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- Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Taylorville in Christian County, where at one time there were 16 coal mines.

Coal mining was probably the biggest employer in the county for decades.

Well, there was a Christian County mining museum downtown on the square, 300 square feet last several years.

Well, in June they met good fortune and they moved out here on Highway 29 to the 7,000 square foot facility.

And it's really worth a look.

Chuck Martin, This is pretty, pretty remarkable.

I mean, you went from a little bitty little bit of, sort of like an office where you had all of this coal mine museum material, and now you've got 7,000 square feet.

What, what a dream, huh.

- It's great.

It's a dream come true.

It's a prayer answered.

We're so fortunate to have this facility for the coal mining residents, area residents.

It's just been a labor of love from my part and my wife's part and Brian's part.

Yeah, just so many people have helped us.

- We're gonna talk about the history of this and one Will Stone who started this a long time ago.

- Yes.

- In 2015, you became the executive director of the museum and then little did you know at the time that this space would become available and that you could actually afford it.

- Absolutely.

I had hoped and I prayed and it came true thanks to the generosity of a lady named Pat Klingler.

Her maiden name was Banko.

- And we're going to talk more about her in a little bit, but first we're in the lobby, the reception area.

Just to get the scale of how important coal was to the state of Illinois, let's take a look at this map over here before we get started.

Right?

- Well, as you can see, there's vast coal reserves, almost the entire state of Illinois.

In fact, Illinois has the third largest coal reserves of any state in the country, second only to Montana and Wyoming.

- Wow.

- And this map shows the location of all the active mines and all of the inactive minds throughout the state, but almost every county, well below I-80, has minable coal reserves.

- We're in the Christian County Coal Museum.

And, and this is the, this is the area here that we're really focusing on, but the whole area was, you can see it by Springfield.

All of Springfield was undermined.

- Yes.

- This is what Peabody number 10, I think, which was a huge coal, coal mine, the largest in the world.

- Yes, correct.

Largest in the world.

And there were 17 coal mines, underground coal mines in Christian County from 1883 to 1995.

- Right.

And now, as we talk about coal now, I think you said there are only two active coal mines.

- Nearby.

There's one in Williamsville-Elkhart called the Viper mine, and then there's one at Hillsborough and those are the two closest and everything else is pretty much south of Centralia that's active.

I think there's 11 or 12 active coal mines in the state, that's all.

- Which is minuscule compared to what it once was.

- When I started underground as a college student in 1970, there were 25,000 United Mine Workers in the state of Illinois active.

Today there's zero.

- Let's go inside and take a look around.

And you need this space.

Boy, you've got a lot of stuff to show.

- We really do.

And people keep bringing things to us and we find the space.

- Well, that's what you want, isn't it?

- Yes, it's, it's perfect.

And every day, every day, there's something new that seems to show up and we make use of it.

- I wanted to start here because we talked about Will Stone and here's a good picture of Will up here.

He's the one that started the Christian County Coal Museum.

He started it in a little bitty space.

He started it with some friends down here who were also miners.

They wanted to make sure that the legend, the legendary story of people's lives in central Illinois was preserved.

And that's what coal mining was for many, many, many families.

- No question about it.

If it's not for Will and Ron Verbinski and Earl Simmons, we wouldn't be here today.

They started the museum in 2003 and kept it going for many, many years.

Unfortunately, they've all passed away now.

And as you mentioned, Mark, I took over in 2015.

- And Will actually started this with, like you say, with his friends.

They had collections of their own working materials that they used in the mines.

And that's what got them started, wasn't it?

- Right.

They, they pooled their resources and tapped on to their friends and everybody came forward and contributed.

And we just have a massive amount of memorabilia and, and things that they utilized working underground.

And it's a hard life as you well know, just to put food on the table, the conditions they put up with and they're to be admired.

- Yeah.

Let's go this way now because we're going to, we're going to bring it up to date and how we got to where we are today.

And we're going to see as much of this as we can while we're here.

But this building is, you are in this building because of this woman who, whose family was also coal miners.

- Yes, her father.

- And she was this a good picture of Pat Banko.

- Klingler.

- Klingler and her husband, her husband has since passed away, but Pat knew what you wanted to do.

And she came through for you.

How did she come through for you?

- Real quickly, her brother Jim was a teacher coach here that I knew pretty well.

And he brought me this statue at the old place that I'd never seen before.

And he gave it to me.

And I told him, I said, I just wish that we could have our own building.

Then we could make a showcase here that so many people could be proud.

And he said, he'd try to help us out.

And unfortunately he passed away four days later, but in between that time, he spoke with his wife and his sister, Pat Banco Klingler and shortly thereafter, she told me that she would buy a building for me if I could find a suitable building in honor of her dad and her brother.

And such a touching thing that she did.

And, and thanks to her we're here.

I've never met her.

We've talked to her on the phone.

She's a delightful lady.

She's I think just turned 90 years young and lives in Florida.

And I hope to see her someday and personally thank her.

- Wouldn't that be terrific.

I hope she can tour this place.

- I would like that.

- Well, Chuck, it's not Disney, but it's not a bad job.

I'll tell you what, what made you want to build an under?

- Well, I kept hearing about the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and I've been there.

And of course, if we could have a simulated underground coal mine at our own museum, wouldn't that be a nice attraction?

And we've sort of accomplished that.

We're still working on it.

We'll fix the top and make it look a little more authentic in January, but we've put some authentic items along the walls and you get the impression of being underground if you can get your mindset proper.

And of course no running water or.

- What you have to do is you could you get your mindset properly, you gotta know what you're in for.

So if you're going underground 500 feet, you're going to be down there all day without any of these items right here.

And I'm not sure too many people could live without the internet access, but, and the cell phones, but everything else they can, they can do without.

Let's get started.

- Okay, sure.

Come with me.

We have some old time pictures here that gives you the impression of what was at the turn of the century.

Mules pulling cars of coal out of the mine.

And in some cases they used large dogs believe it or not to pull on coal cars.

and drilling holes into the face of the coal and shooting with dynamite.

- Yeah, we're going to, we're going to actually see how that demonstrates, how, how that got done.

Some of the tools that they used.

These, these, they actually did use these, these to shore up the sides of the walls.

- It was called timbers or props.

And that was the before roof bolts became a standard, but long ago, that's the main support that you had to make sure that you didn't experience the roof from falling.

- Now, this fellow looks like he's tapping the roof or the ceiling for something.

- Correct he's, he's got a tapping rod there that he's listening for a hollow sound.

And if it's hollow, then there's a good chance that the top is loose.

And if he can find a small crack, he'll reverse his rod to make it into a pry bar, possibly pull down the top before it falls down.

- And he's holding a light.

- And his right hand, he has a safety lamp, which replaced the canaries in the cage that so many people know about a long ago, you'd take your canaries down.

And if the canary became lethargic or possibly passed out, then you knew that the air was bad, possibly full of methane.

That safety lamp has a flame of about a half an inch.

And if it grows or turns bluish or pops, then you know, the presence of methane is.

- And you need to get out of there, right?

- It's time to go.

- Okay, well, what's, what's our friend, what's our friend here doing?

- Well, this, this is an older worker who has, has a handheld crank auger, and he's drilling holes into the face.

He'll drill those holes every three feet or so, maybe three feet up and then put sticks of dynamite into the holes.

They might go in four or five feet, light the fuse, blow the, blow the face, and then shovel out the chunks of coal.

I see, so that's how he got paid.

He could shovel out the chunks of coal and if he was successful and he knew what he was doing, he could actually shovel out more coal than somebody who was not as practiced as he was.

Talk about, and this is the auger he's using.

- Look at the length of this baby, right?

- That's a six-foot logger and a hand crank.

It weighs 25 pounds.

And if you noticed on his head, he's got a canvas cap with an oil wick lamp and an open flame.

And he's working with blasting powder and dynamite and possible accumulation of coal dust.

And it's extremely hazardous work, but they found a way and they were really sharp in how they did their work with primitive tools and harsh working conditions.

- What, what does not bolted mean?

- Well, that's a progression from the timbering.

We used roof bolts, iron rods that do drill up into the top to sustain the top.

And oftentimes they would place signs that said it hasn't been bolted because it was maybe bad top or the roof bolting didn't work properly.

- Okay.

So caution.

- Yes, yes.

This is a good, this good picture of, of what they're putting up with every day.

And this, of course, after they blasted, I guess then they're picking away at it, aren't they?

- Yep.

- Oh what a tough life.

- Yes, it is.

- Tough life.

- Yeah.

You had to be pretty, pretty strong.

And you had to put up with a lot of just rough working conditions.

- And these are just wonderful pictures, wonderful pictures here.

This looks like a little more modern day here.

He's got some kind of, can't see what the device is.

- Well, it's called a loading machine and it is a mechanical device, obviously it would load tons and tons of coal.

- So that whole face of that wall has come off, has come down and now it's going out.

- Well, they've blown, they've shot that area.

And the chunks of coal are there for him to scoop up.

And he's got some gathering arms and a alligator tail that shoots it into a shuttle car.

- And of course it's much more, became much more modern.

I mean, the miners never had it easy, but this was a lot better than it was when you were doing it by hand, when you were blasting that, that stuff.

And you had a, a flame attached to your, to your helmet.

- Right.

- Significant safety improvements have occurred over the years.

- Mary Jo, Chuck said he couldn't have done this without you.

- Well, thank you.

- He says you're kind of a workhorse and you have a great eye for colors and for layout.

So he gives you all the credit for it.

- Well, thank you.

- Because when you guys got this building, it didn't look anything like.

- No, no, it was, it was an old gym, an old workout center.

And it had very, very vivid, bright colors, I think for people to be awake when they were here.

So we wanted to tone it down a little bit and give it more of a relaxed feeling when people would come in.

So gray being kind of popular right now, I saw some other grays in town and just kind of went from there.

And it worked out very well.

- Gray and black for coal mine always works, I think.

And we're, and now we're here in the reception area, but let's go inside, inside the display area here.

But you also did a little homework that Chuck credits you with, and I particularly wanted to see this because when we first started the program, we looked at the state of Illinois and all the mines, all the, all the areas of coal.

But I, I think people would be amazed at what they think about central Illinois.

And they think about the, these are the number of mines that were existence from 1883 on, you had a lot of homework to do to dig this up.

- We did, we, we, as I noted down here, the Illinois state geological survey had a lot of this information, and I was able to acquire a lot of it from there, but unbelievable that this many mines just in Christian County at one time, from 1883 on through when the largest mine, Peabody 10 closed in 1995, but just amazing that.

- 16 of them.

- Isn't that wonderful?

- You would have to believe then that coal was the main employer in Christian County by a long shot.

- By a long shot for many, many, many, for over a hundred years, really.

- And not only Christian County, but all of the surrounding counties had enormous coal deposits and built many coal mines, 16 just in Christian, but they were all over the place.

- Right, right.

And of course, Peabody being the largest owners of the mines here, and just, just how much it enriched this community and how many people have a tie to the mines, still today that have a tie to the mines from their background.

- And, and that's, that's a good thing because families, many of the, many of these families were immigrant families.

And they, they, that was really the glue that held the communities together in many cases, because they all, they, they socialized together.

They worked together and they lived, you know, close by.

- Oh, yes, yes.

- You love this part down here and I do too, because I never think of it.

How do you, how do you know who's in the mine and who do you know is out of the mine because you can't keep track of people down there.

And in many cases, they're working by themselves once they're underground.

- Many times they worked by themselves.

This is an actual, these are called in and out, in the mine, out of the mine signs.

And this actually was in one of the Freeman United coal mines in the area.

And every miner had a tag, something like this.

Some of them were shaped different shapes in that, you know, some of them were around or some of them were square, whatever.

Everyone had a number on there, and that was their number.

And they would wear that tag on their belt.

And of course, miners wore the big belts that had their batteries on and all the other equipment that they needed.

So when they, and they also had a tag that was on the board.

So when they were in the mine, they would put their tag and it would correspond to the number on the board.

And then the, then it was known who was down in the mine.

But then when you came out of the mine, you took your tag off the in the mine board and put it out of the mine.

So if there was an emergency, they would know who would still be in the mine.

- And unfortunately, there were a lot.

- There was a lot of emergencies.

- And we're going to look at some of that in a little bit, but it wasn't unusual at all for there to be cave-ins or fires.

- Oh my gosh, yes.

Or just that someone was working in a part of the mine by himself and didn't get on the, the elevator to come up.

And so they would realize, wait a minute, this person didn't come up.

We have to go back and send that back down.

So I, I like it because it was, it was so simple.

You know, it's really just simple.

It's a wooden board with numbers in that, but it was so valuable for the mine and for the miners to be able to be identified that way.

- Brian Hawkins, you help out here.

So some of the items we're looking at actually were yours.

You've been a miner.

You were a miner until you retired, but what years were you down in the mines?

- Well, I started in 1977 and I ended up 90, 91 in there.

I don't remember exact dates, but I worked at two different mines, Peabody 10 and Monterey number one down at Carlinville.

We were just talking about Peabody 10.

How massive.

- That, that was the largest underground coal mine for years.

We at one point had like 25 miles of belt underground.

It was crazy.

Like whole city underground.

900 people, or a little better 900 actually worked when I started in '77.

Yeah, it was really something.

had three points of entry into the mine.

Three portals.

Yeah.

Slope and two shafts, mine shafts they called them.

Yeah, you could try, well, sometimes it took us 45 minutes from the time we got underground.

- Just to get to your work site.

- To get to the working place.

- I'll be darned.

You've got an kind of nice collection here and I wanted to, I wanted to show that these are things that you gave or have put in the museum for people to see.

And this is nice because it's a progression from, from the really ancient old stuff from the 1800s, back back to what they were using more modern.

What, tell us about, tell us about this, this outfit.

- Well this was what most of the miners back in the 1800s on into the very early 1900s would have worn on their head and it offers no protection actually.

- A little, you not much.

- Yeah, you bump your head on a rock, it's not going to help much, but all it really was, was a lamp hanger for the oil wick lamp.

This burned a waxy substance called miners sunshine.

And it would just have a flame here was there.

- A live flame on top of your head in a gaseous atmosphere.

- Potentially explosive environment.

And you were working with explosives, black powder, dynamite.

So you had a lot of risk involved wearing this thing, but that was how it all, they primarily the first version of what they would wear.

- This is your lunch kit, right?

For that same area.

- That same bucket, roughly the same timeframe.

It has a it's made up of multiple compartments.

The water would go in here and that'd be your drinking cup.

And then you had, you know, a couple levels of plates in here with different things for your lunch, which is your only source of water once you're underground is what you carry in your bucket.

And this, these are, this one is the same idea.

It's got the cup and the water in the bottle.

- And this, now this is different though, because this is not a live flame, right?

- This, this one is a carbide light.

This was the next progression.

And it had a flame that would shoot out the front here, because when you put the carbide in the bottom and fill this with water, and this would adjust how much the water dripped into the carbide, and as the water mixed with the carbide, it'd emit acetylene gas, which shot out here and just use this like a lighter to light it with.

There'd be a flint in there, and make a spark that would light.

But you're still working with an open flame.

- No, no, we're not good.

- But you've also gotten now you went to a hard top to where, if you hit your head or something fell on you, it would offer a little bit of protection, but it's still primarily cloth and leather.

- And this, this is even better because this is no longer an open flame.

This is a battery.

- And they went to the battery power.

You didn't have to worry about it igniting the atmosphere.

It was called permissible.

That's what we call a turtle shell hat.

It kind of resembles a turtle's shell.

But it's.

- And this is the battery you wear around, correct?

- Yes.

That would have been one of the earlier electric batteries.

And these two points here could be used to set off of a blast, electrical charge to a blasting cap to explode for blasting the coal out.

So it kind of served two purposes.

- And then again, this is the kind of the same thing only updated.

- Right.

- But you can see how much they do bump their head.

Look how scarred up this thing is.

- Yes.

You look at any one of these hard hats that was actually used, they're beat up pretty good.

You was always bumping your head, but that would be like, you started off here in the teens, early 1900s, late 1800.

And on, up towards the '20s and this would be '30s '40s, '50s, '60s.

'Cause this, this one, even though it looks like this one, is made of fiberglass and they're a lot lighter, but this is the modern version.

It's plastic.

And this particular one's yellow, because generally at most mines, when you started as a new guy, you got to either like at number 10, it was a yellow hat.

I think Freeman had red hats, but some way to designate it at a glance that the guy was a new guy.

So that's what you use the colored hat.

- Come on over here, if you would.

You know, we were talking, we went through the simulated mine over there and we were talking about, you know, and originally, they used the canary in the coal mine deal.

And that's how you knew that the gas was bad.

You actually have one of these bird houses.

This is where the canary sat, wasn't it?

- Right, and there's a picture of the two guys underground actually using one to, they say they watched the canary.

If he was acting funny or got lethargic, you better get out.

I don't know if they actually took it to the point where the canary died.

- Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, this is fascinating.

And this is, this is part of your collection here.

- This is all stuff I've accumulated.

I've been collecting 30, 35 years, something like that.

Yeah, even when I was a little kid, we lived in Southern Illinois and I was just fascinated by the thought of going underground and working, you know, and I actually got to do it.

- Do you ever miss it?

Oh yeah.

I mean, I missed, I miss portions of it.

I mean, it was hard, dirty work, but the guys, mainly the guys, you know, the camaraderie and we used to mess with each other all the time.

You know, it was, it was a clown show kind of sometimes but I miss it.

Yeah.

It was the only job I've had.

And I've had many that I really say I'd like to do again, as far as the work part of it, you know, but.

- Well, thanks for visiting with us.

This has been, this has been fascinating.

Well, Chuck, we were talking about what a hazardous duty it was to be down in a mine.

And, and one of the, one of the walls you have dedicated to these mine tragedies that occurred.

And unfortunately they were not that rare.

They happened kind of regularly any in every county it seems like they had their own tragedy.

- Yeah, the worst in the state was in 1909 in Cherry, Illinois, which is near LaSalle, Peru, where 258 men and boys in 1909 lost their lives due to an underground fire.

Of the good part, and there is a good part to that.

21 men lived for eight days with no water, no light and no food.

And they were rescued.

- They were rescued?

- Yes, they were.

They were rescued, they survived.

21 men for eight days in complete darkness.

And that, that was the only good thing that happened out of that.

- And this refers to the Cherry mine disaster that you were talking about.

- Yeah.

They holed themselves up, boarded, boarded themselves up into a confined space.

And they thought they made a makeshift fan they could keep the black damp, which is a combination of noxious fumes with sulfur, sulfur and underground fire.

They could keep it away for them, but it didn't work for that group.

But the 21 others did survive.

And that's a mistake.

It says 268 men and boys, but it was 258.

- Well Moweaqua was nearby here.

They've got their own mine museum over there for the disaster that occurred there on Christmas Eve in 1932.

- Yes.

And that's right on the border of Christian County, those fatalities of 54 men that died instantly in 1932, aren't part of the Christian County tally.

So to speak of a 296 and they're attributed to Shelby County, but that's a nice museum.

Mrs. Siver does a good job there.

- Over here in Centralia, dust explosion kills 25 traps 125.

- Yeah.

That's the second worst in the state.

1947, 111 men passed away.

- I want to read, I want to read a little bit.

This is from the, from that disaster where those men were trapped underground and they knew they were not going to get out.

To my wife.

It looks like the end for me, honey.

I love you honey, more than life.

It's just breaks your heart when you read these.

Here's one here.

My dear wife, goodbye.

Name baby Joe so you will have a Joe.

Love all, dad.

And they found these notes in these miners pockets when they six days recovered the bodies.

- You know, six days later and they had time to write a, a goodbye note.

Yep.

- Well, it's very, it's very somber.

It's not all somber.

It's a great museum, but there are somber notes to it, aren't there?

- Thank you.

Yes.

Yes, we put this tragedy up here, up here because it's a part of the risk that so many people took just becoming coal miners.

- Chuck.

Thank you.

- Thank you very much, Mark.

- The, the Christian County Coal Mine Museum is open Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, but Chuck and Mary Jo are welcoming groups if you call for an appointment on another day, they can arrange to be here to help you out.

There's no admission, but they do, they, they do accept donations.

With another Illinois story in Taylorville, I'm Mark MacDonald.

Thanks for watching.

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And by the support of viewers like you, thank you.

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