Edward Eugene Carey, Jr. (1904-1946) was born in Lost Creek, Schuylkill, Pa., one of at least nine children of Edward Eugene Carey and Mary Ann Moran. He married Mary Agnes Toole of Lost Creek in 1925 and they had at least five children.
A slide of culm at the Rose Valley Bank, a half mile east of Girardville, killed two men shortly after 9:30 o’clock March 12, 1946. Edward Carey, 40, of Lost Creek, an Inspector, and the father of five children, died in a futile attempt to save John Haluska, 31, Girardville, oiler on power shovel at the bank.
The shovel operator did not report for work this morning and the regularly employed oiler took over his job as operator. Haluska, a truck driver filled the oiler’s vacancy day. The high, steep culm bank, frozen during the winter months, began to thaw in the bright morning sun. The first slide occurred almost without warning, trapping Haluska about the legs and pinning him fast. Several fellow workers rushed to his side and began moving away the material. One of these men was Edward Carey, employed by Kelly Construction Company as a coal inspector for the Rose Valley Coal Company.
While Carey; Herbert Hancock of Big Mine Run, shovel operator; and Norman Luton and Stanley Mervine, Ashland truck drivers; worked desperately to extricate him the second fall occurred. The entire right section of the huge culm bank began to move. Forced to leave the trapped victim, the men leaped to safety, but Carey was too late. He was caught with the full force of the tremendous slide. Haluska saw it coming but was unable to move. Both men were completely covered. Soon fellow workers dug Carey out and he was pronounced dead by a doctor on the site.
The fall also partly burying the power shoved used to load the coal on trucks. Using hands and shovels, the men uncovered the body of Carey, just before 11 o’clock. Meanwhile a bulldozer and another power shovel were brought to the scene and tons of debris were removed before John Birster of Girardville, bulldozer operator, uncovered Haluska’s head, lying face down. It took nearly an hour before the body was removed, because it was tightly wedged by rocks and timber that came down in the slide. The rescuers’ lives were endangered for the entire time they worked trying to uncover Haluska, and they frequently had to flee big lumps of coal and rock that rolled down from an overhanging 60-foot bank. Among the rescue workers who risked their lives during the recovery were Jack Scheuern, Lost Creek; Harold Young, John Birster, Chip Barnhart, and Bernard Powlick, Girardville; and William Thomas of Mahanoy Plane.
Workmen had been busy the past five months removing the bank, the culm being taken to the Packer No. 5 breaker for cleaning. The underground mines had been closed by state inspectors and strippings and banks were the breaker’s only suppliers. The bank was being removed by Kelly Construction, and this was the first serious accident in 10 years for the company owned by James V. Kelly of Frackville.
James Vincent Kelly (1893-1949) was a well-known stripping contractor born in Lost Creek. In 1937 he moved a shovel into the mountain south of William Penn and this marked the beginning of a successful venture in the stripping business. He struck large veins of coal on the mountain between William Penn and Lost Creek and soon had a large force of workers on his payroll. His coal business expanded rapidly. Kelly contracted for stripping work in other areas in this vicinity, including Lost Creek and Girardville. The accident occurred on a contract from Girard Estate to level the ground north of town, adjacent to the old Kehley Run property in preparation for a Shenandoah Athletic Stadium.
Culm is a mixture of rock and coal and is the dry refuse of the preparation of anthracite coal. Piles of the material, “culm banks” are of early origin, originally mostly small-sized anthracite which had no marketability. Banks were often run through breakers or washeries to recover product as smaller sized anthracite gained a market. Culm was also used as backflushing material to prevent subsidence in deep mines. Today, the culm piles are mostly rock and dirt, but still have some carbon content and are burned by fluidized bed non-utility power generators.
The Rose Valley Culm Bank where Carey died was put there by operations of the Packer 5 colliery over a long period. The Stephen Girard Estate leased the property Packer 5 would be on to Jeremiah Seitzinger (1814-1903) and George Washington Huntzinger (1825-1883) on July 1, 1863. Seitzinger and Huntzinger developed the property and erected a breaker which was called the Colorado Colliery, its first shipment in 1865. The lease was transferred to the Philadelphia Coal Company in 1867, and in 1874 the Lehigh Valley Coal Company bought Philadelphia Coal. About 1884 Lehigh Valley opened new tunnels to the coal seams lying above and below the Mammoth and erected a new colliery, Packer No. 5. Colorado, then known as Packer No. 1 colliery, was taken down during 1885, and all coal mined on this lease after was mined through Packer No. 5. The Lehigh Valley Coal Company continued operations on this lease until 1939 when East Bear Ridge Coal Company, a subsidiary of Temple Coal acquired it.
Rose Valley Coal Company was started in 1945 by Pasquale “Tony Rose” Adonizio (1881-1954), a Pittston coal operator. Tony Rose at one time operator of nine collieries in the region. Girard Estates leased Packer No. 5 Colliery to Tony in March 1945. It was worked on a steady schedule until February 1947, when it was suspended for a rehabilitation program on the fourth level. There was also a dispute over “lost wages” at the time. In October 1948, John Baptist Rich (1893-1978), president of the Gilberton Coal Company, acquired the Packer 5. It closed in 1959.
Edward Carey’s two older brothers were working in the coal mines at 17 and 19 years of age in 1920, and it is likely Edward started mining shortly thereafter. He was working in coal mine in 1930, and received two years of Penn State college credit for attending Shenandoah Night Mining School. He went into the coal delivery business before taking his job with Kelly Construction. He was buried in the Annunciation Cemetery, Shenandoah.