Ten Names from Henry Clay

A June 1873 report of disaster at Henry Clay Colliery named ten men who lost their lives: John S. Hayes, Isaac Mousch, Daniel Powell, Nicholas Paulis, Anthony Harris, Michael Deia, Lawrence Rogulsky, Enoch Maginsky, Wm. Drumheiser, and Conrad Drumheiser. The list turns a distant disaster into ten individual losses.

The report described suffocation and drowning after gas spread through old workings. Its explanations involving lamps and mine gases do not fit together cleanly. It also used a different spelling, Magenski, for Enoch in the narrative. These inconsistencies should remain questions rather than become invented certainty.

An inquest had begun, but this account did not give its final verdict. It therefore cannot settle responsibility. What it does preserve is the scale of the loss and a list of individuals whose lives should not disappear behind a general description of mining’s dangers.