Mary and Anna: The Coal Miner’s Daughters

There is an old saying that the apples don’t fall far from the tree, meaning kids often turn out a lot like their parents. That certainly is true of two friends of mine, Mary Hopton and Anna Kushon, of Carmichaels, PA.

Mary and Anna are sisters, one year apart in age. Daughters of Cosmo and Dorinda Sorgiovanni, humble Italian immigrants, they grew up in a small coal mining patch town in Greene County, PA. Their father toiled hard in the mines for 36 years, while their mother sewed, raised animals, gardened and canned to feed her family of six children on a very modest income.

I had the privilege of hearing Mary and Anna reminisce about their childhood recently, just after Anna’s 75th birthday. Stuffed to the brim with angel food cake topped with glazed strawberries and whipped cream, and warmed by a nice cup of coffee, I heard a wonderful story that was sad, inspiring, warm and funny all rolled into one.

Life for the PA coal miner was a very difficult one, full of hard work, uncertainty and danger. Long hours, low wages, and unfair labor practices were common. Daily, miners faced the possibility of injury and death from floods, fires, suffocation from gas, explosions or cave-ins. Women who kissed their husbands goodbye in the morning were never sure until they came back home if they would ever see their loved ones again. Many men lost their limbs, injured their knees and backs, and suffered from black lung disease. Because there were no unions in the early days, these hardships were borne by the miners and their families. They received no compensation or help from the mining companies.

The economic life of the mining town was designed so that the mining company held an iron tight grip over their employees. In many ways it was a system akin to slavery. Miners were required to buy, maintain, and repair their own equipment and supplies and purchase them from the company owned store---along with all the other necessities of life---food, furniture, clothing, and dry goods. Their homes were company owned, and the rent they were charged and the cost of all items purchased from the store were deducted from their wages. Come payday, the company often claimed the miner spent all his wages or went in the hole at the company store and was therefore owed nothing. Other times they were paid not with money, but with scrip, which could only be used at the company store. In essence, the mining company owned the miner, his family, his home and their few possessions lock, stock and barrel!

The patch town was generally a close community, made up of varying ethnic groups, including immigrants from Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia. For the most part there was little ethnic strife, and folks got along well, but the diversity in languages could create some humorous situations sometimes. Mary and Anna recall fondly that in the early days of his mining career, their father Cosmo was a driver, pulling the coal out of the mine in a horse driven wagon. When he was placed in a different area of the mine to work, his replacement had a devil of a time getting his horse to follow a single command. After asking Cosmo what made the horse so darn stubborn, he learned that he spoke to the animal in his native tongue, so he couldn’t understand what his new handler was saying to him! Once Cosmo taught him a few words of Italian, the work day went back to normal.

It was common for the people in the patch to put in a garden, raise small animals such as chickens, to hunt and gather berries from the nearby woods, and fish in local streams and rivers. Many made homemade wine, big vats of sauerkraut, and canned a variety of meats and vegetables to see them through the winter. The children often helped in all of these activities, which helped lessen the mother’s domestic burdens and taught them life skills that they would later on use raising their own families.

Due to the crushing work load, spare time was a luxury, and there was not a lot of recreational activity. In some areas the miners organized baseball teams and competed against teams from nearby rival mines. The kids would play stick ball, or “socky ball” making a soft ball from old socks and batting it with their hands. Other games were kick the can, hopscotch and tag, all of which required inexpensive equipment or none at all. Money was too scarce to purchase sporting equipment! Some kids passed may happy hours climbing trees or swimming in the local creek.

Illness, unfortunately was common in the patch towns, and medical care was not good. Although each mining town generally had a company doctor, and a fee was deducted from each miner’s pay monthly to have access to his services, preference in care and better medicines were generally given to the family and relatives of the mine’s bosses, or workers that had curried the bosses favor. Whooping cough, tuberculosis, the grippe, and black lung were rampant. Many miner’s were injured on the job, and many accidents left men crippled. If there were a mine disaster such as a fire or a cave-in, it often took many hours to rescue the miner underground, put him on a wagon and take him many miles away to a hospital. In those cases there were many who suffered massive blood loss, shock, and untimely death. In the day’s before the unions, miners had no health insurance, claims for workman’s compensation for injuries sustained on the job, and no sick pay or disability benefits. A bad accident or a death meant economic devastation for a family. Miners and their families were well accustomed to tragedy and grief, and bore such misfortunes with grace and strength.

In 1920, R.V.Rex, the superintendent of the Lambert Mine in Fayette County began a tradition that was followed in many patch towns---that of erecting an evergreen tree in honor of each miner that died. In that particular area, 13 trees were planted. In later years some trees were cut down and used for Christmas trees, but the first one is still standing, and is over 30 feet tall. It marked the passing of Paul Kochis Sr., who died in a fall on May 31, 1920.

Mary and Anna moved from that little coal patch, married and raised their own families. Both their husbands were employed in the mines. They both instilled in their children the values of hard work, sticking together as a family, the virtue of saving for a rainy day, and the many other wonderful qualities they learned from their humble and industrious immigrant parents. They carried on the tradition of planting large gardens, canning and baking from scratch, and their sons learned the art of making homemade wine like their father Cosmo had done in the basement of their modest home in the coal patch. Both sisters coped with accident, illness and death in their own families and bore their misfortunes with the same quiet grace and dignity of their parents. They have brooded over their own children and grandchildren like protective mother hens.

The life of a coal miner was indeed difficult, but hard work seemed to craft people of strength and character. It is evident when you take a glimpse into the lives of my two friends, Mary and Anna...