Ernest: Former company town lives on as a residential community

A young boy wrote a letter to the Ernest post office not too long ago. He wanted to know how the little Indiana County town derived its name. “His name was Ernest, that's why he wrote,” says Jodi Sandoval. Sandoval assists her sister, Sue Bennett, in running the U. S. Post Office, which is headquartered in their home. “We wrote back and told him it was named for Ernest Iselin.”

Ernest was the first company town in Indiana County, built on hillside farmland in the early 1900s. Ernest Iselin was born in 1876. The Iselin family owned Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal & Iron Co., which built the town along McKee Run. It was named for James McKee, who in 1806 built a small, water-powered mill on the site.

The coal town thrived. The Indiana Progress reported a brick plant in Ernest produced 30,000 bricks a day in 1902, and there were more than 200 coke ovens.

The history of Ernest is bound to the history of the local mining industry, but it is also the story of everyday people doing ordinary things – rearing children, playing baseball, going to church, packing lunch pails. Metal buckets filled with warm, hearty food represented what was usually a life of predictable daily routine for mining town residents, but not always.

The mine explosion of 1916 that killed 27 men stands as the worst disaster in local history.

Eileen Mountjoy Cooper, a historian who documented mining and the life of coal miners, wrote “Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company: The First 100 Years,” published in 1982. It includes nine pages describing Ernest as a typical company town. It was also, at one time, the site of what was one of the world's biggest coal operations. The book's title perhaps expressed the company's optimism that a second century might follow. It was not to be.

But while R&P company is no more, Ernest lives on as a residential community – with daily reminders of its roots. Later generations own and live in houses their parents and grandparents rented from R&P. Patty Yamerick lives with her mother, Agnes Klyap, in the former residence of her grandparents. “The man who lived over there died in the mine; my uncle died in the mine; and my dad's best friend died in the mine,” says Yamerick, pointing to a neighbor's dwelling. She lives on Route 110, which runs through the town.

Cooper says R&P built 156 houses in Ernest in 120 days. Gray, narrow two-story buildings, they now reflect varied tastes and hold unspoken history within their silent walls. And if walls could speak, some messages would be heavily accented — Cooper reports that by 1906, 1,026 men worked inside the Ernest mines. Some immigrated from England, Scotland, Wales, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Italy and other countries, seeking a better life in America — and a sure job.

COMPANY STORE

Residents looking back have little to say that is negative about the way R&P operated Ernest, a company town complete with a company store. Rent and coal were deducted from miners' paychecks, and the store kept a list of purchases. It was known for an impressive line of food, furniture, clothing, housewares, mining supplies and just about anything customers wanted.

Yamerick remembers running down to the store for treats. “As a 6-year-old, I'd go and get a chocolate ice cream bar and say, ‘Put it on my dad's account.' That was just the way we did it,” she says.

Everything in town was owned by the coal company, even the barbershop, according to Eugene Gapshes, 69, the grandchild of Lithuanian immigrants. “They put everything on the book,” he said. “And there was a limit on how much you could buy.”

Tom Gerber, 70, says some miners were limited to 50 cents a day for food – “and they had families,” he says. But Gapshes remembers many miners were bachelors, too, renting rooms from families.

The company store closed sometime in the 1950s, Gerber says, who recalls buying peanut butter there by the pound, scooped out of a keg.

When the company bought the land where Ernest stands, it took the farmhouse as its office. Gerber later purchased the old house which contained, among other things, a pay-rate book. He said miners would hang a brass number on the coal they mined. If a miner didn't produce enough coal, a “snake” would be drawn through his paycheck for that shift – “that meant they earned nothing that day,” Gerber says.

Gapshes explained life in a company town this way: “It was all in a circle — like the song says, ‘You owe your soul to the company store.' My grandfather worked for nothing. Then my dad helped organize the union.” The union hall stands just outside town at the foot of the road leading into Blue Spruce Park.

Around the middle of the century, Gerber remembers R&P sold the town to salvage entrepreneur Joe Kovalchick with the understanding that for about $1,000 residents could buy the homes they had rented. That's how much Gerber paid when he bought his house from another party in 1959.

James O'Hara, 70, now lives in Indiana, but his roots are in Ernest. He said you could get anything at the company store. “It was big, three stories,” says O'Hara, who worked there during the Christmas season as a youngster. “We hauled lots of stuff to Indiana. People could order over the phone; a girl there took orders all day long. During the late '40s I heard they did more business than any store except Murphy's five-and-10 in Indiana.”

LEGACIES

The last mine in Ernest closed in the mid-1960s. Gerber says by then men traveled great distances underground to mine coal sections. “That was too far to go; it didn't pay to haul it back here,” he says.

Once brought to the surface, railroads carried coal north, keeping the town relatively clean. Boney piles were left behind as unwanted black refuse from the mining process. Today another company, Amerikol, is whittling the piles down and hauls products by trucks to power plants. Ash, a byproduct, is returned.

The process has made Ernest dusty and noisy, according to longtime residents Jim and Hannalore Garsick. “You hear trucks all day long,” Jim Garsick says. He estimates 300 to 400 trucks pass through the town daily.

“And cars are covered with dust because of it,” adds his wife, a German immigrant who serves on borough council. “It's no longer a clean, safe, quiet little town.”

Gerber estimates it will take 10 to 15 years for Amerikol and other companies to completely remove the boney piles. There is also strip mining, nearby.

Another legacy of mining is black lung disease. There are widows in town whose husbands died from it, says Sandoval, adding after they lost their men, “They had to learn to drive, pay bills and all these things.”

Gapshes says his dad, Adam Gapshes, died at age 48 of heart disease. “But when they did an autopsy, he was full of it. (black lung).”

Many residents of Ernest are retired, like John Tortella, 79. He says after growing up and graduating from what was then Indiana State Teacher's College, he tried teaching but it wasn't his forte. “I went to Chicago – the small town boy wanted something bigger,” he says with a laugh.

After trying various jobs, he eventually worked in a hospital's credit office for 28 years before retiring. “My mother was still alive, so I came home to be with her, I decided to remodel my home here, and here I am,” Tortella says.

When Tortella first returned he worked in the post office, and it helped him put names with faces. “Me and my dog live here, and now I'm president of borough council,” he says. He learned returning to Ernest has drawbacks for a man who came to love city life. “I've been a bachelor all my life – if it weren't for my relatives, I would be lost here. We go out to dinner once a week.”

BOROUGH PROJECTS

Ernest depends upon the Pennsylvania State Police for law enforcement, but the borough has hired a regulations enforcement officer to make sure municipal regulations are followed. No signs or businesses are allowed in the borough, which some residents say is a way to ensure no “bottle clubs” come to town as has happened in other communities which lacked zoning ordinances.

Ernest, which is located in Rayne Township, was under the township government for a few decades. It became a borough in 1979 in order to operate its own water system rather than remain part of the Indiana County Water Authority. Not everyone in town agreed that a locally operated water system was a good idea. Ultimately the courts ruled on the creation of the borough.

Today the town has a woman mayor, Delores Pereni, who says she was also the first woman elected to borough council. She says that in order to be eligible for grants to operate the water system, the town had to incorporate. “I've seen Ernest grow, since then. Property prices have gone up, while other coal towns practically became ghost towns.”

Pereni is a former businesswoman – she operated a beauty parlor in her home. When a vacancy for the position of mayor opened, borough council voted her into office.

“It's a learning experience,” says Pereni of her position, pointing to former Pittsburgh mayor Sophie Masloff as her role model. “She looks like a simple person, reminds me of my mother. She was a good mayor, another woman in politics.”

“We're a friendly town, we look after one another. If anybody sees someone who needs help, everyone pitches in to help,” Pereni says.

Although Ernest is purely a residential community, Pereni says things could change in the future. “We're looking at other possibilities – we want it to grow, like any other town. Look at Creekside, it has a hair salon. They have a small store; we can do the same thing. We're not looking for an industry but we want to enrich our life.”

One recent change is the addition of a small park.

The Rev. Micah McMillen of Old Mahoning Baptist Church outside Plumville “leased” the land to the town for McMillen Park on First Street, but doesn't charge anything.

Newcomers Sandoval and Bennett pushed for the park, saying they had to overcome some objections along the way. Pereni sees the park as a positive addition. “I've been working on council for years to get that park. Now others have taken it over, and I'm very happy about that.” A park committee sponsors community events on a regular basis, with churches often holding activities there, too.

Deborah Sykes, whose husband John pastors the white clapboard Ernest Bible Church, says the town remains a good place to raise a family. “It's a bit like Mayberry,” she says.

That congregation was organized in 1909 as Union Church. “Stewart's History of Indiana County” states that at one time there were 240 enrolled in Sunday school and 52 in the men's class. As immigrants arrived, Roman Catholic and Orthodox congregations also grew. Today there are three active congregations in town- Ernest Bible Church, Assumption Church, which is Orthodox, and Church of the Resurrection, a Roman Catholic church.

FIRST WOMAN UMPIRE

"I thought it was a great place to grow up; we never lacked for things to do,” Jim O'Hara of Indiana says of Ernest. “We had a beautiful big ball field, swimming in the summer in McGee Run, and spent a lot of time in the woods. In the winter we skied and would skate on anything that was frozen.”

O'Hara remembers baseball as a big part of growing up in Ernest. The town team competed against other company towns in the R&P League, and the competition sometimes grew intense. Cooper reports that mine personnel were sometimes chosen on the basis of their baseball abilities.

“I suppose over a cup of coffee I could tell you about the baseball – we weren't too good. We used to kill them with laughter. But Ernest had some marvelous ball players at one time,” O'Hara says. “The men in the mines paid for it (the baseball league). It was 25 cents, taken off your wage statement. It was automatic, whether you liked it or not.”

He remembers another baseball enthusiast, a woman somewhat ahead of her generation, Beverly Gera. She made baseball history as the first woman umpire, working as a semi-pro. “I knew her. She was a year ahead of me or so,” O'Hara says. “I remember her as athletic, always playing ball, a bit of a tomboy.”

A Pennsylvania historical marker honoring Gera as a baseball pioneer is located in nearby Blue Spruce Park. Probably the most famous person from Ernest, Gera's short-lived career was bittersweet. After winning a landmark lawsuit allowing her to umpire, Gera only oversaw one professional game, on June 24, 1972 in a New York-Pennsylvania League game in Geneva, N.Y. With some of her calls in dispute, Gera was so disheartened by the entire experience that she abruptly quit and went to work in the office of the New York Mets. She died in 1992.

YOUNGEST RESIDENT

Gerber says his dad, William, 93, lives in a senior care facility in Indiana. William Gerber may be the last remaining Ernest miner of his generation. At the other end of the life spectrum is Noah Eugene Bennett, born Oct. 24 at Indiana Hospital.

Noah's parents are Sam and Sue Bennett. As the mother of five, Sue Bennett's busy these days and is apt to appear at the post office window with Noah in her arms. Practically everyone in town stops at her house daily to pick up their mail. There's no home delivery in Ernest. As the only business in the small town, the post office doubles as a social center, Sue Bennett says.

She says she wanted to live in Ernest the moment she and her husband drove into town in search of a house that had been advertised for sale. "I wanted this town," she says. "I didn't care if we lived in a one-bedroom apartment —I wanted this town."

She was grateful when they found a small home to buy. Within a few months they bought the house next door, the largest one in Ernest, and opened the post office in a closed-in porch. Shortly thereafter, Sue Bennett's sister moved to town with her four children. Both families moved to Pennsylvania from Fort Hood Army Base in Texas. They enjoy small-town life. "Neighbors brought my children cookies on the day we moved in," Sue Bennett says.

“It was culture shock,” Sandoval admits. “Where we came from, there were gangs. You were known by your gang. Here, people are known for playing football, or for whether they're good or bad, as individuals. Even compared to Indiana, this is different. It's a neighborhood.”

Penciled portraits of the Bennett children by Ernest artist John Waldenville hang on the family room wall. Bennett says living in Ernest is like going back to the 1960s, with people greeting each other with a friendly wave of the hand. "You can let your kids play in the street and not worry.”

The sisters demonstrate an independence that is new to some in Ernest. They constructed the cement sidewalk leading to the post office on the side of their home. “Some women were intrigued that we did it without a man's help,” Sandoval says.

One of her favorite spots near town is Blue Spruce Park – some residents fish there every day, rain or shine, she says. Others hike, exercise or sketch in the wooded setting.

“Fishing got bad with the drought, but that doesn't keep them from socializing,” says Sandoval, who takes her 4-year-old nephew, Colton, there to fish. She doesn't like handling a hook or worms, so she tied a rock on the end of a string. Colton enjoyed several afternoons of “fishing” with a rock as his Aunt Jo sat nearby, crocheting.

Sgt. 1st Class Sam Bennett worked with the ROTC program at nearby Indiana University of Pennsylvania when the family first moved to Ernest. Then he transferred to Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. His family likes Ernest and the Marion Center School District so much that he now commutes 1 1/2 hours a day so they can remain living there.

Along with a new son, Sam Bennett has a new hobby – woodworking, mentored by some of the “old timers” in the town. Gapshes, who lives across the street, is one of them. Sam Bennett constructed a cradle for Noah before his arrival.

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

Alan and Beth Bupp are other newcomers to Ernest. They moved there when Beth was hired to work at the new state prison built in Indiana County for youth, Pine Grove Correctional State Institution.

Now Beth Bupp is laid off and searching for a teaching or counseling position. Her husband operates a model engine and model train business out of his self-contained van, since businesses aren't permitted in the borough. He travels to antique equipment and train shows within a 300-mile radius of their home.

Alan Bupp's interest in trains began when he was 7,and his grandmother gave him one. He says one of the biggest challenges in his business is that model trains are built to last — “They don't wear out.”

Alan Bupp has a model railroad track in his yard, but now it is overgrown and wild. The engine for the track is a model of one built in 1829, George Stephenson's Rocket Train. He also has a matching riding car, which can carry a 250-pound adult — “If you don't mind being close to the ground,” Beth Bupp adds.

The Bupps remain in Ernest with their young daughter because rent is affordable and moving is a chore. “We moved in on a Christmas Eve. It was snowing. Our rental truck got stuck in a ditch,” Alan Bupp says. “We're not moving again until we have to.”

Sandoval says sometimes it may seem to an outsider that it's old timers-versus- young upstarts, but agrees with others that Ernest residents are friendly to everyone. And forget the 21st century. “We're just trying to bring Ernest into the 20th century,” she said, jokingly.

Past mine explosions were dark with tragedy

Like the rest of the world, residents of Ernest were glued to their TV screens during last summer's Quecreek Mine rescue.

Many of those living in the small Indiana County community, however, grasped the perils the nine miners faced better than most viewers because they, too, had spent years working underground.

“Dark is dark, down there,” says Eugene “Gene” Gapshes, 69, a retired miner. “I could just imagine what they were going through —dark, damp, wet,” he said.

The Quecreek miners story illustrates that mining is still a treacherous occupation, but it ended more happily than some past mine disasters.

Often the danger underground is related to gases and depleted oxygen levels. In Gapshes' home, a former company house, is a “bug light,” sitting on a decorative shelf over a staircase. The light could be used to check the level of oxygen in a mine. “If it goes out, that means there's an oxygen deficiency. We call it black damp. You'd better get out of there,” he said.

Gapshes said he's seen water gush at a cutback underground, a bit like what happened at Quecreek on a much smaller scale. He's also seen warning signs that water is near. “We were against Sagamore mine; the coal was getting red.” Red mean the coal was showing sulfur, he said, adding that means something was changing its color – “water.”

Gapshes' parents were both born in DuBois in Jefferson County, but his grandparents all immigrated from Lithuania. His mother, Anna Gapshes, born in 1903 and still living at an area personal care facility, came with her family to Ernest in 1906.

She told her son about the 1916 explosion at Ernest Mine No. 2, and he donated all her papers about the town to Stapleton Library at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She told him about the bodies which were moved to Indiana where they were buried in unmarked graves in St. Bernard of Clairvaux Roman Catholic Cemetery.

Mining conditions were far more primitive a century ago. Many miners in the early 1900s were immigrants, often single young men who spoke little English. Gapshes said his mother told him that a few of the men who died in the Ernest mine explosion were only known by their first names and were buried without names on gravestones, or relatives to weep their passing.

Former IUP mining historian Eileen Mountjoy Cooper told Monsignor William R. Charnoki about the miners buried in a mass unmarked grave in the old part of the cemetery.

“I thought that was appalling,” Charnoki said. “Most of us came from mining backgrounds. Something had to be done about that.”

Both of Charnoki's grandfathers and his father were miners. “I understand the bodies were displayed in storefronts with the hope somebody could identify them,” he said. Charnoki told his Indiana parish members about the unmarked grave, and they collected enough funds to purchase a large stone listing the names of all the miners who died in the 1916 accident. It was dedicated, appropriately, on Labor Day 2001.

The Special Collections & Archives division of Patrick J. Stapleton Library, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, holds records of early mining days in Indiana County. Cooper, who now lives in Pittsburgh, researched the 1910 and 1916 Ernest mine explosions and wrote extensively about mining life in western Pennsylvania, capturing the dreariness of life in a mining town.

The following condensed version of Cooper's comments on two mining disasters is used with permission of IUP:

“In its infancy Ernest was known locally as a ‘model mining village' of 156 houses, 2 churches, a school, and a community center. During the first several years of development at the site, R & P opened four drift type mines and built 274 beehive coke ovens which by 1909 had an annual production of 17,946 tons. By the close of 1906 more than one thousand men worked at the operation.

On February 5, 1910, an explosion occurred near the face of No. 5 room off No. 11 entry, resulting in the deaths of eleven men. County Coroner James S. Hammers held an inquest in the weeks that followed, and jurors determined the dead miners succumbed to the "afterdamp," a mixture of gases remaining in a mine after a fire or explosion of firedamp (methane).

Families buried their dead; the town mourned. The miners who remained went back to their underground livelihood's, and for the next six years the mines at Ernest produced coal without a major disaster.

Several improvements in the years preceding 1916 made mining somewhat easier and safer for the men working in Ernest No. 2. That year, R & P purchased twenty-one electric cutting machines for the plant, greatly reducing the amount of work done by hand. With the increased availability of electric cap lamps, only certain portions of the mine were worked with open carbide lights.

Many of the miners who entered the No. 2 mine on the morning of Friday, February 11, 1916, were not, however, wearing the safer, battery-operated cap lamps. The new electric cap lamps were cumbersome to wear and the batteries often leaked acid. Besides, the men who worked in the fifteenth right room of headings three and four felt safe working with the older carbide lights; gas had never before been discovered in this part of the mine.

By that evening, twenty-seven of them were dead. No one on the outside heard the sound of the explosion. (the late) "Butch" Tortella, a retired miner, was only a small boy at the time of the tragedy, but he remembers that it was Jimmy Moody, the motorman, who brought the news to the surface.

When he took his locomotive back into the mine late that afternoon to bring out the loaded mine cars, Moody discovered the body of one of the miners only about a mile from the entrance. Hurrying back to the surface, he quickly summoned help.

The exact time of the tragedy was later determined from a watch found hanging from a pocket of one of the dead men. The watch was smashed and the hands pointed to 3:20 p.m. Rescue teams formed rapidly at the mouth of the mine as word of the explosion spread to Indiana. Crews from nearby mining towns arrived by automobile, and Thomas Lowther of Indiana took charge of the rescue attempts. All available doctors and nurses from the Indiana Hospital rushed to Ernest, together with Dr. C. Paul Reed of Homer City and Dr. F.F. Moore of Lucerne. Officials of the R & P and of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway hurried to the scene in a special train from Punxsutawney, arriving in Ernest shortly before 8:00 p.m. F.M. Fritchman, general superintendent of the coal company, was early on the scene and assisted in the direction of the mine rescuers. A specially equipped mine rescue car came from Pittsburgh on the tracks of the B R & P, and by night fall every mining town in the district was represented by a rescue team. Pennsylvania state troopers were summoned and prevented families and friends of the trapped miners from passing over the bridge leading to the mouth of the mine. An Indiana newspaper reported that there was "no great excitement" at the site; only the "silently weeping women, wringing their hands and giving vent to little cries of despair, and the hushed whispers of the crowd" could be heard.

Teams dug through the debris after clearing part of the main road and rebuilding the mine brattices as they advanced. The first of the bodies was brought to the surface about 4:30 a.m. on Saturday and the others at various intervals until daylight.

A special train carried the dead to Indiana where morticians prepared the bodies for burial. By Saturday evening, little more than twenty-four hours after the explosion, three Indiana undertakers had finished the embalming of the twenty-six dead miners. Reports later estimated that nearly three thousand people viewed the bodies as they lay in three separate Indiana store buildings.

On Monday afternoon funeral services were held according to the religious affiliations of the dead. A large trench was dug at St. Bernard's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Indiana; twelve of the miners were laid there in a single grave. Two of the men were immigrants who had arrived alone in America. As they spoke little English and had few friends, their full names were never known. Later, the body of Pompia George was recovered from the mine, bringing the total number of dead to twentyseven. The long grave at St. Bernard's was reopened to receive his body.

B. M. Clark of Punxsutawney, assistant to R & P President Lucius Waterman Robinson, stated publicly that at least half a dozen theories as to the cause of the explosion were advanced. A miner named Nord, who survived the blast, stated that he was about 1,400 feet inside the mine when the first detonation occurred. He was knocked about twenty feet and landed against one of the mine ribs. Before Nord could get to his feet a second explosion erupted and knocked him unconscious. His proximity to the mouth of the mine prevented him from breathing the poisonous fumes caused by the blast.

Nord seemed positive that two explosions took place in the fifteenth right room of headings three and four, about a mile and a quarter from the entrance... Investigations carried out by a five-man team of Pennsylvania state mine inspectors from five districts concurred with the account given by Nord from his hospital bed. On February 15, three days after the disaster, the inspection team submitted its findings to Roderick. Their document is printed in full in the Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania for the year ending 1916.

They also found evidence of intense heat and considerable force surrounding rooms No. 14 and No. 15 right entry, all the way to room No. 8, but not extending to any other area of the mine.

The report noted that ‘all persons working in the vicinity were burned and afterwards suffocated by the afterdamp.' Investigators had "no criticism to offer in regard to the work of the mine superintendent, the mine foreman and his assistants who were in charge...as no explosive gas was ever previously discovered . . . in this part of No. 2 mine.'”

Lights Festival shines at Blue Spruce Park

It's hard to say which season shines brightest at Blue Spruce Creek. Right now the park is moving from autumn's splendor into winter's pristine beauty. The park is located six miles north of Indiana, one mile off Route 110, just outside of Ernest and is considered by many Ernest residents to be a local treasure.

The centerpiece of the park in a 12-acre lake, stocked with trout. People from the area knew it was a good place to fish long before Indiana County established Blue Spruce Park in 1966. For Ernest children, it was an easy hike over the hill to take a forbidden dip in what was then known as Cummins Dam, constructed in 1908 and enlarged in 1912. The dam was built by the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway and was named after early landowner. J.D. Cummins.

During the upcoming holidays, from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day, the Festival of Lights shines nightly at Blue Spruce Park. The festival features luminaries glistening by the lake's edge, dozens of one-of-a-kind light displays, a craft store of locally made crafts, horse-drawn sleigh rides (with or without snow) and visits with Santa.

Ed Patterson, director of Indiana County Parks, says that about 30 local volunteer groups will staff the entry booth. “We have some new displays planned for this year, along with the traditional favorites, including the luminaries,” he says.

A gift shop featuring locally made crafts is open on the same nights as the festival through Dec. 23. “We feature inexpensive, well-made local crafts. If folks have not stopped at the gift shop they are missing a very nice feature of the festival,” Patterson says.

Visitors can register at the gift shop to win a basket of crafts donated by the crafters. Last year's gift basket was valued at $200.

Hours: 5:30 to 10:00 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, Nov. 28-Dec. 8, and nightly Dec.12-Jan. 1

Admission: $6 per vehicle and $1 per passenger for buses.

For more information, call 724-463-8936.

Jan Woodard is an Indiana, Pa., freelance writer for the Tribune-Review.