History & local legend
On September 6, 1869, a fire at Avondale Colliery near Plymouth cut off the coal mine’s only exit. The disaster killed 110 people, including two volunteers who descended in an attempt to rescue the trapped miners. The scale of the loss made Avondale one of the defining tragedies of Pennsylvania’s anthracite region.
A haunting tradition grew out of the disaster’s aftermath. Folklorist George Korson recorded that some men and boys refused to return to work underground at Avondale because they believed the dead still occupied the mine. He included the story in Minstrels of the Mine Patch, published in 1938.
Korson placed it within a broader mining custom: after a fatal accident, workers sometimes stayed out of a mine until the victim had been buried.
Sources
- Jake Wynn, Ghost stories and dark folklore collected by George Korson in the Coal Region, quoting Minstrels of the Mine Patch (1938)
- EARTH Magazine, Benchmarks: September 6, 1869, Pennsylvania’s Avondale coal mine fire kills 110
- Historical Marker Database, National Welsh-American Foundation memorial
- Ohio State University eHistory, Andrew Roy’s account of the Avondale disaster
