1876 death in the mines of Lucas reported in Wales

"Y Goleuad," Carnarvon, Wales, Oct. 28, 1876, Page 7

So I got up this morning, pulled up Google "Translate" and got to work attempting to turn this paragraph, in Welsh, into something I could understand. I'm not about to publish the translation here --- I was in too big a hurry to iron out the fine points. But was able to confirm that it is an account, published in Wales on Oct. 28, 1876, of the tragic death of a young Welsh miner named Roger Davies in the White Breast mine at Lucas, Iowa, during early September of that year.

I was unable to find a report of Roger's death anywhere in Lucas County --- most likely because the issue of The Chariton Patriot that would have contained it has vanished. But I did find a brief report, most likely circulated as boilerplate filler, in The Northern Ohio Journal, Painesville, Ohio, of Sept. 16, 1876. It reads as follows:

"While two men were being raised from the mine of the White Breast Coal Company, at Lucas, Iowa, a few mornings since, in a box moved by steam power, the box came in collision with the hoisting apparatus, and one of the men, named Roger Davis, was thrown to the bottom of the pit, a distance of 200 feet, resulting in instant death. The other occupant maintained his position, but was considerably injured."

The Welsh version adds the information that the other man involved in the accident was named "Charlestone," that Roger had accompanied his parents to the United States from Wales as a child and that he had no relatives living in or near Lucas County when he died. He did have a brother, John P. Davies, living at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and a cousin, also John Davies, at Pittston, Pennsylvania.

Because he had no relatives nearby, according to the Welsh report, he was "buried respectfully Sept. 10 two miles and one half from Lucas." The White Breast mining company handled the arrangements, according to the report, because there were no relatives to do it.

It's impossible to say exactly where Roger was buried. What now is known as Fry Hill Cemetery served both the town of Lucas and its neighbor, the mining town of Cleveland, but tradition has it that Shadrack Fry, another young miner, was the first to be buried there --- in 1880. There also was a neighborhood burial ground about that distance east of Lucas, up in the White Breast hills, but it was destroyed many years ago and such remains as could be found moved into the Chariton Cemetery. Most likely we'll never know.

But somewhere out there are the remains of young Roger Davies --- and you know that now, so he's no longer entirely forgotten.

The Welsh report was published in "Y Goleuad" a Welsh-language weekly published at Carnarvon, North Wales, and distributed among Welsh-speaking Methodists in both Wales and England.

How did the story get to Wales? Lucas/Cleveland had a large Welsh mining population by 1876, so someone may have written home to Wales about Roger's death. There's also the intriguing possibility that Gomer Taliesin Davies, a giant among Kansas newspapermen who got his start in journalism in Lucas and Cleveland as a correspondent for The Chariton Patriot during the 1870s, might have filed the report. But that's a story for another day.