Darr Mine victims remembered
CONNELLSVILLE – Nearly a century after the Darr Mine explosion claimed the lives of 239 men and boys, representatives of a national Hungarian organization came to pay their respects Thursday. Members of the William Penn Association, a non-profit fraternal benefit society with headquarters in Pittsburgh, stood in the rain at St. Emery’s Hungarian Roman Catholic Cemetery in Connellsville while membership activities manager Endre Csoman laid an arrangement of red and white roses at the base of the Darr Mine Monument.
“We feel close to the coal miners because our society was founded by coal miners,’ Csoman said in explaining the reason for making the trip.
The members – wives of the national board of directors who are meeting this week in Pittsburgh – came to visit monuments dedicated to the Darr miners at St. Emery’s Cemetery and at Olive Branch Cemetery near Smithton. Erected in 1909, the monuments are written in both Hungarian and English and refer to the miners as “martyrs.’
In addition, the members visited the Coal and Coke Heritage Center at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus to learn about the life of coalminers and coke workers.
“When you’re older, you shouldn’t allow your mind to idle. I’m 73 and I’m learning something every day,” said Joan Tomczak, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, now living in Lakeland, Fla.
Betty Vargo of Montgomery Village, Md., whose father-in-law was a Pennsylvania coal miner, said she didn’t even realize how hard life was for these coal miners and their families, and she called the visit to the monuments a “great idea
“And it’s good for adults to bring children with them to see what the past was like. …We heard that coal mining was difficult, but when you see all this, you realize it really was a rough life.”
Ann Toth, a member of the William Penn Association and Bobtown resident whose family formerly lived in Connellsville, made local arrangements and spoke to the guests. Toth and others have worked diligently to maintain the Darr monuments. She noted that 10 Darr miners are buried in St. Emery’s, 53 others are in cemeteries in Connellsville and 71 are buried at Olive Branch.
At St. Emery’s Cemetery, Toth explained some of the history of the explosion of the Darr Mine, which was owned by the Pittsburgh Coal Co. and located on Jacobs Creek at Van Meter, Westmoreland County. She noted, ironically, that some of these same families had lost loved ones just days before when 34 men were killed on Dec. 1 at the United Coal Co.’s Naomi Mine.
“There was no welfare then. If you wanted to eat, you’d go where the work was,’ said Toth. “So maybe you had a husband or brother killed in Naomi. Two weeks later, the rest of your family may have been killed at Darr.’
With the death of 361 men on Dec. 6 at Fairmont Coal Co.’s Monongahela Mine, December 1907 came to be called “The Dreadful Month.’
The Darr explosion could have had a higher death toll except that 200 miners did not report for work that morning, choosing instead to lose a day’s pay. They were of the Orthodox faith and were in church to observe the feast day of St. Nicholas when the explosion occurred at 11:30 a.m., shaking the ground like an earthquake.
After Csoman laid flowers at the monument Thursday, the Rev. Alexander Jalso, a Hungarian native who is a retired United Presbyterian minister living in Brownsville, said a prayer he wrote for the Darr miners in both Hungarian and English that recalls their struggles as immigrants to a new land. His prayer reads, in part, “The immigrants who came here to find a better world through an unexpected disaster had to continue their journey to the eternal home. May they rest in peace and let their memories be blessed.’
The staff members of the Coal and Coke Heritage Center are among those striving to maintain the memory of coal miners such as those killed at Darr.
Dr. Evelyn A. Hovanec, retired Penn State professor, author and director of the Penn State Coal and Coke Heritage Center, also spoke at St. Emery’s Cemetery, noting the ceremony honored and celebrated the lives of these men and their families.
The immigrants who came to work the coalfields and coke yards had a significant impact on this region. Before 1860, Hovanec told the group, Fayette County had a population of 39,000 people, predominately English, Scots-Irish and German, who were largely employed in agriculture. That would change rapidly as the area became industrialized and coal and coke became a driving force. Immigrants from eastern and southern Europe poured into the region with little idea of where they were headed.
“Most had no concept of where they would end up,’ said Hovanec, whose own family is Slovak and whose father was also a coal miner.
She noted they came to the area without training and unable to speak English. It was worse for the women, who stayed in their homes and didn’t learn English until their children went to school.
Speaking of the sacrifices of the Darr miners, Hovanec said, “They gave their lives to raise their families and to their country who sometimes forgets to say thank you.’
She urged the members to share their heritage with their children.
Later at the Coal and Coke Heritage Center, Csoman agreed: “We need to pass on our heritage and honor those who paved the way for us. If not for them, we wouldn’t have the freedom we enjoy. I came from Hungary, but I didn’t go through their suffering and pain. I’m ever grateful for what they did for the generations to come.’