Location: US 15/501 at southern intersection with Walter Bright Rd. north of Sanford
County: Chatham
Original Date Cast: 2016
Mining is a dangerous occupation. During the era when the Tar Heel coal industry was at its height, approximately 154 men in North Carolina lost their lives working in the mines. Others may have died in the earlier years whose names were never recorded. Mine disasters occurred in 1856 (two), 1863, 1895, and 1900. The largest loss of life in a mining accident in the state occurred on May 27, 1925, when 53 miners were killed by explosions in the Coal Glen mine in Farmville. To date it remains the worst industrial accident in North Carolina history. The news of the explosion made headlines nationwide and was even mentioned in papers overseas.
The coal mining industry in North Carolina was based in the Deep River region along the border of what are now Chatham and Lee Counties. Although it had its origins in the Revolutionary War era, its heyday lasted from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.
While coal mining in North Carolina was never on the same level as in West Virginia or Pennsylvania, it was still economically important to the state. Mining was originally done primarily for local use, but after 1850 a chain of dams and locks were built to make navigation on the Deep River practicable. Work at developing the fields commercially expanded alongside of the navigation improvements, which were completed by the start of the Civil War, opening up the transportation of coal by water. The Deep River mines became an important source of coal for the Confederacy. Following the war, railroads were constructed to the mines, making the coal even more readily available to such markets as Wilmington and Fayetteville. Due to the relative transportation costs, Deep River Coal could be sold at a lower price than imported coal.
The Deep River Mining and Transportation Company was the first business to attempt to fully develop a mine at Farmville, beginning in 1850. The shaft was completed three years later. Operations were irregular after the Civil War but resumed operation in 1884. The shaft that was the site of the 1925 explosion was sunk by the Carolina Coal Company in 1918. In 1922, Farmville became Coal Glen, and the mine became known as the Coal Glen Mine.
On the morning of May 27, 1925, about 70 men were underground when an explosion occurred at 9:40. Two other explosions soon followed. The cause of the first explosion was probably the result of the ignition of a concentration of firedamp, or methane gas, possibly via a spark from a fault lamp. Efforts to enter the mine were thwarted by the secondary explosions and by ventilation problems. Although there was contact by telephone with some of the miners after the original explosion, there was no further word after the blasts that followed.
Rescue teams from the neighboring Cumnock mine rushed to the scene and were followed by reinforcements from Alabama and West Virginia. Unfortunately, all aid was too late, as the miners were all dead by the time that the situation had stabilized enough for serious rescue efforts to begin. The bodies of 53 men, 33 white and 20 African American, were brought to the surface over the next two days and buried. Identifications were difficult, and early accounts indicated that perhaps as many as 71 died, based on the numbers of mining hats that were missing at the time of the explosion. The disaster as often credited as being the impetus behind the passage of North Carolina’s Workman Compensation Act in 1929. According to newspapers during the summer of 1925, Labor Commissioner Frank Grist indicated that the Coal Glen accident was an argument for a workman’s compensation law for the state.
The Coal Glen mine continued to operate for another twenty-eight years. It closed in 1953, but not before another 14 lives were lost in various small accidents and explosions. Its closing effectively ended the era of North Carolina coal. The U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement filled in the ventilation shaft in 1987. All that visibly remains of the mine is the closed main entrance in the center of the General Timber Inc. plan on Farmville Coal Mine Road. The shaft is flooded with water, and so is not accessible far from the entrance.
References:
“Are Mining Coal in Cumnock Field,” Roanoke Beacon (Plymouth), March 1, 1918
Cecelski, David, “Listening to History,” News and Observer (Raleigh), February 13, 2000, republished as “Margaret Wicker: The Coal Mine Disaster,” NCPedia, https://www.ncpedia.org/listening-to-history/wicker
Chapman, James, Energy and Enterprise: Coal Mining at Deep River, North Carolina (2015)
“Coal,” Tri-Weekly Commercial (Wilmington), June 3, 1854
Cohn, Scotti, Disasters and Heroic Rescues of North Carolina: True Stories of Tragedy and Survival (2005)
“Despair Settles Over Little Mining Settlement as Hope of Bringing Men Out Alive Dies,” Durham Sun, May 28, 1925
Ebenezer Emmon’s “Map of the Deep River Coal Fields” (1856)
“Farmville is Now Coal Glen,” Chatham Record (Pittsboro), November 24, 1922
Fletcher, Stephen, “The Carolina Coal Company Mine Explosion,” LearnNC, http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newcentury/6008
Hadley, Wade H. Jr., “Chatham County’s Coal,” Chatham Historical Journal, 6:2 (1993)
Hill, W. H., “Report of the Explosion of the Mine of the Carolina Coal Company”
“Last Victim Taken From Mine; Death Total Fifty-Three,” Durham Sun, May 31, 1925.
“Mine Explosion,” Devon and Exeter Gazette (U.K.), May 28, 1925
“News of the Week from the State Capital,” item beginning “W. G. Hill, for many years superintendent of the old Cumnock mines in Chatham County,” Robesonian (Lumberton), July 9, 1925
Chatham County Soil Survey Map (1933)
Rachel Osborn and Ruth Selden-Sturgill, The Architectural Heritage of Chatham County, North Carolina (1991)
Reinemund, John A., Geology of the Deep River Coal Field North Carolina (1955)
“70 Miners Trapped in North Carolina Pitt,” Wilkes-Barre Record (Pa.), May 28, 1925.
“Seventy-One Miners Met Death in the Coal Glen Disaster Last May,” Greensboro Record, October 18, 1925
Tullos, Allen, Habits of Industry: White Culture and the Transformation of the Carolina Piedmont (1989)
Vatter, Fred A., Tales Beyond Fried Rabbit: Chatham’s Historical Heritage (2009)
Wilson, Paul F., compiler, “The Coal Glen Mining Disaster,” http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pfwilson/coal_glen.html