Llewelyn Evans came to Scranton, Pennsylvania from Wales in 1871 when he was 3 years old. Six years later, he started his first job in the DL&W Bellevue Colliery’s breaker at the age of 9. It started a career in the anthracite industry that lasted more than 60 years.

In 1942, Evans retired after 40 years working as a Pennsylvania mine inspector. Shortly after his retirement, he gave an interview to a Scranton newspaper about his first job in the mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania – breaker boy:

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“I will never forget my experience as a breaker boy. Whenever I read of galley slaves the remembrance of those bleak days on the chutes in that dusty breaker recur to me.

I see the breaker boss with his long pole prodding children in the ribs because they were allowing too much slate to pass by them in the chute under their legs.

It is a scene which has long since vanished…”

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Evans later went underground as a teenager, but his career later took a turn and he became a well-respected mine inspector in the Wyoming Valley. He retired after more than 40 years service in that role.

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Read more breaker boy recollections and stories

A remembrance of a boyhood in Schuylkill County during the Civil War

“Children of the Coal Shadow” – A haunting report about the children of the Coal Region from 1903

“The Breaker Boy” – A poem from 1897 about the child laborers of the Coal Region

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