Dynamite Making and Remaley Deaths
I recently ran acoss this article on Dynamite making that gives and interesting view of the late 1800s / early 1900s in western Pennsylvania. There are a couple of factual errors and so I have also made a post giving a contemporary account of the 1884 blast.
Trenton (NJ) Evening Times, Wednesday, June 3, 1908, p8:
TRAGEDY MARKS DYNAMITE MAKING
One of the Standard Oil Company's superintendents read the other day about the retirement of Matt Agnew of Franklin, Pa., the only oil well shooter who quit the game with his body intact. The superintendent was born and raised on the banks of the Allegheny River, where oil wells were as common as mud and nitro-glycerine was slung around so carelessly that it's a wonder there were not more sudden deaths than there were. No one, he says, expects a person who has had the eperience can realize what chances the people in the oil country took with explosives in the old days.
"At Black Run, down the river from my home," said he, "there was a factory where dynamite and nitro-glycerine was made and never a year passed that I can recall that it wasn't blown to smithereens. Sometimes it went up oftener, but the annual explosion came around as certain as Christmas, although nobody knew the exact day when it was coming.
"Every time it went up it meant the taking of from two to eight or ten lives with it. Then the factory was rebuilt. Big wages were paid to the men, and to the girls, who were employed to roll and wrap the dynamite in the waxed paper shells in which it is sent out, packed in boxes of sawdust. The high wages were a temptation to the poor people in the neighborhood, the men getting $8 and $10 a day, and the girls $5 a day or more. In one of the explosions the entire Remaley family of seven persons -- four girls and three men -- was wiped out, and there wasn't enough of their remains found to hold a decent funeral over. Only a few shreds of flesh, about enough to fill a cigar box, were recovered.
"A queer thing that shows the freaks of fate was what befell Mike Simzik, who was called "the Polish Dude." Mike had been a poor track walker on the Allegheny Valley Railroad when the high wages offered in the dynamite factory tempted him to quite tramping ties and go to work there. He became an expert mixer -- the man who understands combining the harmless glycerine with the sulphuric acid -- and was getting enormous pay.
"With a poor foreign peasant's idea of thrift, he was salting his money away against the day he would return to the old country to live in ease and comfort for the rest of his life. At last came the time when Mike saw his way clear to quite the dangerous work and go back to the fatherland. He was to leave on a Saturday, and the previous Wednesday he got off to go to Pittsburg (sic) to see about engaging his passage. When he stepped off the train at Barking that night, on his way home, he got in front of another train and was cut to pieces. The next morning the dynamite works blew up again, killing half a dozen workers. It looks as if fate had intended a sudden and violent death for Mike, whichever way it came.
"Of course this factory brought well shooters from all parts of the country for their supplies. I've seen several shooters a day, with their light, long-bodied spring wagons, always drawn by a pair of lively stepers, pass by my home. They carried the cans of deadly stuff wrapped in horse blankets or bags in the backs of their wagons, and they used to worry a whole lot the old negro ferryman who ran the wire rope ferry across the Allegheny between Springdale and Logan's Ferry.
"One day Bill Moxon, a coal digger, was walking home from work. He had about a mile and a half to go, and as Bill was a great big fellow, weighing about 300 pounds, he didn't like walking any more than he could help after a hard day's work in the mines. He was trudging along the road, his dinner pail in hand, when he heard the rattle of horses' hoofs behind him. As the wagon came alongside he hailed the driver and asked for a ride.
" 'Sure!', said the driver, 'jump in.'
They had gone about half a mile when Bill asked the stranger what he was hauling.
" 'Nitro-glyverine' said the driver.
" 'Holy suffering snakes!' yelled Bill, 'let me out'! He jumped out of the wagon, scrambled over a stone retaining wall ten feet high to the railroad tracks, and never stopped running until he reached home. If Bill hadn't been scared almost to death he wouldn't have got down that embankment and over that wall for a thousand dollars.
"Nitro-glycerine and dynamite explosions play some queer freaks at times. The shock of the explosion follows the strata in the rock, or that is the theory in that country at any rate. I remember the explosion in which the Remaley family was killed, and the shock was felt more distinctly twenty miles up the river than it was within a radius of a mile from the factory. At Kitanning, twenty-eight miles away, windows were broken in stores on the main street, and people thought it was an earthquake. At my home, only a mile and a half away, the shock felt like the dropping of a heavy weight on the floor, but it was not severe enough to make the dishes dance or break any glass.
"About as sad a case of the sudden end of a well shooter as I know of was that of Sam Bigley. Sam had started out in a small way as a 'wild-catter', an independent operator up around Bradford, and made a fortune. He was on the road to becoming as rich as Coal Oil Johnny, but he sank a lot of money in a sucession of 'dusters,' as they call dry holes in the oil country, and was down and out.
"He was so far gone financially that he had to sell his home and send his wife and children back to the old folks to live. The Washington field was just opening up then, so Sam decided to turn well shooter until he could get enough money ahead to begin over again. It was no new business for him, as that was how he made his first start in oil, and he saw plenty of work ahead.
"But Sam was blown to kingdom come on his very first trip with a load of glycerine. He drove into the magazine on the outskirts of Little Washington, carefully loaded the toucky stuff, and hadn't gone more than a mile on the return trip when there was a blast that tore a hole in the road 50 feet in circumference and 10 to 12 feet deep. A frame house near by was blown down and there wasn't a thing left to show what had become of him, his horses, or his wagon. Just the hole in the ground, that was all.
"About three-quarters of a mile away there was a railroad trestle, and firmly imbedded in one of the timbers some boys found a horseshoe, with a bit of a horse;s hoof sticking to it. They had to get a chisel to pry it off for a souvenir.
"But with all the explosions and accidents, it was surprising to see the chances people in that part of the country would take with the stuff. One day two children of Jim Stowers, a section foreman on the railroad, mysteriously disappeared. When last seen they had been fishing off the end of a raft, so the natural conclusion was that they had fallen into the river, or that one of them had fallen in and then the other had jumped in to save him. Nobody had heard a scream or seen them disappear, but it was a sure thing that their bodies were at the bottom of the river.
"The stream all around was dragged with pike poles and divers went under the raft, but they couldn't find either one of the little bodies. Then the railroad construction gang, which was blasting out a cut for a new double track, was send for. They came to the scene provided with dynamite sticks, fuses and fulminating caps, ready to bring the river bed to the surface if necessary.
"It was a solemn scene, but it reminded me for all the world of that in Mark Twain's 'Tom Sawyer' where they fired the cannon over the water and shot loaves of bread plugged with quicksilver out of the Mississippi in the effort to raise the body of a drowned girl.
"Stowers was a popular foreman, and the Dagoes in his gang were the most loyal bunch you ever saw. Why, the way they shot dynamite off out over that river you would have thought they were shooting firecrackers. They would take a stick of dynamite, bury the fulminating cap in one end of it, then put the fuse in the cap for you can't make dynamite go off without that cap, although most people have other ideas about it. Then they would stand there, holding that stick of destructive matter just as if it were a firecracker, until the fuse had almost reached the powerful explosive in the cap before tossing it into the water.
"They did this, of course, because the water would have put the fuse out if they had tossed it in too soon, but oftentimes had they held the stick of dynamite two seconds longer it would have wiped them off the map, as well as everybody who stood nearby.
"Strange as it may seem, there was not an accident, and the bodies of Stower's little boy and girl were brought to the surface, but not before about a million fish had been slaughtered. Dynamiting fish is against the law in Pennsylvania as the blast bursts their bladders and they come to the surface dead, but the fish and game laws were waived in this case.
"At another time we had a big husky chap named Lew Thomas working around the place. One day he was moving some fence rails from a big pile to another spot, about 50 feet away, carrying them one at a time. He reached in his vest pocket for a match to light his pipe. He couldn't find a match, but a couple of copper objects, looking like empty cartridge shells dropped out.
"What are those Lew?" I asked.
"Oh, only some dynamite cartridges," said he. He had been blasting ut some old stumps in a swamp the day before, and had enough fulminating caps in his vest pocket to blow a corner off the farm and send himself and everybody else on it to oblivion. Had the end of one of those rails he was carrying hit that pocket too hard a lick you can imagine what the result would have been."
Trenton (NJ) Evening Times, Wednesday, June 3, 1908, p8:
TRAGEDY MARKS DYNAMITE MAKING
One of the Standard Oil Company's superintendents read the other day about the retirement of Matt Agnew of Franklin, Pa., the only oil well shooter who quit the game with his body intact. The superintendent was born and raised on the banks of the Allegheny River, where oil wells were as common as mud and nitro-glycerine was slung around so carelessly that it's a wonder there were not more sudden deaths than there were. No one, he says, expects a person who has had the eperience can realize what chances the people in the oil country took with explosives in the old days.
"At Black Run, down the river from my home," said he, "there was a factory where dynamite and nitro-glycerine was made and never a year passed that I can recall that it wasn't blown to smithereens. Sometimes it went up oftener, but the annual explosion came around as certain as Christmas, although nobody knew the exact day when it was coming.
"Every time it went up it meant the taking of from two to eight or ten lives with it. Then the factory was rebuilt. Big wages were paid to the men, and to the girls, who were employed to roll and wrap the dynamite in the waxed paper shells in which it is sent out, packed in boxes of sawdust. The high wages were a temptation to the poor people in the neighborhood, the men getting $8 and $10 a day, and the girls $5 a day or more. In one of the explosions the entire Remaley family of seven persons -- four girls and three men -- was wiped out, and there wasn't enough of their remains found to hold a decent funeral over. Only a few shreds of flesh, about enough to fill a cigar box, were recovered.
"A queer thing that shows the freaks of fate was what befell Mike Simzik, who was called "the Polish Dude." Mike had been a poor track walker on the Allegheny Valley Railroad when the high wages offered in the dynamite factory tempted him to quite tramping ties and go to work there. He became an expert mixer -- the man who understands combining the harmless glycerine with the sulphuric acid -- and was getting enormous pay.
"With a poor foreign peasant's idea of thrift, he was salting his money away against the day he would return to the old country to live in ease and comfort for the rest of his life. At last came the time when Mike saw his way clear to quite the dangerous work and go back to the fatherland. He was to leave on a Saturday, and the previous Wednesday he got off to go to Pittsburg (sic) to see about engaging his passage. When he stepped off the train at Barking that night, on his way home, he got in front of another train and was cut to pieces. The next morning the dynamite works blew up again, killing half a dozen workers. It looks as if fate had intended a sudden and violent death for Mike, whichever way it came.
"Of course this factory brought well shooters from all parts of the country for their supplies. I've seen several shooters a day, with their light, long-bodied spring wagons, always drawn by a pair of lively stepers, pass by my home. They carried the cans of deadly stuff wrapped in horse blankets or bags in the backs of their wagons, and they used to worry a whole lot the old negro ferryman who ran the wire rope ferry across the Allegheny between Springdale and Logan's Ferry.
"One day Bill Moxon, a coal digger, was walking home from work. He had about a mile and a half to go, and as Bill was a great big fellow, weighing about 300 pounds, he didn't like walking any more than he could help after a hard day's work in the mines. He was trudging along the road, his dinner pail in hand, when he heard the rattle of horses' hoofs behind him. As the wagon came alongside he hailed the driver and asked for a ride.
" 'Sure!', said the driver, 'jump in.'
They had gone about half a mile when Bill asked the stranger what he was hauling.
" 'Nitro-glyverine' said the driver.
" 'Holy suffering snakes!' yelled Bill, 'let me out'! He jumped out of the wagon, scrambled over a stone retaining wall ten feet high to the railroad tracks, and never stopped running until he reached home. If Bill hadn't been scared almost to death he wouldn't have got down that embankment and over that wall for a thousand dollars.
"Nitro-glycerine and dynamite explosions play some queer freaks at times. The shock of the explosion follows the strata in the rock, or that is the theory in that country at any rate. I remember the explosion in which the Remaley family was killed, and the shock was felt more distinctly twenty miles up the river than it was within a radius of a mile from the factory. At Kitanning, twenty-eight miles away, windows were broken in stores on the main street, and people thought it was an earthquake. At my home, only a mile and a half away, the shock felt like the dropping of a heavy weight on the floor, but it was not severe enough to make the dishes dance or break any glass.
"About as sad a case of the sudden end of a well shooter as I know of was that of Sam Bigley. Sam had started out in a small way as a 'wild-catter', an independent operator up around Bradford, and made a fortune. He was on the road to becoming as rich as Coal Oil Johnny, but he sank a lot of money in a sucession of 'dusters,' as they call dry holes in the oil country, and was down and out.
"He was so far gone financially that he had to sell his home and send his wife and children back to the old folks to live. The Washington field was just opening up then, so Sam decided to turn well shooter until he could get enough money ahead to begin over again. It was no new business for him, as that was how he made his first start in oil, and he saw plenty of work ahead.
"But Sam was blown to kingdom come on his very first trip with a load of glycerine. He drove into the magazine on the outskirts of Little Washington, carefully loaded the toucky stuff, and hadn't gone more than a mile on the return trip when there was a blast that tore a hole in the road 50 feet in circumference and 10 to 12 feet deep. A frame house near by was blown down and there wasn't a thing left to show what had become of him, his horses, or his wagon. Just the hole in the ground, that was all.
"About three-quarters of a mile away there was a railroad trestle, and firmly imbedded in one of the timbers some boys found a horseshoe, with a bit of a horse;s hoof sticking to it. They had to get a chisel to pry it off for a souvenir.
"But with all the explosions and accidents, it was surprising to see the chances people in that part of the country would take with the stuff. One day two children of Jim Stowers, a section foreman on the railroad, mysteriously disappeared. When last seen they had been fishing off the end of a raft, so the natural conclusion was that they had fallen into the river, or that one of them had fallen in and then the other had jumped in to save him. Nobody had heard a scream or seen them disappear, but it was a sure thing that their bodies were at the bottom of the river.
"The stream all around was dragged with pike poles and divers went under the raft, but they couldn't find either one of the little bodies. Then the railroad construction gang, which was blasting out a cut for a new double track, was send for. They came to the scene provided with dynamite sticks, fuses and fulminating caps, ready to bring the river bed to the surface if necessary.
"It was a solemn scene, but it reminded me for all the world of that in Mark Twain's 'Tom Sawyer' where they fired the cannon over the water and shot loaves of bread plugged with quicksilver out of the Mississippi in the effort to raise the body of a drowned girl.
"Stowers was a popular foreman, and the Dagoes in his gang were the most loyal bunch you ever saw. Why, the way they shot dynamite off out over that river you would have thought they were shooting firecrackers. They would take a stick of dynamite, bury the fulminating cap in one end of it, then put the fuse in the cap for you can't make dynamite go off without that cap, although most people have other ideas about it. Then they would stand there, holding that stick of destructive matter just as if it were a firecracker, until the fuse had almost reached the powerful explosive in the cap before tossing it into the water.
"They did this, of course, because the water would have put the fuse out if they had tossed it in too soon, but oftentimes had they held the stick of dynamite two seconds longer it would have wiped them off the map, as well as everybody who stood nearby.
"Strange as it may seem, there was not an accident, and the bodies of Stower's little boy and girl were brought to the surface, but not before about a million fish had been slaughtered. Dynamiting fish is against the law in Pennsylvania as the blast bursts their bladders and they come to the surface dead, but the fish and game laws were waived in this case.
"At another time we had a big husky chap named Lew Thomas working around the place. One day he was moving some fence rails from a big pile to another spot, about 50 feet away, carrying them one at a time. He reached in his vest pocket for a match to light his pipe. He couldn't find a match, but a couple of copper objects, looking like empty cartridge shells dropped out.
"What are those Lew?" I asked.
"Oh, only some dynamite cartridges," said he. He had been blasting ut some old stumps in a swamp the day before, and had enough fulminating caps in his vest pocket to blow a corner off the farm and send himself and everybody else on it to oblivion. Had the end of one of those rails he was carrying hit that pocket too hard a lick you can imagine what the result would have been."
posted by Jim Ramaley | 5:40 PM
3 Comments:
although this story gives me the shivers i cant help to think there is some genetic code for risk taking that might perhaps explain the many risks i have taken during the first fifty years of my life. sincerely, Leland Chalmers Raymaley III (Chipper) born jeannette pa 1960 currently living in Pittsburgh pa 15212
risk taking must be in the raymaley genetic code
Mike Bigley here!
I am a descendant of Sam Bigley's brother Henry Wilkins Bigley. The Bigley's and Remaley's of Springdale, PA, inter-married a few times. Do you suppose we're distantly related?
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