It’s hard enough to imagine going down into a coal mine to work equipped only with a carbide lamp strapped to your head, but imagine what it’s like to spend over a day crawling around in a pitch black mine trying to find your way out without any light at all. That is exactly what a Marion man experienced in 1937.
Jesse Wilson grew up on the border of West Marion and Herrin Township in the Crenshaw area. Jesse and his father, Roy Wilson, purchased property and mineral rights adjacent to the old Peabody No. 3 mine near Cedar Grove. Cedar Grove is on Route 37, just on the north side of Marion these days and used to be called Dogwalk, back in the mining days.
The Wilson Mine was operated with about 10 men, mostly family members, and was a slope mine. Slope mines have openings that enter the earth at a slope and are not tall enough to stand up in. Because miners in slope mines would constantly scratch their backs on the ceiling, the mines came to be called “scratch back mines.”
The Wilson family had also procured rights to blocks of the old Peabody No. 3 mine which was not only adjacent to the Wilson mine, it actually tied into it. It was noted that since this mine and the old Peabody mine had so many openings to the surface that it had good air and ventilation down below, but water encroachment had become a problem for the Wilson’s.
On November 10, 1937, Jesse entered the mine at 11 A.M. Monday and stopped in a section of the pit where five or six miners were working. When he left them he said he was going into the adjacent workings and they thought nothing of his absence, until they left the mine at the end of the day’s work and found his automobile still at the top of the mine where he had left it.
Mine men speculating upon the cause of his disappearance said that he had probably become lost because of the failure of his lamp. He was equipped only with a carbide lamp when he entered the mine. Although he was acquainted with the workings adjacent to the slope, it was said even the most expert miner might become confused in the labyrinth of passages nearby.
Some expressed the fear that the young miner had wandered into a pocket of black damp which would snuff out his life. The possibility that he might have been struck by a fall of rock was considered remote. His uncle, Jesse Wilson, said an accident of that character would be the least likely among possible accidents be might have encountered.
The possibility of encountering inflammable mine gas was dismissed by miners who commented upon the excellence of the air supply in the mine. The fact that the workings are penetrated by numerous surface openings, they said, assured the mine of a plentiful supply of air.
Soon after Wilson failed to come out of the mine Monday evening workmen re-entered the mine to search for him, and before long an organized search was under way. Barney McSherry, Superintendent of the Herrin Mine Rescue Station and Fred Schoonover, state mine inspector, went to the mine to direct the search. They were joined during the night by other rescue men and volunteer crews began investigating every known passage in the mine.
Hope for Wilsons’ rescue was pinned upon the possibility that he might realize his predicament in time and sit down and wait for help. Should he continue to seek a way out after becoming lost, it was said he might wander out of reach of the searchers or double back on their path in the darkness of the pit and finally drop from exhaustion.
Through one of the mines many openings a group of rescue workers entered the mine from a strip mine operation west of the slope on the west side of Route 37. Penetrating the workings toward the old Peabody No. 3 shaft, members of the crew said they thought they heard a voice in the distance, but their investigation failed to find any one. Although it was said they might have heard members of another rescue party in another section of the mine, other workers were sent into that section to make a complete search.
The family of the lost mine operator maintained an all-night vigil at the mouth of the sloping entrance to the pit. His father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Roy Wilson, his young wife, Mrs. Jessie Wilson and two brothers waited anxiously thru the night and next morning for word from below. The brothers were among the rescue workers who first entered the mine when anxiety over the absence of Wilson prompted the search about 6 P.M. Monday.
Seventeen men carried on the search throughout the night without result. As the search dragged slowly through Tuesday morning there were 24 men in the pit pushing the search farther and farther into the abandoned tunnels and working places of old Peabody Mine No. 3.
At 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday four rescue teams with seven men in each group were working under the direction of State Mine Inspector, William Johnson of Franklin County. The men in charge of the four groups were Mine Inspector John of Christopher, Houston Webb of the Johnston City Mine Rescue Station, Barney McSherry of the Herrin Mine Rescue Station and Rufus Winters of Marion. No trace of Wilson had been found and after first using chalk to mark their courses to prevent getting lost in the blind entries, they then began using binder twine to show their routes.
Members of the Wilson family explained that the Wilson mine working extended only about a quarter of a mile from the opening. But the mine proper comprised only a part of the area to be searched. The mine recently had been engaged in removing pillars from the old Peabody No 3 mine and the abandoned workings of that mine open into the Wilson pit.
At the time he was last seen Wilson was on an exploration tour of the old workings. The Wilson hold some blocks of coal north and east of the slope which they operate on Route 37 at Dog Walk, but these additional holdings have not been operated because of water underground. It was a quest for a drainage way through which to drain this water that prompted young Wilson to enter the old workings, member of his family believed.
Since his failure to come out of the mine at 5 o’clock Monday gave rise to the first anxiety that he had become lost in the mine which he entered shortly before noon Monday, his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Roy Wilson, his wife, Mrs. Jessie Whitfield had not left the mine. They had just completed their second night’s weary eyed vigil and were gazing blankly at another day dawning in the east when the blackened and weary figure of their son and husband struggled slowly up the steep slope.
Like a ghost from the black depths, Jesse Wilson, 28 year old mine operator, walked up the slope of the Wilson Coal Mine on Route 37, north of Marion at 5 o’clock Wednesday morning after spending 42 hours lost in the labyrinth of underground passages in the dark below.
Unannounced by the 30 members of rescue crews who were systematically searching the abandoned working of nearby Peabody No. 3 mine in which the missing mine operator’s trail was picked up Tuesday night. Wilson found his own way out of the mine.
“I’m all right, I want to go home,” he said as members of his family and friends crowded around him at the mouth of the mine crying for joy.
A gash on his head had been bleeding where he had struck it on a rock during his wanderings in the dark and been knocked unconscious. Once their first joy at his return had given vent to joyful tears and embraces of greeting, members of the Wilson family were relieved to learn that the long hours below in the darkness had left his mind clear and although his body was weakened from hunger and exhaustion he was unharmed. His clothing indicated he had spent much of this time crawling on hands and knees in the pit.
They did not press him with questions but they overruled his request to be taken home and sent him at once to Herrin hospital in an ambulance.
Greeting him also as he walked out of the pit were his two brothers, Bert and Wayne, his sisters, Mrs. Levi Simpson and Miss Dora Wilson and his uncle Arthur Wilson, who had also kept up the vigil during his absence in the mine.
In the meantime, word was sent down into the mine to the rescue crews notifying them that the missing man had been found. By the time young Wilson made his own way out of the mine the rescue workers had penetrated deep into the abandoned workings surrounding the slope of the Wilson mine where Wilson, his father and brothers have been engaged in mining the pillars of coal left underground by the abandoned Peabody No.3 shaft nearby.
In a regular mine with railroad tracks, miners can find their way out when their lights go out or when they are lost by following the rails. They can tell by the way the switches point, which is the “bottom” of the mine. Jesse found such a track in this mine and crawled out with it as a guide.
Having endured this experience, you would consider Jesse Wilson to be a lucky fellow. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end here.
Only five years later, on November 11, 1942, Jesse was walking next to the road in Ferges (northwest of Marion) when he was struck by an automobile driven by Charles Labotte. He was taken to Herrin Hospital, but never recovered and died at 8 P.M. Tuesday, November 24, 1942.
Jesse Wilson, son of Roy and Mary (Trout) Wilson, was born in Williamson County, March 9, 1907. He was married at Herrin in 1935 to Miss Jessie Whitfield and had one daughter Janie Louise, four years old, who survived his passing.
Two sisters and three brothers also survived in addition to his parents. They were Mrs. Albert Jack and Mrs. Levi Simpson, Marion RFD 1; Bert Wilson, Cape Girardeau, Mo.; Wayne Wilson of Detroit and Bobby Wilson, RFD 1, Marion.
Funeral services were held at Cedar Grove.
Sam’s Notes: In the years of my growing up in this area, I was familiar with the Bert Wilson junkyard that used to dominate the east side of Cedar Grove on route 37 where a large church building now sits. Burt was Jessie’s brother. Burt Wilson’s son was Richard G. Wilson, after which the Marion Armory was named. Richard was awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously, after displaying heroism during the Korean War. He was killed in action in 1950. Apparently, Richard was made of the same stuff as his uncle Jessie.
The Wilson family is laid to rest in their family plot in Maplewood cemetery with death dates as follows. Jesse died in 1942, brother Wayne died in 1944, parents Roy and Mary in 1950, brother Robert Eugene 1948, brother Bert in 1995, sister Laura Simpson in 2008 and her husband Levi in 1995.
(Data extracted from Marion Daily Republican articles from November 1937 and August 1942; Marion City Cemetery Records; photo provided by Helen Lind; compiled by Sam Lattuca on 11/19/2013)