This week we will return to our review of coal mines in the Bridgeville area, focusing on the Elsie, Melrose, and Katy mines. Our information on them is extremely limited; we would be delighted to hear from anyone with specific knowledge of any of them.
Let’s begin with Elsie. Is this a female name or a corruption of the letters L and C? A few weeks ago we were discussing Bridgeville coal mines at one of our BHS brunches, and Ben Rupnik reported that he remembered a coal tipple at the end of Chestnut Street. My first reaction was that this was absurd; fortunately I was courteous enough to keep my mouth shut. A few days later I checked this out on the 1924 Sanborn Insurance map at the Bridgeville History Center and confirmed its existence.
This led to further investigation, and eventually I found an old mine map at the History Center which showed a portal identified as “Lynch and Crum Pit” at the bottom of the hill directly opposite the point where Elm Street intersects Chartiers. The mine appears to extend several hundred feet into the hillside and to have several lateral branches. Ben’s recollection included some sort of rail system leading from the tipple (at the end of Chestnut) down the side of the hill to a portal (below the end of Elm Street). Apparently there was a skip car system that transported the coal from the portal at the base of the hill to the tipple, where it was loaded onto trucks.
The History Center also produced a pair of relevant documents, stock certificates for preferred stock of the Elsie Coal Company, dated July 9, 1917. John C. Crum is identified as owner of the certificates amounting to twenty-five shares of $100.00 stock in a company capitalized at $50,000. On December 26, 1918, the stockholders and directors of the Elsie Coal Company, announced a public sale of “all the real estate, plant, and equipment of the said Elsie Coal Company”. Six days later the Daily Post reported the sale by Daniel W. Frye of 17.9 acres in South Fayette to the Elsie Coal Company for $10,740.
It is easy to surmise that Elsie was indeed “LC” and that the “C” referred to John Crum. Was the “L” Jimmy Lynch? At any rate, it is encouraging to know that Ben Rupnik’s memory is still as solid as ever.
The Melrose mine, on the other side of Chartiers Creek, was an order of magnitude larger. On June 3, 1914, the Post-Gazette reported the incorporation of the South Fayette Coal Company, Bridgeville, by Edmund R. Weise and Louis A. Weise, Robbins Station; and Frank E. Weise, Glenshaw, at $50,000. That was indeed a happy day for Bridgeville. The positive impact of the Weise family on the community in the next century was immense, and it continues today.
Edmund Weise was born in Germany in 1866, the son of August and Henriette Weise. In 1881 the family emigrated to the United States and settled in West Newton, where August and his sons found work in the coal mines. After marrying Alma George, Edmund moved to Snowden where he worked for a series of different companies in a variety of supervisory positions. In 1907 he leased the Germania mine from the Pittsburg Coal Company. Apparently this experience was successful enough that he and his sons, Louis and Frank, were able to incorporate a new company and open the Melrose Mine.
The Melrose Mine was located just south of Melrose Cemetery, in South Fayette Township. In 1916 the mine’s 112 employees produced 129,000 tons of coal. Based on its mine map, it apparently took up about sixty acres. Someone at the History Center remembered its tipple on the Chartiers Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
And then we have the Katie Mine. Was it named for a sweetheart named Katharine? According to the 1907 Sanborn map, its portal was on Villars Avenue, close to its intersection with Coulter Street,. On that map the tipple is shown over the B & M branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, on the other side of Villars from the portal. The powerhouse is described as “Amyville Gas & Coke Co. Katie Mine #1”.
On October 29, 1906, the Pittsburgh Press announced a Receiver’s Sale of assets of the Amyville-Youghiogheny Gas, Coal, and Coke Company, which included the Katie Mine. The advertisement contains more detailed information regarding the operation of a coal mine in that era than is available in most other locations. The coal body was described as forty-two acres of “Pittsburg Vein” coal. A 160 HP McEwan engine powered a Jeffrey 100 KW generator that provided electricity throughout the mine. Two 125 HP return tubular boilers provided steam. Ventilation was provided by a steam-driven, twelve-foot diameter Brazil fan.
About one hundred pit cars serviced the mine on a forty-inch gauge rail system, with a Goodman six-ton motor running on the main haulage road. A hoisting engine-equipped incline lead to the tipple, which serviced three tracks with room for sixty rail cars. Existing buildings included a blacksmith shop, machine shop, sand office, and office, sufficient to support a capacity of five hundred tons of run-of-mine coal a day. The advertisement emphasized the advantage of operating a mine in an established community, negating the necessity for company houses and stores.
On the 1917 version of the Sanborn map the same building is designated “McClane Coal Company, Katie Mine #1”. By ,1924 the tipple was gone. According to another reference, the Katie Mine was operated by the Keeling Coal Company from the early 1900s to the mid 1920s and never had more than several dozen employees.
Although these three mines were modest in size, relative to the Bridgeville Mine (in 1916 its 259 employees produced 211,000 tons of coal), they too contributed significantly to the growth of the community.