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- REFN3426
Custom Field:<_FA#> 23 Jan 1895Died in mine explosion at The Tate Slope.@S08545@Date of Import: Oct 19, 2000 REFN: 210 [Sarah Robinson Tate.ged] James Coffee died in a mine explosion on January 23, 1895. Excerpt from the Hopkinsville, Nera Era: Explosion 1895 -- Sturgis, KY MIDNIGHT EXPLOSION IN THE SLOPE AT STURGIS Not one Man of the Five Excapes to Tell the Tale Four Widows and seventeen Children Left Uprovided For Cause of the Accident DEKOVEN, Ky. Jan 23 An explosion in a coal mine caused by the igniting of gas occurred south of here, near Sturgis, at 12 o'clock last night, and of the five men who were working in the slope not one is left to tell the story of the awful death under ground. About midnight last night a tremendous shock, carrying with it a muffled roar, awoke everybody in the neighborhood, and a party of citizens rushed in the direction of the sound. The debris about the old Tate slope from which an opening was being driven into the Sturgis shaft, soon pointed out the nature and spot of the disaster. Lights were procured and a relief party started in to the hole of death to rescue if possible, the unhappy occupants. Having got through the mass of coal, slate, wrecked cars, etc. left by the explosion, the relief crew came upon the bodies of two dead mules, which were used in the mines, and their worst fears were about to the realized. Loud shouts into the dark pit recieved no reply, and the stillness of death reigned in the rooms whence a foul odor of gas and powder came. At the face of the entry, where a wall of coal of about one hundred yards divided them from the men who were working toward them from the shaft, the five miners of the slope side were found in various position, all dead and nearly all badly burned. The eyeballs of several protruded from their sockets, and the bodies presented a sickening scene. The dead men are as follows: JAMES COFFEE, aged twenty one married. WILLIAM WALTON, aged fifty, large family. ROBERT HALL, aged forty large family. AL HALL, aged twenty unmarried. MILES FITZSIMMONS aged forty five, large family. The explosion was so great that it cracked the roof of the mine near the entrance. When the charred remains of the victims were brought out and recognized by their families their cries and lamentation were heartrending. Not a few miners think the explosion was caused by dust, but the general opinion is that the gas which accumulated in the rooms while the mines were abandoned was rushed forward by the falling of heavy slate in the main opening and there ignited by the lamps of the miners. Three kegs of powder, one of which was opened were found in the mine, the two unopened kegs being exploded and the one being untouched. The mines have been working day and night using a double force, the object being to drive north and south from the shaft and the later slope thus joining the mines together. Submitted by: Betty Sellers Belle Coffee, widow of James Coffee, filed suit against the Sutrgis Coal and Coke Company seeking $15,000 in damages after her husband was killed in the blast. She later settled out of court. Source: A Centennial History of STURGIS, KENTUCKY 1890-1990 by Dennis Kirchner. This was taken from Chapter Seven COAL MINES The Tate Mine.
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1873 - 1895 (21 years)
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