Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1890 — MINE DISASTER. [ARTICLE]

MINE DISASTER.

A Terrible Calamity at Wilkesbarre, Pa.— The Work of Rescue—Many Lives Lost. Twenty-seven men were entombed on the 15th, No. 6 colliery, at Wilkesbarre Pa. Rescuing parties were at once organs ized and an opening broken through into a man-way along the bed of a mountain stream, where the chambers in that part of the mine came within a few feet of the surface. All day long these men toiled like Titans at the hard and stubborn rock, while the weeping wives and little ones of the doomed victims stood around the opening and rent the air with their cries and lamentations. Gang after gang relieved one another, until at 5 o’clock the news was passed that they had succeeded in breaking through the chambers beneath the cave. The men toiled on in silence until 6:30, when there was a commotion at the mouth of the dark opening and the foreman crawled out on his hands and knees and announced they had found one of the victims. He was lying at the bottom of a fifty-foot plane, and in order to rescue him it became necessary to lower a miner down with a rope. This was done and the charred and blackened form of Anthony Froyne, the first of the victims, was hoisted to the surface. He was still apve, but his injuries are considered fatal. Two more bodies were taken out at nine o’clock. Exploring parties bS the 16th penetrated the mine. They found nineteen deadgix men are still missing, and it is more than probable that they, too, are now all dead. The scene at the mine as the nineteen dead and charred bodies were brought out was heartrending in the extreme. Men, women and children shrieking and groaning, fell upon their knees, lifted their hands and their eyes toward heaven and prayed for the dead. Up to the night of the 16th, twenty-one bodies, all charred and mangled, were taken from the mine. Six men are yet in the fatal chamber. All operations at the mine have been abandoned.