, I moved back home, took a few years off of school and got a job delivering pizza around Fairmont.
I eventually went back to college and attended Fairmont State College while it was in its transitional period to University status. It was an epic mess but, while I was there I was required to take a nationwide standardized argumentative essay test and, even though I went into that test with every intention of failing, my brain kicked into that mode (like it does) and I ended up scoring better than 98% of the rest of the country. This earned me a grant to attend any college of my choosing in WV and the state would pay 75% or so of the tuition.
Enter: my Alma Mater, Bethany College in Bethany, WV.
I studied Visual Art and was very active in the college Theatre department.
Costume and makeup for Tommy. Yea…that’s my hair. Not a wig. I bleached, dyed, sponge rolled that beast and rocked it for months following.
So active, that professional theatre was my first employment right out of college.
You may have seen this floating around the internet before. The story behind it is…priceless. I still keep one of the bricks in my car.
I graduated from there in 2009 but, I had to leave my graduation early so we could hop in a car and drive the 2 hours back to Fairmont to see my brother graduate from Fairmont State on the same day. At the end of the summer, which was actually quite eventful, I moved to Detroit. I did my internship with the Jewish Ensemble Theater and from there I did the typical TD/Designer freelance thing for several years.
Cast and crew of Diary of Anne Frank, JET, 2010
“Union Break” at Meadowbrook Theatre Scene Shop, 2012ish
Now I reside in Indianapolis with my fiance, Chris. At one point, as it tends to happen for some people, I got a bit of a “calling” into Death Care and have shifted my focus from professional entertainment scenic design and construction to end-of-life and death care.
I can promise you this much: this place may be my home and my bias is firmly rooted in it and its people but I don’t love it enough to glorify it nor do I hate it enough to demonize it; it is what it is. And what it is…is just fucking weird, dude. — Katie Orwig (KtO)
The Monongah Disaster 