, 1890-06-17
Terrible Explosion of Gas and
Fire Damp in
Hill Farm Mine, Dunbar.
Pennsylvania.
Thirty-Four Miners Lose
Their Lives.
A Young Hero Loses His
Own Life
While Trying to Save His
Comrades.


DUNBAR, Pa, June I6.-This morning
at ii 40 a sudden roar shook the lowly
miners dwellings on Hill Farm. in Fay
cite county, near this place aud hundreds
of affrighted persons who knew the sound
too well and who feared another mine
disaster soon found their a-pprehensions
well grounded. In a moment the fearful
news spread that the Hill Farm mines
had exploded. The low browed hill from
which the slope entered shook from
mouth to pit and a score of miners
houses, lining the fatal hill, shook for a
moment and then poured out their fren-
zied inmates by the hundreds. A rush
was made to the mouth of the pit, but in
gress was impossible as smoke in dense
volumes was issuing forth. Fifty two
miners had gone to work in the morning
and were in the slope when the explosion
occurred. Of these ffty-two eighteen
were in the left heading aud thirty-f four
in the right heading. Those in the left
heading got out all right. The retreat of
the others was cut off and not one
escaped.
Their names are Joseph Brigner
Richard Briguer. Milt Farney, Barney
Maust, Emanuel Maust, Pat Courtney.
j. w. Mitchell, Joseph Bieley, Peter
Eagan, Robt. McGill, Martin Cavene,
John Cope, Andrew Cope, Patrick Der
lin. Joseph Delaney, John Joy, John
Devanney, David Davis, Thos. Davis,
D..l li.L.u w rlu Dbl
Courtney, Jack Mitchell, Dan Smith,
Daniel Shearnas VIM. Hayes, James
McCleary and Elmer Denney. OF these
twenty-one were married and have fami-
lies.
The mine, it seems, had been some
what troubled with water and an air shaft
had been drilled from the surface to a
juncture of the right and left shafts,
where the water seemed to be the most
abundant. As the miners branched off
from this point they knew an air hole
had been drilled there that had not yet
been broken into the mine, but they did
not M the shaft was to be broken to-
day. This shaft, by the way, was a six
inch hole.
A miner named Kerwin had been left
in the right drift, near where that branch
joined the mines exit. and in the course
of his labors broke into the perpendicular
shaft. The moment this was broken into
a food OF water gushed out and Kerwin
and a man named LandY. standing by,
yelled out for some one to save the men
in the right shaft, as the water poured
down the hill in a stream, and he feared
they would drown, Young David Hays,
who had seel the affair, leaped forward at
the call and turned down the left drift to
-~~. HE a.In--.nl -
Just as he passed the air shaft that had
been broken into, the rush of water
changed to an ugly roar which blanched
the cheeks of the men.
The flow OF water had changed to a
deadly volume of fire damp, and as young
Hays swung by the shaft q fash of blaz-
ins light slid through tee shaft from end
to end. 1t seemed that the daring young
man carried an open burniug miners
lamp in his hand, and be had hardly
taken a step beyond the roaring shaft
when a spark ignited the reservoir of
deadly fire damp, and he sank a corpse
ten feet toward the men whom he had
hoped to save, and the men whom be had
certainly doomed. In an instant an I'M
quenchable fire sprang up in the nine foot
vein. just between the main entrance and
in the right drift, forever shutting off the
thirty-twe men imprisoned there.
Poor old David Hays, father of the
mistaken hero. driven mad by the fate of
his son, dashed into the s%ulphurous smoke
and stranglinR fire damp only to fall
blindly by the side of HIS son aud to be
drawn out an hour later with James
Shearn, both recognized only by rheir
wives. The FIRE, famed by the air from
the main drift and from the fatal shaft
itself, soon sprang into an awful confiagra
tion..
The miners from the left drift escaped,
blackened aud bruised, but safe, and they
tell a fearful story of the sight beyond
the blazing coal on the right. Willing
hands and hearts were not wanting on the
outside, and Clerk Cook, with Mine In
spector Keegley, headed a party of 100
who entered the main shaft. and alter
groping on for a quarter of a mile at
least, were driven back again by the
deadly gas only to recover breath for a
moment and again plunge in, to find that
the right drift was impenetrable and no
man living could pass.
They finally came upon two bodies, and
they we're brought to the opening OF the
mine, where two blackened corpses, those
of Shearn and Hayes, the elder, were
drawn into the daylight. A moan went
up from the hundreds about the pit. but
the anguish is as nothing to the silent
watch kept by the wives, children and
sweethearts of the men whose doom was
all the more awful because unknown. At
midnight smoke and gas from the right
shaft poured out of the mine exit in AN
unbroken volume, and after trials almost
beyond human endurance the rescnine
party gave up all hope of ever recovering
their comrades dead bodies.