Women in Mining Camps, Part 2

Part 2 of my post on Women in Mining Camps, the seminal (light) research from about ten years ago that inspired my upcoming novel, When Doves Fly.

(Yes, it's been longer than a week since Part 1. My apologies, I ran into a band of outlaws who kidnapped me and forced me to finish editing a manuscript. P.S. The writing is a rough ride.)



Westward expansion, and the rise of industry and increased need for steel and minerals, meant mining towns grew in number and often consisted of the first "civilization" in a remote area. As the East grew more urbanized, the West remained a savage and isolated place. "Cornish immigrants James and Mary Bennett were among the first settlers in Mineral Point [Wisconsin] in the late 1830s, and Mary begged her husband to take her away from that 'hardly discovered wilderness,' where 'Indians and wild animals were numerous,' and back to civilization in England. ¹ Many women who followed their husbands to the mining towns had recently immigrated and had little or no experience in an undeveloped, wild land, coming from Europe where even the remote areas had long since been explored and mining was well-established. "As John Rowe observed, 'In Cornwall it was the miner who was old before he was thirty-five; on the early American mining frontier, it was his wife.' ² These difficulties came on top of the inherent risks involved in mining that left many miners injured or dead and their wives without income.³ These women didn't all stay home, but whether married, single, or widowed, history rarely recognized the woman's occupation. Most census records did not record a woman's occupation, even if single, unless it was unusual, so we often don't know how many women worked as servants, milliners, or proprietors of stores or parlors.⁴ However, simply from population records, we can infer that women were as influential and indispensable in the mining towns as elsewhere. In St. Clair, Pennsylvania, a well-established mining town, in 1850 there were only a little over 100 more men than women and more than 700 children in a population of over 2,000. ⁵ Thus, these women formed the backbone of the community, maintaining their families and providing support for the miners. However, changing times and cultural attitudes brought change to the mining towns as in the rest of America.

 



Group of mine workers...and one woman. c. 1895-1905

By the mid-1800s, with westward expansion at its height and new mineral and metal resources discovered farther west, women experienced new-found freedoms. They were encouraged to work outside the home to help their families before marriage and often found themselves widowed and forced to provide financial support, particularly in an industry such as mining. Many women left the mining camps and returned to their families once widowed, but some stayed and developed their own businesses to support themselves and their families until remarrying or moving on. ⁶ The need for women in budding mining camps was sorely felt. New mining camps had a great demand for single women, particularly in areas of rapid expansion such as California during the 1849 gold rush. "…In the West, a woman could make money and have the boldness to call the money her own. Women who had never worked in their lives discovered that the drudgery of work was sweetened by the freedom to earn and save money in their own names." ⁷ In the wild, uncivilized areas where mines sprang up quickly and few men (the men being occupied with mining, which paid much more) could provide such services as waiting tables in hotels or saloons, women found new occupations available. The positions were socially unacceptable for women in the East, but they opened to women in the West out of necessity. Strict social rules followed in the East were set aside for women in these "social" setting positions, where men had previously ruled, such as the requirement that a woman be introduced to a man before speaking to him. ⁸  

Along with the need for women in service sectors, the men needed companionship. It wasn't until the latter 1800s that mining towns, and the country as a whole, saw the development of brothels on a large scale, and usually only once a town was well-established.⁹ Most often, women operated them (if not owned them) and "at late hours provided 'nice young men' with drinks and the social services of a small bevy of female boarders." ¹⁰ In the East, these establishments were less tolerated and the operators were fined or jailed if discovered.¹¹ But in the west, they thrived and often remained legal until well into the 1900s.

Unmarried women had other options, though, particularly in the West. In the chaotic mid-1800s, various industries and areas saw many boom and bust times, forcing single men to seek  new opportunities, often in mining towns. The areas they abandoned had a shortage of marriageable men, and unattached women frequently followed the migration to developing areas to find husbands and employment. ¹² "John McCracken wrote to his sister telling of one such incident. 'I heard not long since of the arrival of an old Lady and her five daughters. They came in a wagon and seemed quite happy to think there were such chances to get well married' (Levy 175)." ¹³ Women would even advertise themselves for marriage, finding that with the abundance of men they could raise their expectations and demand a higher quality of mate. In one "advertisement from a Maryville newspaper of 1849…[a woman gives] self-qualifications for marriage and what she expects in return from the man: 'an old man need not apply, nor any who have not a little more education than she has, and a great deal more gold, for there must be $20,000 settled on her before she will bind herself to perform all the above' (Levy 176)." ¹⁴ In the mining camps, many men avoided the few prostitutes due to fear of disease or simple unavailability. As towns grew, "businessmen" opened more brothels and saw a new avenue for profit in mail-order bride services. They already had sources for women to supply to their brothels, so the "supply chain" of immigrant women was already in place. ¹⁵

Once they arrived in these often lawless, uncivilized western mining camps, women asserted their influence, utilized their skills, and developed new ones. "Many craved the amenities of civilization; they longed for social interaction and sought networks of family and friends for emotional support." ¹⁶ In newly formed mining towns, the few women were lonely and despaired of the conditions in which they lived. They attempted to create homes with canvas tents and dirt floors. Supplies were often slow in arriving, if they arrived at all, and they made do with whatever they found. Louise Clappe wrote her sister from California in 1851, "…Everybody ought to go to the mines, just to see how little it takes to make people comfortable in the world." ¹⁷ Out of this turmoil, women created social connections. While operating their boarding houses, laundry services, and stores, and being mothers and wives, women organized. They developed social organizations and helped to found churches, libraries, schools, and other civic institutions. They created communities in the wilderness. They insisted on social functions to help ease their homesickness while they adjusted to new climates, new cultures, and new occupations. "The Alta California periodical commented upon the positive influence of women in bringing order to chaotic new towns: 'Woman to society is like a cement to the building stone. The society here has no such a cement; its elements float to and fro upon the excited, turbulent, hurried life of California immigrants, or rather, we should say, goldhunters' (quoted in Levy 174)." ¹⁸

Perhaps the most neglected aspect of women's contributions in mining towns, and to some the most surprising, is that of women miners. Although a very small number, especially until the latter half of the 1800s, some women worked alongside men in the coal and lead mine operations. ¹⁹ They endured the same vile working conditions as the men in the deep shafts and dangerous quarries with toxic fumes and the constant risk of explosions and cave-ins. Later, a number of women aided their husbands or worked gold and silver claims alone in the West. Just as on the farms, they shouldered the burden of hard labor when necessary to support their families.

Three men and a woman

These examples show women in mining communities in the 19^th century were vital to the operation not only of the mines, but the growth and development of the community and civic function of the town. They contributed in those capacities in addition to the customary role of wife and mother they continued to perform for their families in harsh conditions. In crude log cabins, and without food or supplies, they managed to create homes that provided for the miner's comfort and daily necessities. And they provided services and labor for the many businesses needed to maintain the mining towns. They were essential to their communities, both in founding them and maintaining them.

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1. William E. Van Vugt, Britain to America, Mid-Nineteenth-Century Immigrants to the United States (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 126.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., 95.

4.  Anthony F. C. Wallace, St. Clair: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1987), 131.

5. Ibid.

6. Suzanne Hilton, Miners, Merchants and Maids (New York: Twenty-First Century Books, 1995), 69.

7. Ibid., 62.

8. Ibid., 71.

9. Wallace, St. Clair, 166.

10. Ibid., 167.

11. Ibid.

12. Van Vugt, British to America, 90.
13."Here Comes the Bride", Women's Work in the Long 19^th Century,

(http://www.kennesaw.edu/hss/wwork/Settlement/bride_cc.htm)

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Philip J. Deloria, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Jack N. Rakove and David Burner, This Land: A History of the United States (New York: Brandywine Press, 2003), 263.

17. Hilton, Miners, 19.

18. "Here Comes the Bride", Women's Work.

19. Van Vugt, Britain to America, 126.


Images courtesy of Library of Congress - http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hhh.mi0086.photos.088820p/ & http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsc.01705/

Women in Mining Camps

I thought I'd share the seminal research that sparked my interest in women in mining camps, and ultimately inspired my upcoming novel, When Doves Fly. Women often have no voice in history, having been immersed in the maintenance of their families, stifled by discrimination, and denied a lasting outlet for their thoughts and ideas. One of my goals in my writing is to give them a voice and acknowledge their impact.

This will be a two-part post, so check back next week for the second part.



Group of mine workers...and one woman. c. 1895-1905

History studies consistently neglected women until relatively recently. While interest in women’s roles and their contributions to every aspect of society, culture, politics, medicine, and economic development has surged, huge gaps of knowledge and understanding still trouble us. When we read about mining towns, from early mining in Pennsylvania and Virginia to the California gold rush period and later to established mining operations throughout the United States, we find a vision of rough, dirty men engaged in dangerous manual labor. Women remain mostly absent from this picture. When offered a glimpse, we see only the stray barmaid or prostitute in the tavern or saloon. It is difficult to comprehend women’s impact on mining communities in the 19^th century. Mining camps needed women and offered women a drastically different life and opportunities unavailable elsewhere. The women in these areas encountered hardships, prospects, and lifestyles unseen by women in urban areas. Ultimately, they changed how women were viewed and changed their communities in sometimes subtle but inescapable ways.

The earliest mining communities in the eastern United States were established in the beginning of the 19^th century.¹ At this time, areas east of the Mississippi River remained largely unexplored. Throngs of immigrants flowed into eastern Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky to find land and fresh opportunities. Businessmen in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston searched for new sources of revenue. Industrialization swept the country. Additional resources were needed to fuel these changes, and the discovery of anthracite (coal) in the Allegheny Mountains provided one of the richest foundations for this growth. By the 1820s, farmland and uninhabited areas sprouted small mining camps as investors and landowners realized the enormous potential of the reserves under the soil.²

Men established these camps, and initially, all of the workers and supporting labor were men. During the period of speculation for a mine, small operations employed a dozen or two hands, and women stayed home in the urban areas or on the farms.³ Once a large vein was discovered, and the mine proved profitable, more men arrived, and practically overnight a community sprang up. A town could go from one hundred inhabitants to thousands in a few years.⁴ Owners and investors encouraged and even financed the growth, because population development around the mining district brought even more profit. In 1835, a mine investor planned a community in Pennsylvania and envisioned "'a first Town within the Coal Range, and in the midst of a great mining district.' In addition to the profits from royalties on coal, the development of the Westwood Tract would bring additional financial benefits from the sale of town lots, mill seats, and timber and an extensive 'home trade' could be expected…"⁵

Further, development of the communities, which required women and families, could benefit the operation of the mine itself. "'Nothing can equal the neatness and Comfort of these snug dwellings…the wife keeps all in order at home, every child at 7 or 8 years gets to work among the Coal or in the Neighboring Manufactories…Saturday Night collects all the wages and all the family together…'"⁶ In this instance, we see women in the communities illustrated as they were elsewhere at the time: as the wife of the working man, keeping a comfortable and respectable family life at home. With these eastern mines, the mining company planned orderly communities, and often, even before the mining operation was fully constructed, a town grew nearby to provide necessary services. As quickly as they could build housing, the families of the miners, artisans, and craftsmen moved in, providing a "family life" for workers.

Even in relatively large communities, the lack of single women resulted in large numbers of working single men who needed services normally performed by a wife. Laundering, cooking, gardening, sewing, and many other services were performed by married women who operated (but rarely owned) boarding houses or worked from home. They moved frequently, following their men to new operations. They had to assimilate in communities often hostile to immigrants. They provided the comforts of a home without many of the supplies and amenities available in urban areas.

By the middle of the 19^th century, with mining communities expanding in the East, textile mills sprang up near sources of industrialization. While the men worked in the mines, some women began working outside the home in several fields, often related to clothing.⁷ Women and children, with their smaller frames and hands, could often perform tasks in cramped spaces or work which required dexterity many men lacked. The mills required long hours in harsh conditions--and the female workers often still had to run the house when they arrived home. Some of these women were integral to the start of the Labor Movement. Many of these industries, and the women workers they relied on, provided the capital for costly mineral exploration and made mining possible.

The women in these early, Eastern mining towns were essential to the mine's operation, as they performed the menial household work and supplied necessary services. They allowed both married and single men to pull treasure from the ground without worrying about the time-consuming daily tasks of living. This dictated a hard life for the women, even more so as America moved westward.

 

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1. Anthony F. C. Wallace, St. Clair: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1987), 3.

2. Ibid., 2.

3. Ibid., 70.

4. Ibid., 96.

5. Ibid., 78.

6. Ibid., 79.

7. Doris Weatherford, Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America, 1840-1930 (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1995), 205-206.


 Image courtesy of Library of Congress - http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hhh.mi0086.photos.088820p/

 

The Last Christmas

Early Christmas morning, Edward kissed Helen’s hand, just as he had on their honeymoon fifty-four years earlier, and laid it back on her chest. His thumb brushed the heart-shaped birthmark on the side of her throat. For a painful second, he believed his eyes when they told him her faint lashes had fluttered on her cheek. He knew it wasn’t so.

 

His Helen was gone and had been for an hour. He sat talking to her after her final soft exhalation of breath, holding her hand and ignoring the way her skin lost its warmth as the minutes passed.

With tears spilling from his rheumy eyes, he explained all those days he’d risen in the morning with dark circles betraying a sleepless night.

“You always believed my excuse of insomnia—didn’t you? I was too embarrassed to tell you why I didn’t sleep…. I would lie next to you, watching the slow rise and fall of your chest on nights when the moon was full, watching your lashes flutter against your cheek while you dreamed. In the quiet, I watched you sleep, still unable to believe, after five years or ten or forty, that you had chosen me and loved me despite my bad habits and big nose and quiet ways. I never got over that disbelief, and I studied you at night to memorize the line of your jaw, the slight upturn of your nose, the precise color of your lips—afraid one day you might come to your senses and find a man without so many faults. You were too loyal for that, I know, but I watched you sleep just the same.”

Now he would have to face the nights with only the memory engraved by thousands of moonlit hours.

Edward grabbed his cane and pushed himself up from the bedside chair. The dull ache in his knees flared brighter, his hands seemed to tremble more, the color of the sunrise appeared muted and flat as he shuffled from the hospital room. Nurses offered condolences, but he hardly heard them. He made his way down to the lobby, aware that the sharp antiseptic smell had vanished from the hallways. Reaching the bus stop, he lit his pipe, but the tobacco had no flavor. Helen had taken the essence of everything with her.

 

He went through the motions of life: rising in the morning, eating at the proper times, and keeping the house neat. But the days held no meaning, and the moon illuminated nothing. More and more, Edward sat in his easy chair, staring at nothing, with no one to notice.

On a Sunday, as Edward walked home from the bus stop with his small bag of groceries in one hand and his cane in the other—going through the motions—he was woolgathering, wondering how long he would have to endure his faded imitation of life before death would finally embrace him. A weak whimper interrupted his thoughts. He paused on the sidewalk and tilted his head, thinking the noise might have come from his own lips. The cry came again, from a solitary lilac bush growing wild at the park’s edge.

He bent to see deeper into the thick shadows. Curled in the dirt, a patch of darkness whimpered again. Edward lowered himself, pushing away the pain and stiffness, until he kneeled beside the bush and parted the profusion of heart-shaped leaves. An Irish Setter puppy peered back at him. The animal trembled and whined, shrinking back.

“Here, pup,” Edward whispered. He tried to suppress the palsied tremor in his hand and held it out to the puppy.

The dog watched him with wary eyes for several minutes, gaze darting for an escape. It started to lean forward, pulled back, started toward him again. Edward kept his hand out and waited. Inching toward him, the setter stretched its neck out, and ventured a nervous lick at his hand. He let it sniff until it came out further. The puppy wagged its tail as it slinked into the gap between Edward’s legs and huddled there. The perfume of lilac came to him then, overwhelming in its dizzying sweetness.

The pup wore no collar. Edward carried it home, and made it a small bed, and cooked some food for it, grumbling that he didn’t want the burden. He told himself he had no business keeping a dog and would find her another home. He scanned the paper for days and checked the neighborhood for flyers. In case someone called, he left his name and number with the dog pound, but the phone stayed silent.

 

On the fourth day, as he sat in his easy chair and the dog lay at his feet, he felt her eyes on him. He resisted the urge to meet her gaze. Her head lay on her paws and she crept closer and closer. He wouldn’t give in. Soon she lifted her head, slow and sneaky, until it touched the hand resting on the chair’s arm. She nuzzled it and insinuated her head under it. Edward sighed and let his hand smooth the silky hair, then scratched her ear. As his hand drifted lower, she lifted her chin, asking for more. Her head tipped back, exposing her throat. For the first time, he noticed a tiny white patch there. Shaped like a heart. His resistance melted away, tears dampened her hair, and he named her Ellie.

He chastised her for getting on the bed and nosing through the trash. Ellie followed him around the house and sat patiently by the door when she needed to go out. They went on walks, neighborhood children begged to play with Ellie, and she obliged. Edward and Ellie watched old movies on Saturday nights, with her in the spot beside his chair and his hand resting on her head. She lay next to his bed every night. When he woke, he would find her soulful gaze on him, watching.

The color seeped back into the sunset. Food tasted better, and his pipe, left in its stand on the mantel for ages, found its way back into his shirt pocket. Smells returned, sounds became richer once more. Ellie brought the essence of everything back to him.

 
Early Christmas morning, Ellie snuck onto the bed with Edward. Her big dark eyes watched him sleep. And when the last soft breath left his lips, she licked his hand as it lay on his chest.