Franklin—Growth and Struggles of Company Coal Town

Part II—Fire Spreads Death in Franklin Mine

By MaryLynn Strickland

By 1894 the miners of Franklin were working side by side—people who had migrated from Pennsylvania and Ohio, immigrants from Wales and England, single young Italian men hoping to earn enough money to bring their families to the US and black miners who had been “imported” from the mid-West in 1891.  

Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper articles in 1894 related stories of miners striking throughout the United States.  Miners in Roslyn, Washington, had become divided over a wage reduction.  The August 18 paper reported that black miners had accepted the reduction; white miners were holding out and there was talk of moving black miners from Franklin to Roslyn.  Other news of the world dominated the front page of each issue.

Picture property of Black Diamond Museum, permission granted for this purpose

But “Stifled by Smoke” was the headline on the front page of the August 25, 1894, issue.  A full two columns on the front page, complete with a list of 37 victims of the fire and a layout of the mine, detailed the survivors’ stories and the recovery of the bodies.  Subsequent issues of the paper related the movement of coffins from Seattle to Franklin and the funeral preparations for each of the men.  One young man, John E. Hall, was buried at Saar Cemetery, where his headstone is still evident today.  Others were buried in Franklin, Black Diamond, Seattle, Renton and even Cedar Mountain.

The coroner’s inquest the next day determined that the fire itself might not have been fatal.  Two unrelated incidents of human error caused the deaths.  A fan that was supposed to circulate air to the levels underground was turned off.  The other incident was caused by John E. Johns, the gas inspector, who opened a door that shouldn’t have been opened, causing the smoke to double back on the miners.  Johns went into the mine looking for his 18 year old son Evan who was working in the levels below.  The father was found holding his son in his arms.  Both had suffocated along with the other 35 miners.

From page 3 of the same issue, . . “Distress always follows in the wake of a disaster like that which occurred in the Franklin mine yesterday.  There are many more widows and orphans in the hamlet of Franklin today than there were early yesterday morning.  Death stalked in suddenly and deprived them of their breadwinners, and many of the bereaved ones are without means for future support.”  The paper established a fund and daily published the donations that had come in.  Among the donations was $1.00 from “Little boy.”

Throughout the county there were benefits for the relief of the 16 widows and 48 children as well as the older parents and dependent siblings of the deceased miners.  At Madison Park entertaining groups performed daily, among them a group who presented “Underground Railroad” a musical comedy-drama about the trials and tribulations of people who had escaped from slavery.  Also appearing was Fukino’s Oriental Japanese troupe.  There were two shows a day and admission was $.10.

One of the miners John T. Pugh was a Welsh immigrant who was survived by his wife and five children.  The death index gave his age as 29, the Seattle PI gave it as 23.  With five children it is more likely that he would be in his later 30s.  The 1880 census listed a young John T. Pugh, born in Wales, 24 years old and living in Pennsylvania.  With a search of the 1900 census, I found a Pugh family in Black Diamond.  Head of the household was Elizabeth, a widow with five children, who was running a boarding house for miners.  Her two oldest children had been born in Ohio, the others in Washington.

By 1910 she and the youngest children had moved to Seattle.  Her youngest daughter Edith married John A. McCallum by 1920 and in the 1930 census John and Edith McCallum had three children.  Edith Pugh was living a few houses down the street.  It is likely that one or more of their children is still living today.

As I was researching this disaster I looked at lists of the victims from different sources as well as the names I had encountered on the King County Death Register.  I was able to match up names and details for all but one name.  In the death register there is the name originally indexed as Joe Mangicak.  With closer examination I think it should have been Joe Mangiacali.  He was 19 years old and born in Italy.  But that name isn’t in the lists published by the paper.  The only name in the paper that doesn’t match the register is Joe Cassall also listed as 19 years old and born in Italy.

I haven’t been able to find Joe under either last name nor have I found any Mangicalis.  I have found some Italian immigrants to New York with the surname of Casali or Casale.  And I found a few Mangiacasali immigrants in the early 1900s.  One of them signed his naturalization papers “MangiaCasali”.  I wonder.

What of the others?  They were Welsh, Swedish and Italian immigrants, African Americans and laborers who had followed the coal companies across the nation.  What happened to their families?  Do they have gravestones in our local cemeteries?  So much more research could be done on this one incident and the families involved.

For more information about this fire and a list of their names, go to historylink.org, keywords, franklin mine.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer August 1894, accessible at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
Sources: King County Death Index 1881-1907
Historylink.org
Black Diamond: Mining the Memories; compiled by Diane and Cory Olson for the Black Diamond Historical Society
One Hundred Years Along the Cedar River; Morda C. Slauson, reprinted by Maple Valley Historical Society
US Census records: 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930