A Struggle for Survival and Identity: Families in the Aftermath of the Castle Gate Mine Disaster

A Struggle for Survival and Identity: Families in the Aftermath of the Castle Gate Mine Disaster

BY JANEEN ARNOLD COSTA

ON THE CLEAR, BRISK MORNING OF SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1924, 171 men reported for work in the Number 2 mine of the Utah Fuel Company in Castle Gate, Utah. Shortly after they began their shift the mine was rocked by two separate, violent explosions. None of the miners survived, and one rescue worker, who apparently removed the nose clip of his gas mask, was killed by inhaling the deadly afterdamp. It took a week to recover all of the bodies.

As the week wore on company officials went into action to provide for the families of those killed. In 1917 the Utah State Legislature had passed a workmen's compensation law and set up a state insurance fund. The Utah Fuel Company, self-insured, provided $150 in funeral expenses for each miner and $16 a week for nearly six years, totaling almost $5,000 in compensation for each claimant. In addition. Gov. Charles R. Mabey set up a committee to distribute $132,445.13 in funds raised through public donations. On June 6, 1924, the Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee hired Annie D. Palmer, an experienced Red Cross worker, to determine the needs and conditions of widows and orphaned children. For seven years following the disaster, she submitted carefully detailed reports.

The following were among the fatalities: 49 Greek, 22 Italian, 8 Japanese, 7 English, 6 Austrian, 2 Scotch, 2 Negro, 1 Belgian, and 74 American. Of those killed, 57 were single men and 114 were married.

In February, when the company decided to close down the Number 1 mine due to falling coal prices and a mine fire that was proving difficult to extinguish, it laid off single men first, retaining married men with families to support for continued work in the Number 2 mine. Thus, the proportionate number of married men at work and killed in the devastating explosion at the Number 2 mine that morning in March was much higher than it would have been only a short time before.

Excluding boys above the age of 16 and girls above the age of 18, the disaster left 417 individuals dependent, including 25 expectant mothers. Information is available on 143 families for several years following the disaster. The chronicling of their lives shows a clear difference among the options available and undertaken by these women and their children, a difference based on the diverse ethnic backgrounds of those involved.

The data provide an opportunity to correlate the strategies these women chose with information on cultural practices, the time at which the individual and the general immigrant group first came from a specific country or region to the United States and to Utah, and, thus, an understanding of the migrant group's position in the labor market and in the social milieu of the time. There are also data on the age of children in the family and the presence of close relatives in the area. All of these variables influenced the decision-making of the women and children. The tragedy presents a unique opportunity to observe the actions taken by women in an era when choosing to maintain ethnic identity or to assimilate were options primarily exercised by men, both for themselves and for the women they brought with them or sent for in the process of migration.

The social environment in Utah in the 1920s was one of discrimination against those who were distinguishable from the majority because of language, religion, appearance, or customs. Of those killed in the mine disaster this would include Japanese, Greeks, Italians, and Blacks. The Japanese, by their own choice and because of anti-Japanese laws and attitudes across the country, remained separate from most aspects of life in mainstream Utah. Assimilation simply was not a choice available to them. The eight Japanese killed at Castle Gate had no families living in the area at the time, and no records reveal the way a Japanese family would have handled the disaster. Some of the immediate responses of the Greek, Italian, and Negro families are available, and they differ significantly from the responses of those who, because of lighter colored skin, language, or northern European background, were more assimilated into the flow of Utah life and had become, despite their birthplace, Americanized.

The Greek experience in Utah up to 1924 had been one of isolation and conflict. Greek men left their homeland in droves in the late 1890s and early 1900s; Greek women came to Utah in the 1910-20 decade. Many of the Greek men killed at Castle Gate were not married and were living in the homes of relatives. Greeks followed a chain migration pattern, and networks of kin, friends, and fellow villagers operated to bring migrants to an area, to find them jobs and places to stay, and to provide them with a sense of social community. Annie Palmer, the social worker who chronicled the lives of the widows and their families, reported the following:

Despina Sargetakis . . . related that in her home at Castle Gate four men, workers in the Number 2 mine were living. From her home on the morning of March 8, 1924, four men went to work—her husband . . . and [three] relatives. . . . From the wreck of the mine to the morgue, and on to the Cemetery they were all carried; and she with her babies came to the shelter of her sister's home.

Despina, a woman of thirty-four, was left with five children, six years of age or younger.

A major motive for many young Greek men to leave their homeland was to find a way to provide income for their families in Greece, particularly for use in the financially crippling dowry required for a satisfactory marriage for their sisters. There is no way of knowing how many families in Greece were left destitute from the death of their provider, a son sent to challenge the dangers of life in a new country.

Unlike many of the other widows, Greek women did not, by custom, remarry. The prospect of life without a husband, particularly in America where he provided a crucial link with mainstream society, was overwhelming to the young Greek widows. Old-country customs of modesty and strict social rules had isolated them from American life. Their husbands had provided social and financial security by dealing with the outside world, working, buying food and other necessary items, and interacting with non-Greek acquaintances. Male and female domains were separate in Greece, and the association of the woman with the private arena of the home and the man with the public arena was often transplanted to and intensified in America.

For women such as these staying in America was an unwelcome option, and they determined to return to Greece with the help of the Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee. Annie Palmer described the case of Koula Camperides who was typical of these young, devastated Greek mothers:

She seems so entirely unable to adapt herself to the condition ... so helpless with her three babies, the oldest of them but three years. . . . She states that in Greece women do not remarry. She intends to devote her life to her children. There are good schools in all the towns in Greece.

Outsiders like Dr. Bruck of Castle Gate were also concerned about the helpless condition of these isolated women. He asked Palmer to visit Camperides, because he thought she was "a very superior woman and does not consider it wise to leave her in her unprotected condition."

Although the committee was initially opposed to providing transportation for anyone wishing to leave the United States, Palmer convinced them of the need to do so. In writing to Camperides after her arrival in Crete, Greece, Palmer states:

I pleaded so hard for you to be allowed to go to your home country, when the committee had told me they did not favor sending anyone away from America. To me it seemed the biggest thing that could be done for you, to help you to those who could help you with your little ones—those who were bound to you by ties of blood. I know that had I been left as you were left, that would have been the thing I should have wanted above all else. ... I pleaded for them to help you to go home. The trip was no doubt hard. But that is now so long ago that you must try to forget it. There are so many things that are not good to remember.

The committee helped six Greek women and their families return to their homeland, four of them departing together on July 5, 1924, by train from Castle Gate to Hoboken, New Jersey, and from there to Greece on July 12. For these women the journey home represented a return to safety and security, where family and, for some, minimal property were available. The compensation provided by Utah Fuel, barely adequate for life in America, would seem a lavish amount once Greece was reached.

Palmer reported on the condition of one Greek woman, Maria Bouzis, who chose to return with her five children to Crete:

Like others of her countrywomen she seems unable to adapt herself to the condition that confronts her. She feels helpless and alone. Her people are in the homeland, anxious for her return. Her compensation will last at least twice as long for the children, if she is in her own country. It is the one great desire of her heart that she be helped to get back home.

In early June 1924 Palmer visited Sophie Kapakis and described her as a "woman as helpless as a woman could be, with a heavy winter coat on in midsummer. [She] begged Mrs. Palmer to stay and let her make coffee. [She] seems incapable of caring for her children."

In describing the final departure of these women on July 5, Palmer wrote:

The big trunks were taken to the depot by employees of Fuel Company, everything was made as comfortable as could be for the departing women and children, and they left as scheduled. The women kept up bravely until the train was in and they began to get aboard. Then they broke down and women and children wept aloud as they bade farewell to the spot where the saddest hours of life had been endured.

Many Greek widows seemed unable to decide whether to return to Greece or not. By the departure date of July 5, Palmer wrote, "more than half the original party had decided not to go." Some sought refuge with relatives in other parts of the United States before returning to Greece. Zoy Stavranakis left Castle Gate with her two sixteen-month old daughters immediately after the disaster to go to her brother's home in Evanston, Wyoming. Five months later she asked for and received funds from the committee to cover her return transportation and expenses to Greece. Chrissie Malax, pregnant and with a child fifteen months of age, went to Connecticut to be with her immigrant brother and sister. CaUiope Dallas, so distraught with the loss of her husband that insanity was feared, took her three young children and left for New Jersey where a cousin lived. She later returned to Greece, the committee having provided funds for her to do so. When Palmer arranged for her things to be sent to New Jersey, Dallas wrote that they had arrived but that "she did not care so much for the things as for Jim," her lost husband.

For some Greek women the presence of other relatives and the opportunities available to their children were enough incentive for them to remain in America indefinitely. They, like their countrywomen, spoke little English and were largely unacquainted with American customs and the public arena but relied on a network of relatives and friends to support them until their children became old enough to take over this task. Despina Sargetakis moved back and forth between the home of her sister in Salt Lake City and her husband's brother in Helper; both her brothers-in-law helped with rent, medical expenses, and everyday financial needs. Mary Katsanevas, who at first wanted to return to Greece with her five children ranging in age from seven months to fifteen years, was persuaded by her oldest son (who feared induction into the Greek army) to remain in America. He was old enough to support the family through his work and to perform the social linking tasks Greek custom dictated should fall to the males of the family.

These Greek women continued to be conservative in dealing with the outside world despite the number of years they lived in America. Of Despina Sargetakis, Palmer wrote, "... she realizes that her children wiU have a much better chance in America." Within four years of the disaster, Palmer observed of the Sargetakis children: "Theodore and John are quite Americanized." Yet, for the mother, the customs relating to the loss of her husband remained strong: "Mrs. Sargetakis explained that since four years are now past, she had taken down the black drapes, and that the children are happier. When asked about the black clothes, she states she will wear black until Theodore is sixteen." Theodore would turn sixteen in 1934, ten years after the explosion. Nevertheless, she continued to wear black until she died.

For the two remaining Greek women the proscription against remarriage, a Greek custom rather than a Greek Orthodox church requirement, was not as strong in America as in Greece. Even today, in many regions of Greece, a widow has little hope of marrying.

Eirine Markakis lost both her husband and a brother in the mine explosion. For the next six years she continued to live in Utah with her unmarried brother and a daughter born to her a few months after the disaster. In 1930 the social worker suggested "that she should seek employment among her countrymen. . . . She said there is no work that a Greek woman can do in Salt Lake. . . . [Palmer] suggested a remarriage. She said she had opportunities to remarry, but not of the men of her own section of Greece [Crete]."

The custom among both Greek immigrants and Greeks in the homeland was to marry someone who came from the same region of Greece so that the prospective spouse's background and family would be known. This knowledge was considered important for the proper selection of a husband or wife and determination of the future happiness and success of the family. When Palmer suggested that Markakis consider marrying a man from another part of Greece, she did so within two days of the suggestion, hoping she would not be criticized for an action contrary to traditional Greek practice.

Greek attitudes that prevented a woman from working outside the home also weakened in America. Georgia Paizakis, originally hoping to return to Greece in the company of the other women, changed her mind and remained in Utah for two years. In 1926 she moved to California to be with a cousin, claiming "she could get work at much better wages in California." Within two years she had remarried, providing a father for her three young children.

Significantly, none of the Greek women who remained in Utah undertook any form of wage labor outside the home or labor within the home involving close contact with outsiders, such as taking in boarders. Instead, they chose to remain in the private arena and female-centered space of their homes and to utilize close male relatives, their own children, or a new husband to provide the critical connection with the public sphere, without which they could not function.

The widows of the Italian men killed in the Castle Gate explosion faced social isolation and antiforeign attitudes just as the other ethnic groups did, yet their comparatively longer experience in the United States and their awareness of opportunities outside of mining made it possible for them to consider remaining in Utah and to attempt to carry on some semblance of their life as it had been before the disaster.

Italians from both the north and south of Italy came to Utah five to ten years earlier than the Greek immigrants. Like the Greeks, opportunities in railroading and mining attracted them. By the time Greek workers began arriving, the Italian population was well established. Italians had a history of conflict, particularly labor conflict, in Utah. According to one source, "Utah's first important experience with labor strife occurred in the 1903 Carbon Country strike that involved, predominantly, Italian miners. By the time of the Castle Gate disaster in 1924 Italians were less involved for "labor violence and abuses led many Italians to leave mining and start businesses of their own or turn to farming." Following the 1903 strike Italians left Castle Gate, many settling on farms in the same area or taking up other kinds of work:

Numerous immigrants had been apprenticed in various trades in the old country, and once an economic base had been achieved, they left the mines or railroads and embarked upon their craft. This was particularly evident in [the larger cities of Utah] . . . where shoe shops and tailor shops, as well as grocery stores and taverns, sprang up in Italian residential areas.

At Castle Gate that dismal morning, 22 of the 171 miners were Italian, the second largest separate ethnic group employed in the mine but less than half the number killed who were Greek and a third of those who were categorized as American.

None of the thirteen Italian widows returned to Italy. Some relied on networks of relatives and friends across America, as many Greek women had done, but the majority remained in Utah and remarried within a few months or years of the disaster. For Italian women, husbands provided a link with mainstream society, although to a lesser extent than for the Greeks in Utah. Lacking the proscription against remarriage that so profoundly affected the behavior of the Greek widows. eight Italian women remarried and again obtained an important connection with the public sphere through a male.

Women who remarried forfeited any further compensation from the public relief fund, since the committee assumed the new husband would support the family. Utah Fuel Company cut by one-half to twothirds the remaining workmen's compensation when a woman remarried and often placed the money in a trust fund to be given to the children at the age of maturity. So, remarriage was not always a wise financial step and was certainly not undertaken on the basis of financial need alone.

Two Italian women remained in Utah without remarrying; they made and sold wine to support themselves and their families. This bootlegging operation, carried on during the prohibition era, was well supported by both immigrant and American populations and often ignored by law enforcement officials. Vittoria Cassela was said to have carried on a bootleg business prior to and after the death of her husband. The sheriff in Casde Gate commented, "Perhaps she seUs some wine . . . aU Italian women do." The other Italian widow who did not remarry, Mrs. Gionini, was known for the quality of her wine. She reported to the social worker that her income was in the thousands of dollars. Many Italian women in Utah produced wine, a culturally accepted way to acquire money in Italy, although illegal in the United States at that time. For these two Italian widows of the disaster, this business supplemented their income when the husband was alive and provided an important source of support after the mine disaster.

Four Italian women took boarders into their homes in the months that followed the disaster to alleviate the burden of rent payments, and some found a second husband among their boarders. The second husband did not always provide the support the Utah Fuel Company and the committee expected, however, and the committee continued to pay for medical problems and other occasional expenses. For example, although Brigida Ambrosia remarried in the fall of 1924, the committee provided funds for the care of her children, for clothing, and for medical expenses through 1926. Committee members recognized that jobs were difficult to find and to keep, particularly as the depression approached, and they hastened to reinstate monthly allowances to help in all ethnic groups when the second husband lost his job or showed signs of unwillingness to support the family fully.

Financial concerns aside, widowed women also had to face the difficult task of raising their children alone. Often they felt unable to deal with the problems and situations that arose as the children grew into young adults. Sometimes the children stayed out late, drove the family car without permission, and associated with friends the mothers saw as unsavory characters. The widows often found themselves unable to handle such situations with clear authority. For immigrant women the problem was compounded by differing cultural values, for the widows retained aspects of old-country mores while their children were assimilating into American society. In 1927, when Teresa Tallerico asked Palmer for advice on how to deal with her eight children, the social worker said that she and her children "must both try to make adjustments as children are fairly Americanized and Mrs. Tallerico is still foreign."

Although the first known Black traveled through Utah in the 1820s and three Blacks came with the first permanent white settlers in 1847, their number—both slave and free—remained small in the early years of settlement. According to Ronald G. Coleman, "In the period between 1920 and 1930, Carbon and Emery counties had a number of Blacks working in the coal mines and other related industrial activities." Discrimination and anti-Black attitudes were even stronger in Utah at that time than feelings against southern European immigrants. Coleman noted:

With immigrants from the Balkans and the Mediterranean initial discrimination was strong but of relatively short duration and never so virulent as that experienced by Blacks. Public opinion kept the new immigrants out of certain areas in towns and cities and frowned on intermarriage, but laws restricted Blacks in housing and public accommodations and through the Anti-Miscegenation Law (1898-1963) prohibited marriage with whites.

Both the workers classified as Negro in the "nationality" census of those killed in the Castle Gate explosion left behind families. The two black women found little to keep them and their families in Carbon County following the death of their husbands. Cora Willis, deprived initially of workmen's compensation because she was not legally married and her son was not the legitimate heir to Ed Willis, found herself without income of any sort. Palmer reported that Willis:

Sold chairs to buy food. Now offering a small table for sale. Nothing in the house worth anything. A white woman living near brings loaf of bread and few potatoes each day, and Edith Hadfield, colored maid at hotel gives fifty cents occasionally for food.

Willis hoped to move with her friend Edith to Los Angeles where Edith's mother had promised them a place to stay until they found jobs. The committee provided $150 for transportation to California and to pay off the family's debts in Castle Gate. In October 1924 the Utah State Supreme Court found in favor of Willis and awarded workmen's compensation to her son John.

Following the mine disaster. Myrtle Henderson, the second Black woman, originally planned to move with her four children to New Mexico to live with her brother. She changed her mind, however, and moved instead to Ogden to be near friends. The welfare worker seems to have been predisposed to see this family as needing help in everyday affairs, and the evidence indicates that racial attitudes in the Utah community presented many obstacles for the Henderson family. Palmer reported that Ogden was "a hard place for colored people to get along" and that the family was a victim of "crooked deals" several times. The committee provided $75 for moving expenses to Ogden in September 1924 and $25 for transportation of the children to Del Carbon, Colorado, to join their mother in October 1925 when she remarried.

If the ways Greek, Italian, and Black women responded to the tragedy varied, there is little to distinguish the responses of most women whose husbands were categorized as English, Scotch, or Belgian from those categorized as American. These women, in general, spoke English, and their habits, customs, and appearance were similar to those of the surrounding majority community. Migrants from these areas came into an America in which those from northern and central Europe were better tolerated and accepted within the context of an increasingly diverse society.

A few women from the British Isles followed a response pattern similar to other, less tolerated ethnic groups, and left America. Georgina Dodd and her eighteen-month-old daughter Dorothy May departed for Scotland, and Mary Ellen Tryer and her son Walter, seven years of age, left for Lancashire, England. The committee provided each of them with $250 in transportation expenses. And Jessie Garrock, who had come to the United States from Scotland in 1923, took in boarders during the winter following the disaster and eventually rented out the front rooms of her home to families or schoolteachers so that she would not have to deal with men unknown to her. Palmer wrote: "To her, life seems to be adl sorrow—a sorrow to which she clings, from which she has no desire to be separated." The social worker described Garrock as "heartbroken and disgusted about the women who have already remarried, before even the year has passed." Throughout the years of taking in boarders and cleaning and caring for the company cottage at Castle Gate, she continued to express a desire to return to Scotland. In 1930 she married a man from her homeland and returned at last to Scotland. Her daughter Anna, thirteen years old by that time, presumably returned with her, but there is no mention of her older daughter, Margaret, age sixteen, who had completed high school in the United States and was of marriageable age by the time her mother left.

For the rest of the widows in these northern and central European ethnic groups and for those said to be American, a typical pattern of coping with the difficulties of life following the deaths of their loved ones emerges. Many younger women with children immediately moved in with their parents or with the parents of the deceased husband. For some, the move back into their parents' home was difficult. For many immigrants, of course, moving into the parents' home was not an option, unless the immigrant had come to America in company with family or had later sent for parents.

Many widows took in boarders in the months and years that followed the mine disaster. Others provided meals for single men who lived in company boardinghouses or company homes. Although a few women were afraid of taking in unknown men as boarders, some had a more practical approach. When Palmer told Anna Curtis Pappas, an American woman whose Greek husband was killed in the explosion, "that is was not always wise for lone women to take strange men into the home," Pappas replied, "Money is what talks."

Some widows of northern European or American background found employment in local businesses, including work at the Castle Gate Amusement Hall, doing "beauty work," or cleaning homes or offices for company officials. Others pursued education at Brigham Young University or Henager's College of Business. Many husbands had left insurance or accidental death policies, and their widows and children received amounts up to $5,000 to help them through the initial shock and efforts to rebuild their lives.

Within the first several years for which there is information, remarriage was a viable option, depending on age at the time of the disaster; younger women were more likely to remarry. Of those women of northern and central European origins and those listed as American, 89 percent under the age of 30, that is 24 out of 27, remarried. Of the 12 widows between the ages of 30 and 40 at the time of the disaster, 50 percent remarried. In the 40-50 age group, only 25 percent, or 3 out of 12, remarried. And of those 50 years of age and above, only 1 out of 9 married again.

Annie Palmer also noted the religious backgrounds of the widows and families. Among Mormon women more advanced in age, some considered moving to Salt Lake City to work in the temple, although none actually did so during the twelve years the committee kept records following the disaster. Women of the LDS faith received occasional aid from the church's Relief Society. Older women of all ethnic and religious backgrounds relied on working-age children to support them in the years that followed. Unmarried children often paid rent to their mothers; married offspring provided funds on rare occasions.

For women and children, regardless of ethnic, national, or religious backgrounds, the loss of family members was tragic and often followed by continuing difficulties. Laura Simpson, for example, had lost her first husband in the Winter Quarters mine disaster at Scofield in 1900. Her second husband and a married son were killed at Castle Gate, and a sixteen-year-old son was killed six months later when he inadvertently stepped onto the railroad tracks in front of an oncoming passenger train. Some women found the strain of dealing with the crisis or crises too great. The committee received notice that Mrs. Kapakis, who had returned to Greece with her children in 1924, had bowed to despair and insanity and died in 1927.

Beyond the grief and tragedy, however, some women and their families found the necessary strength to struggle with the vicissitudes of life. Among these were both immigrant and American-born women, who despite the loss of the male head of household, provided their families with emotional and financial support. Both the Sargetakis and Katsanevas families are respected in the Greek community of Salt Lake City today. Sarcih Thomas acquired a lifetime teaching certificate from Brigham Young University within two years of the explosion at Castle Gate and supported her seven-year-old daughter at the same time. Many women took part of their compensation in a lump sum to purchase a house, reducing their monthly income to a level dangerously low but giving them the security of a home for their children. The examples are many.

The explosion at the Utah Fuel Company at Castle Gate, in March 1924, left 417 dependents. The ways in which those who lost family members in the disaster coped with the loss of husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers varied according to the culturally accepted customs of their diverse ethnic backgrounds. At a time in history when men provided the primary means of support and identification with the community, these women and their families were able to rely on relatives, company and relief fund support, and significantly, their own resources, talents, and strengths to survive a disaster in which so many lives were lost.

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