An illustrated story of mine patch minstrels from Pennsylvania. Featured in “Pennsylvania Profiles,” a weekly series produced for the Sunbury Daily Item, with the above number published on July 6, 1985.
TROUBADOURS OF THE MINE PATCH
There existed a unique brand of men who brough joy and levity into the dour, drab, depressing mine villages, or patches, of the anthracite coal region during the last half of the 19th century. These care-free, funny “Mine Patch Minstrels.” as colorful as those in Merrie Olde England, roamed up and down the region from Cressona to Carbondale, composing and singing ballads about hard-coal mining.
Whenever one of these “fiddle-playin’ fools” strolled into a patch, someone would borrow a sheet of iron from the nearby colliery and lay it on the rocky ground. The troubadour would step on this stage and perform a one-man show of jigs, reels, ditties and improvised songs — in exchange for a night’s lodging, a meal, or loose change to buy liquor.
Shown here is Ed Foley of Black Heath, a great improvisator who did his best work at Irish wakes and christenings.
The best known bard was Con Carbon from Hazleton. He broke from the Irish influence of most anthracite ballads and glorified the Slavic immigrants with songs like “The Hungarian Ball” and “A A Greenhorn Makes Good.”
Martin “Poet” Mulhall of Shenandoah was the poet laureate of the Molly Maguires, for each of the sixteen men who were convicted and hanged for being Mollies, he created a song such as “Muff Lawler the Squealer”
William Keating of Pottsville composed songs before he learned how to read and write, such as “October on Mount Laffee’s Hills, “The Dover Boys of Wadesville Shaft,” and “Down, Down, Down,” a barroom ballad relating the feelings of a miner reporting to work at the Oak Hill Shaft in Duncott with a roaring hangover.
Other great troubadours of the mine patch are the Johnson Brothers, Patrick Johnson and Jack Johnson, from Summit Hill; Barney Kelly of Ashland; Dennis Coyle and Michael McAndrew, both of Wilkes-Barre; Harry Tempest, of St. Clair; Bob Quigley of Carbondale; Jerry Byrne, of Buck Run; Lansford’s Joe Gallagher; Thomas Rowlands of Edwardsville; Danny Walsh and Jim Connors of Centralia.
Anthracite ballads have earned a niche in American folklore, thanks to Ukrainian-born George Korson of Wilkes-Barre who collected and preserved them in his book Minstrels of the Mine Patch.
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An explanation of the series “Pennsylvania Profiles” appeared in the Sunbury Daily Item, May 10 1985:
For the stories behind… forgotten but fascinating facts, you’ll want to read “Pennsylvania Profiles,” a weekly feature with vivid illustrations… in this newspaper…. Pennsylvania Profiles delves into the nooks and crannies of the Keystone State’s hectic heritage. [It] is researched, written and illustrated by Patrick M. Reynolds of Willow Street, a town in southern Lancaster County. He is a graduate of Pratt institute, Brooklyn, New York, and Syracuse University, New York. His features are available in books. Reynolds is a Vietnam War veteran and an Army reserve Infantry officer.
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Obtained through Newspapers.com.
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