Dates

• Majority of material found within 1800 - 2000

Extent

33 boxes Linear Feet (Dr. Mildred “Millie” Allen Beik is the author of The Miners of Windber: The struggles of new immigrants for Unionization, 1890s-1930s (Call Number: HD 8039 .M62 U6143 1996), which was based on her dissertation: The Miners of Windber: Class, ethnicity, and the labor movement in a Pennsylvania coal town, 1890s-1930s (Call Number: HD 8039 .M62 U6142 1989a). Both of these works were based on the oral history interviews that she recorded with longtime residents of Johnstown, Scalp Level, and Windber Borough, Pennsylvania in the 1980s. The Berwind-White Coal Mining Company (Berwind Corporation) was formed through the partnership of brothers Edward Julius Berwind (1848-1936) and Charles Berwind (1846-1890), and Congressman Allison White (1816-1886). In 1892, the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company incorporated the Wilmore Coal Company and the Wilmore Real Estate Company to purchase the mineral rights and surface rights to property in the Bituminous Coal region of Cambria and Somerset counties near Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The Berwind-White Coal Mining Company founded the company town of Windber, Pennsylvania in 1897. The name Windber was derived from the Berwind family name. For more information about the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company and its subsidiaries the Wilmore Coal Company and the Wilmore Real Estate Company see Manuscript Group 112: The Wilmore Real Estate Company Collection. Miners of Windber chronicles the coming of unionization to Windber, from the 1890s to the 1930s, when thousands of new immigrants came to Pennsylvania in search of work, and into the New Deal era during the Great Depression when miners began to organize and join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 2, see Manuscript Group 52: UMWA District 2. According to Dr. John Bodnar, Professor of History at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, “Mildred Allen Beik’s account of a Pennsylvania coal town in the first three decades of this century is a powerful story of repression and resistance. This is both an important historical story and a lesson that American should keep in mind as they debate the merits of unions and dismantling the welfare-state in the late twentieth century.” Mildred Allen Beik’s paternal grandparents Andrew and Priscilla Jelinek-Allen (June 26, 1882-May 5, 1948) were later known by the surname Allen. They emigrated from Hungary to Windber, Pennsylvania in the early 1900s. Andrew Jelinek-Allen (October 13, 1878-May 27, 1935) worked in the mines at Windber, and his son John Joseph Allen started working at Eureka Mine 35 in Windber at the age of 11 in 1914. John Joseph Allen (November 28, 1902-December 4, 1963) married Mildred Kuhlman, whose family was from Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The Allen family first lived in Mine 36 before moving to Mine 40 in Windber. Their children were John Allen, George Robert Allen (May 27, 1938-June 6, 2008) and Dr. Mildred Allen Beik, all of whom grew up at Mine 40 in Windber. In 1954, after John Allen had worked for the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company for 40 years, the company started shutting down the mines, and John Allen and his family left Mine 40 and eventually moved to Illinois. Former company towns including Windber experienced tremendous economic and social changes following the closure of many coal mining operations. While conducting research for her doctoral dissertation, Mildred Allen Beik’s aunt and uncle, Bertha Kuhlman Gerula and her husband Peter “Pete” Gerula (June 10, 1923-November 23, 2009) made efforts to identify longtime residents of Windber for their niece to interview. Most of the interviews were conducted in 1984 and 1985, Beik also interviewed Pete Gerula in 1984. After completing her dissertation, Dr. Beik received her PhD in History from Northern Illinois University in 1989. Dr. Beik’s dissertation and the Miners of Windber explore the struggle of miners and their families against the company, whose repressive policies encroached on every part of their lives. Windber's diverse population represented 25 distinct nationalities and spoken languages including Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Italian, and Carpatho-Russian, all of which could be potential obstacles to the solidarity of miners and their families. This is quite evident in the oral history interviews. Beik’s dissertation and research show how the immigrants who came to the company towns of Pennsylvania overcame ethnic fragmentation by banding together as a class to unionize the coal miners. Work, family, religion, fraternal societies, and civic organizations all proved critical as men and women alike adapted to new working conditions and to a new culture in company towns like Windber, Pennsylvania. Circumstance, if not principle, forced miners to embrace cultural pluralism in their fight for greater democracy, reforms of capitalism, and an inclusive, working-class, definition of what it meant to be an American. Dr. Mildred Allen Beik has taught at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to being a consultant for various public history workshops, Dr. Beik serves on the Battle of Homestead Foundation. The Mildred Allen Beik Collection represents a collected history of the coal mining community of Windber, Pennsylvania. One of the most significant parts of this collection are the collected and transcribed oral history interviews that Dr. Beik conducted with longtime residents. The collection is divided into six series including maps, oral history interviews, church records, census information, publications, and materials about the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company (Berwind Corporation). This collection represents the research and interviews that the donor conducted during her graduate and doctoral work, which led to writing her book The Miners of Windber (Call Number: HD 8039 .M62 U6143 1996), which was based on her dissertation: The Miners of Windber: Class, ethnicity, and the labor movement in a Pennsylvania coal town, 1890s-1930s (Call Number: HD 8039 .M62 U6142 1989a), both of which chronicle the coming of unionization to Windber, from the 1890s, when thousands of new immigrants flooded Pennsylvania in search of employment, through the Great Depression and the New Deal era of the 1930s, when the miners’ rights to organize, join the United Mine Workers of America, and bargain collectively were recognized after years of bitter struggle. Dr. Beik draws on a wide variety of sources, including many oral histories gathered from the oldest living immigrants in Windber (see transcriptions of the oral history interviews), foreign-language newspapers, fraternal society collections, church manuscripts, public documents, union records, and census materials. The struggles of Windber's diverse working class undeniably mirror the efforts of working people everywhere to democratize the undemocratic America they knew. Their history suggests some of the possibilities and limitations, strengths and weaknesses, of worker protest in the early twentieth century. According to Dr. Beik, “The impact of the loss of a father, brother, uncle, or son is not a measurable statistic, and oral histories with mining families are invaluable in revealing the real meaning and cost of such a loss. For example, Anna Timko Thomas’s descriptions of the impact upon her and her family of her father’s death in a mining accident in 1903 are devastating.” More information about Mining injuries and Fatalities in the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company Mines is available on the Pennsylvania Coal Culture website maintained by Special Collections & University Archives at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). Additional information about coal production and mining-related injuries and fatalities are available in the annual publication Report of the Bureau of Mines of the Department of Internal Affairs of Pennsylvania (Call Number: HD 9547 .P4 A34 Special Collections). For more information about Johnstown, Pennsylvania, you should visit the Heritage Discover Center and the Johnstown Area Heritage Association. Series List: Series A Maps of Windber and Borough Charter of Windber, Pennsylvania; Series B Oral History Interviews conducted by Mildred Allen Beik (Trascriptions and Audio Recordings); Series C Windber, Pennsylvania Church Records; Series D U.S. Census Information for Windber Region; Series E Berwind-White Coal Mining Company; Series F Publications; Series G Transcribed Oral History Interviews; and Series H Research Materials. For more information, see Manuscript Group 112.)

Language of Materials

English