Alexander Campbell, Floyd Collins and Leon Hoaglan
These three men have something in common; each lived much of their time beneath the surface of the Earth, under the ground, in the underworld. And in more ways than one.
Having spent my high school years skipping class and inhabiting the nearby limestone caves it can be said with confidence there are perils beyond measure in the underworld, where darkness reigns supreme. Travel there is madness, though men have been going into it for eons; and if they cannot find a hole, they will dig one.
The Welsh are inveterate diggers of holes, and the Irish go there for a wage. The Welsh are the quarry and mine owners, and the Irish are immigrant laborers, seemingly always. That alone should be cause for concern…
So we’ll start with the Molly Maguires and Alexander Campbell. Being born and raised in the Appalachia of Pennsylvania and always ranged there, the anthracite region is in the blood. The Susquehanna, Delaware and Lehigh rivers were instrumental in Early American coal and iron extraction, transport and subsequent use. The scars of heavy industry are everywhere in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and they run deep.
Hiked much of PA and back country skied as well, sometimes along the Lehigh and into Jim Thorpe (Mauch Chunk) where much of this tale occurred, and where many of the Molly Maguires lived and died, many violently.
This much is true: there is bad blood between the Irish and Welsh and much blood has been shed among them. Bangor, PA was named for Bangor, in Wales and is riddled with deep quarries of black slate, the slate every chalk board and billiard table was made from. The owners and founders of the town are Welsh. The quarry workers right down to the excellent blacksmiths were largely Irish and Italian. The same occurred throughout the quarry and mining regions of Pennsylvania.
Researching the Mollies is easy, start with the Wiki. Names of people, place names and dates are taken from several sources and assumed public record. Mostly it’s my own memory and observations.
The Molly Maguires were likely a splinter group of an ancient Irish agrarian order whose form of justice was violent retribution aimed at their oppressors. This order might have arisen as a result of conflict between growers and herders in a pre-Christian world.
On 6 September 1869, a fire at the Avondale Mine in Luzerne County, took the lives of 110 coal miners. The families blamed the coal company for failing to finance a secondary exit for the mine.[24] Wiki
...the mine owners without one single exception had refused over the years to install emergency exits, ventilating and pumping systems, or to make provision for sound scaffolding. In Schuylkill County alone 566 miners had been killed and 1,655 had been seriously injured over a seven-year period...[25 Wiki
Take it from me it is inadvisable to stray too far from the tourist traps around Jim Thorpe, (Mauch Chunk) PA., let alone carelessly broadcast any knowledge of the Molly Maguires, an iteration of a very ancient Gaelic secret society with a blood oath involved. The Mollies held rebellion against deadly working conditions in the mines which were ignored by the owners. After over a hundred miners were lost in a single mining accident that rebellion turned violent. Folks were murdered. Folks were hanged. Those families are still there. People will make light of my advice after they visit the modern tours and eateries while the Mollies are now part of The Chamber of Commerce’s advertising. Just don’t be found in isolation well past hours or act the idiot while in an out of the way tavern. Don’t talk about the Mollies.
Alexander Campbell was hanged, accused of being a ringleader during the alleged murderous actions of the Molly Maguires along with ten or so of his compatriots. Wikipedia will have a photo of the prison these men were hanged at and its location being in Pottsville, PA.
Alexander Campbell claimed innocence up to the moment he was hanged, placing his handprint on the prison cell wall he was detained in. That handprint is there still, the cell is not used, and the prison itself is in fact Carlisle, PA. Having been privileged to a tour of Carlisle Prison (not open to the public) gave me firsthand glimpses of Mr. Campbell’s prison cell, his handprint and the gallows he was hung from…know it well.
The Pinkerton investigators along with mining industry instigators were every bit as ruthless as the Mollies were reported to be, evidence of murders is sketchy at best and at least partial postmortem clemency has since been awarded the Mollies. Still, the subject is best avoided when amongst their people and haunted lands.
For much more about the Mollies from an expert historian this is highly recommended:
Next up is a man named Floyd Collins, who lived and worked in Kentucky among the great caverns of that region which includes Mammoth Caverns, longest in the World.
Once again, the Wiki has much to say but my preference is to rely on memory and use research to confirm names of people and place names mainly. A book was written as well as a movie depicting this event, and my reference came long ago.
Floyd Collins was a full-time spelunker (cave explorer) at a time when private landowners were scrambling to discover the next cave to be opened as a tourist attraction (a lucrative use) and competition was fierce.
Pictured is the entrance to the cave Floyd was exploring when he became trapped in a crawlway far below; a crawlway is a narrow shaft sometimes so small the explorer must crawl on elbows and knees. Spent much time in one myself we called the Trap cave since the entrance was a crawlway so narrow, if one’s elbows got behind the shoulders, entrapment resulted. Add to that total darkness without a light source and anyone not terrified is a fool and unfit to have along.
A boulder no bigger than a soccer ball dropped from above Floyd’s foot as he passed by, but since he could not turn to reach it, all attempts to free himself failed, and he was trapped with little hope of rescue. The only person who might find Floyd was his brother, no other person knew anything of Floyd’s exploits since secrecy was employed in the trade. Only after going missing for two days did Floyd’s brother determine to look for him.
Since his brother knew something of the surroundings, he did find the cave Floyd was in, but getting to him was perilous enough and at some point, he became too terrified to continue and instead went to organize a rescue party.
Over the following ten days many trips were made into the cave taking food and warm clothing to Floyd as he lay wet, cold and facing hypothermia and dehydration. A massive rescue attempt went underway including mining equipment, engineers, rescue workers, the public and the press. The story of Floyd Collins became the largest News event of its time and included the very first aerial news dispatch in American history curried by a young pilot named Charles Lindberg.
First an air shaft went down and then a man shaft was started since extricating Floyd in situ was impossible. The soil conditions resulted in the shaft subsiding faster than machinery could dig. Finally, all options being exhausted, Floyd died in that cave 14 days after becoming trapped, his brother gaining the courage to spend much of Floyd’s final hours with him.
Today anyone braving the terrible underworld regards Floyd Collins as a hero and father to all spelunkers.
Leon Hoaglan was a man known to me for many years, a lifelong quarry worker in the slate belt of Bangor, Wind Gap and Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania.
Leon told many stories of life in the quarry, fraught with terrors and gargantuan proportions: vertical holes some as deep as 650 feet, so deep that from the bottom he could look up at the night sky in broad daylight. Tales of whole mule teams and their drivers going off the edge to plummet hundreds of feet to their death. Ice falls as big as a house calving from above and crushing workers below, and of course man-eating cables and derricks shuttling massive slabs up and over the quarry walls. These were masters of their craft imbued with pride despite the dangers.
Today the slate belt is redundant, all that remains are the holes now filled with water, clear water as black as night from the slate walls and bottomless depths that seem to draw one into their abyss, some doing the service for distraught lovers and careless wanderers. They conceal unspeakable things.
Once a bustling industry that covered the roofs of many houses, spoke from countless chalk boards and adorned the houses of wealthy industrialists and pool halls all round the World, now forgotten but for the holes now gobbling up back yards and streets within their influence.
Leon, along with the many who dwelt in the underground was a good man who worked hard and gave his blood, sweat and tears for the building of an America, now sputtering at the edge of twilight.
Sinkholes, mines and quarries, caves and openings all portals to the underworld that swallow the unwary or coax the intrepid explorer into the unknown within.
Just today the news reported a 63-year-old woman looking for her cat was swallowed by the earth, found thirty feet below in an abandoned mineshaft.
The Miner’s Lullaby is featured in this post of contributing writers by Ellen from Endwell in substack.com. Check it out:
Powerful post, David, and a way to make better sense of the Miner's Lullaby.
I can't believe you went in the Trap cave. It sounds like the worst nightmare of many of us!
You might find it of interest that the last Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and a Pinkerton detective. Of course, it portrays the coal mining union as corrupt and murderous, as Arthur Conan Doyle by that time had become a member of the English elite.
Your post also makes me wonder about the use of slate. I've gotten very interested in a lot of historical exploration by people around why there are so many classical building marvels in cities around the world from times when there was only horse and wagons. For example, https://www.youtube.com/@jonlevichannel. Where was all the product of those mines used? I never see slate house roofs, so it makes me wonder. Thoughts?