Legend has it that a man named William Hennebry was hired by farmer Thomas Byron to drill a well on his central Illinois farm in 1864.
Hennebry had drilled to what he assumed was a sufficient depth, but still hadn’t found any water. After some thought, he decided that water was there, but it was probably just deeper down.
After he had gone down to about eighty feet, he started to notice chunks of black in the soil being removed. Curious, he removed the dirt and clay and took a hard look at it them under the afternoon sun. To his surprise, he had drilled directly into a vein of coal.
Of course, that legend is wrong.
The truth is that coal had already been found decades before, and the world was ravenous for it.
In the 1800’s, coal fueled the world. Technological breakthroughs had allowed for mass industrialization, meaning mass production of goods on a virtually unprecedented scale. Factories grew massive, confined only by the limits of the cities where they had been built. With the growing businesses came workers; people eager to work who brought their families with them.
Cities swelled, neighborhoods spreading across the rural landscape of America. Other businesses grew up to accommodate the needs of the expanding masses. These new businesses brought new workers with their own families, growing the urban sprawl even more.
Coal was a big part of making all of that happen.
Soon industrialists pioneered new methods of turning iron ore into different kinds of steel, revolutionizing the construction industry, allowing bigger and taller buildings to be built in places like Chicago, Illinois.
Development of steam technology driven by coal-powered furnaces allowed for bigger, faster trains to be built. This allowed the transportation of larger amounts of goods to not only larger cities, but also small towns and villages across the country.
Coal fueled it all, and industrialists dug for it wherever they could find it.
In Illinois, in the central United States and far from the eastern mountain ranges, coal was first found by early settlers around 1810. Locals would take what they needed from open seams that ran through ridges and cliffs above the ground. They would mostly use it for blacksmithing and heating on a regional scale.
As the need for coal grew, mining companies began to dig shafts to extract coal seams throughout central Illinois. Towns grew up virtually overnight as men came to work the new mines.
One of the companies that arose in central Illinois was the Diamond Coal Mine, owned and operated by the Wilmington Coal Mining and Manufacturing Company. Headquartered in Chicago. Diamond was a name brand, and the mines operated under that brand were named Diamond No. 1, Diamond No. 2, and so on.
The mines were started by digging a shaft straight down into the earth until it reached the coal deep beneath the surface. An elevator was installed to bring workers and equipment down, run by a large steam engine. Pumphouses were also installed to pump out groundwater that seeped into the mine.
From the bottom of the main shaft, tunnels were dug outward, following the veins of coal. As a general guideline, the tunnels were made six or seven feet high and four feet wide. At regular intervals the walls were supported by heavy timbers.
Finding pockets of poisonous gases such as methane, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon monoxide were a constant concern for miners. Some of these gases would displace the available oxygen in the area, suffocating the workers. Others were highly combustible or flammable, leading to deadly explosions and fires.
To help prevent the build-up of these gases, multiple ventilation shafts were drilled into the mine from the surface, allowing more fresh air to come down to the mine while allowing the gases a place to drift out.
These ventilation shafts also served as alternate escape routes in case the miners needed to get out of the tunnels fast. Ladders were installed just for that purpose.
On February 16, 1883, nearly 300 men of Diamond No. 2 in the town of Diamond, near Braidwood, Illinois, got up and went to work. Several of them were just teenagers, going to work the mines alongside their fathers, uncles, and brothers.
Arriving at the mine, they took turns getting on the main elevator, descending into the darkness below. Ninety-two feet later, they went to work a winding coal vein that stretched over nearly eighty acres.
Just before noon, the pumpman, Thomas Daly, noticed that the bottom of the main shaft was starting to fill with water. His main job was to run the elevator for the miners, but he was also there to keep an eye on any water seeping into the tunnels.
Daly noticed that the water had rose a little and figured that the engine just required a little more steam. Getting into the elevator, he rode to the top to check the pumps.
When Daly got there, him and the engineer, the man who worked the pumps, found that they were producing more than enough steam to handle ordinary water levels. If that were the case, the two surmised, then there must be more water coming in than normal to have that much showing in the tunnels.
That also meant that something was very, very wrong.
With hardly a word, Daly ran back to the elevator and went back down the shaft.
When he reached the bottom of the shaft, the water was already up to his waist and rising quickly.
Several miners had assembled there, waiting to get out. As they climbed onto the elevator, the water rose quickly, rising to their chest in just a few minutes. The elevator loaded to capacity; Daly threw the switch. Slowly, the cage rose up the shaft again, the water following steadily behind.
Further into the mine, Andrew Costigan had been taking a break with another worker in a side chamber when they heard a dripping noise nearby. They assumed that a leak had sprung on the ceiling and went into the main passage to look for it.
They quickly realized that the sound was too loud to be a leak, and that the mine must be flooding. Terrified, they began to run toward the ventilation shaft.
Another miner, John Huber, was working along the main corridor, his two sons working nearby.
As he worked, he thought he heard someone shouting a warning from somewhere down the passage. Straining to hear, he could just barely make out what they were saying: “The water is coming.” He stood there, puzzled, trying to figure out what that meant.
Within a few moments, more shouting and screams came about the water.
Just then, Huber noticed a trickle of water going down the middle of the corridor. Suddenly he realized what the warning had been for: the mine was flooding! Moving as fast as he could, he made his way to where he knew his sons were.
When he got there, Huber discovered that they had already gone. He figured that they must have heard the shouts and already started running for the escape ladder. He started moving toward the ventilation shaft, shouting about the water as he ran.
Unbeknownst to them, a large sinkhole had opened at the bottom of a large pond nearby. It led directly into the mine shafts, sending untold amounts of water cascading into the voids below.
Three shrill whistle blasts were sounded at the mine, sending the signal that there had been an accident. Nearly everyone in town stopped what they were doing and rushed to see what had happened.
Crowds formed around both the main mine shaft entrance and the air shaft. Either could be used as an escape route, and wives, children, and friends eagerly watched for any signs of their loved ones.
In the mines below, the rising water had begun to pick up speed.
Some men seemed to lose their minds, shuffling aimlessly in the middle of the passages. Desperate miners pushed them out of the way, leaving them to their fate as they ran toward either shaft that would lead to escape.
Four brothers by the name of Pearson were in the mine when the flooding began. Hearing the warnings, all of them began running toward the ventilation shaft with another miner. Two of the brothers veered off into a side passage, away from where they needed to go. The oldest brother looked at his youngest brother and their companion and told them to keep going; he would go get the other two.
Without another word, he ran off after them, calling their names.
As the miners tried to escape, the lights that lit the tunnels went out, leaving the men to scramble blindly through the dark.
Many were caught in the flood, some drowning and others slammed mercilessly against the walls and ceiling by the torrent of water thundering through the passages.
The miners scrambled over top of one another as the bodies of their drowned colleagues floated past them. They clung to the ladder leading up the shaft with maniacal strength, scrambling up the rungs on legs burning with exertion. Some men fell back into the raging water; others were pulled up to safety.
Pat Redmond had reached the ventilation shaft with his two sons. Redmond had just begun to climb when the younger son tripped and fell. Without thinking, he ran out to grab him. A moment later, both were swept away by the raging water.
By the time Andrew Costigan and his companion had made it a few hundred feet down the corridor, the water was already up to their necks. Struggling through the water, Costigan managed to grab onto the ladder and began to climb.
John Huber had also reached the ladder, the water up to his shoulders. Slowly he managed to climb the ladder to the top.
The crowd at the top pulled him out to safety. After taking a moment, Huber began to shuffle back toward his home. When he got there, his hysterical wife, with an insane look in her eyes, asked him where their sons were.
Huber felt himself go numb. Had he been wrong? Had his two boys escaped like he thought, or were they still down in the mine?
In an instant, Huber forgot how tired he was and ran back to the mine. Desperately, he looked for his sons in the crowd, asking everyone he saw if they had seen his boys.
After a while, he knew that it was futile. No one had seen his sons since they had gone into the mine that morning. They were never coming home.
An exhausted Andrew Costigan had also made it to the top of the shaft, and he gladly let himself be pulled to safety by the men in the crowd. His companion had never made it out.
In a similar fashion, the youngest of the Pearson brothers and his companion made it to safety. His three brothers never found their way out and died in the mine.
One miner had managed to hold onto the corpse of his son, carrying him all the way to the surface. His wife caught sight of him, calling out to him.
As he began to climb the last part of the ladder toward the top of the shaft, his hand slipped. The wife could only watch as her husband, still clinging to the body of their son, fell to the bottom of the shaft.
Eventually, the water stopped. The water in the main shaft had stopped just twelve feet from the surface. The rescuers knew that no one else could make it out.
There was hope that, perhaps, some of the men might have found pockets of air and managed to survive.
Several large steam pumps were brought by train from Chicago to remove the water from the mine. Although they were delayed by flooding along the way, there was an eager crowd of nearly 300 volunteers that helped to transfer the pumps to a flatcar and take them to Diamond No. 2.
However, by 3 o’clock that afternoon, the hope of finding any survivors had been snuffed out. The water had risen nearly eighty feet up the main shaft, which meant that nearly everything below had been flooded completely. Even if by some miracle someone had survived, by the time they pumped out the water they would be dead.
Hampering the effort was also that the temperatures were starting to fall, and the water began to freeze. It was decided that any further efforts would be toward the recovery of any bodies that could be found.
Out of the estimated 185 miners in the tunnels that morning, 75 were trapped in the depths below.
It took 38 days to pump enough water out of the mine to let miners enter again. When they did, they discovered that Diamond No. 2 was in a shambles.
The flooding had caused the ceilings in several passages to cave in, leaving them filled with rock and clay. Timber props had been swept away by the water, leaving the cleared parts of the passages highly unstable.
Every surface was damp and slimy from the water, and a horrible smell of wet decay filled the mine.
Authorities quickly determined that the mine was far beyond repair. No one would ever work Diamond No. 2 again.
Ultimately, 28 bodies were recovered. As they were brought out, the remains were placed into coffins and placed into a building everyone called the dead house. Dozens of eager relatives crowded around to see if any of them were their loved ones.
After a large meeting between mine managers, superintendents, and pit bosses from all over the region, it was determined that recovering any further bodies from Diamond No. 2 was impractical.
There was good reason to believe that other areas of the mine had caved in as well, and the remains were likely buried under thousands of pounds of debris. The mine was already unstable, and further efforts would be extremely expensive and very dangerous for the recovery teams.
Even if they were to continue the search, by the time the bodies were found they would have likely been in no condition to be moved.
Recovery efforts were ceased, and the entrances to Diamond No. 2 were permanently sealed. For those bodies remaining, it would serve as their final resting place.
Today the Diamond Mine Disaster stands as one of the worst mining disasters in Illinois history, standing testimony to the dangers that miners faced every day in an era when coal ran the world.
Sources
History of Mining in Illinois. Illinois Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund, imsif.com
Bobrow, Abigail. Built on Coal. Storied.illinois.edu
Coal Mining Basics. Sierra Club Illinois Chapter.
Joyce, Richard. Early Days of Coal Mining in Northern Illinois. Illinois Labor History Society. Illinoislaborhistory.org.
Maue, August. History of Will County, Illinois. Topeka-Indianapolis. Historical Publishing Company; 1928.
Chart Industries. The Most Dangerous Gases in Mining. Chartindustries.com, 11/9/2023
The Black Year. Chicago Tribune, 2/17/1883
Diamond Mine Disaster Anniversary. Coal Mining in Illinois, Coal City Public Library District.
Klasey, Jack. KLASEY: The Diamond Mine disaster. Daily-Journal.com.3/11/2023