'Oh God, for one more breath'
In the cold, choking blackness of the Fraterville Mine, death whispered their names one by one
By Fred Brown, News-Sentinel Senior writer
May 12, 2002
FRATERVILLE -- Monday, May 19, 1902. At 7:30 a.m. in Coal Creek, another spring day is unfolding.
Wildflowers dot the hillsides and mountains of Anderson County, their bright blooms poking through the long green grass. They paint a peaceful scene in a place where, a dozen years before, bullets whined through these same mountains during the coal wars between miners, state militia and convicts.
But the coal mine convict lease system at the end of the 19th century had finally been suspended. Coal mining has become a mighty sword in America's emerging Industrial Revolution, and Coal Creek and Briceville are the epicenter of the state's transformation.
Although Coal Creek is quiet on this soft spring morning, it is not destined to remain so. Coal Creek, Tennessee, the Southeast and every single person in Briceville and Coal Creek are about to experience a catastrophic day, almost biblical in its wrath, which will become a tale that is told down through the generations.
In those early-morning moments of May 19, most of the men and boys of Coal Creek have left home to make the long walk to the Fraterville Mine. They labor three miles beneath the ground five days a week, 10 hours a day, 50-plus hours a week for 17 cents per ton of coal removed.
The walk to Fraterville, about four miles along the Southern Railway tracks, starts before daybreak so the men will arrive at the mine in time to catch a ride on the mantrip, a coal car-like vehicle pulled by short, stubby mules bred specifically for rugged mine work.
If they miss the mantrip ride, the men have to walk in bent over beneath a coal seam that is four feet from ceiling to floor in most places, less in others. And walking three miles bent over with all your tools and lunch pail is not the ideal way to begin a day's toil. Your back is already broken before the pick and shovel work begins.
Shortly after 7:30 a.m., word arrives in Coal Creek that Fraterville Mine has just exploded. This seems impossible, because no one in Coal Creek has heard so much as a bump from the mine, let alone an explosion. A cloud of black smoke belches from Fraterville's airshaft, but that's a common sight. The coal-fired draft furnace blows out smoke routinely.
But the women -- mothers, wives and daughters left at home--begin to worry. Elizabeth Dezern has five sons and two sons-in-law inside that mine. Her husband, William F. - old Bill - died about seven years before when a tree he was cutting down fell on him, and Elizabeth has not yet recovered from that shock. Bill Dezern had served in the Civil War, Federal 8th Regiment, Tennessee Cavalry, and survived, only to be felled by a tree. And now this.
Ellen Vowell panics because her 14-year-old son, Elbert, has been working in the mine with his father, Jacob, to help the family cope with low wages and a scarcity of food. There are four more Vowells inside the mountain that is named for their family -- Bannister and his three sons, George, William H. and Levi.
Manpage Vowell and two of his sons, all Virginians, were among the first pioneers to arrive on Vowell Mountain a century earlier. Accustomed to the high mountain weather, they started a settlement on the hemlock-studded ridges, moving up from the valley where it was too damp for them. By 1902, only Thomas and his brother Bannister are still left in Anderson County, and Bannister and his three sons work both their farm and inside the mines to keep food on the table. Thomas is a farmer, determined not to enter the mines.
Bannister and his boys are Jacob's cousins. And on this day, six of the Vowell family are in the Fraterville Mine.
When the explosion is officially announced, the news is bad. The blast has caused a cave-in, and initial reports say up to 300 men are buried under the rubble in small pockets, isolated from each other and the rest of the world. The only man who got out was "Uncle Billie" Morgan, a roadman, but he wasn't as lucky as it sounds. He was just entering the driftmouth when he was blown back outside by the massive force of the blast.
Billie is covered from head to boot in mud and debris. The powerful explosion knocks out one of his eyes. For Billie, 63, lightning has struck three times. He was in a mine explosion in his native Wales and another in Pennsylvania. This time, they say, the third blast might be his last. He is not expected to survive the night. He will die three days later.
At first everybody in Coal Creek is stunned. When the initial shock washes over them, they begin to run toward Fraterville. Hundreds of them, wives, sons, daughters, all running toward the mine along the same tracks their husbands, sons and brothers had walked that morning. News begins to filter back through the human chain. Most of the men are trapped deep in the mine, unreachable. There is little hope of getting to them before their oxygen gives out.
Reports now claim 226 miners killed in the explosion.
People are weeping and moaning as they crowd up to the driftmouth of the mine.
Except for three men, all of Coal Creek's adult male population is trapped deep in the core of Fraterville Mine. The hills seem to weep sympathetically. Hard men cry out to check the awful pain. Death, however, gallops deeply inside Vowell Mountain on an appointed schedule.
When mine boss George Camp arrives, he decides to try to gain access to the men by cutting through from the nearby Thistle Mine in Thistle Hollow, which connects underground to Fraterville Mine. The men inside that mine taught George Camp all he knew about coal mining. They are like fathers to him.
Ellen Vowell remembers sending Jacob and Elbert off to work that morning in the old mine that hugs the base on the southeastern flank of Vowell Mountain. Even though the mountain is named for Jacob's pioneering family, his 10-hour days are still not enough to feed a family of eight. That's why Elbert, a boy who can read and write and might have had a better future, is now trapped underground with his father.
Jacob is tall, with dark hair and a thick, black mustache. His face is as sharp as an adze, coming to a point at his chin. He is 35 years old, looks much older, and has worked so long at Fraterville that Ellen has never been able to get rid of all the coal dust that soaks into the pores of his skin and the threads of his work clothes. His bones are thin shadows beneath his clothes.
When the mine closes over the weekends, there is no smoke or noise from Airshaft Hollow, where the coal-fired furnace pumps in fresh air at 9,200 cubic feet per minute and pushes out bad air through the double-entry system.
Jacob and the other miners have never trusted that furnace, especially since Labor Commissioner Mine Inspector R.A. Shiflett ordered George Camp, son of the wealthy E.C. Camp family of Knoxville, to upgrade its operation.
The Camps own Coal Creek Coal Co., which operates Fraterville Mine. When Shiflett inspected the mine in January, he wrote E.C. Camp that the antiquated furnace was pushing only 25 percent of the entire volume of air throughout the mine entries and crossways. In addition, the wooden brattices designed to direct airflow leaked.
He warned Camp to reduce the workforce from its usual 200 to 80 men and animals until the repairs are made. But more ominously, Shiflett's report claims the air getting to the miners is laden with noxious afterdamp from an adjacent abandoned mine owned by Knoxville Iron Co. The cross entries of that mine are actually providing air intakes into Fraterville mine.
Deep in the now-silent mine, Jacob and Elbert cling together in a small pocket with 11 other men. That morning, they had entered Fraterville's driftmouth as usual and ridden the mantrip underground, stopping off at their numbered side room, called a Left or a Right, depending upon its location off of the main entry. The only light is from the open-flame oil lamps on their hats. Because of the four-foot-high ceiling, Jacob works on his knees, mostly in water, or sitting back on his heels and swinging his pick. Elbert, shoulders bent, starts shoveling coal into the big steel bins.
Being inside the mine, with thousands of tons of rock over their heads, teaches the men about adversity. Working with stubborn mules and constant mud, digging an expected five tons of coal per day, and dealing with the stress of constant danger from cave-ins, explosions, deadly gases and falling rocks also prepare them for just about any disorder.
The haul mules are up as usual, too, pulling their heavy steel coal wagons. The clatter of the big wheels makes a hard and eerie sound, one the men and boys no longer notice.
The mine is more accommodating for the mules than for the men. To allow access for the 5-foot-tall animals, a trench had been cut into the rock roof, making it just high enough for the mules to walk upright, heads bent. The youngest boys can walk upright with the mules, but grown men have to bend at the waist.
Now in their small, dark prison, Jacob and his son look at their friends. Only their hopeless eyes show through the black dust of coal that darkens their faces. That dust has accumulated in the atmosphere of the mine for more than 30 years, ever since Fraterville Mine opened in 1869. Their feet swim in it. Their lungs absorb it. There is no escaping it. In the pale safety lantern light, dust is like a dark sea washing silently over the men and boys.
Coal dust is also something else. Fine particles of coal dust drifting about act like a line of explosive powder. Once a spark reaches the dust, the explosion follows the dust trail, until the blast consumes all of the dust and finishes its volatile trip.
When a coal mine explodes, the power of the underground blast punches holes up through the mountain to the outside world, shooting clouds of dust to the surface and simultaneously allowing shafts of light to glimmer onto the mine floor 30, 40, 50 feet below. Such a mighty explosion kills miners where they stand, blows others into oblivion and closes off the outside world to the few survivors. Scattered pockets of precious air, like beaded bubbles beneath water, float and then disappear.
Deep mines make haunting noises. As the ceiling cracks and creaks above them, so do the pillars, the columns of coal in the mining rooms. When a room has been thoroughly mined, the bravest men return to "rob the pillars," taking out the last stubby legs of coal that hold up the mountain. When a pillar pops unexpectedly in a hulled-out coal room, a man reacts with apprehension, because such a sound could represent the last thing he will ever hear.
In the flickering light of an oil lamp, a man appears ghostly--a black ghost. Overhead, the dense ceiling reminds the men that an unfathomable amount of rock is above them and that their puny supply of air is vanishing and will not last long enough for rescuers to reach them. The men are trapped beneath the mountain they knew as boys, the mountain they hunted with fathers and friends, a mountain spotted with wildflowers and trees to climb, fresh air and infinite space.
When their lamps begin to run out of oil, or are extinguished by the noxious afterdamp, a thickening darkness drops in folds. The men are wrapped in a black silence that looks and feels like eternity. Dust layers their heads, shoulders and legs. They taste the earth in their mouths, and smell it as it cakes inside their nostrils. The last of the light will soon fade away. And so will they, the 13 men and boys in this one room where stubby coal pillars are crushed, cracking and failing.
The explosion has bounced off mine walls, ricocheted down the halls, echoed into the rooms where men and boys are bowled over by the tidal wave of heat and fire.
Large steel cars filled with chunks of coal are tossed like toys against mine walls. Work mules are blasted to bits. One mule is impaled on the mine's ceiling, where a sharp plank tacks it to the slate roof like a spear.
In this underground hell, the men quickly realize that the poisonous air will soon take their lives. Jacob becomes the chronicler for some of the men's last moments, because many of them can neither read nor write. He pulls out the paper normally used for recording how much coal he and Elbert have mined and licks the end of his pencil.
What do you say when you know the words you write are the last words anyone will ever see or hear from you? How do you write that you are breathing your last little sips of air, that you feel the clutch of death in your chest? How do you express your feelings that your son is beside you and his life is ending at such a young age, that future memories of him will be of a little boy rather than a grown man?
How do you write goodbye forever?
What Jacob Vowell doesn't say in his letter is just as important as what he does say. He doesn't tell his wife, Ellen, about the terrible effects of the explosion or that men are dying around him, suffocating in agony, gasping for what will inevitably be the last breath. He doesn't speculate that an oil lamp, or maybe a spark from the ventilation fan, might have ignited the maelstrom. While there is still light, Jacob writes a message of love and faith to comfort his wife:
"We are shut up in the head of the entry with a little air and the bad air is closing in on us fast and it is now about 12 o'clock. Dear Ellen, I have to leave you in a bad condition. But dear wife set your trust in the Lord to help you raise my little children. Ellen take care of my little darling Lily. Ellen, little Elbert said that he had trusted in the Lord. Chas. Wood says that he was safe if he never lives to see the outside again he would meet his mother in heaven.
"If we never live to get out we are not hurt but only perished for air. There is but a few of us here and I don't know where the other men is. Elbert said for you all to meet him in heaven. All the children meet with us both."
Some of the dying miners ask Jacob for help in writing their letters. "Do the best you can," Jacob writes for Henry Beach to his wife, Alice. "I am going to rest."
Then, with oxygen depleting, Jacob writes, "Ellen, darling, Good Bye for us both. ... We are all praying for air to support us but it is getting so bad without any. Horace, Elbert said for you to wear his shoes and clothing. It is now past 1."
Later, as life is leaving him, he adds: "Oh! How I wish to be with you. Good Bye all of you. Good Bye. Bury me and Elbert in the same grave by Little Eddy. Good Bye Ellen. Good Bye Lily, Good Bye Jimmie. Good Bye Horace. We are together. Is 25 minutes after Two. There is a few of us alive yet.
"Oh God for one more breath. Ellen remember me as long as you live. Good Bye Darling."
Then, Jacob Vowell gathers his son, Elbert, into his arms to be close to him. Around them, kneeling men keel forward, their hands and faces falling against the mine floor. Some sit, arms across their knees and heads on their arms. They die in these positions.
There is no more after that.
Jacob and Elbert Vowell are among the official 184 victims found in the rubble, though as many as 216 perish. Jacob is found with the palms of his hands pressing against his temples. It is as if he died in the middle of a yell. Another miner is discovered, his nostrils ripped from his face in a desperate effort to breathe. Another butted his head against the mine wall until he fell over, his face contorted in one last gasp.
Ellen Vowell buries her husband and son in the same grave, right beside that of their previously deceased child, Little Eddie, in the Longfield Cemetery at Coal Creek.
The words on the gravestone give the date of Jacob's birth, July 14, 1866, and death, May 19, 1902. On the other side of the gravestone is Little Elbert, born Nov. 25, 1887; died May 19, 1902.
"Gone, but not forgotten," is the inscription for both.
Elizabeth Dezern buries her five sons--John, the oldest, David, Samuel, Carr and George--in Leach Cemetery at Clear Branch Baptist Church, where a special miner's circle sits on top of the hill overlooking Coal Creek.
The Dezerns' gravestones ring the outside concentric circles surrounding the 30-foot-tall marble obelisk that lists the names of 184 dead miners. Oddly, many of the headstones misspell the Dezern name. Some read "D'zern" "Dezarn" and "Dzearn."
Elizabeth has all five caskets brought to her house before the funeral. David's beautiful wife, Lula Harris, is there with her daughter, Evelyn Elizabeth Dezern. Like the others, none of these women knows what the future holds for them. With their husbands and breadwinners gone, they must now leave the coal company houses.
The next day, the enormity of the event begins to settle in. Coal Creek has lost all of its male population, with the exception of three. Caskets are brought in and more ordered. A number of itinerant miners are never identified and are buried in lonely graves beside the rails away from the mine mouth. It is as if they never existed and have been swallowed up by a black hole in the Earth.
Somebody says 1,000 children who had fathers on Monday are fatherless on Tuesday.
Louise Nelson's grandfather, David Dezern, was one of the 184 men and boys killed in the Fraterville Mine Explosion on May 19, 1902. She paused at his grave at Leach Cemetery in Lake City, where a memorial to the victims stands in the background.
