Series 4 - John Maguire memoir

37pp

Biography from a published source: Patterson, J. F. (1914). Reminiscences of John Maguire After Fifty Years of Mining. Publications of the Historical Society of Schuylkill County (Pottsville, Pa.), Volume IV, No. 4.

Copy of Reminiscences of John Maguire After Fifty Years of Mining. Gathered by Joseph F. Patterson and Read Before the Historical Society of Schuylkill County by John Maguire. Born in 1845, John Maguire emigrated, it is believed by Kerby A. Miller, from somewhere in Ulster to Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Maguire arrived in Philadelphia with his family in 1853, eventually moving to Saint Clair in the southern Coal Region of Pennsylvania, where his father began work as a miner and Maguire began working as a slate picker at nine years old. Maguire assisted his father when he became foreman, and when his father became a mine boss, Maguire took over for him upon his death. Maguire also helped organise a miner's union in Saint Clair and Joseph F. Patterson writes, 'considering the numerous accidents in mining and the dangers involved, and comparing the risks of a miner with those of a soldier, Mr. Maguire used to assert that a miner is a soldier every day he works, while the man in the army is only taking risks when he goes to the front, which is but occasionally.' Patterson also states that Maguire, 'knew more than any other living mortal about the Southern Anthracite coal field of Schuylkill County. As boy and man he had gone in and out of almost every colliery opening in the whole stretch of territory from the eastern county line near Tamaqua to the western line near Brookside, a distance of about 40 miles' and worked as 'fire boss, inside foreman, superintendent, district superintendent, Government Mine Inspector, and later, Division Superintendent for the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co.'