| On Thursday, May 19, 2005, the 103rd
anniversary of the Fraterville Mine disaster, a
dedication ceremony was held at
Fraterville Miners’ Circle in Leach
Cemetery, Lake City, Tennessee. Lake City was formerly known as the
town of Coal Creek. Over 100 descendants of those miners and friends
were in attendance to recognize the Miners' Circle's placement on the
National Register of Historic Places, our Nation's official list of cultural
resources which define who we are as a people and a Nation. The
dedication ceremony celebrated the lives of those miners.
Click here for the program in Adobe
Acrobat Reader format. |
Official bronze plaque |
 Opening Prayer:
Rev. Roy Daugherty opened the dedication with a prayer |
|
Click on image to enlarge
A portion of the farewell letter
written
by Jacob Vowell before he suffocated
in the Fraterville Mine |
History Lesson about the
Coal Creek Miners
Some
contemporary descriptions of the Coal Creek miners call them “poor,
illiterate, mistreated, and abused”. If they were so poor, how did they
afford these elaborate headstones and how could many of them own their own
homes and land as they did? If they were illiterate, how did they write all
those farewell messages before suffocating after the mine disasters? If
they were mistreated and abused, and if being a miner was such a terrible
job, then why did they literally go to war to protect their jobs during the
Coal Creek War? |
|
Greg Gaylor, great grandson of
Jacob Vowell, reads Jabob's
farewell message |
Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle
sang original songs written for
the play "Measured in Labor:
The Coal Creek Project" |
| Dr.
Eirug Davies, a Welsh Scholar at Harvard, has answers to some of those
questions. The first miners who came to Coal Creek after the Civil War
were Welsh immigrants. They came to America because the English never
liked them. Their problems started in 1787 when the English needed a
way to populate their new colony in Australia. Since they didn’t like
the Welsh, English “Bobbies” arrested and banished them to the prison colony
of New South Wales, Australia, where Sidney is now located. Then it
got worse in 1847 when British Parliament banned the use of the Welsh
language. Since their Sunday Schools were practiced in Welsh, that
impacted the way they worshipped. America needed experienced coal
miners at that time, so they came here to live their lives on their own
terms. |
|
Briceville Church built by
immigrant Welsh coal miners |
Most of the Welsh immigrants who came to Coal Creek were
well educated, only in the Welsh language, not English. The first thing
they did here was to build schools and churches so their children, and those of the other
miners, could be educated in the English language. That’s why so many of
the Fraterville Miners had the ability to write farewell messages after
being trapped underground. |
| The Welsh miners, like those in Coal Creek, celebrated their
heritage by holding annual Eisteddfod cultural festivals. At the ones
in Knoxville in 1890 and Chattanooga in 1891, Welsh miners from Coal Creek
joined miners from ten states to compete in literary and musical
competitions. The judge at those festivals dressed up like a Welsh
druid. After announcing the winners, he drew his sword, and asked, “Do
you want peace or war in the land?” Not knowing if he was going to
honor the winners or lop off their heads, participants yelled, “PEACE”, to
guide his decision. |
Briceville first graders were
tasked with decorating
the ceremonial sword |
|
In that tradition of competition, Briceville and Lake
City Elementary School students this year competed in the 2005 Coal Creek
Eisteddfod Literary Competition by writing essays and poems about the Coal
Creek miners. |
Barry Thacker dressed as a
Welsh druid to announce the winners
of the literary competition
during the ceremony
|
|
Michael Matlock was the grand winner
of the literary competition.
Victoria Wright was runner-up. |
The word “eistedd” in eisteddfod means “to sit”. The
tradition is for the winners to be seated in a ceremonial chair after they
are announced. It’s similar to the way the head of a company or committee
is called the chairman. Also, in the tradition of the Welsh miners, they
used fake names on their entries, so nobody knows the winners until they are
announced. |
|
Dedication of Miners’ Circle
on National Register of Historic Places
The miners of Fraterville were literate thanks to the
schools built by the Welsh immigrants. Those letters were printed in
newspapers around the world. From them, everybody in America knew the name
of a coal miner. It raised public awareness about the dangers of early 20th
century coal mining, starting us down the long road toward safer working
conditions in the mines today. In 1902, 216 miners died in the Fraterville
disaster alone. Last year, 28 coal miners died nationwide while producing
the coal that provides over half of the electricity we use in this country. |
|
Janet Whaley was one of the descendants who read names
of the miners. Her great grandfather Slover perished in the mine.
Janet found cousins and family she had not seen in over 30 years at the
dedication ceremony. |
While we mounted the official National Register marker,
descendents of the miners read some of the farewell messages left by
those miners and the names of the miners on the monument. We left off some of those names because we don’t know them. Itinerant
miners died in the disaster without anyone knowing their names. They are
buried by the abandoned railroad track in Fraterville. |
|
Tony Thomas from Coal Creek and the Mystery Mountain
Boys sang about
those unknown miners. Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle sang us a song
from the play about the Fraterville miners, “Measured in Labor”. |
Tony Thomas and the
Mystery Mountain Boys performed
their songs about the miners |
|
Louise Nelson and sister Marie Morts
lost their grandfather David DeZern
and four of his brothers in the disaster. |
Descendants and friends gather around monument
for special ceremony |
|
We ended our program by hearing from some
of the descendents of the Fraterville miners. The Coal
Creek Watershed Foundation would like to thank
Mr. Tony Van Winkle with the East
Tennessee Development District without whose help in submitting the
application to the National Register, this would not have been possible.
|
Opening Prayer:
