Coal Mining Accident in Chatham County Mine Kills Workers, 1925

“Sixty Men May Have Been Killed Yesterday in Chatham County Mine,” from The Beaufort News, May 28, 1925

Coal Glen, May 27—The mine of the Carolina Coal Company today became the scene of the greatest mine disaster in the history of North Carolina when three successive explosions deep in the bowels of the earth entombed 59 miners, every one of whom tonight was believed to be dead.

At 7:20 the first six bodies were brought to the surface. No trace has been found yet of the remaining 53 believed to be in the mine. Rescue workers, digging on hourly shifts and desperately attacking the piles of debris that closed the main shaft, are fighting ahead with every ounce of strength and skill they possess to reach their comrades.

Claude Scott, in active charge of the rescue work, and Dr. J.F. Foster, one of the medical corps in charge of the arrangements on top, said tonight at 9 o’clock that they did not believe any man would be brought up alive. Others are more optimistic.

Six Bodies Brought Up

The known dead, whose bodies were brought out, are:

Archie Hollins, white,

Hollins Richardson, white,

William E. Byerley, white,

William Irick, negro,

James Williams, negro

A sixth negro, unidentified.

All these men were killed almost certainly by the force of one of the explosions, either the second or the third. They were found first by Howard Butler, acting superintendent of the mine, and Joe Richardson, a machinist, when these two plunged down the shaft immediately after the first explosion. Butler and Richardson found them about 1,000 feet down, or about 500 feet in a vertical line from the top of the ground, dazed, bruised, but still breathing.