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| Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co.,
PA [A coal company patch town in Young Twp., Jefferson County, Pennsylvania.] [Walston was named after Walston H. Brown, the president of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal & Iron Company.] [Located on the Jefferson Traction Company Railway.] See: Walston No. 1 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 2 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 3 Mine & Coke Works, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 4 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 5 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 6 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 7 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 8 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 9 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Walston No. 10 Mine, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA Williams Coal Company, Walston, PA Williams Mine, Walston, Jefferson Co., PA
Walston No. 1 Mine (ca.1901-
? ),
Walston No. 2 Mine (ca.1901-
? ),
Walston No. 3 Mine & Coke Works
(ca.1901- ? ),
Walston No. 4 Mine (ca.1901-
? ),
Walston No. 5 Mine (ca.1901-
? ),
Walston No. 6 Mine (ca.1901-
? ),
Walston No. 6 1/2 Mine (ca.1912-
? ),
Walston No. 7 Mine (ca.1906-
? ),
Walston No. 8 Mine (ca.1912-
? ),
Walston No. 9 Mine (ca.1912-
? ),
Walston No. 10 Mine (ca.1912-
? ), |
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| The map is a portion of the U.S.G.S. 15 min. DuBois quad
map ca.1924ed. showing Walton and the Walston Mines & Coke Works, on
the Pennsylvania Railroad. (Maps courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C.) |
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| The Coke Works at Walston, Jefferson County Pennsylvania
during a burn of the coke ovens. (Courtesy of the Jefferson County Historical Society.) |
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| Walston Coke Works at night. (Courtesy of the Jefferson County Historical Society.) |
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| Loading coke in wooden railroad cars at the Walston Coke
Works, Jefferson County Pennsylvania. (Courtesy of the Jefferson County Historical Society.) |
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| The Pinkerton Detective Agency, the coal
company's Coal & Iron Police arriving at the Walston Mines, during the
1894 coal miners strike. The coal company's used the Coal & Iron
Police to maintain control of the miners and their families, and protect
the mine buildings during periods of strike, according to the coal
company's. (Courtesy of the Jefferson County Historical Society.) |
| The 1894 Coal Miners Strike at Walston Mines.
The Bell, Lewis & Yates Company brings in scabs to replace the striking coal miners. Dissuaded by the Strikers Men Engaged for the Walston Mine Refuse to Go to Work. Punxsutawney, Penn., June 24, 1894. Some time during last night twenty-five private police of the Bell, Lewis & Yates Company, who had been stationed at the Eleanora Mine, were taken through this place and stationed at Walston Mine. At 6:30 o'clock this morning sixty Poles and Slavs were brought here from Rochester and Buffalo and were immediately taken up to Walston. On their arrival there they were met by a crowd of miners composed mostly of their own people. The police stationed there made an attempt to prevent the miners from talking to them, but the crowd increased so rapidly and took such a determined stand that the police withdraw and called on the troops. The commanding officer with twelve men, who were doing guard duty, went to the scene, but found no unorder. The miners, as soon as the police left, explained to the new men that they had been brought there to take their places and, if possible, break the strike. The new men in reply said that they had been hired to work on the railroad at $2.25 per day, and that they had no intention of taking the strikers' places. The striking miners took them to their houses, and are now feeding them. Some time to-night there will be more new men sent to Walston. The miners say that they do not intend to offer any violence, but they are determined to talk to the men and, if possible, persuade them not to go to work. Late this afternoon two passengers coaches filled with private police passed through here for Walston. The situation at this mine looks very grave, and it is possible that there may be a conflict within twenty-four hours between the miners and the police. At the Adrian Mine the company's old houses are being filled up with a large number of bunks and they are making other preparations for receiving new men. At the two camps of the National Guard everything is quiet. About 1,000 persons visited the xamp of the Sixteenth Regiment at Walston to-day, a large part of them being miners. (from the "New York Times," New York, NY, June 25, 1894.) |
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| A Mine Map of two of the Walston Mines, showing a plot of the mine buildings and the miners houses. |
| HISTORY:
"All of the coal mined for market at the Beechtree mines, on the Rattlesnake Creek, at the Du Bois and the Reynoldsville mines of Bell, Lewis & Yates, and at the Adrian and Walston mines of this company, near Punxsutawney, comes from one coal bed, the Lower Freeport Coal Bed of the Geological Survey Reports. So far we have found no other coal bed in the lower productive coal measures to be of any commercial value." "Walston mines opened 1883, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad having been completed to Walston during the summer of 1883." "In the Du Bois and Reynoldsville region, and at the Walston and Adrian mines, the Lower Freeport coal is large and good, ranging from five to seven feet and averaging about six feet in thickness. It is of first-rate quality and lies well for mining. "The Jefferson county production of steam and coking coal has shown a percentage of increase that is very unusual. In 1881 the county shipped to market only a few hundred thousand tons of coal, and the region was unnoticed as a coal producer, and only locally known." "Now, in coal production it is second to Cumberland and Clearfield, and if its present rate of increase holds will in a few years pass them." "In the coke production the change is even more striking. A few years ago the region shipped no coke, or almost none, and that of inferior quality." "Now the Walston coke of this company is quoted and sold alongside of Connellsville coke in all the great markets, and the reputation and use of the coke spread steadily. There is a great future for the coke trade of Jefferson county." "At the Walston and Adrian mines it is of superior quality for coking. Taking together the size of the coal bed, six feet in thickness, the facility of mining, the unusually good coking character at Walston and Adrian, and the nearness to market, and you have the combination necessary to make a great producing region. It will not be many years before Jefferson county coals and cokes will be as widely known as the coal of Cumberland and Clearfield, or the coke of Connellsville." "Walston mines, now (April, 1887) have 500 coke ovens running and 300 building, making 800 in all." (from "History of Jefferson County," by Kate M. Scott. Syracuse, N.Y., D. Mason & Co., 1888.) |
| History of the Walton Mines & Coke
Works
The coking facility in Walston, near Punxsutawney, stood unrivaled as the "king" of Jefferson Country coke producers. The town and plant of Walston, founded in 1883, was named in honor of Walston H. Brown, who was a New York financier of and first president of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Co. The ovens at Walston were built by August Bauldauf, who emigrated from Austria in 1884. When he arrived in America, Bauldauf brought with him the skills of bricklaying and atone work learned through an apprenticeship in his native land. Soon after landing in New York, Bauldauf make his way to the offices of the R&P C&I and was hired to construct the battery of coke ovens at Walston. John Delaney of Indiana got his start in Reynoldsville area as secretary to Ira Smith, who was associated with the Reynoldsville and Falls Creek railroad and later with the R&P C&I. As the Delaney and Bauldauf families were close friends, John knew the contractor quite well. "At first" he says, "people, especially young people, make fun of Augie because he didn't speak English very will. But by the time he retired, he owned several mines in the area, and his home was a showplace. And he wasn't one of those supervisors who sat behind a desk and gave orders. When they say that August Bauldauf built the coke ovens, they mean he actually built them. The ovens were make of brick faced with stone, and Bauldauf worked right beside that men when they laid the brick and cut the stone." Commercial sales of coke, at $2 per wagonload, began at Walston late in 1884. By 1885, the R&P C&I operated 356 ovens at the site and produced a highly saleable grade of coke form coal mined at Walston and at nearby Beechtree. The coking coal was taken from what geologists call the lower Freeport coal bed, which averaged five feet in thickness. The coal contained few impurities or slate partings and required little washing before being loaded into ovens. Walston also had its own deep well for drenching the coke before it was taken out of the ovens. This combination of good coal and pure water make a high grade of coke, which competed successfully for a decade with the coke of the famous Connellsville region. By July, 1885, 500 men worked at Walston. As the compound expanded, residents of Punxsutawney, while pleased by the presence of a major industry so close to home, also encountered a few problems of adjustment in regards to their new landmark. An 1887 issue of the Balley News reported, "Punxsutawney experienced her first visit from the Walston coke oven smoke last Monday. It hung around the town all day and had a very disagreeable taste." Local pride in the Walston coke plant was justifiable, as by 1867 part of the operation was billed as "the longest string of coke ovens in the world." That year, the Punxsutawney News noted "About one of the grandest sights in this end of Pennsylvania at night is the burning of the dock ovens at Walston. Since the completion and "firing" of the last batch of ovens, the line on the west side is over one mile long - making the longest block of coke ovens in the world! And driving along the road at night, in full view of this serpentine- like line, the spectacle is simply grand. There are other coking districts that have longer lines of coke ovens that are broken by roads, etc., but Walston leads the world with one solid block and one -quarter miles long." Walston, make a sharp contrast to the turreted mansion of the same name that overlooked the Hudson River in upper state New York. The housed in the mining community cost $200 each to build and rented for $48 per year. By 1887, Walston housed 1,800 people. Since major portion of that number were newly -arrived immigrants, a great variety of people lived and worked side by side. In the words of a reporter for the New York Coal Trade Journal, "Walston at this time includes all known nationalities except Turks and Indians, and the paymaster and his assistants find use for nine languages. The coke ovens are burning there daily, and their sulphurous smoke blights everything on the mountains or a mile back." Andrew Mizerack, Ernest, was born on Walston and has many memories of life around the beehive ovens. "My dad came to Walston from Czechoslovakia because he had friends here," Andrew explains. "They wrote to him and told him it was good here, so when he was 25 years old, he dicided to come too. He spent most of his life around ovens. "It was hard work, and especially in the summer, very hot work. Sometimes during July and August my dad would go to the ovens at two in the morning to escape the heat." Andrew, who often helped his father at work, describes the coke process: "A high grade of washed, crushed coal was loaded in special cars, called "larries," which are pulled by small engines called "dinkies". A track ran across the top of the ovens. The larries dropped their load of coal into the ovens through a hole at the top. A worker known as "scraper" leveled off at the top. A worker known as a "scraper" leveled off the coal by reaching in through the door in the front of the oven. He did that so the coke would burn evenly. "The coal was loaded, or "charged", into an oven that was between two hot ovens, so that the newly-charged oven could light itself by spontaneous combustion. When the coal, still wet from cleaning, was first charged into the oven, it would begin to steam. Next, the coke worker would put the damper on at the top, and seal the oven almost all the way up with bricks and mud. Gradually, the escaping smoke would turn blue, then to a thick yellow. About an hour later, the man knew the coal was ready to catch fire. Then it would explode, and you could see the fire spread all over the inside of the oven. When it had settled down, the man would take a tool called a hook, and pull the damper back. "The art of making good coke," Andrew continues, "was a in controlling the damper and the height of the oven door to regulate the burning of the coal inside the oven. Usually in 72 hours, all the impurities were baked out of the coal, and good coke remained. On weekends, though, because we didn't work on Sunday, the coke was left burning 96 hours. To do that, less air was allowed into the oven, so the burning was slower. "To unload, or "pull" the ovens, the brick door was taken down with the hook, and the coke was sprayed with water to stop the baking process. Last, the coke was lifted out with a fork, loaded into wheelbarrows, and dumped into the flatcars." Andrew Mizerack learned about coke ovens at a very early age. "As a boy, I used to go and help my dad," he recalls. "In those days, coke-pullers were paid by piecework, not by the hour, so that the sooner they could get to go home. The men got around $2 an oven, and usually pulled two and one-half ovens per day. That meant that two buddied would pull two ovens each and then together would pull a third oven and get a dollar more each. Often I helped by mixing up the mud they used to brick up the oven doors. "The men enjoyed the piece work because they could do their work early and be finished for the day. My dad thought he had a good job at the coke ovens. He always said that a minor had to worry about natural conditions - weak roof, water, or a bad place - but for he coke workers, it was always the same." To be closer to his work, Andrew Mizerack Sr. moved his family to the "shanties" near the coke ovens. "There were six families under one roof. They were like chicken cooped," Andrew laughs as he tells the story more than 50 years later. "There were two of those buildings, sort of like apartment house. But, there was no plaster on the walls and you could hear the other people talking all around you. Later, when my dad could get a house, were moved to the main town of Walston." From his countless hours at the coke ovens, Andrew Sr. used to create stories to entertain his children. One of his favorites was the gale of the coke oven boss who was tragically killed by a dinkey on the top of the ovens. "Part of the job of the boss was to be the man up in time for work, which wasn't easy after occasional drinking bouts on weekends or holidays. So after the boss died, my dad always said, when it was raining that he could see his fellow with an umbrella, coming 'round, waking up the men to go to work." As coal and coke production grew steadily at Walston, the officers of the R&P C&I formulated plans for the opening of another mew mining and coking plant in Young Township, two miles from Punxsutawney. |
| (Extract from "The History of Coke," By Eileen Mountjoy Cooper. Used with permission of Eileen Mountjoy.) |
| Coal Miners
Memorial Walston Mines & Coke Works, Walston, Young Twp., Jefferson Co., PA |
| Support the Coal & Coke Heritage
Center, a non-profit research center and museum. Want to know more about the women who lived in the coal patch towns? You need this book. One of the few studies done on the women of the coal & coke era. Common lives of Uncommon Strength: The Women of the Coal & Coke Era of Southwestern Pennsylvania 1880-1970 Complied, written and edited by: Evelyn A. Hovanec, PhD 227 pages. Voices of the women tell unique stores of the coal and coke era, plus vintage photographs, documents, maps, and newspaper articles. Hardcover $35.00 Soft cover $25.00 Add $5.00 shipping / handling. Send Check or money order to: Coal & Coke Heritage Center, Penn State University Fayette Campus P.O. Box 519, Uniontown, PA 15401 |
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