Jackson County IL Archives News.....GUS BLAIR A WEDGE-SLEDGE MINER WHEN 9 October 16, 1923
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Mary Riseling riseling@insightbb.com July 13, 2006, 7:36 pm

Murphysboro Daily Independent October 16, 1923

    Mayor Gus BLAIR of Murphysboro was born in 1871.  Orphaned very early in
life, he lived with his aunt, Mrs. John LAWSON.  His ninth year found him a boy
miner in the old Mt. Carbon Mining Co.'s No. 3 pit and "The Tunnel."  He is
another of our citizens who "came through" with Murphysboro from the old days to
the new.

    All of his memories of the Mt. Carbon times in the late 70's and the 80's,
Mr. Blair recalls most vividly of all the days away back there when Big Muddy
River broke into the "Old Tunnel" and No. 2, which were operated together.  The
men were in the workings he said, when the river went through in a great
whirlpool near the Mt. Carbon school.  As it happened, no lives were lost.  But
as the men and boys forged their fearsome ways toward the place where they again
hoped to see the light of day, the water was so deep that they met mine props
floating towards them on the crest of the inpouring floor.

    Those were the days of "the wedge and the sledge" when Mt. Carbon miners
would hoot the thought of the use of power to do their work for them, and could
count a miner a man who could wedge and sledge down say three tons a day, and be
thankful for his pay at the rate of 60 cents to $1.00 a ton, Mr. Blair recalls.
 The days were ten-hour days and long ones, with the hearty diggers of the time
thinking little at all of working knee deep in the water of the pit.

    Mr. Blair also recalls distinctly the burning of the old Granny shops soon
after he had entered his teens, and the keen sense of loss the Mt. Carbon and
Murphysboro community felt at the time.  These shops maintained the primitive
engines and other rolling stock of the old Grand Tower & Texas, built as a coal
road from Murphysboro to big coal dumps at Grand Tower in the early 70's and
later extended to Grand Tower.  

    When Mt. Carbon school boys of the time came to the "Fifth Grade" they came
to the educational jumping off place, as the school did not go any farther, Mr.
Blair declares.  A boy was expected to have enough book learning and gumption by
the time he left the fifth grade with honorable mention, to go ahead and get
along and learn more as he got there.  So it was that the present day Mayor
Blair came to be a "Fifth Grader" and jumped off, as it were, to shift for
himself when it came to getting more education.  The age of twenty found him
still a miner, but with night school learning added to that the little Mt.
Carbon school afforded him.  His final schooling in addition to his practical
lessoning in the mines came through a correspondence course after he had become
a man.

    His oldest memory picture of Murphysboro paints the town as a straggling
village around about a court house, with a tail-like wing of homes and business
places extending down McGuire hill away towards Mt. Carbon, when Mt. Carbon was
the larger town and the fount of the local industrial pay rolls.

    Of the early trading places Mr. Blair recalls best, he says, the original
"Company Store" when Capt. CHAPMAN was in charge.  Here the miners' wives would
go to shop on pay days, the first of the month.  The old company book system was
used.  The customer would present her book.  It would go in its turn into the
top of the box in back of the counters, and come out of the bottom of the box. 
When it came out the owner would be waited on, not before.  Mr. Blair says he
remembers too well how traders would get into the crowded store at 8 and 10 a.m.
on these days and sometimes be kept waiting until 4 and 5 pm. before their
orders were filled.

    Coal mining, this pioneer miner declares was the "foundation of
Murphysboro."  To other industries he attributes the rounding out and
modernization of the city that grew and grew.

    Leaving the mines when 20 years old, Mr. Blair made a trip through the
northwest and did granitoid work in St. Louis three years, then to come back and
take charge of the D. P. WILLIS & Co. coal operations at Willisville, which
instanced the building of the town about the mine.  Mr. Blair opened a store for
the incoming populace.  Both the mine and store prospered.  The young mining man
married Miss Evangeline ROSENDOIL, daughter of a landowner whose holdings the
company developed.

    Six years later found him back in Murphysboro, where he opened in his own
name Blair mine No. 1 on the M & O north of Gartside No. 4 and Blair No. 2, near
the old Billy BOUCHER farm house, now the Earl IMHOFF farm, on the Missouri
Pacific.  Operation of mines 1 and 2 occupied him from 1902 to 1917.

    Mr. Blair's first public office was that of alderman in 1907.  He was
appointed postmaster under the Woodrow Wilson administration and served seven
years.  For a few years he found himself without a coal mine and then got back
into the game.  Mr. Blair was elected mayor last April.


Additional Comments:

Transcribed by Mary Riseling from grandfather C. E. RISELING's collection of old
newspapers.

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