A eulogy for Old Barney, a horse of great merit

Coal mining was on the decline in western Lucas County by January of 1894, when Old Barney died.

The huge and technologically advanced White Breast Coal & Mining Co. mines at Cleveland, once the biggest and the best in Iowa, had closed during 1890 and their equipment had been transferred to other company properties. It would be 20 years before the industry revived and boomed again near legendary mining towns like Olmitz, Tipperary and Williamson. 

But during those 20 years many smaller mines flourished, employing dozens rather than hundreds of workers.

The Lucas Coal Company mine at Lucas was one of those. Too small to afford high tech equipment, it relied on age-old methods. A horse gin, for example, was used to lower and raise miners into and out of the pit. The same gin, powered by Old Barney and most likely others, raised the coal to the surface.

The illustration here is from the Beamish Museum, County Durham, England, but the technology was universal --- Horses walked in endless circles turning the shaft that turned the wheel that powered the lift that made mining possible.

So it was a considerable tragedy at the Lucas mine when Old Barney was killed, so much so that the following eulogy was published in The Lucas Review of Feb. 1, 1894:

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On last Thursday Old Barney was killed. Now Barney was a horse, but he deserves a "press notice" a hundred times more than a good many human beings who get their names "in the paper."

Barney had put in a goodly portion of his life working for Lucas Coal Co., "for board and lodging," and so long as these were provided Barney never struck or asked for more wages.

He had a head that would have graced a portion of the human race. He knew as well when a miner was coming up or going down in the cage as if he talked English. Nothing would move Barney from a slow walk under these circumstances. It made no difference how much you yelled, or if you pounded him with a club, he hauled the gin around the exact number of times and then stopped.

But when he was hauling up coal he went round his well beaten path as if shot out of a Krupp gun, slowing down only just before the cage reached the top, and when the cage "clicked" Barney stopped, turned around, ready for another pull. If some of us ever get to heaven and don't find Barney there we will be disappointed.

How was Barney killed? Some of the men tried to do his work, the pole was jerked out of their hands, struck the old horse on the head and Barney went the way of all horsekind.