In the early morning hours of December 18, 1869, residents of the mining patch of Stockton, Pennsylvania, awoke to rumbling and groaning sounds from the ground beneath their feet.

The village, a few miles from the rapidly growing community of Hazleton, was familiar with sounds coming from below ground, as each day tons of anthracite coal was taken from the earth beneath Stockton by the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company.

This was different though. The homes and residences shook with unusual force and residents began to flee their homes in the darkness.

Two double-block homes began to crumble as the ground gave way. In one home, an incessantly barking dog woke up the residents. Upon investigation, the alarm was given that a chasm was swallowing their home and the residents fled in the nick of time.

Their neighbors, the Rough and Swank families, were not as fortunate. Their home collapsed into the center of a vast hole, throwing all six people and all their earthly possessions into a hole that measured hundreds of feet deep at places and dozens of feet wide.

The stoves in the houses were overturned and lit the wooden mass ablaze at the bottom of the chasm.

Rescue efforts began immediately, with assistance arriving by daybreak from Hazleton, including the steam fire engine from the town’s Pioneer Fire Company to throw water on the inferno at the bottom of the pit.

It quickly became clear what had happened at Stockton and it was a common problem through the anthracite coal region – mine subsidence. Efforts to “rob pillars” – removing coal left behind to hold up the mine roof – less than 20 feet below the surface of the ground had left nothing to hold up the weight of the homes and structures above.

The ground caved-in and had sent the Rough and Swank families plummeting to their doom.

Rescuers, working from above and below, discovered the remains of the families trapped in the crushed and burned rubble of their home.

The hole was filled in and a marble monument was later placed on top of the pit. It honors those who perished in the disaster:

The disaster was covered by newspapers across the country. Journalists noted another disastrous event in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region, just months after the Avondale Disaster claimed the lives of more than 100 miners less than 30 miles away.

The illustrations accompanying this post come from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, a publication that sent a special artist to cover the disaster.