OP-ED: The play of history in our backyards
At one time Fayette County led Pennsylvania in the production of coal and coke. This occurred at a point when the state was the premier coal state in the nation and coal was the nation’s primary source of energy.
This made the county an important economic and political hub.
Visiting Uniontown in 1934, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Henry Rainey, rhetorically paid homage to the locale and its prominence, by declaring that God, in His infinite wisdom, had mixed together equal parts mud and coal and “called it Fayette County.”
It’s my impression that a great many people have lost sight of, or maybe never knew, the central importance of Fayette County to the economic wellbeing of the country.
Presidents and Congresses and the news media paid attention to the place. During the labor troubles of the 1930s, the president of the United States was regularly informed of developments in the county. Once, a delegation of county miners met with Franklin Roosevelt at the White House, providing the chief executive with a first hand update.
On more than one occasion, the ladies and gentlemen of the national press corps flocked here. Rocked by violence and seemingly irreconcilable differences between coal miners and coal mine owners, Fayette County became a focal point of coverage.
The White Swan Hotel in Uniontown became the unofficial press headquarters. With a little imagination, it’s still possible to hear the clack of typewriters on the sidewalk outside on Main Street.
Those were exciting days as well as dangerous ones.
Across the street from the courthouse in Uniontown stands a row of older buildings, one of which was used as a meeting place for members of the United Mine Workers. Miners gathered there to debate the merits of continuing to strike despite pleas from union leaders and the government to return to work.
Interrupted by an enterprising photographer hoping to get a shot of the delegates, it was suggested that the miners adjourn to form outside the courthouse. One miner had the wit to voice apprehension that the despised county sheriff at the time might arrest the whole lot of them for trespass or on some other bogus charge.
In the face of adversity, miners – some of them, anyway – maintained a sense of humor.
I rarely drive on North Gallatin Avenue in Uniontown without recalling a tumultuous gathering at what was called Gallatin Gardens in 1922, when a local attorney admonished striking miners to “play square” with owners and operators and the public.
There was once a strip of land off Gallatin Avenue known as the Reagan-Lynch Lot where UMW rallies were held. On April 1, 1934, when the wife of Gov. Gifford Pinchot, the combative Cornelia Pinchot, spoke, shots rang out, marking the bitterness between strikers and non-striking miners.
Not infrequently I sit in my car on Morrel Avenue near Sheetz in Connellsville waiting for the light to change. On my left is the Slovak Club, where union miners debated the merits of the 1922 coal strike, a defining moment in the history of the county and union.
The countryside is dotted with reminders of Fayette County’s rich bituminous coal past.
Down the hill from New Salem is the once handsome Union Supply store, a Frick-run emporium that sold clothing, groceries, just about anything a miner and his family might want or need. Many families were deep in debt to the store.
Across the street Buffington coal patch rises on a precarious hillside criss-crossed by bumpy, narrow streets.
Turning right at Footedale, a little ways down Route 21, allows the traveler to explore Gates patch, reached finally by a slow crawl up bendy Mine Hill Road.
Somewhere yonder is Edenborn, the scene of coal strike violence in successive decades of the 20th century. In 1933, in front of Rowes Run patch, shots rang out and a man was killed. And nearly everywhere the remnants of coke ovens, wasted by years of neglect and obscured by vegetation, are sealed away but still there.
The county’s coal-era past is out there, literally waiting to be seen and experienced.
Richard Robbins is the author of “Troubled Times: The Struggle for Wages, Recognition and Power in the Age of Coal and Coke.” He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.