A state historical marker honoring 239 coal miners who died in the Darr Mine explosion in Rostraver Township 87 years ago will be unveiled tomorrow in a Rostraver cemetery that holds a mass grave of 49 victims from that terrible disaster. The traditional blue marker issued by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission will be unveiled during ceremonies at 2 p.m. at the Olive Branch Cemetery, Route 981 and Van Meter Road. State and local officials as well as labor leaders from the United Steelworkers of America and United Mine Workers of America are expected to participate in the hour-long event. The marker commemorates a mine explosion on Dec. 19, 1907, that resulted in the state's worst mining disaster and the nation's second worst mining disaster. The disaster at the Darr Mine, a Pittsburgh Coal Co. mine along the Youghiogheny River, followed the Naomi Mine explosion that killed 34 people in Fayette City and preceded a West Virginia blast later that month that killed 361 miners. The Darr Mine disaster is being recognized because it is significant in Pennsylvania history, Robert Weible, chief of the history division of the PHMC, said. The mining disaster was deemed suitable for recognition by an independent panel of historical experts, Weible said. Weible credited the America's Industrial Heritage Project, a program coordinated by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Heritage Preservation Commission, with raising the awareness of the importance of labor in the region's history. "We are increasingly recognizing the importance of labor history and the history of working people in the marker program," Weible said.

The Olive Branch Cemetery, rather than the site of the Darr Mine near Van Meter, was selected as the site for the historical marker because the cemetery contains the mass grave plus the graves of 22 other victims. John Sheppard, caretaker of the Olive Branch Cemetery, said the state historical marker will be placed not far from the mass grave. By placing the marker along Route 981, which connects Smithton with Route 51, more people will see the historical marker than if it were in Van Meter, Sheppard noted. Although he hopes that one day a plaque will be placed at the mining site, Sheppard said remnants of the mine have been removed so visitors cannot see where the deadly explosion occurred. Sheppard, who also serves as president of the cemetery board, has more than a passing interest in seeing the victims honored because his grandfather died in the explosion. He was in charge of a mule team, which pulled carts of coal out of the mine. Even though the disaster is being recognized by the state, Sheppard is upset it took almost 90 years for that to happen. "I've been fighting this for 10 to 12 years. It should have been done years ago," Sheppard said. But "everything (history) is soon forgotten."

The mine disaster is not forgotten by the Hungarian community, which will have ministers from Brownsville and Hazelwood as well as a representative of the Hungarian Embassy to the United States participating in the event, Anna Toth of Bobtown, said. Many of those killed were Hungarian immigrants living in Van Meter and across the Youghiogheny River in Jacob's Creek. Toth, whose paternal grandfather, Istvan, assisted in the futile rescue efforts, said it was the Austro-Hungarian empire which helped many some of the families widowed by the explosion. Emperor Franz Joseph helped to fund the first monument to the dead miners at Olive Branch Cemetery. The Hungarian Federation of Labor monument was dedicated in 1909. Toth's stories about the disaster were passed down from her father, Steve, who was 5 when the accident occurred. Young Steve could not understand why his mother was crying until he went to the railroad tracks and saw some of the caskets laid out.
(Copy courtesy of the Tribune-Review, Greensburg, PA.)

Labor must continue to press for stringent safety regulations in the work place to prevent industrial accidents like the 1907 Darr mine disaster, union officials and area officeholders said during a memorial service Sunday in Rostraver Township.

More than 100 people gathered at the miners' mass grave in Olive Branch Cemetery near Van Meter to remember the 239 victims of Westmoreland County's worst industrial accident. The occasion was "Workers Memorial Day,'' which marks the 20th anniversary of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Monsignor Charles Owen Rice, known as the "labor priest," said the Darr disaster was a reminder that freedom - the control over one's own destiny - is not automatic. "We have to fight for it here. Those poor men came to this country seeking freedom and they found death," he said of the many Hungarian miners who died that day.

Rice said if the miners had had a say about their work place they would have spotted the unsafe conditions and done something about them, but "they were utterly without power." And he warned that working people will be reduced to the conditions of the immigrant miners without an effective trade union movement.

"We have people still dying and being maimed in industrial accidents today," said Rice. "Nothing so bad as that horrible mine disaster, but it's going to get worse as the labor unions lose their clout."

The Rev. Alexander Jalso, pastor of Calvin United Presbyterian Church, Brownsville, offered a prayer in both English and Hungarian. Jalso, who fled his native Hungary during the failed 1956 revolution against the Communist regime, recalled the struggles of immigrants "who came here to find a better world" but faced constant danger in the mines. Said Jalso: "How many widows' hearts were shattered and how many orphans could not find consolation?"

Behind him a Hungarian flag flew below the U.S. flag. A wreath with the Hungarian colors was placed at the memorial dedicated in 1909 by the Hungarian-American Federation.

State Sen. J. William Lincoln, (D-Dunbar), said the erosion of protection for the worker is more subtle now, but just as real as demonstrated by the loss of pension protection in the leveraged buyout of Pacific Lumber Co. or falsified coal dust test results.

"The working conditions that we see existing today are not like they were in 1907, but they're getting close," said Lincoln. "And whenever you see the high unemployment that we've had in the last 10 years, people start getting more and more worried about their jobs."

Said Lincoln: "Can you imagine what it had to be like when word came home to those widows that their husbands had been killed in the mine? There was no Social Security, there was nothing even to bury them, there was no welfare."

Westmoreland County Commissioner Dick Vidmer said the rights of workers and the obligations of employers did not come about by accident. "It has been through the purposive, organizational response of organized labor that has succeeded not only in forcing the issue of safety but in sensitizing the public to the risks, to the perils in the work place," he said.

He called for the updating of safety regulations to address the hazards of modern-day work places, including toxic chemicals.

State Rep. Herman Mihalich (D-Monessen) said memorials and historic mine sites should be identified, possibly by roadside markers. A monument, he said, is also planned to commemorate the 34 miners who died in another mine disaster in Naomi, Fayette County, less than three weeks before the Darr explosion.

In addition to the monument in Rostraver, another stands in the St. Imre Hungarian Roman Catholic Church section of Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Connellsville.

Ann Toth, of Bobtown, Greene County, said her late father, Steve Toth, could recall vividly when his father, Istvan, returned home after the first recovery effort after the late-morning explosion at the Pittsburg Coal Co. mine.

"He saw his father, covered with coal dust, mentally and physically exhausted, not eating, saying to his sobbing wife, Rosza: "No use; nothing can help those poor souls at the Darr mine."

Toth said he could also remember the wooden coffins being loaded aboard railroad cars - the Baltimore and Ohio at Smithton and the Pennsylvania and Lake Erie on the Van Meter side of the Youghiogheny. The remains, she said, were taken to what is now Connellsville's Chestnut Hill Cemetery, which has since fallen into disrepair.

Toth said some help for the families came from Fransz Joseph, emperor of Austro-Hungarian empire, from which many of the Hungarian miners had emigrated.
(Copy courtesy of the Tribune Review, Greensburg, PA.)

Anna M. Toth's grandfather Isvtan (Stephen) Toth helped bring out the dead after an explosion in the Darr Mine at Jacobs Creek killed 239 workers on Dec. 19, 1908.

For much of the past decade, the Bobtown resident has led a crusade to clean up St. Emory's Cemetery located off Baldwin Avenue in Connellsville - the site of a monument to the Darr disaster and the last resting place for 10 of the miners who perished.  It looks like her efforts may finally be paying off.

The Diocese of Greensburg is committed to cleaning up the cemetery "and keeping it mowed and manicured," according Ed Blaskowski, director of chancery services.

The condition of the cemetery began deteriorating after St. Emory's Roman Catholic Church, an ethnic Hungarian parish, closed in 1970. The St. Emory's lot is one of 65 cemeteries the Greensburg diocese owns through individual parishes in Fayette, Westmoreland, Armstrong and Indiana counties. "These places are hallowed ground," Blaskowski emphasized.  With the St. Emory parish closed, responsibility for maintaining the cemetery has passed to Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Connellsville.

"We've been working on it with a more concentrated effort, doing whatever we need to do," Blaskowski said of recent efforts to improve St. Emory's cemetery.   The most immediate need is to remove dead trees standing precariously in the grave yard. Blaskowski said an inspection of the grounds showed "several of the trees are threatening the monuments."  The diocese plans to cut down the dead wood. Blaskowski also reported that Connellsville has agreed to help with the effort, even though no city property is involved.   "We offered to chip any trees they cut down," Connellsville City Clerk Bill Hughes said, noting that the city was happy to provide if the diocese was "going the extra mile" to clean up.

Toth has also made progress in the effort to repair cracks in the obelisk commemorating the Darr miners.  The monument to "the martyred workers" was placed at the cemetery in 1909 by the Verohavay Aid Society, an ethnic Hungarian benevolent association founded by 13 anthracite coal miners in Hazzleton, Pa.

The explosion at Darr took place during the deadliest 31-day period in U.S. mining history, known as "the Dreadful Month." Many of those killed in the explosion were Hungarian immigrants, including teen age "trapper boys." Toth noted that 106 of the dead belonged to St. Emory's.

There is also a second monument and a state historical marker at Olive Branch Cemetery near Smithton where more victims of the Darr disaster are buried.

Al Vargo, former president and current board member of the William Penn Society (successor to the Verhavay), said the St. Emory monument was also meant to remember other ethnic groups such as the Polish, Slovaks and Italians who were "fighting for the same causes we were."   "We're taking care of the restoration of the monument," Vargo said. "We're going to try to get the whole board to come down in the spring."

In the meantime, Toth is working directly with Davis Monument Company in Scottdale to encase the bottom of obelisk to prevent further cracks. That work could possibly be finished by the anniversary of the Darr disaster Dec. 19.

Although Toth has been lobbying for improvements to the grounds for years, the effort came to a head last summer when she called an outdoor meeting at the cemetery, attended by Blaskowski, Hughes, state legislators and others. Toth has since praised the efforts of Blaskowski in moving the effort along, while downplaying her own role.  "I don't want admiration or praise," she insisted. "All I want is to see (the cemetery) cleaned up as it was at the turn of the century."

The meeting last summer coincided with a visit to the area by Dr. August Molnar, president of the American Hungarian Foundation in New Brunswick, N.J.   Molnar visited several cemeteries where immigrant Hungarian miners are buried during that trip to Pennsylvania and Virginia.   He said cemeteries are important to the community because of the history they represent, and he described them as "monuments to the anonymous."  "Without the work of these folks, America would not be America," he said.

CHESTNUT HILL

The St. Emory lot is just one section of the larger Chestnut Hill Cemetery. The greater part of Chestnut Hill is located off Wills Road, overlooking St. Emory's. Immaculate Conception maintains the St. Joseph's section there; The Chestnut Hill Cemetery Association maintains another large section.

Bill Foley, the current president of the association, credits Richard and Barbara Husband with starting the group in 1987.

The corporation that had run the cemetery went out of business decades ago, and while some families gave good care to individual plots, other sections were overgrown and their tombstones overturned. "It was in awful shape," Foley said.

After more than a decade of hard work, Foley said association members have managed to turn "a wilderness" into a cemetery in "pretty good shape."   The same cannot be said for the Old Connell section adjacent to St. Emory's off Baldwin Avenue.  The section was carved out in 1900 to move the remains from an existing graveyard to make way for the construction of the Carnegie Library.

The then Connnellsville School Board was involved with the creation of the Carnegie Library and the relocation of the cemetery to Chestnut Hill, according to Toth and others.   Toth cites a page in the "Centennial History of Connellsville" that notes the sale of the Chestnut Hill section to the school board.

Foley appeared before the Greater Connellsville Area School Board in 1995 to request that the district assume responsibility for the land.   But Connellsville Area Superintendent Gerald Browell said there are no records that the school district owns the land, and they can not accept responsibility if a link isn't established.

The .6 acre lot is abandoned and no one, it seems, is responsible for its maintenance.

(Copy courtesy of the Tribune-Review, Greensburg, PA)

Restoring St. Emery's Cemetery in Connellsville has brought history alive for Ryan Rumbaugh and fellow Scouts in Troop 111. It has also changed their outlook on deteriorating historical sites.

The restoration was initiated when Ann Toth suggested Rumbaugh's scout troop care for the run-down cemetery once affiliated with St. Emery's Hungarian Catholic Church, which closed in 1970. Rumbaugh chose the restoration as an Eagle Scout project.

"To see the parents of these young men put their efforts down there is something no money can buy," Toth said. "It is a personal satisfaction for both of us and we are going to be at this a long time."  Toth also lauded the efforts of Scout leader Karl Butchko.

In conjunction with the restoration, Rumbaugh and his fellow scouts are adding shrubbery and a flower planter.  The scout troop will also provide the continuing care.  Ann Toth of Bobtown shared her knowledge of the cemetery with the scouts as they raked and trimmed around tombstones.

Numerous tombstones broken on the ground are difficult to turn over and read due to deterioration and vandalism, she noted. Many are stones belonging to men who lost their lives in an explosion at the Pittsburgh Coal Co. Darr Mine at Jacobs Creek, Westmoreland County.

The disaster at the Darr mine that claimed 239 lives was the worst in Pennsylvania's history and one of a series of mining catastrophes across the country that gave December, 1907, the name "the Dreadful Month."

"Some stones are marked, Dec. 19, 07 are down and they (the scouts) can't turn them over," Toth said. "We only had a listing of ten men buried here, but I am finding more in the books at the IC Church."

The St. Emery Church parish, which included missionary churches along the Youghiogheny River at Dawson, Star Junction, and Whitsett, lost 110 members in the explosion. Some of the 63 bodies that were taken up river are buried in Chestnut Hill Cemetery on Wills Road.

While Toth's grandfather, Stephen Toth, helped pull bodies from the mine after the explosion his family worried he was among the casualties, she said.   The snow was knee-deep when casualties were brought to St. Emery Cemetery by horse and wagon and were buried in hand-dug graves, Toth explained.

In 1909 the Rev. Robert Paulovits helped place a monument in St. Emery Cemetery and also in the Olive Branch Cemetery in Van Meter, near Smithton.  "Both monuments have in common the oak leaf cluster, the date and the words `martyred laborers' and Hungarian and English translations," Toth said.

Toth said historians who ask why the names of the lost men aren't on the monuments are told it "was dedicated to them, but there were so many unidentified (men) the records are not accurate."   She mentioned a common grave used for 71 unidentified men in the Van Meter cemetery.

Emperor Fransz Joseph of the old Austro-Hungarian empire paid for there.

"They used the word `martyred' because the coal barons didn't care about the men because there was always another load of (immigrants) coming," she said. "But if one of the men hurt a pony or a mule, the company got rid of him and sometimes blacklisted him."

The small cemetery once had a large weeping willow tree, said Toth. All that remains now is its stump. Rumbaugh designed a planter box around the stump where Hungarian babies, children of St. Emery Church members, were buried. One of those babies was Toth's uncle, she noted.   "The baby graves were marked with little wooden crosses," Toth told the scouts. "There are no records. Death came so strong and fast families didn't know what was hitting them."

As the scouts were digging, Toth noticed a white marker. Rumbaugh had discovered a stone that had fallen over and been buried for years.  "It was surprising to see a stone could just fall over and be so perfectly preserved by being covered with dirt for 50 to 60 years," Rumbaugh said. "It tells how poorly it's (the cemetery) been taken care of."

The clearly written inscription on the stone listed the name was Butkoczy Illona, Jan. 24, 1911 to Feb. 18, 1911. Toth told the scouts that the Hungarian and Chinese languages are the only two languages where the family name is given first and the given name is placed last. "Who is little Illona?" Toth asked the scouts as she read the Hungarian engraving on the stone as well as she could. "Here lies little Helen - Illona means Helen. She lies in Heaven."

One stone had the name "Bufano" on it.   "Why an Italian name buried in a Hungarian cemetery?" she asked rhetorically, explaining the man was married to a Hungarian woman.

Toth moved over to where a cemetery gate used to be. "The gate was confiscated during World War II," she said. "Iron was taken here and all over the United States for war use."

She also informed the scouts that equipment used for cutting trees made crevices in the ground, creating uneven soil.

Restoring the cemetery and learning its history has given Rumbaugh and other troop members a living view of history. It has changed Rumbaugh's outlook on the frequent neglect historical sites, he said.  "Knowing the story and what happened here makes it (history) more meaningful," Rumbaugh said. "You learn more than a piece of history - you learn what happened here, things that went on that shouldn't have. They (mine officials) knew about the gases and that the measurements were bad, but they sent the miners in anyway."

Rumbaugh is glad the cemetery will finally get the care it deserves.   "Anything historical should have extra care," he said. "Hopefully some people will read the paper, visit and try to find more information about the cemetery and events surrounding it."   He advises people that rather than overlooking historical landmarks they should look deeper into them.

"There's a bunch of things," he noted. "The Aaron building has just yellow tape around it. It's unbelievable they tore down the old railroad building. They never should have. I always think it's nice to restore it."

Rumbaugh said his project has the support of his scout troop and community. Scout leaders are Butchko of Dunbar; Tom Groomes, Joe Hixon, and Guy Napolillo, all of Connellsvile. Donations for the cemetery refurbishing have come from Better Materials Co., Stone and Co. and Lowes.

(Copy courtesy of the "Tribune-Review," Greensburg, PA.)

Residents, Fraternal Society Mark Restoration of
Darr Mine Disaster Monument
By Jerry Storey, staff writer, "Tribune-Review," Greensburg, PA

Ann Toth is pleased with the progress of the restoration of the monument to the Darr Mine disaster and the reclamation of the grounds at St. Emery Cemetery in Connellsville, but she said some work remains.  Toth, who for more than a decade has led an effort to have the cemetery reclaimed, said that a rotted, leaning tree still has to be removed and some tombstones must be righted.

She would also like to see a state historic marker placed at the cemetery.

The leaders of the William Penn Association came full circle in making a journey to Connellsville last week to pay tribute to their heritage and check on the restoration work at the coal miners' memorial.  Although its name doesn't reflect it, the Pittsburgh-based association is the largest Hungarian fraternal life insurance society in the U.S., founded in 1886 by 13 anthracite coal miners from Hazleton, Luzerne County.

In 1909, the association's forerunner, the Verdohay Fraternal Insurance Society, paid for an obelisk at St. Emery Cemetery for "the martyrs" of the Darr mine explosion.

The Pittsburgh Coal Co. Darr mine at Jacobs Creek, Westmoreland County, exploded on Dec. 19, 1907, killing 239 miners, many of whom were Hungarian immigrants. Included among the dead were a number of "trapper boys" barely in their teens.   The explosion ranks as the worst mine disaster in Pennsylvania history. It was also one of a series of coal mine cataclysms across the nation that December that earned it the name "Dreadful Month," in mining lore.

The monument and cemetery grounds in Connellsville, where 10 of the Darr miners are buried in a common grave, had deteriorated after the 1970 closing of St. Emery Hungarian Catholic Church. The obelisk, a four-sided pillar topped with a pyramid, had developed cracks in its base.

Toth is a Bobtown resident of Hungarian descent whose grandfather, Isvtan (Stephen) Toth, helped bring out the dead from the mine.

"That monument wasn't going to topple," she said.   The William Penn Association decided recently to repair the monument's base and provide funding to help maintain the grounds. Anthony C. Beke, chairman of the association board, said the monument had been lost to history.

The Catholic Diocese of Greensburg arranged to cut down rotting trees that threatened both the monument and cemetery headstones, with the city of Connellsville feeding the dead wood through its chipper.

Toth praised retired miner Henry Indoff for being involved in the restoration from the beginning. Local landscaper Paul Harvey reclaimed the grounds from years of neglect.

Boy Scout Troop 111 from Trinity Lutheran Church, under the leadership of Karl Butchko, is also slated to upright tombstones and landscape the area on an ongoing basis.

Officers and board members of the association from across the country, attending a board meeting in Pittsburgh last week, chartered a bus to take them to the Connellsville cemetery.

Al Vargo, a national director and former president of the association, said they came to Connellsville to pay homage to their Hungarian brethren and other ethnic groups who died in mine disasters.   "We owe it to these people," current association president George S. Charles said. "This is part of our heritage."   Frank Wukovits Jr., a national board member, said it is important "to keep in our memory not just that they died but that they did so much for what we are today."

There is a second monument and a state historical marker at Olive Branch Cemetery near Smithton, where more victims of the Darr disaster are buried.

Rusyn miners from Eastern Europe were spared because they were celebrating the feast of St. Nicholas on the day of the explosion.

(Copy courtesy of the Tribune-Review, Greensburg, PA.)

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