The 1907 Miracle of St. Nicholas in Pennsylvania at Darr Mine

 

St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, who saved hundreds of Orthodox faithful who honored his feast   

 

The 1907 Miracle of St. Nicholas in Pennsylvania at Darr Mine

 

On 20 December 1907 The New York Times front page reported details of a mining disaster in Pennsylvania. Although hundreds of coal miners had lost their lives, the newspaper carried the unusual headline of The Pittsburgh Press: ‘St Nicholas Feast Saves the Russians’. And other headline captions at the time included: Pittsburgh Gazette Times: "Majority of Victims Americans - Foreign Workers Lay Off to Go to Church and Escape Death"; Pittsburgh Dispatch: "Many of the victims are English-speaking men. Foreigners escape owing to religious holiday." What was the story behind these headlines?

 

On 19 December 1907, at least 239 coal miners were killed in an explosion at the Darr Mine in Van Meter, in the south-western corner of Pennsylvania. This remains the fourth worst coal mining disaster in U.S. history and everyone inside the mine was killed. However, it could have been much worse - the number of victims could have been double. The death toll was not some 500, because 19 December is St Nicholas’ Day [Old Calendar] and some 250 faithful Carpatho-Russian immigrant coal miners had taken an unpaid day off work to celebrate his memory. For even the greedy coal mine owners, who otherwise had virtually complete control over the miners with their threats of dismissal, knew that they could not force Carpatho-Russians to work on 19 December, St Nicholas Day. For St Nicholas is the patron saint of shepherds, one reason why he has been the Carpatho-Russian patron saint for centuries, and thanks to his intercession, men and boys, some perhaps as young as ten, survived to become fathers of hundreds and grandfathers of thousands. Had it not been for this miracle, more than a thousand would have been widowed and orphaned, which in 1907 would have meant financial destitution, for there would have been no assistance from companies or government agencies in those days.

Newspaper reports of the 11:30 am explosion that took place in the middle of the church service record that there was a terrible noise and the ground shook, as if there were an earthquake. Immediately everyone realized that there had been an explosion in the mine and they rushed to help find survivors. Although it was against the few regulations that did exist at the time, the mining company had allegedly interconnected more than one mine, which devastated a large area of the mine on both sides of the river. In the end, many bodies could not be identified and were placed in a mass grave, and although probably higher, the official death toll was 239.

Life was very harsh for the Carpatho-Russian miners. They were worked like animals in the bowels of the earth, exploited by ‘the English’ - anglophone American businessmen and coal barons, and often worked seven days a week. At that time the Carpatho-Russians were supported in their labour struggles by a priest, Fr (now St) Alexis Toth (1854-1909). Fr Alexis not only supported every labour struggle and won the respect of the people, but supported the immigrants in other ways too. For, having been forced into outward Uniatism in their homeland by the threat of starvation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from the 1880s on the Carpatho-Russians had been forced into emigrating by the cruel Hungarian Roman Catholic authorities in their homeland. In America they struggled to retain their identity and traditions. However, as a result of the religious freedom they found in North America, many of their priests and tens of thousands of people had since 1892 been returning to Orthodoxy to become part of the Orthodox Church in North America. And it had been St Alexis who had led the way. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Uniats were as a rule anti-labour and supported their Irish masters. The Carpatho-Russian miners remained close to the Church and many later revered the memory of the Russian Tsar-Martyr, Nicholas II, under whom all Orthodox in North America had been united.