The following article was published as a three-part series in the October 4, 11, and 25, 1984 issues of the Breeze.
Introduction and Local Comment by Irene Ambler
The headlines in the CHARLESTON DAILY GAZETTE, published in Charleston, West Virginia, January 19, 1906 (Volume LXXI, Number 369) read as follows:
“Horrible Mine Disaster yesterday at Detroit Mine on Paint Creek,” and “Lives of Eighteen Men Suddenly Snuffed out.”
This tragic news held almost unbearable grief for the victims’ families; but for four Hurricane families, the happening had very special meaning. Four brothers in the Bridgeman family – Peter Bridgeman, who was married and the father of two children, and Melvin, Ed and Philip Bridgeman, all unmarried – lost their lives, as did two brothers in the Snyder family. G.P. Neal, a brother-in-law of the Bridgemans, and A.C. Sovine, added up to a total of eight Hurricane area miners who died in the Detroit Mine at Paint Creek.
Two other Hurricane citizens – William Amos Bridgeman (a brother to the other four), and O.M. “Oat” Bias – were employees of the mine, and would have also lost their lives on January 18, 1906, had they reported for work that day. O.M. Bias did not go to work because he was ill; and the family does not know why Amos Bridgeman did not report in.
The other ten men who died in the Detroit Mine, were: Patrick McLaughlin, Stephen McCardle, Patrick McCardle, James McCardle, James McLaughlin, Claude Saunders, William Miskell, James Miskell, Isaac Snyder, and Isaac Pancake.
Simon Peter Bridgeman was born September 11, 1877.
Philip Henry Bridgeman was born April 17, 1879.
George Melvin Bridgeman was born May 4, 1881.
Charles Edward Bridgeman was born February 9, 1883.
They all died on January 19, 1906, with the oldest, Simon Peter, being about four months away from his twenty-ninth birthday. The youngest, Charles Edward, would have become twenty-three years of age in February, 1906.
Peter, Philip, Melvin and Ed were sons of John T. and Elizabeth J. Bridgeman. The mother died in September, 1892, at the age of thirty-nine; and the father died only one month later, in October, 1892, at the age of forty-. They were survived by eleven children, the oldest, William Amos, being twenty years of age and the youngest, a daughter, Allie, being two and a half years old.
To say that life during that time was hard for the Bridgemans would be putting it too mildly. William Amos assumed responsibility of caring for and keeping the family together. He would rise early in the morning, cook breakfast for the others and prepare food for the remainder of the day so that he could walk to Culloden to work for fifty cents a day. After walking back home, sometimes after dark in the fall and winter months, he would prepare supper, get the smaller ones ready for bed and then cut wood for cooking and heating until his own bedtime. In the summer he would work in the garden with the older children helping out as much as they could. The love and devotion for the family members to each other and their desire to maintain their home possibly made it easier to cope with their seemingly insurmountable odds; but we wonder how they could manage to survive with so little money and so much hard work under such adverse and sad conditions, not to mention that only a few years later four of the boys would lose their lives in the mines.
Florence Bridgeman (Neale) Mynes was only seven years of age when she lost her parents; and she had the later added tragedy of losing, not only four of her brothers, but also her husband, G.P. Neale, in the explosion at the Detroit Mine at Pain Creek. She had been married only a short time to G.P. Neale. Mr. Neale was the brother of Mrs. Kate McElfish, Mrs. Cosby Wood, and Mrs. Addison Neale, longtime Hurricane residents, all of whom are now deceased.
The two Snyder brothers were related to Mrs. Lena Thomas of Tacketts Creek Road, Hurricane. They were listed as unmarried, while A. C. Sovine was listed as married, but we do not have the information concerning his family.
Following is a newspaper story by a writer identified only as “A Staff Correspondent” of the CHARLESTON DAILY GAZETTE.
“Paint Creek, W. Va., January 18, 1906 – Eighteen lives went out today as the result of an explosion of dust in the Detroit mine of Paint Creek, about nine miles from this place. The dead who with one exception are still in the charred house, in which they met their death, are:
“G.P. Neale, Patrick McLaughlin, Peter Bridgeman, Isaac Snyder, Stephen AcArdle, Patrick McArdle, James McArdle, A.C. Sovine, James McLaughlin, Claude Saunders, Ed Bridgeman, Melvin Bridgeman, Philip Bridgeman, Ben Snyder, Charles Snyder, William Miskell, James Miskell, Isaac Pancake.
The only body yet recovered is that of G.P. Neale, which was found about 6 o’clock this evening.
“The explosion occurred eight minutes past twelve, when all the day men, that is those who are employed by the day, as distinguished from those who actually dig coal, were outside at their dinners, or the death loss would have been much larger. The force of the explosion was terrific. The mine is a drift, with its mouth 100 feet above the railroad track, the incline being tolerably steep. The drum house was built on a rock just above the drift mouth and almost out of reach of the sweep of the protrusion from the explosion, but nevertheless it was entirely demolished and the splintered wood from the framework was distributed all the way to the bottom of the incline and some even far beyond in the little valley between the two opposing mountains on the opposite of Paint Creek.
“Great timbers ten and twelve inches square and eight or ten feet long, solid oak, were thrown from the mouth of the mine across the intervening valley and almost buried in the mountain side a thousand feet away. A mule and a Shetland pony used to haul the coal from the entries were tied inside about a hundred feet from the mouth. They were thrown from the mouth of the mine and down to the railroad track, where they struck in shapeless heaps with probably every bone broken and the way by which could be told which was the pony and which was the mule or that either was either was by the hoofs. Nine cars that stood inside the mine a hundred feet or more were swept out and thrown down the mountain side all the way to the bottom. The blacksmith shop stood at the side about ten feet from a straight line from the nearest edge of the drift mouth and its nearest side was torn to kindling wood. “the Detroit mine is the property of the Paint Creek Colliery Company, which was chartered one day this week with a capital of five millions, to take over all the mines on Paint Creek except two. The Detroit mine was turned over to the company on Monday. It was opened in October, 1903, by the Detroit and Kanawha Coal Company, composed of Detroit capitalists. The main entry is driven but thirteen hundred feet and there are not sufficient rooms for many men to work, which accounts for the small number of miners employed. District Mine Inspector Bonner Hill (?) inspected the mine two weeks ago and declared it free from gas, but said in his report that it was very dusty and ordered that means be taken to sprinkle it. This, the new manager W.W. Mucklow, was making preparations to do and part of the paraphernalia was on the ground ready to be installed. It was supposed the explosion was caused by a blast setting off the dust.
“One theory is that someone used a mixture of dynamite and powder used in blasting, a combination that is considered very dangerous. Blasts of this kind were used some time ago and the superintendent ordered it stopped on pain of discharge, but it is thought the order was probably disobeyed today with fatal results. The mine is ventilated by an eight-foot fan run by compressed air, and the ventilation was said to be perfect, leaving no doubt that the explosion was one of dust. The fan was totally demolished and had to be rebuilt and the air pumped into the mine before anyone could venture in, but that made little difference as it was utterly impossible that anyone inside could have survived the shock of the explosion. It was later in the afternoon when the fan had been reconstructed and air was again passing through the mine. Then a party went in to explore. It found that every brattice had been demolished and that beyond where the first one stood there could be no good air.”
(Continued next week)
October 11, 1984
According to additional information we have received since last week concerning the eight Hurricane men who were victims of the 1906 Paint Creek Detroit mine disaster, A.C. Sovine was married to Elizabeth M. Sovine; and they were the parents of Sylvia Sovine Myles, who was a Putnam County school teacher for many years before her death. Sylvia was half-sister to Morris and Betty Jo Wentz. Mrs. Florence Bridgeman Neal (Mynes) was the wife of G.P. Neal; and she had the grief to bear for, not only her husband, but also for her four brothers, Simon Peter, Philip Henry, George Melvin, and Charles Edward Bridgeman.
When Elizabeth J. Bridgeman, age 39, died in September, 1892; and her husband, John T. Bridgeman, age 40, died only a month later in October, 1892, they left eleven children. The oldest son, William Amos, was twenty years of age. The next son, James David, was eighteen years of age. The oldest daughter, Annie, was sixteen years of age. Then came Simon Peter, age fifteen; Philip Henry, age thirteen; George Melvin, age eleven; Charles Edward, age nine; Florence, age seven; Eva, age five; Laura, age three; and Allie, age two.
It took more courage than can possibly be told for the family to stay together and survive. It is almost impossible to visualize how a family this large could be fed, clothed, and housed in that long ago day when work wasn’t too plentiful and jobs didn’t pay much even if they were available. The second son, James David, either had a job when his parents died, or obtained one shortly thereafter; and he helped raise the family, giving them financial, physical, and moral support in every way possible – help that lasted for many years.
The CHARLESTON DAILY GAZETTE, the newspaper which reported the disaster, published glowing accounts about the Bridgemans, about their love and concern for each other after their parents died fourteen years previously and about their struggle to stay together and survive under seemingly-impossible circumstances.
A writer identified only as a “Special Correspondent” in telling his story of the recovery of the eighteen victims of the Detroit mine disaster at Paint creek stated in graphic detail the following:
“Paint Creek Junction, W.Va., January 19 – the Work of rescue in the Detroit mine has been completed, and its fruit is 18 bodies lying cold in death in a morgue improvised from a disused boarding house.
“The only important discovery made was that a number of men met death not by the force of the explosion, as was at first thought was the fate of all, but by the slower, more awful means of asphyxiation.
“Patrick McLaughlin was assisted in his work by his 14-year-old son, Jimmie, and when found he had the boy clasped to his bosom as if in an attempt to save him from the death he knew in his heart was inevitable.
“Two of the McArdle brothers, of whom three lost their lives, were found folded in each other’s arms, as though trying to “double-team” and fight off the grim reaper. They seemed to have sat down to eat their dinner, as the buckets in which they brought it to the mine were sitting close by unopened, and not even turned over by the explosion.
“Others were found in such positions as seemed to prove that they had made some struggle to escape after the explosion had expended its force, but were overcome by the deadly damp that followed.
“All through the night a brave band of workers, led by Deputy Mine Inspector Earl Henry, Manager W.W. Mucklow and Mr. John E. Miner, toiled through the mine, putting up brattices and mending air shafts as they proceeded, having to come out once because the fans stopped and the air got bad, but returning as soon as the trouble had been repaired. From entry to entry and from room to room they went, until in the farthermost parts of the mine they began to find the bodies of those who had perished, and by daylight had brought eleven to the surface. By 11 in the forenoon the remaining seven had been found and brought out.”
(Next week: the conclusion and the poem written by H.M. Kelley in honor of the victims of the Detroit mine.)
October 25, 1984
(Conclusion)
After the explosion in the Detroit Mine at Paint Creek on January 18, 196, there came the sad task of identifying and claiming the eighteen victims’bodies and the arrangements for their burial. Families — widows, children, brothers, sister and parents of those killed in areas outside of the Paint Creek community — arrived by train to claim their dead. Eight Hurricane men lost their lives that day; and their bodies were sent to Hurricane by train for interment. The coffins were unloaded near the C&O crossing on what is now called Mill Road, and taken to a nearby house, where they remained until the graves could be prepared.
The eight men were buried in local cemeteries, the four Bridgeman rothers in a common grave in the old Hurricane Cemetery on Virginia Avenue.
Local victims of the mine disaster were: G.P. Neal; A.C. Sovine; brothers Ben and Charles Snyder; and brothers Peter, Ed, Melvin and Philip Bridgeman.
At the time of the tragedy the United Mine Workers of America were holding their national convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. When they received news of the explosion they voted to contribute one thousand dollars to each of the miner’s families.
H.M. Kelley, a Hurricane citizen living on Main Street, Hurricane, at the time, wrote a poem in honor of the victims of the Detroit mine on Paint Creek. The poem follows:
DETROIT MINE EXPLOSION
By H. M. Kelley
January 19, 1906
Detroit was exited as she never was before
Upon learning that the miners all around
Were rushing up the incline
Their dearest friends to find
But we learn that they were beneath the ground.
The smoke and dust came forth from underneath the ground.
And Oh, how sad a sight it was to see
To hear the women crying and looking up to God
While the rest stood in confusion all around.
Eighteen Union men have perished
Doubtless, covered up in gob
While their anxious wives were waiting,
Also praying to God.
Mothers praying, children crying
Oh, for God to spare their lives;
Not as out will, Heavenly Father,
But for the sake of their dear wives.
We learn that when they found two boys
And McArdle was their names.
With their arms around each other
They had suffered death and pain.
Jesus Christ these two had slain.
Why this was we do not know;
Have their souls gone to Jesus?
We are humbly praying so.
Oh, God, we pray receive their souls and also other ones.
These poor men were working hard
Yes, to earn their children’s bread.
But, alas, this great explosion
Has them numbered with the dead.
If these Union men, dear Father,
Only were prepared to die
They shall wear crowns of glory
And we will meet them by and by
Let us read the Holy Bible
And prepare ourselves to die
Because you know Jesus tells us
As the tree falls, it shall lie.
One poor boys was in a meeting
Two nights before on Paint Creek line
This poor boy was tender hearted,
Noble, true, loving, kind.
And the preacher begged and pleaded;
“Be in haste, make up your mind
For the Gospel Ship is sailing,
Soon you will be left behind.”
As the preacher asked his boy
Confess your sins;
For God’s sake, do
Be in haste and wait no longer
Something bad will happen to you.
Now take warning from this boy
I think __ was his name
Broken hearts are sadly mourning
Has he missed the gospel train?
