C--Coal

Stacks of the Gatsby Power Plant, from the 3rd floor window of FHL (Dec 2011)
2011:
As I sit on the 3rd floor working at the Family History Library,  
I glance at the smoke stacks of the Gatsby Power Plant out the windows. The Gatsby Power Plant, located in Salt Lake City, Utah, the area my husband worked at Pacific Power before he died.

How interwoven my life has been with my ancestors—intentional or unintentional!


View from the tracks on 1000 West  (Dec 2011)
1970:
The Gatsby Power Plant, just a block, more or less, from my maternal grandparents home on the west side of Salt Lake City. As a child, I would walk up and down the sidewalk from North Temple to the train tracks.  If you stand at the tracks (the train tracks that transported coal to the power plant) and look west you see the coal-fired Gatsby Power Plant.  (In the mid 1990's the Gatsby Power Plant was redesigned and now is fueled by natural gas).(1)


Hunter Power Plant, Castle Dale, Utah  (2010)
1983:
My husband and I moved to Emery County as he was hired to work at the coal-fired Hunter Power Plant. He was hired as a general helper and then moved up to a C-operator. He would come home smelling of coal and he would be covered in a light layer of coal dust. 


picture from here
1984:
In December 1984, the Wilberg mine accident killed 27 miners. The small Emery County communities were in a sad buzz of commotion. I clearly remember that cold December day renting a small home in Castle Dale, Utah.
picture from here


1994:
As I began doing family history work,I learned my ancestors were coal miners in Wales, England, Wyoming & Pennsylvania.
Still living in Emery County, coal miners were our neighbors and friends.

1999:
My husband transferred to the Naughton Power Plant, located just outside of Kemmerer. At Naughton, he was a heavy equipment operator, moving coal around the coal yard.  We lived in Evanston,just a mile or two from the Almy Coal mines; where the Roberts sons worked when they first came out west from Pennsylvania.  
During these next two years, researching took me to the coal mining communities of Rock Springs, Green River, Frontier, and Kemmerer.

Frontier Mine No. 1, Kemmerer, Wyoming 1923
2000:
I became acquainted with the Frontier Mine Disaster of 1923 where 99 men were killed. It brought to my mind the Wilberg Mine accident of 1984. 

FHL, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 2010 Church Service Mission
 2010:
In May, I begin serving a Church Service Mission at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I search and re-search again, looking for my ancestors--coal miners.  I browse films, books and spend hours at the computer searching for my family.


Gatsby Stacks, (Dec 2011)
2010: I see those smoke stacks and I ponder: intentional or unintentional, coincidental or not. Funny how interwoven, coal, coal dust, coal mines, power plants, 
coal…
Coal…
COAL…
Sustaining my family and my ancestors...
An integral part of my life and the history of my ancestors.

Source:
(1) www.pacificorp.com/content/dam/pacificorp/doc/Energy_Sources/EnergyGeneration_FactSheets/RMP_GFS_Gadsby.pdf

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Walking Where They Walked: Park Hotel

Image
Park Hotel, Rock Springs, Wyoming, September 2013, RR&B 19 Elk Street, Rock Springs, Sweetwater, Wyoming The Park Hotel opened in 1914 and was the hub of Western Wyoming until the late 1950’s. It was the largest and most modern hotel in the city. Advertisements boasted of hot and cold water in each of its 38 rooms, twenty of which had private baths and toilets. The fourth floor was added in the 1920’s. The Park Hotel catered to commercial men and automobile tourists traveling the Lincoln Highway. The hotel had a boisterous barroom and a sedate restaurant with sparking white table cloths. Rock Springs Miner, 30 January 1914, page 1, Wyoming Newspaper Project online. One memory of the Park Hotel, is related by Thomas P. Cullen, “One summer afternoon while walking up Elk Street toward the C Street Crossing, my attention was drawn to the small crowd assembled near the north end of the Park Hotel. A slight man, of short stature, stood rolling up his pantlegs
Read more

What is a mortcloth?

A mortcloth, or pall, is a funeral cloth used to cover a coffin in the funeral ceremony or the deceased prior to burial.   The deceased’s family usually rented a mortcloth from the local church and after each use, the fabric was washed and readied for use again.   The word comes from the Latin word “pallium” meaning cloak. The Mortcloth case of 1792 begins:   “ For many centuries, and probably up to the 20th, the Church of Scotland was the sole supplier of mortcloths.   As the name would suggest, they were cloths used to cover the dead prior to burial, and after use, were washed ready for rehire. The Church hired these for a few pence, or in some cases loaned out these cloths, until the time of the funeral. The revenue raised by this service, typically around £40 pa, was distributed to the poor of the parish at frequent intervals.”   In the late 1780’s a local Society of Colliers decided to purchase and rent out their own mortcloths preventing the local church from making re
Read more

Bagillt, Flintshire, Wales

Image
Bagillt, Flintshire, Wales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagillt) The parish of Bagillt was gazetted on 23 May 1844, having been created from the townships of Bagillt Fawr, Bagillt Fechan, Coleshill Fawr and Coleshill Fechan, which were formerly in the parish of Holywell. It is located in the Northern part of Wales. (Genuki, http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/FLN/Bagillt/index.html)   The 1841 British Census finds Margaret(2) Roberts, aged four years living with her parents and siblings in Bagillt, Flintshire, Wales. In 1831, J. Poole penned: "Bagillt is a bustling place, and will continue so, as long as her smelting and coal works go on in their present prosperous state. Well conducted boats go from this place to Chester every day; with a favorable wind, these little barks make the 17 or 18 miles in little more than two hours."   (J. Poole, Gleanings of the histories of Holywell, Flint, St. Asaph and Rhuddlan, 1831 as qtd.  in http://www.genuki.org.uk/
Read more