Remembering The Men who Lost Their Lives Mining Fluorspar

In the 1930’s and 40’s, Mr. Hollis C. Franklin, a noted Crittenden County businessman and community leader, and also a talented writer, wrote a weekly column in the Crittenden Press titled Two Eyes, Two Ears and A Typewriter. 

After learning of the death of a young man, Eugene Williamson, while working in the fluorspar mine in our county, Mr. Franklin wrote his column about this tragedy. From the archives of The Crittenden Press came the following story.

June 6, 1939. Eugene Williamson, 25, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Williamson of Farmersville and brother of T. W. Williamson, popular superintendent of the Keystone Mines, was instantly killed about one o’clock Saturday morning, June 10, while working underground in the mine which has for the past several years been under his brother’s superintendency, and which up until this time had never had a serious accident of any kind.

Young Williamson and his buddy had been working side by side during the shift. A few minutes before the accident his buddy had gone out to get some timbers. When his buddy returned with the timber few minutes later he found the lifeless body of his friend, near the spot where he had left him only a few minutes before. It is though young Williamson had picked into a loaded dynamite hole. Those who know anything about fluorspar mining know what happens on such occasions. That one act invariably spells “tragedy” where fluorspar is mined.

Funeral services were at White Sulphur Baptist Church near Crider, where he had held church membership. 

This is Mr. Franklin’s column.

Last Friday night, a little after midnight, while most of us were in our beds sound asleep, a fine young man lost his life instantly and accidentally while working underground in one of the county’s best equipped mines. This mine, as well as most of the other fluorspar mines in this section, has always used every safety precaution. It has, too, almost constantly drilled its workmen in safety practices. Even then fluorspar mining is hazardous. It is in many ways a dangerous occupation. Life was sweet to this young man who in a little more than a month would have been twenty-five. Life was sweet to him as it is to other normal, friendly and ambitious young people. He, like most of us looked forward with pleasure to what he intended to do tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.

He was fully cognizant of the fact that his task was hazardous but man that he was, he had no hesitancy in undertaking and doing a man’s work in connection with that job. He was anxious to do his job well as other men in the same work or in other fields of endeavor are anxious to do their jobs well.

I wonder if you and I have ever stopped to think of the part which the man who works in the fluorspar mines plays in our daily life. I wonder if we have ever stopped to consider the obligation which society owes to him for the things which make for better living for us all?

Those who know tell us that spar is absolutely essential to the manufacture of more than 80 per cent of the steel used in the world today. Fluorspar is essential in the manufacture of the metal with which our homes are covered, of the nails which enable us to fashion our homes as we want them, of the cars in which we ride, of the wire with which we fence our fields of the rails on which all the trains run, of the instruments which the doctor uses in his laboratories and in his offices, of the boats which run the rivers and of the ships which sail the seas.

 In a thousand ways, fluorspar as it is mined in Crittenden County, serves in its own district way to make life more comfortable, more pleasant and happier for us all. Nothing else has ever been found that could take its place.

The men who work in fluorspar mines make from day to day a notable and noble contribution to better living for us all.

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Note: I have compiled a list from obituaries and death certificates that total 31 men that lost their lives in mining accidents in Crittenden County from 1900-1948.  This doesn't include the Salem area mines, and I'm sure I've not been able to find all that had died in fluorspar mining accidents in Crittenden.  

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This is a rare photo of a group of underground miners in the Big 4 Mine located near Sheridan.  They were sitting on a vein of purple and white spar.  Left to right: Orville Croft, Dewey Corn, Fred Cooper, Claude Cooper, and Taylor.