Employee Record Cards
November 23, 2011 10 Comments
One of the most exciting research sources we found this summer are employee record cards from the Lattimer Coal Company. These cards span the early twentieth century, in the period after the massacre and the Big Strike of 1902. There are 2,685 cards in total. They contain a huge amount of information about each employee including name, date of employ, age, nationality, country of birth (not always same as nationality), church, doctor, occupation, wage rate, and whether they have a miner’s certificate. Some cards include the word “Dead” scrawled across the front of the card. Some of these include notes on the back describing the cause of death for miners. Other notes include health issues identified by the company doctor.
An example of a card can be seen here. The name on the card is Manus Gallagher, Jr., a resident of 799 Alter Street. He was born in Lattimer, PA in 1900. He began work at the colliery on the July 7th, 1917. He attended a Roman Catholic Church. The collection also includes a card for Manus’ father, who appears to have been killed in the mines.
We are in the process of transcribing all of the data on the cards to a searchable database. We hope to present it to the public. Ideally, members of the public could add details, stories and photographs of their family members to the project. In the next post, student Katherine Chen will describe a bit about the process of transcribing the cards,a project she has taken on for the semester. We will also report on a visit to Lattimer we made this past week and the discoveries we made.
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Imagine my surprise! I find this site, and the card displayed that belonged to Manus Gallaghher belonged to my mother’s first cousin Manus Gallagher Jr. We always wondered what happened to his dad, and now we know he was killed in the mines.
Meg,
This is amazing! I wish we could match up all of the 2600 or so cards we have to present day descendants! We will post the info from the father online or email it to you. It likely has more info you may not know yet. Keep in touch!
Thank you. My mother’s and father’s families were miners in Lattimer from about 1868 until the mines closed. My grandfather Owen Sharkey was injured and was sent to school to become a teacher. His brother Patrick was a mine boss for many years.
My father’s grandfather was Owen Costello who along with his sons and 3 brothers and their sons also worked in Lattimer. One of Owen’s sons was a prominent attorney in Hazleton, and his son James P Costello Jr was elected the first Irish mayor of Hazleton in 1937. I lived in Lattimer for about 2 years with my grandparents. Good stuff you are doing.!
Regards, Meg
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Hi, I was wondering if you have any record of my great-grandfather, George Treible, who worked for the Mine Company for a long time. His last job was in the office of the Mining Company. He retired at 73 years old! He lived in Lattimer most of his life.
What a wonderful project you are undertaking. I am an amatuer geneaologist and I was on the web searching for miner tag information. I was trying to find out if the identities of the miners were archived, then I came upon your site! Love this stuff, so I subscribed to your blog and cannot wait to see the mysteries that you will be solving! Keep up the good work! Dot Hogge, Villas, NJ
Dorothy, Thanks for your interest and encouragement! We are really excited as we are almost complete with our first draft of all the names from the company record cards. It has taken us more than a year to get through this work! We have already learned a lot. I am also digitizing the census records for Lattimer between 1880 and 1940. Stay in contact, and tell us what you think as we update the blog! Best, Mike
My great grandfather, Michael John Harascak Sr. was born in Lattimer #2, now Pardeesville. Most of the Harascaks settled originally in Lattimer Mines #2 and then spread out from there. My great grandfather moved to Cranberry where he was president of local union 1434, Cranberry, District No. 7, U. M. W. of A. Joseph Harascsak who is listed in the database was his brother. the address was 221 Allen St. The ironic thing is one of my best friends until the age of 22 lived at 221 Allen St. I’d like to post my great grandfather’s obituary but don’t know if that’s possible. I also lived at 349 Canal St. from 6th to 11th grade directly across the street from where the archaeological dig was performed. Used to find a lot of old relics up on the coal bank/hill overlooking the dig site but never made anything of it at the time. I was only 10 to 16 years old.
Michael,
You will be excited to know that we will be working in Pardeesville again this summer! We will be excavating down on Yanac Street. Also, I have been compiling the census records for Lattimer and Pardeesville and I found the Harascaks all the way back into the 1910 census. I will send you the census info when I have it all polished up. I know exactly the house! Maybe we will see you out this summer?
Mike