PERRY COUNTY TRIBUNE DECEMBER 2000
Margaret Parker
Taken June 12th, 2004
Company Owned Towns Remembered
By Gary Wilson
Margaret Parker of New Lexington has a sharp, reminiscent memory of coal
mining days gone by when she was under 10 years old.
She has been in a five generation family picture about every ten years
since the 1920's up to the present.
The mining companies furnished homes for the miners in those days. They
were built in straight rows and were called company towns, said Parker, who
has written extensive notes since the mid-seventies on the subject of early
mining days in Perry County, particularly in Rose Farm, which was near
Crooksville.
Margaret Parker
Rose Farm was situated between Stringtown and Deavertown, and was home
of the Tropic Coal Mine, later known as the Manhattan Coal Company and later
the New York Central Coal Company.
Parker has a large collection of vintage pictures depicting mining life..
Pointing to a picture of her grandfather's brother, Willie McIntyre, she
commented, He lived alone in one of those company houses, and as the story
goes, he had visited the little grocery store in Rose Farm, bought five
cents worth of spikes and a piece of rope, and returned home, telling the
woman who lived next door to him, "You won't have to wash clothes for me
anymore" and he hung himself on Thanksgiving Day.
During the winter, rags were stuffed in open cracks of barns and company
homes to keep the chill out. During one February, the Rose Farm Tropic Mine
was on strike, and the strikers would not let the pumpers in to pump the
water out. My father, John McIntyre, was mine foreman at mines 51 and 52,
and had to pump the water out of the mines himself to keep the water from
ruining the generators inside.
It wasn't his job, he wasn't dressed for it, and his wet clothes froze
on him. One of his co-workers told him to go home and change clothes, but he
was near finishing the job and kept them on. And within a week he was dead
of pneumonia at age 38 years and one day.
John McIntyre
McIntyre's obituary described him as a man who lived and tried to
practice the Golden Rule, and quoted Ruskin, who said, "Oh, let me live in
a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man."
Trains would back up to load near the Crown Mine, and the row of company
houses was known as The Crown. As you went through Sayre into Rose Farm,
you would see Delmar Jadwin's general store, the Christie Store, and the
Giles Store on the corner which also served as the town miner's hall.
Parker recalled, At this minerıs hall, there was a store in the bottom,
and upstairs they had church services. On up you had the Pedlow Mine, and
there was a row of red painted houses there on a hill, and this was called
Red Hill. Where the train went through going to Sayre, there was a row of
yellow painted company houses, and this was called Yellowtown.
She continued on describing Rose Farm, saying, We always had flooding
problems, Dawson Ross fell off the trussel once and drowned, and then during
the flood of 1950, the Post Mistress, Alice Thomas, was swept away, and they
found her body in Crooksville on a fence.
Very few of the miners had a car, and they walked a long ways from Sayre
to Rose Farm. Before daylight, when the miners were walking to work, you
could see these little lights from their carbide lights twinkling
everywhere, all over the hillsides. It was a sight to see.
After my dad became mine foreman, he paid $1,200 cash for a brand new
Graham Page car from Dutch Wingtenıs in New Lexington, where Lambıs
Laundry is now. It was a deluxe gray car lined with mohair.
Dad had never driven a car. Back then, people just started driving. The
next day he took us for a Sunday drive to Deavertown, and we got as far as
the Deavertown Cemetery, went to turn around by an old church, and the
starter stuck. Well, here we was. He knew nothing about a car, and it was
getting dark, Dad told us to all push the car back and forth, and the
starter finally shook loose and we were on our way back home.
My uncle George served in World War I, and I well remember him, until he
died. My husband Joseph served in General Pattonıs Third Army, 4th Armored
Division. His tank was hit, he was wounded and later received the Purple
Heart. He had four brothers in the service, and his sister's boy was killed
during the war.
He was gone for two years, and came back in 1944 and worked here at the
tile plant. We were happily married for 63 years until he passed away at age
85.
Parker concluded with, It is fun to remember the good things from the
past. We don't realize what we have today is going to change, and our
children and grandchildren will look back someday and we hope they too will
say they enjoyed a few things about growing up.
What wouldn't we give of what we have to be able to go back to Mommy and
Poppy, to Dad and Mom, just for one hour.