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After a significant amount of time, my grandfather went to work at Shannopin Mine as an hourly employee. He still worked his own mine at the same time. Sam Slater passed away and my grandfather became the soul proprietor of Titus Mine.

My grandfather suffered an accident while in Titus. He was working around a car, and somehow, the chain anchoring it to the track broke, and part of his foot was severed. Grand pap was off long enough to heal, but was not as agile as he had once been. He would work the steady afternoon shift at Shannopin and work his mine in the mornings and on weekends.

Times were a little tough, but he managed to save up enough money to buy a “cutting machine” in the early 1950s. Most of the small-time operations, like his, were still hand loading, using ponies and carts. My dad remembers going into Titus with his father as a small boy and watching him mine coal. Grand pap would do all the work himself!

My grandfather bought an old green truck with sideboards to deliver his coal to folks around the area. He still worked at Shannopin, but became a foreman, and he would be a company man until he retired in 1978, working up to shift foreman. He was a hard case, according to those fellows who knew him. They said that he did not tolerate laziness and he was strict, but was practical and taught them how to operate every piece of equipment in the mine. Grand pap enjoyed only four years of retirement, before he passed away in 1982 of a heart attack.

My grandfather had two brothers. His younger brother, Bill, worked the farm for him when he was underground at the Molnar Mine. When Uncle Bill was old enough, he went to work beside my grandfather at that mine. Uncle Bill would stay at that mine until he was called to the service in World War II; and when he returned home he worked in other small operations.

Uncle Bill took over running the Titus Mine for my grandfather for a short time when Grand pap had cut off part of his foot. Uncle Bill began working in the Shannopin Mine after Grand pap sold the Titus Mine. Uncle Bill did not care for coal mining, so he quit and moved his family to Warren, Ohio. Uncle Bill worked in the coal industry for over 20 years. He still lives in Warren and is 85 years old. I just visited him recently and he told me that he could not get a miner’s pension. He retired from a steel company and receives a pension from there.

My grandfather’s wife, Julia, was the thirteenth child born to an immigrant, Hungarian family. Her father Charles Namett left his wife and children in Hungary to make the trip across the Atlantic to America. He emigrated to the United States, because the coal and steel industries were soliciting all over Europe for eager men, who wished to escape their impoverished farms. Charles Namett would wind up in Kentucky working in a coal mine. Here, he would labour for five years before earning enough money to send for his wife and children.

With his family together again, Charles continued to carve out a living in the coal mines all over Appalachia. The Nametts would move from Lynch, KY to Beauty, KY. Then, from Beauty, KY they would move to Crane’s Nest, VA. From Crane’s Nest, VA they would move to Tom’s Creek, VA. And from Tom’s Creek, VA to Holden, WV. Then, they would move from Holden, WV to New Haul, WV (my grandmother’s birthplace). Finally, they would leave New Haul, WV and return to Lynch, KY where it all started. Abusive companies, treacherous conditions, low coal seam and poverty would prompt many immigrant families, not just the Nametts, to look for the greener pastures of the coal industry.

Charles Namett somehow heard of a new mine in Pennsylvania’s Greene County called Shannopin Mine. He made the journey and investigated this new prospect. Charles was impressed, and in my grandmother’s words, “he could actually stand up and not have to crawl like a snake on his belly”. The area where the mine was situated was very favourable for farming, and this appealed very much to my great-grandfather. He sent for the family and went to work at Shannopin.

The Nametts would rent a farm, which they would eventually own, and live a decent life compared to what they left in Kentucky. Charles worked many years before retiring from Shannopin Mine; not until he was in his seventies did he quit.

Story continues tomorrow.