Area History: A Centennial History - Mahanoy City CHAPTER II - THE MAHANOY TUNNEL PAGES 5 - 8 This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Shirley Ryan sryan@enter.net USGENWEB NOTICE: Printing this file by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission fromthe submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. __________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER II - THE MAHANOY TUNNEL PAGES 5 - 8 A CENNENTIAL HISTORY: THIS MATERIAL IS TRANSCRIBED FROM THE 1963 CENTENNIAL BOOKLET ENTITLED "MAHANOY CITY, SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA 1863-1963, A HISTORY". THE HISTORIANS WHO COMPILED THIS HISTORY WERE: JOSEPH H. DAVIES, CHAIRMAN CHARLES H. ENGLE ELWOOD M. YOUNG Transcribed by: Shirley E. Thomas Ryan June 22, 2002 CHAPTER II THE MAHANOY TUNNEL Page 5 - From the time that it was known that large deposits of anthracite existed in the upper Mahanoy Valley, the attention of the landowners and railroad was directed to various ways of getting this coal to market. It was pointed out by the Miners Journal, Pottsville, in its issue of November 27, 1858, that the most feasible way to get this done would be by the excavation of a railroad tunnel through the Broad Mountain. This scheme would divert the entire output of the Mahanoy Valley to the City of Philadelphia. It would connect with the East Mahanoy Railroad to the Eastern seaboard. Accordingly, in the early part of the year 1859 work was begun. Patrick Barry was the principal contractor. It is due largely to his energy and courage that the town of Mahanoy City began as early as it did. Barry had great difficulties, both at the beginning and the end of his contract. The most trying and dangerous incident in the work occurred at the time of the much-publicized riot on Sunday, December 4, 1859. At one o'clock in the morning his home, at the south end of the Tunnel, was stormed by a mob bent on securing their will about certain labor matters. Barry, at the time, was residing in a temporary building. With him were his wife and three or four of their small children, his brother, Philip, who was ill at the time, a nephew, Michael J. Barry, of Lancaster, and his brother-in-law, N. B. Decker, a resident of New York State. Having had some warning that he would be attacked, Barry resolutely made his preparations for defense. As soon as the mob arrived at his house spokesmen demanded that he come out. He, in turn, demanded to know what they wanted. Immediately the house became the target for a barrage of stones and shots from firearms. The defense depended entirely on Barry. His nephew, Michael, was assigned the duty of loading the firearms. This was no small task as the place was in total darkness. The Barrys had three small fouling pieces and three revolvers, which they discharged, at the spot where the sound was loudest. Mrs. Barry and the children were placed in the most secure place to be found, at the foot of a bed and partly under it. She and the children acted roles worthy of their brave husband and father and never cried out. They only knew their protector was alive by hearing the sound of his firearms. At the height of the attack, the assailants tore down the bake oven and large stones and bricks then feel thick and fast. All the doors and windows were soon broken but no one entered the house. The climax of the riot occurred when a shout was head, {"To the powder house, blow them up". The only answer from the agonized family within the house was an increase in the number of shots. As is usually the case, individual cowardice became stronger than mob action and the rioters began to disperse. Some of the rioters must have been wounded as considerable blood was found around the house. After news arrived at Tamaqua, a posse under the direction of Deputy Sheriff Henry Hugh came by train to the Tunnel and began a search for those responsible for the attack. Some of them were found in Tuscarora and neighboring towns from where they were committed to prison or had to furnish bail. The origin of this disturbance seems to have been the result of age-old feuds and grudges from "the Ould Country". Barry, not wishing to take sides, had discharged members of rival "clans". The stronger party, attempting to force their will on him, found in him a foeman not be intimidated or cowed. This was the first of a series of large scale acts of violence in this region. At the conclusion of his work on the Tunnel, Barry was again plagued by what he regarded as the machinations of other contractors and the Board of Directors. He claimed Page 6 - they owed him money for withheld payments of percentages, extra work and damages. With the same courageous and resolute spirit he was able to surmount these difficulties. Shortly after, he moved to town and on March 15, 1865, he purchased two lots on the north side of Centre Street, in the first block west of Main Street. His widow resided there for many years. Barry became a coal operator. His mine was located west of the Brandonville highway, near the Lehigh Valley Railroad, on the M'Neal Tract. Probably he was not too successful in this. No doubt he shared the fate of many of the small individual operators who did not have the capital to continue in hard times and were unable to finance the expense of deep mining. Barry's name has been perpetuated in the region by a mining village or "Patch", as they were long known which was named for him. During the borough's centennial year the last two houses of the settlement were razed to make way for the extension of a strip mine operation. Additional details pertaining to the driving of the Tunnel are to be found in the excellent paper, referred to in preceding pages, which Mrs. T. H. B. Lyons read at a meeting of the Schuylkill County Historical Society in 1905. She records that Michael Barry and a man named Bauns entered into a contract with the Little Schuylkill Company "to dig a tunnel". Bauns retired before the work was begun and sold his interest to Patrick J. Barry and his brother, Philip. Patrick or "P.J", as he was generally referred to, was superintendent. The engineer, whose name was Anderson, resided at Tamaqua. Begun in 1959 and completed in 1862, not a single accident occurred while the work was underway.The day shift was from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., with one hour for dinner. The night shift was from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. with an hour's rest at midnight. The heading men, who worked at the top, where there was more danger from falling rocks, were paid seven dollars a week. The bottom men received eighty-seven cents a day. "A round" was the drilling of a hole in the rock for the purpose of blasting. It took two men at each drill, one holding, and the other striking. There were five pairs of such men in each heading. They were each to drill seven rounds for a day's work. When disagreement broke out between day and night shift factions, known as "Corkonians" and "Fardowns", the day men drilled eight holes for a shift. To prove their superiority, the night shift drilled nine. They kept increasing the number of rounds until they reached fourteen. Then, getting tired of such strenuous labor, they all dropped back to seven rounds. The Barrys refused to accept seven rounds as a day's work. They thought that men who could drill fourteen holes for spite could do the same for pay. They finally compromised on eleven rounds for a day's work and were paid on this basis until the Tunnel was finished. In the contract, the Little Schuylkill Company agreed to pay the contractors, and afterwards did pay, one hundred and twenty dollars a running yard for the digging of the Tunnel. A part of the money was to be retained by the company to provide against accident, loss, or failure to comply with the agreement. When the Tunnel was completed the company owed the Barrys sixty thousand dollars and the Barrys owed the men three months' wages. Quoting Frederick (Gottfried) Reidinger, a pioneer resident of Mahanoy City who was the blacksmith on the job, Mrs. Lyons states that the company, on several occasions, tried to run trains through the tunnel but was prevented from doing so by the workmen who supported Barry. "Besides their guns", Mrs. Lyons writes. "they also had cannon, two buried in the South Mountain and one on the North Mountain. The railroad company, thinking to out-maneuver the contracts, brought a passenger train from Tamaqua up to the east end of the tunnel and asked to be allowed to go through; for answer the superintendent ordered the cannon to be trained on the engine. It did not take the engineer long to back his car out of danger. Hearing that the company was contemplating coming from Girardville with a train, P. J. Barry took three hundred men, and between daylight and daylight, tore up the tracks and threw the rails down the embankment all the way from Girardville to the tunnel. Page 7 - "Then the president of the company went to Governor Andrew G. Curtin and asked him to send troops down to Schuylkill and force these men to surrender the tunnel to the Little Schuylkill Co. Hon. Francis B. Hughes was the counsel for the Barrys. He hastened to Harrisburg and laid the whole matter so forcibly before Governor Curtin that he sent for the president of the railroad, and in the presence of the eminent lawyer, told the president to go to the contractors and pay them the just amount that the railroad was indebted to them, and then if the Barrys did not surrender the tunnel, he, the Governor, would take up the case again. That was the last of the controversy. The company paid the contractors, the contractors paid the men, the roadbed was rebuilt, the tunnel was turned over to the company and the men quietly dispersed". "To show the way the Barrys worked in order to have the tunnel completed on time, Mr. Reidinger stated that for weeks at a stretch the men would work three shifts, two days and a night, or two nights and a day, without sleep, then take one shift for rest and begin again; that he himself, in order to keep up with the work, had stood at his forge four shifts at a time, and more than once he worked seven shifts, or four-and-one-half days, without rest". Some of the directors of the Little Schuylkill Company were also directors of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company which, several years after its completion, leased the road for a period of ninety-nine years. An important role was played by the early railroads in the growth of the coal industry and the development of Mahanoy City. The first railroad in Pennsylvania was constructed in the county by Abraham Pott, the first local landowner to prove the existence of coal here. In 826, Mr. Pott, a resident of Port Carbon, built his pioneer railroad. It was a half-mile in length and extended from his mine at that place to the head of navigation at Mill Creek. It had wooden rails and the cars running on it each carried one-and-a-half tons of coal. Eleven years from the date of the building of this primitive road, over which cars were drawn by horsepower, railroading developed to the extent that coal began to be shipped to Philadelphia in this manner in preference to the canal route. In 1833, two locomotives named "Comet" and "Spitfire" were placed in operation of the Little Schuylkill Railroad and, afterwards, locomotives came into use on other roads. The author of the 1881 history noted that "nearly all the roads in the county have, by purchase, lease, or otherwise, been absorbed by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company...All the principal roads in the county, except the Lehigh and Mahanoy (which merged into the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company), came under their control. "A corporation first known as the Laurel Run Improvement Company was chartered but the name soon changed to the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company. It was owned, and its operations were directed by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and it was a separate organization only in name. "Many millions of dollars were spent in the purchase of coal lands and the purchase or establishment of collieries. Under this company mining operations were carried on to a very great extent and for many years the railroad company was able almost wholly to control the coal trade and transportation of this county". The East Mahanoy Railroad was incorporated on April 21, 1854. The leasing of this road to the Little Schuylkill Company, was authorized by an Act dated April 11, 1859, and another on April 21, in the same year, revived the charter and extended the time for commencement of construction for five years. In accordance with its charter, the road was constructed to the southern base of Mahanoy mountain, at a point four miles from Mahanoy City. It passed under the mountain through a tunnel some four thousand feel in length. It was extended from Mahanoy City and there connected with the railway system in the eastern part of the county. The road was built under the patronage of the Little Schuylkill Company, and after is completion was leased to that corporation. The charter for the Mahanoy and Broad Mountain Railroad Company was granted on March 28k 1859, and the route prescribed was from a point in Mahanoy or Butler townships, and "thence, by the most expedient and practical route, to connect with the Philadelphia Page 8 - and Reading Railroad, or any of its tributaries, with the privilege of making lateral roads into the Big Mine Run, Shenandoah, Mahanoy and New Boston coal basins. Granted April 25, 1857, the charter of the Quakake Railroad authorized the construction of a road from Beaver Meadow railroad, at the junction of Quakake and Black creeks, westwardly up the Quakake Valley, and thence to make connection with the Catawissa railroad between its two summit tunnels in Rush Township. A supplement, approved March 22, 1859, authorized the extension westward of this road to the head waters of, and down the Mahanoy creek, "as far as may be deemed expedient"; with authority to make connection with any railroad in the valley and to construct branches. It was under this charter and supplement that the Lehigh and Mahanoy Railroad was built, and completed as far as Mount Carmel, in 1865. In 1866, it was merged with the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company. The shops of the Lehigh and Mahanoy Railroad, as of its successor, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, were established and maintained at Delano until the early 1920's when a curtailment program went into effect there. The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company discontinued its runs between Mahanoy City and Barrys on January 20, 1920, because of mining conditions. On May 29, 1939 passenger service was eliminated and, in 1957, service was abandoned entirely. Mail train service on the Philadelphia and Reading line (Reading Railroad System) has been reduced through the years and terminated June 30, in this centennial year of the borough.