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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 26, 1912
“The Madonna of the Mines” -Photograph by A. P. Risser
From The Coming Nation of May 25, 1912:
Tag: Coal Mine Widows
Hellraisers Journal: All Hope Abandoned for Miners Trapped and Entombed in Burning Mine at McCurtain, Oklahoma
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 21, 1912
McCurtain, Oklahoma – Explosion at San Bois Coal Mine Claims at Least 70 Miners
From the Muskogee Daily Phoenix of March 21, 1912:
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POTEAU, Okla., March 20.— (Special)— San Bois coal mine No. 2, wrecked by explosion and fire this morning, tonight began giving up its burned, mangled and mutilated dead. Five bodies, some of them disfigured so recognition is hardly possible, have been taken from the depths of the shaft and thirty others have been found.
As far as the checking of the missing and the dead made a count possible late tonight between ninety and a hundred men lost their lives in the explosion. Seventy-five coffins have been ordered rushed to the mine from nearby cities.
Thirteen men have come alive from the smoldering shaft and three of them are so badly injured that their death is thought to be only a matter of hours. All of them are hurt.
What caused the explosion is not known but experts working in the rescue party believe that it was due to coal gas. The mine covers several square miles and is of many levels. Many of the entries caved in and the men who were not mangled by the explosion or burned to death are penned behind great walls of earth and twisted timbers. There they may live for hours but it is thought they will die of suffocation before the rescuers can dig their way to them…..
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[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Report Continues from Gertrude Gordon at Marianna Mine Disaster: Story of Lone Survivor
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 3, 1908
Marianna, Pennsylvania – Gertrude Gordon Interviews Lone Survivor
The heart-rending reporting of Gertrude Gordon continues from the scene of the Marianna Mine Disaster.
From the Pittsburg Press of November 30, 1908:
FEARFUL SCENES WERE ENACTED AT PIT MOUTH
[Continued.]
—–BY GERTRUDE GORDON.
Staff Corespondent of the Press
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SOLE SURVIVOR TELLS STORY OF CATASTROPHE
—–The first body taken out was that of Fred Elvarna who is in all probability, the only man living of all who were in the mine at the time of the explosion. He was badly burned and his leg was wrenched, but he was living. In a talk with him, which, with surprising vitality he was able to give within a few hours of his rescue, he described some of his sensations in the mine. He is a bricklayer and was repairing a wall when the explosion occurred.
[He told me:]
I had just put up a brick, and was putting some mortar on it when I felt the explosion coming. It was just like a cold breath from somewhere, not exactly cold, but there was something awful seemed to come and I knew that terrible danger of some kind was there. Of course the worst danger is fire damp, after any explosion that kills more than fire or the falling timbers, and I just threw myself on the ground and dug a hole with my hands to put my face in, and threw my coat over my head.
Of course I did all that in a second and I didn’t really dig a hole, but just scooped out a handful of earth to lay my face in, so that I could breathe.
After the crash I laid quiet for a little and then when I had to move to breathe I tried to look around. It was pitch dark, of course, and the air was pretty bad, but still I could get enough to keep me going.
COULD NOT MOVE.
I couldn’t move and didn’t know how bad I was hurt, but I started yelling right away so that the boys could tell where I was when they came to hunt us. I could hear the men moaning and crying all around me, but we couldn’t get to one another. The men didn’t seem able to talk, and I cannot tell how long they moaned. I guess it was hours, but one by one they stopped, and I guess they all died.
Hellraisers Journal: Gertrude Gordon Reports from Marianna Mine Disaster: Mute Women Waiting, “Piteous Horror”
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 2, 1908
Marianna, Pennsylvania – Heartrending Reports from Gertrude Gordon
From The Pittsburg Press of November 29, 1908:
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WOMEN MUTE SUFFERERS AT MARIANNA MINE
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Bear Their Great, Anxious Sorrow,
in a Benumbed Fashion
-Rescuers Come From the Shaft,
to Be Followed by Others
—–By Gertrude Gordon.
Marianna, Pa., At the Mine, Midnight.-The first thing that struck my ears on leaving the train at Marianna was the hysterical scream of a woman.
With my nerves keyed to a tension by the reports I had heard all the way up from Pittsburg, and the conversations relating to the terrible mine disaster, I expected to enter upon a scene and sights of the utmost horror, but that one scream was all I heard.
“My boy,” calling her son, and that was all.
Not a star shown on the skies, even the moon glimmered but dully, the only light being the points of brightness which showed the presence of the lanterns and the smoking torches flaming in an inadequate attempt to light the darkness. At the mouth of the Rachel shaft, where formerly had stood compact machinery and rough, although completely equipped sheds, was only a shapeless mass of debris. Official-looking men in blue uniforms stood around, keeping black all the people who were pressing to get closer to the shaft.
