From the U.S. Department of Interior Geological Survey, Irwin Quadrangle, Pennsylvania - Westmoreland Co., 7.5 Minute Series (Topographic) SW/4 Greensburg 15' Quadrangle, ca.1953, revised ca.1969.
(Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C.)

The skilled workers' housing (miners houses) consists of six double houses with clapboard siding.  They are two story houses with gable roofs, four bay, and two-over-two-light double-hung windows.  The Linear Row on SR 3069 comprises approximately forty double houses.  They are two-story clapboard structures with gable roofs and double brick chimneys.  They contain tile foundations, four bays, and two-over-two-light double-hung windows.  The Round Top Road Patch contains approximately fifteen houses.  Of clapboard construction, these houses have gable roofs with double brick chimneys, tile foundations, four bays and two-over-two-light double-hung windows.

Modifications to the coal company built houses include the application of new siding materials over the original clapboard siding, enclosed porches, and room additions.

The School building is common-bond red-brick, with a slate roof.  It has a coursed rubble-stone foundation, ten bays, and stone lintels and sills.  The windows have been infilled.  This building in ca.1994 housed the S & S Chrome Plating Company.

No longer extant are the coal company store, hotel, and community center. These structures either burned or were demolished over the years, since 1938, when the mine shut down.

Only the lamp house of Herminie No. 2  Mine (Ocean No. 2 Mine) remains from the original mining complex.  This common-bond red-brick one-story building has a rubble-stone foundation and was recently, ca.1994,  remodeled as the "Church of the Cross."

No coke ovens or coke works were erected or associated with the Ocean Coal Company's Ocean No. 1 Mine or Ocean No. 2 Mine and most of the coal mined was shipped on the Pennsylvania Railroad to market as stream coal.

In ca.1919 the Ocean No. 2 Mine produced 298,207 tons of coal, the mine worked 259 days, with 262 employees, the Ocean No. 2 Mine had 2 fatal accidents and 4 non-fatal accidents in 1919.  The mine used 30,000 pounds of Black Powder and 4,500 pounds of permissible explosives.

In ca.1920 the Ocean No. 2 Mine produced 312,011 tons of coal, the mine worked 296 days with 288 employees, there was one fatal accident and 5 non-fatal accidents.  The mine used 20,000 pounds of black powder and 4,000 pounds of permissible explosives.

By 1925 the Ocean No.2 Mine produced 247,000 tons of coal and employed 295 persons.

The Ocean Coal Company abandoned its Herminie No. 2 Mine property and closed Ocean No. 2 Mine at Herminie No. 2 in ca.1938 and subsequently sold its company owned houses to private owners.

Herminie No. 2 Mine site reclaimed
The abandoned mine site of Herminie No. 2 Mine located about one mile north of Herminie, Pennsylvania required backfilling two open mine shafts, demolition of abandoned concrete structures, grading of more than 84,000 cubic yards of refuse spread over approximately 10 acres, mixing limestone and placement of one foot of soil cover (more than 16,000 cubic yards) on the entire site, and revegetating the regraded site. In addition more than 1,000 linear feet of stream bank was lined with rock and stabilized. The total cost of the reclamation was $273,882.74.

After about four months work, this abandoned mine site was reclaimed. With the work completed the hazards have been eliminated and sediment is no longer eroding from the land and polluting the streams.

(History and description of the Ocean No. 2 Mine, Herminie No. 2, with additional data and pictures adapted from "Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1994,"  America's Industrial Heitage Project, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, U.S. Department of the Interior, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

A former resident of the coal company patch town of Herminie No. 2, Rita O'Neil Smith relates her memories of Herminie No. 2.

My name is Rita O'Neil Smith. I was born in Herminie No. 2 in 1933 in a double house in which the Namestka's lived in the other half. My father, John J. O'Neil worked in and then managed the company store, which stood across from the hotel, from about 1914 until March, 1943.  His father (William O'Neil) worked in the mine for many years, until close to his death in 1941. His brother, Francis O'Neil, also worked there but was injured after only a short employment (squeezed between two trams, I believe), lingered for several years before dying. I remember the implosion of the very tall chimney associated with the mine, which occurred when I was very young. An uncle, Anton Ucman, a Yugoslav immigrant who came to America in his teens, also worked in the mines for some time but around 1941 opened what would now be called a Kwiky-Mart, a gas station which then evolved into selling candy, ice cream, and eventually even canned goods. That property was directly adjacent to the Washington school; it stood between the school and the slate dump. My uncle and aunt lived directly across from their store. As manager of the company store, my father occasionally drove customers to a larger town called Windber (an obvious permutation of Mr. Berwind's name) to purchase furniture or a large appliance from the central company store, which had a much larger inventory. The village population was very hetergeneous. There were several families which called themselves "Granish", which I later learned represented a region of Yugoslavia. There was a large Granish hall where dances and things like Halloween parties were held. Attendance included children and adults. (There were no babysitters in those days).

Some of the surnames in the village: Strojan, Namestka, Smith, Baer, Clark (the family of the jazz pianist Sonny Clark, was in the same grad in school as my sister Theresa), Carroll, a Polish family which sold eggs , and so on. When we last visited Herminie, in 1991, with my mother (Ann Bush/Bosic O'Neil), Gussie Namestka still lived in the same house as his parents had, but he occupied both halves of the house. A young woman came out when she saw us looking around and identified herself as a descendant of the Carroll family. My grandparents (the O'Neils) occupied a house referred to as the flat, which was directly adjacent to a Prostestant Church and almost opposite the Namestka place.

Rita O'Neil Smith

John Sluga
John and Maria Sluga and their first child, John, immigrated from Slovenia to Herminie No. 2 in 1903.

John Sluga talked about being paid in script that he could use only at the company store; he said the only money they made was from the 8 boarders that they took in. Maria did all their cooking, cleaning and washing.

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