Fraterville (now Lake City), Tenn., is located in the northeast portion of the state in Campbell County, about 25 miles northwest of Knoxville. It was the site of the Fraterville mine where 184 men and boys worked. On the morning of May 19, 1902 the workers entered the mine at their usual 7:30 a.m. time and only a few short minutes later an enormous explosion of coal dust and methane gas occurred spewing smoke and debris from the ventilation shaft and the mine entrance. Many miners were killed instantly from the force of the blast and the heat. Mine cars were splintered as were some of the big timbers and many of those killed instantly were dismembered.
Some of the men were found with no marks on them at all, victims of the gasses. Those who survived the initial explosion were forced deeper into the mine and in a futile attempt to live, barricading themselves in side passages trying to escape the heat and lethal gasses.
Outsiders began to try to rescue the men immediately but were forced to turn back by the gas buildup. It was late into the afternoon when the gas was successfully vented out and it was safe enough to enter. It took four days to recover all 184 bodies.
Coal Creek Coal Co. owned the mine and the company had a great reputation for safety, fairness and never used convict labor. E.C. Camp owned the company and his son George was the superintendent. George had been taught mining by working alongside many of the men that perished that morning, and both E.C. and George Camp were well thought of. George and his wife had company staying with them and he left for work late that morning, then an unexpected rain convinced him to return home for a jacket, making him even later for work and thus saving his life.
Camp’s first mine, Fraterville, meant “village of brothers,” and many of the miners had convinced their relatives to come work with them. The town grew around the mine with the miners given the opportunity to buy land, build homes while being paid in cash instead of the more common scrip and it was a happy community.
The cause of the explosion was listed as the accumulation of volatile gases due to inadequate ventilation. It was thought that the buildup occurred possibly from a leakage from an unventilated and abandoned adjacent mine that had been tapped into and from it being closed up unventilated over the weekend. Both George Camp and the ventilation furnace operator, Tip Hightower were initially charged with negligence but both were acquitted. Hightower lost two sons in the disaster and testifying was horrendous for both men. Camp stated that "Tip Hightower never let his fire die down. I always found his fire all right. He was trustworthy." The Knoxville Sentinel account defended him with “George Camp, the young man who has grown up as a comrade to the dead men and who became skilled in the mining business under the tutelage of the men now dead, wept bitterly on the stand.”
During the long hours it took to get into the mine, several of the miners wrote letters on bits of paper. This disaster led to the formation of the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1910 and next week I’ll continue with portions of the notes left and the devastation this accident left behind.
