Coal Mining in Sullivan County, Indiana: Shelburn, Hymera, Dugger

The 1909 History of Sullivan County, Indiana called the county "one of the great coal bins of American industry," and its chapter on mineral wealth reads like a ledger of shafts, veins, wages and land deals. Between a blacksmith's coal pit near Hymera and the merger rush of 1905, coal turned crossroads like Shelburn, Dugger and Farmersburg into mining towns. This is what that book records about the mines, the camps and the men who worked them.

Written from A History of Sullivan County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (1909). Everything below comes from that book, and where it gives an opinion, we say so. You can read the full book free on the Internet Archive.

Before the Railroads: Blacksmith Coal and Flatboats

The oldest mention the 1909 author could find came from David Thomas, who traveled up the Wabash valley in 1816. Near the Turman settlement he passed a coal mine that had been "recently opened," dug into the channel of a small brook. The book calls this the earliest known mention of coal mining in Sullivan County. For decades afterward coal stayed a local fuel: a farmer might burn a surface vein instead of wood, or a blacksmith might use it in place of charcoal. Timber was plentiful and stoves were not yet in use.

In the 1830s coal from this area went down the river by flatboat to New Orleans, and the book says Wabash valley coal was said to bring as high a price as Pittsburg coal. West of the future site of Hymera, H. K. and Harvey Wilson owned one of the first coal mines in the county; its coal went mostly to blacksmiths and was hauled by wagon to all parts of the county. Around Pleasantville, early residents including the O'Haver and Timmerman families took out coal by "slope" and "stripping" methods.

Rails and the First Practical Mine, 1854 to 1883

The book dates coal mining as an industry to the railroads. The first railroad in the county went into operation in 1854. The next year an advertisement in the Democrat mentioned the first practical coal mine in the county, owned by Hanchett & Kelly of Farmersburg. Their coal came from a bank several miles from the railroad, so late in 1855 they built a wooden railroad of three-foot gauge over the three miles to Farmersburg. Each car held twenty-five bushels, and the coal had to be reloaded into regular railroad cars. Years later the mining companies got the railroads to build switch tracks out to the mines.

Growth was slow. In the fall of 1863 a newspaper reported large quantities of coal being shipped, and the machine shops of the Evansville & Crawfordsville Railroad, its chief user, judged it of very superior quality. When through passenger service to Chicago opened in January 1872, the book says the line opened a direct trade for the coal mines. State statistics for 1883 gave Sullivan County twelve mines producing 87,470 tons, an average of 239 employees, and $74,050 in invested capital. Clay County alone mined 661,410 tons that year.

Shafts, Prospectors and the Handford Explosion

The book's chronological notes trace the hunt for deeper coal. A shaft was started at Currysville in 1866, and that September coal 5 feet thick was found at a depth of 173 feet. In 1870 James M. Hanna deeded 160 acres in Curry township to his son B. G. Hanna and son-in-law Henry Overholser, who formed the Standard Coal Co. with $24,000 in capital stock. In 1872 at Paxton, Harry Stipes, a Mr. Russell and Jonas Ladson formed the Paxton Coal Company with $4,500 and prepared to sink a shaft on Ladson's farm, and in 1873 good coal was struck there at 157 feet. That same year Hinkle and Plough were sinking a shaft at Pittsburg, the town later renamed Hymera, and Daniel Case was working a 7-foot vein in Traders Hollow in Cass township.

In 1874, after nine months of work with no capital beyond their own industry, the Handford brothers reached good coal at 201 feet. By August 1878 their Sullivan shaft employed 18 or 20 miners, and wages had been raised 10 cents a ton. On November 21, 1878, about 4 p.m., an explosion in the lower vein killed eight men, among them Thomas and Samuel Handford. The book blames a miner who used powder instead of a pick to open an air passage after he had been warned that there was gas.

The Mining Towns: Shelburn, Hymera, Dugger and the Camps

Shelburn took its name from Paschal Shelburn, a bachelor who bought a large tract in Curry township in 1818 and in 1855, about a year after the railroad was finished, platted a town of 33 lots. The book says coal mining was always the town's main support, and that the Shelburn Coal Company had been one of the large companies of the county a quarter century before 1909. In the 1890s people believed the local coal was worked out, and the town stalled until better veins were found deeper down. The Mammoth Coal Company became one of the big employers, and nearly a hundred houses were built for its miners south of the old town.

Hymera was platted about 1870 by Nathan Hinkle on land owned by William Pitt and named Pittsburg. The post office department would not accept that name, and postmaster John Badders supplied the name Hymera. When the new town at the Alum Cave mine was called New Pittsburg, the mix-up led nearly all of Pittsburg's voters to petition the county commissioners in April 1890 to change the town's recorded name to Hymera. A branch railroad reached the mines around then, and Hymera incorporated in 1902. In October 1904 it held "Mitchell day" for John Mitchell, president of the national mine workers, with a crowd estimated at over seven thousand. In the fall of 1905 Mitchell was reported to have called Hymera the neatest mining town in America.

Dugger, near the east line of Cass township, grew up around the large mine of a coal operator named Dugger on the narrow-gauge railroad about twenty-five years before 1909, and the book says it "has ever since been a coal town." At Carlisle, the Carlisle Clay and Coal Company, organized in 1905 largely with eastern capital and managed by Solomon Dieble, sank a shaft near town and set off a run of new house building. Smaller camps appear too: Alum Cave, where a house was built for miners in 1886 and where the mine had been burning for three years by 1905; Star City, laid out in 1893 near the King post office; and Dixie, a 26-lot town that the Fairbanks coal company laid out in 1903, though another Indiana post office already had that name.

Land Rush and Consolidation, 1898 to 1907

The boom followed 1898, when output reached nearly 700,000 tons, nearly fifty percent above 1897. By October 1902 almost the entire east half of the county was sold or under option, and the largest mine, the Bogle northeast of Sullivan, had a 180-foot shaft and was expected to employ 400 men. D. E. Everhart sold 400 acres for $20,000; half of that land he had bought a few years earlier for $2,000. In 1903 County Assessor Francis E. Walters estimated that 50,000 acres of mineral land had sold at an average of $30 an acre, and the chronology lists scarcity of miners as the most serious obstacle facing operators.

Mergers followed. In 1905 the Bering Coal Co. of Chicago, capitalized at $5,000,000, acquired twelve or more big mines. Nine mines, among them the Shelburn, Citizens, Cummins, Alum Cave, Gilmour and Green Hill, went to the Indiana Southern Coal Company for $2,000,000. A New York syndicate paid about $2,500,000 for seven of the largest mines in the county, including the St. Clair, the White Ash, the Star City and the Glendora, with John S. Bays managing the deal. By July 1905, seventy Indiana mines had been merged into six big operating companies.

In August 1906 the state geologist reported Sullivan the first coal county in Indiana. Estimates published in January 1907 credited its thirty-seven mines with 2,262,428 tons for the year before and counted 3,666 miners, in a county the book puts at about 26,000 people in 1900. In 1907 Greene County passed it again: Sullivan mined 2,660,333 tons, and the thirty-four mines in the inspector's report had 4,016 employees. The state geologist's 1898 report estimated that 365 of the county's 440 square miles held workable coal, with the thickest vein, coal 5 at Alum Cave, running nine to eleven feet.

Wages, Floods and the Strike of 1906

In February 1883 miners of the Shelburn Coal Co. at Sullivan and Shelburn struck. They had been paid $1.06 a ton at Sullivan and 90 cents at Shelburn, and on February 1 the rates were cut to 86 and 69 cents because the railroad refused to pay over one dollar a ton for the coal. The difference between the two towns came from how hard the coal was to reach. In February 1894 the reservoir at the Jackson Hill mine at Hardersville burst while over two hundred men were underground. To reach the shaft they had to cross the sump, where the water stood within 18 inches of the roof, and pit boss George Sargent stood in the water until he had seen the last man across.

A state report published in February 1905 counted 275 pick miners, 178 machine miners and helpers, 908 loaders, 476 inside day and monthly men, and 283 outside day men in the county, with seventeen mines in operation. Nine of the state's 55 fatal mine accidents that year happened in Sullivan County.

The 1906 strike began as an April 2 holiday. No Sullivan County operator had yet signed the 1903 scale. The Sullivan County Coal Co. at Dugger then signed, the third member of the operators' association to do so, and the book expected its expulsion; the Carlisle Clay and Coal Co. had signed earlier, and both mines kept a full force at work. Squire High of Fontanet asked the brewers not to send their customary free beer, and the book notes less drunkenness than in past idle spells. A settlement came on June 13 after a 17-day session: the men got the 1903 scale, five and a half percent above the 1904 to 1905 scale. About 52 mines had agreed to the scale since April 1, and about 3,000 miners were already working. In March 1908, 16,000 miners in the district voted to strike over fines, docking, delivery of powder and top wages.

Tracing a Coal-Mining Family in Sullivan County

The 1909 author said mining gave the county its "most diverse and problematical social elements," but its coal passages do not say where the miners came from. The book does point to several trails. Its mining chronology is built from dated newspaper items, and it cites the reports of the state geologist and the state mine inspector. The Dugger Journal was established about 1906.

Lodges are another lead. Hymera Lodge No. 603 of the Odd Fellows was instituted at Pittsburg in October 1883. Oriole Lodge No. 616 followed at Dugger in September 1885, and Farmersburg's Lodge No. 622 in June 1886. Watch the post offices too: Alum Cave and Jackson Hill appear on the county's January 1903 list of 22 offices but not on the 1909 postal guide list, and the book says rural free delivery led to the abolition of rural post offices. Saloons tracked the camps as well. In 1906 the county's saloons rose from 55 to 64, which the book credits to the growth of mining camps, while Dugger, a mining town, had none.

Finding your ancestor in Sullivan County

• Census records (free through 1950) list each person's occupation and town, so a mining family shows up decade by decade.
• Death records: search our Indiana database by surname.
• The county histories themselves: the biographical sections of A History of Sullivan County, Indiana, Vol. 1 hold hundreds of family sketches.
• Newspapers on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America carried obituaries, accidents, and local news.

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