Treasure Chest Thursday: The C&O Canal Workers

 

 

Was thinking about my Irish ancestors who came to America, all before the Great Famine. It's interesting because all of the families -- the Kellys, the O'Farrells, and the Corcorans -- came around the 1830s and landed first in Cumberland, Allegany, Maryland, of all places. Why?

 

There were three things of note going on in Western Maryland about that time that might draw these hard-workers in search of a new life: coal mining, the railroad, and the C&O Canal. I know something about the coal mines and miners as well as the railroad, because my Kelly people worked on both of those. But I was lacking in information about the C&O Canal. I went to one of my fav web sites for Western Maryland history, Western Maryland's Historical Library, or WHILBR, and you can see their page about the canal here and find a collection of maps and old photos too.

 

That was good for the facts of it but I sought more insight into the daily lives of those, especially the Irish, who worked on the canal. So I posted a question about where to turn on the Allegany County, Maryland, RootsWeb list. In a flash someone suggested these two books by James Rada Jr.: Canawlers, and Between Rail and River. And I'm glad they did.

 

Here's what the listing on Amazon.com has to say about the first book in the series, Canawlers:

 

Hugh Fitzgerald proudly calls himself a "canawler." He works on the C&O Canal transporting coal nearly 185 miles between Cumberland, Maryland and Georgetown. For nine months a year, he and his family live on their canal boat, working hard to get them through the lean winter months.

The year 1862 was a hard year to live on the canal, though. The Civil War was in full swing and the canal, which runs long the Potomac River, marked the border between the Union and Confederacy. To this point, the Confederacy has stayed south of the canal, but now the Confederate Army intends to go on the offensive and take the war into the north. Not only are the Fitzgeralds' lives endangered by the increased activity of warring army and raiders on the canal, but the Fitzgeralds' secret activity as a stop along the Underground Railroad only endanger their lives all the more.

Now you know this has got to be good! Both books are historical fiction so the history lesson goes down easy as the pages all but turn by themselves. I got what I was looking for on just about every page as a new detail of the hard life of those running canal boats were made all the more impossible by the Civil War. And this is a nice family whose story unwinds and I came to like them fast.

So what were my take away points from these two books that might guide further searching for my own wandering and mysterious Irish ancestors? And now that I have a deeper understanding of the canallers' life, what are the research questions based on these books?

1.) The dates are right for my Irish people coming in search for work on the C&O Canal. Now the question that pops to mind is, were they working on the Erie Canal before they came to Western Maryland? And if so, did they come in through Canada?

2.) Where are the records? Canal records are sparse. Good luck with that but sometimes records are hidden in plain sight so I'll keep looking. I did find some Kelly/Kelley people working in 1850s, and here's a link to the canal worker's document also on WHLBR. Look to the right of this image, below, to find the PDF files.


3.) Double-check the 1850 census for work records. That's late for canal builders but not those who made a living on the canal once it opened just about 1850 all the way to Cumberland. My John Kelly who came from Shannonbridge, Offlay (was Kings), Ireland, was listed simply as "laborer" in that census. Not much to go on. In the 1860 census John Kelly is listed as a carpenter while others on the page are listed specifically as miners or laborers. What can I make of that? Could he have been a carpenter in Cumberland building canal boats?

4.) Noticed a newspaper article on WHLBR dated 1846 that mentions that the work building the canal was halted due to lack of funds. My Irish ancestors, if they did come for work on building the canal, would have moved on to other work about this time. I'll be alert to that 1846 date in my tracking them down. Thanks, WHLBR.



Well, it's a start and now I know more about the lives of those who worked on the C&O Canal.

And then there's this: our Irish family has always been anti-slavery and for equal right in the extreme, as if it were personal or something. Now I think I have a clue as to why. The Irish who came here before the Civil War were escaping the type of "soft slavery" enforced by the British landholders who inflicted pain and punishment on the very people who once owned that same land. The family in both of Rada's books expresses this opinion and are a link on the Underground Railroad! There's my own ah-ha moment:)

Were my Irish ancestors canal workers after the canal opened?

 

All canal photos in public domain and come from WHLBR.

 

 

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Treasure Chest Thursday: A Miner's Christmas

While back east visiting Mom I took some time to go visit Aunt Betty. Aunt Betty is really my Mom's cousin but somehow all who know her have come to call her Aunt Betty. I just love my time with her and we do go on about family and local history in Western Maryland around the little town of Frostburg.

This time I asked her when she thought Welsh stopped being spoken locally in the churches and at home. We have no real data but figure that most likely by 1900 no Welsh families in Western Maryland were speaking Welsh anymore. By then, in the coal mining families around Frostburg who came from Wales, everyone had learned English and was speaking it. Our guess is that the original immigrants from Wales didn't teach it to their kids, as immigrants often didn't in that time. It was all part of the assimilation process.

Aunt Betty chatted about how it was growing up in a coal mining community where just about everyone worked for the mines. Her best friend was from what we might now consider a "poor" family. The daughter, then maybe 9 years old as I remember Aunt Betty saying, had it as her summer chore to pick coal from the slag heaps (waste coal) and bring it back home for storage until it was used for the fires of winter. Aunt Betty went along and helped her friend just for fun.

While in Main Street Books, the Frostburg bookstore and one of my favorite haunts when visiting Mom, I noticed a book by James Rada, Saving Shallmar. Here's the Amazon write up, below.

In fall turned to winter in 1949, the residents of Shallmar, Maryland, were starving. The town's only business, the Wolf Den Coal Corp. had closed down, unemployment benefits had ended and few coal miners had cars to drive to other jobs. When children started fainting in school, Principal J. Paul Andrick realized the dire situation the town was in and set out to help. He worked to get the story of the town's troubles out and get help for the town's residents and succeeded beyond his wildest dreams just in time for Christmas.

As I read the book, based on fact and using real names, on the flight back to San Diego, I picked up a bunch of information about life in a typical coal town in Western Maryland. I found that picking coal for heat in the winter, as Aunt Betty had done with her friend, was entirely common. There are plenty of details of everyday life to keep the casual reader happily turning pages!

The thing that stayed with me and was found throughout the book is how the coal mining companies entrapped the miners and their families. Shallmar, an actual coal town in Garrett County, Maryland, was pretty much typical of what was going on elsewhere. The coal companies, or operators as they are sometimes called, would offer high paying jobs to lure the best miners with their families. Miners with families were hard-working and stable and wouldn't move when they were needed during boom years.

The coal company often provided small houses and a company store close by for convenient shopping. They paid miners in script that could only be used to pay rent or buy goods from the company store. It became a trap when the script was only good to buy high-priced items at the store or exchangeable at a great discount for real currency. Shallmar was too far away from any real town where a miner might shop without driving a car to it, and besides, very few of the miners here had cars.

Shallmar at the start was a bit different in that the homes were quite lovely by comparison to other such homes offered by coal companies. They were wood frame and two story by contrast to the typical and tiny stone one-story miner's homes in Eckhart Mines, Maryland, where I have other ancestors. Shallmar in the beginning was pretty and roses grew over a trellis at many doors, a real model community. The power plant for the mine also supplied free electricity for homes. Sure residents only had power during the day, but at least they had it.

But as the time passed, the mine got played out with the best and easiest coal taken. Then after WWII, the price of coal dropped so miners got laid off and those left were paid less. Some lucky few did move out of Shallmar and on to other opportunities. But about 600 individuals remained at Shallmar even after the mine closed and there was no more work to be had and unemployment benefits and union payments ran out. Without a car to take them elsewhere, they were pretty much stuck in Shallmar.

I've driven all over this territory in Western Maryland, and seen the old coal shacks still in use. It's sad and desolate. I'll confess to naively thinking, "Why don't they just move?" Reading about Shallmar I got an education in the social and economic dynamics of coal country poverty.

But wait! Don't pass up this book because you think you'll be too sad when reading it. Nope, there are good people around and they do make a difference, and it's worth reading about. And yes, it's a Christmas story! So if you have any coal miners on your tree and you want a book that gives a lot in the telling, get this one.


Eckhart Mines coal camp houses.
(Photos below courtesy of coalcampusa.com and Chris DellaMea. Thanks you Chris for the wonderful web site on coal mining communities, especially those in Western Maryland where my peeps worked.)



Shallmar coal miners houses.
(Also from the same source as above... thank you Chris!)

Two story version of the miner's houses.


Smaller one story version at Shallmar.


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Treasure Chest Thursday: Concerning the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic

I love books in my library that deal with the history of the little Western Maryland town where my ancestors came from, Frostburg, Allegany County, and the area nearby. Most recently I stumbled onto a writer that I enjoy a lot because he's written extensively about the events that formed the area as well as other historical books. His name is James Rada Jr.

Right now on his web site he's featuring a new work about the 50th reunion of soldiers who fought at Gettysburg. Although it looks pretty cool, I'll not stop now to read it because I'm reading a whole other stack of his books about Cumberland, the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, and the Irish immigrants who worked on the C&O Canal. He has two books of short essays, a form of writing I dearly love, all about Western Maryland, called Looking Back and Looking Back II. I plan to get those next!

Mom is now reading The Rain Man, about the 1936 flood of the Potomac River in Cumberland, also called the St. Patricks Day Flood. She remembers that day because she made a new green dress to wear to a St. Paddy's Day dance which was cancelled. Instead she boarded the bus to Cumberland and took in the awful sights of the flood's destruction.

The focus of our energies today is a book entitled, October Mourning. OK, so maybe you're thinking, what? A book about the flu?! Yikes! But this historical novel had me going from the second page. And I say second page because it takes my brain that long to grab a writer's style such that I can "hear" his words in my head. Does that make sense? (Mom does that too.)

In this book, we follow a doctor through the panic of the flu epidemic as it sweeps through Cumberland, during WWI. People have their concerns and worries about the war, some have lost sons and husbands. But when the German doctor tries to do what he can, and admittedly it's not much in the face of the flu, but he's trying with all his might, some of the citizens turn their anger towards him. There's a crazy street preacher, locals of all stripes, a cop named Cow, and a woman who has just lost her soldier fiance to, not the war, but the flu. She's an interesting character as we follow her journey to real redemption and healing.

It's an easy read but don't get your "literary" meat hooks and red pencil ready. And yes, you'll find some typos but that simply indicates that someone somewhere was rushing. Give a guy a break. What this book does provide is a window for me to look through and observe the world my ancestors inhabited. I'm wondering if my ancestors purposely avoided nearby Cumberland during this time? Did they take shelter in the location of Frostburg that was just far enough away? Now I keep thinking, which of my ancestors died in October 1918?

Rada lets the story unwind and tucks in what you need to know in a gentle way, like the description of what happened physically to flu victims that caused death. A historical synopsis is at the very end under the title "Afterword: Spanish Flu in Allegany County," and that felt like the perfect place. I was surprised to understand that the flu hit remote Cumberland in one disastrous month, from September to October. By the end of that time cases were dwindling. It's unnerving to think that people were dying so fast burials couldn't keep up. And besides, no public gatherings of the population were allowed so funerals, if they could be scheduled, were immediate family only, and outdoors. It's a mind-blower!

So thank you, James Rada! Keep writing, please:)

Treasure Chest Thursday is a blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers.

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