Mining memories

The village of "Edna No. 1" is located less than a mile south of Adamsburg along Edna Road in Hempfield Township between Route 30 and Route 136. Street names such as Lilac, Tulip and Daisy hardly evoke visions of a coal town, but the double houses are very typical of a western Pennsylvania coal patch.

Located on a hillside above a tributary of Little Sewickly Creek, about 50 company-built houses survive today. The mining complex was demolished long ago. Only portions of the slate dumps remain, serving as a lasting reminder of the Edna Road coal mining era.

The Pittsburgh and Baltimore Coal Co. opened the slope-entry Edna No. 1 Mine in 1900. The mine was located at the village of the same name at the bottom of what is now known as Bucktown Road. At one time, the single male miners, or "bucks" as they were known, were housed along that road.

Two years later, the company opened a second mine, Edna No. 2, just south of Wendel near the Hempfield-North Huntingdon border. By 1903, Edna No. 1 employed 276 men and boys and produced nearly 304,000 tons of coal from the 72-inch Pittsburgh coal seam.

During World War I, United Coal Co., a subsidiary of Hillman Coal & Coke, took control of the company, making improvements to the mine and tipple. By 1921, the mine operated under the Hillman Coal & Coke name. J.W. Cornelius served as mine superintendent throughout most of the 1920s, with annual production consistently over 220,000 tons.

Most of the miners at Edna No. 1 lived in the adjacent company town, known today by outsiders, simply, as Edna. The miners purchased their necessities at the company store operated by the Hillman Supply Co..

Beginning in the 1930s, the mine was leased to the John Carr Coal Co. The company houses were then sold to the occupants for between $750 and $1,600 each. Mine operations finally ceased in 1945. By then, the mine had been leased to other independent coal operators.

Just north of Edna No. 1, the Adamsburg Gas Coal Co. began operating a slope mine in 1909, known as the Gress Mine and later called the Adamsburg Mine. During the late 1920s the mine was acquired by Edward Tomajko; it then became known as the Adamsburg Coal Co.'s Tomajko Mine.

Tomajko emigrated from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s. He and his family eventually settled in Adamsburg in the 24-room Tomajko mansion. The house was, eventually, sold to Al Adams and became famous as the Adams House, a popular local restaurant and nightclub.

The entrance to the mine was located between Edna No. 1 and Adamsburg. The shaft was dug to the west, paralleling present-day Route 30, and under the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The mine produced clean-burning house and industrial coal.

Tomajko left the mine to his five sons, Ed, Frank, August, Joe and John G. Tomajko. John G. Tomajko was responsible for operations inside the mine. He was in the mine every day. Occasionally, he took his son, John, in the mine with him.

John Tomajko, grandson of the Tomajko Mine's original owner, still lives along Bucktown Road. His property overlooks the site of the Tomajko Mine. He has many memories of the coal-mining era along Edna Road.

"My dad took me in the mine and showed me dinosaur tracks in the roof; they were exposed when the coal was removed. That sight made quite an impression on me as a young boy," he said.

"The mine had numerous side shafts; once they mined out a section, you stayed out of there. You had to leave so much coal in, or the mine inspector would shut you down.

"The early mine cars were made of rough-cut lumber," Tomajko continued. "They were hand-loaded; the miners got paid by the carload. Each car held between 1.25 and 1.5 tons of coal. Later, the mine cars were called coal buggies or shuttle cars; each car had a capacity for 6 tons of coal. By then, the miners were paid an hourly rate.

"At peak production, the mine employed almost 100 workers. Each miner carried a safety lamp and a two-barrel carbide lamp. They also had to carry their own dynamite and a drill. Later, the dynamite was replaced by cardox, a form of carbon dioxide. It was a lot less dangerous than dynamite. The downward force of the explosion would fracture the coal into nice big pieces that were good for home heating."

Tomajko worked at the mine from 1952 to 1956 as the weigh master. By that time, there were only 20 or 25 miners still working there.

"Coal was always sold by the ton," he explained. "It was worth $4.50 per ton then, plus $2 per ton to shovel it into the cellar."

Westinghouse in East Pittsburgh was one of Tomajko Coal's best customers. Tomajko recalled that, "Once, when there was a strike threat there, we got an emergency call to deliver all the coal we could possibly haul in the next 24 hours. I loaded 888 tons of coal myself that day. Westinghouse also bought thousands of tons of slag for their boilers to make steam; they paid $1 per ton.

"By 1956, the coal mine was worked out and operations ceased. The mine cars were sold, and the tipple burned down; the metal was sold for scrap. Then my uncle would buy screened coal from other mines and sell it to local haulers for home delivery.

"People in Edna didn't have to buy coal: they'd pick it themselves. You could always find a few good lumps," Tomajko said.

Helen Rigoni Slattery grew up in Edna No. 1 with seven brothers and sisters in a company-built house her parents purchased from the John Carr Coal Co.

"We'd pick up the coal dropped by passing trains and put it in a wheelbarrow or bushel basket," she explained. We'd also climb to the top of the slate dump to pick coal and slide back down on top of a bag of coal."

Slattery, now a Michigan resident, recalled that, "The streets weren't named then, but the houses were numbered. We lived in a double house, numbers 41 and 42. The Carr Coal Co. bosses had the bigger houses on the upper side of Edna Road."

Her father, Matthew "Mike" Rigoni, worked at the Tomajko Mine as a coal cutter, and her sister, Catherine, worked in the office at the Edna No. 1 Mine.

When she was a little girl, she attended Edna No. 1 School. It was a two-room school; grades 1 to 3 were in Room 1 and grades 4 to 6 were in Room 2.

"Mary Clemenstein ran a hotel in Edna; there was a store on the first floor. I worked there when I was 12 years old. In addition to the Edna No. 1 company store, over the years, there were also several other stores in Edna," Slattery continued.

"There was a book at Tomajko's store where they would record all your purchases, and the miners would go there to settle their accounts when they got paid. They'd give us a bag of cookies when we paid our bill," she fondly recalled.

"The Ghrist family had a store; they were the first people in Edna who had a TV set. Sasso's grocery store was located along Edna Road. They sold penny candy; I always had a hard time deciding what to get. Later, my sister, Lucille, and her husband, James, converted their garage into Jupena's grocery store; that was the last store in Edna.

"We had a double lot; my dad would always spade a big garden. We used to pull weeds, hoe, and pick vegetables, strawberries and raspberries. Families were self-sufficient then," Slattery proudly remarked. "My mother canned just about everything.

"We had no running water. There were two reservoirs over the hill. On Sundays, we'd walk back and forth filling buckets, so mom would have enough water to wash clothes on Monday."

Slattery summed up life in Edna during the coal-mining era.

"People didn't have much in those days, but they took pride in what they had," she said. "People always helped each other."

Tony Meneghini and his wife, Pauline, lived in house no. 78, next door to the hotel. Soon after his family moved to Edna No. 1 in 1931, there was a serious accident in the mine. The 89-year-old Meneghini, now a San Clemente, Calif., resident, recalled, "The pit boss, his son-in-law and two others were killed by a rock fall; my brother was seriously injured."

The tragedy didn't prevent Meneghini from going to work in the mine in 1937 as a coal loader for the John Carr Coal Co.

"In those days, you were paid for each ton of coal you loaded," Meneghini explained. "Each miner had a little round brass 'check' with his number on it; the number identified you. After the coal car was loaded and dumped, you were credited with the tonnage.

"After I returned from serving in World War II, I went to work at the Tomajko Mine, loading cardox explosives. I worked there from 1945 until 1948 when I got laid off."

Since the decline in coal mining, much has disappeared from the village of Edna No. 1. The company store burned down in 1937. In August 1945, John Rodenz, who still lives in Edna, brought the last carload of coal out of the mine. Edna No. 1 mining operations ceased and the tipple was torn down.

The mine buildings and coal cars are long-gone, but the miners and their families left the community with a legacy of hard work and the promise of a better way of life. Edna's coal heritage remains fresh in the minds of the older generation as a source of lasting pride.