“Lurid, flashed the awful warning / Down the depths of Pittston’s gloom…”
In May 1871, tragedy struck the Knight Shaft near West Pittston, Pennsylvania, when fire swept through the colliery’s breaker, trapping miners underground as deadly gas filled the mine complex.
Among the victims was 11-year-old mule driver Martin Crahan, whose extraordinary courage became local legend in the Pennsylvania Coal Region. As the fire raged on May 27, Martin turned back from his escape to safety to warn the men still in the mine.
They refused to let him behind their barricade – built in desperation against the suffocating fumes. Denied shelter, Martin made his way to the underground stables, choosing to die beside the mules he worked with every day.
When rescuers finally reached him, they found the boy’s body there – his bravery immortalized in a poem written later that year. Nineteen other miners perished with him in what newspapers called a haunting echo of the Avondale mine disaster of 1869.
The poem, written by W.A. Peters for the Pittston Gazette, was shared in George Korson’s 1938 book about mining folklore in the Coal Region.
The Hero of West Pittston Mine
Lurid, flashed the awful warning
Down the depths of Pittston’s gloom;
Dirgeful, were the hissing fire-tongues
Ringing down the miners’ doom.
Crackling flames o’erhead, consuming
Fast, the avenue of hope,
As the noble boy stood yielding,
With his hand upon the rope.
Yielding to the noblest impulse
That e’er moved a boyish soul;
Yielding up himself forever
For those dust-grimed men of coal.
Yielding—every yielding—while
Up, in soul devotion,
Thought of self in love; that firm
Law of nature—his comrade went above.
Busy thoughts of home were crowding
O’er him in that inch of time,
But he went to his “Father’s business”
Like a hero, grand, sublime.
Went, in all his brave devotion,
Went, through simple love to tell
What we deem the noblest duty—
Man to man—and there he fell.
O ye angels of record in heaven!
O ye pens of mortality, write
Him a place on the roll of martyrs,
And clothe him in spotless white.
Raise, from the wreck of the body;
Raise, from the burning mine,
His heroic young spirit to heaven—
O Christ, for he is Thine!
Read more about mining disasters in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region
The Twin Shaft Mine Disaster | June 28, 1896
Avondale – The Coal Region’s deadliest mining disaster
“In the mines of Avondale” – A Coal Region ballad
The Stockton Cave-in Disaster | December 18, 1869
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Heartbreaking. Poor child so brave losing his life so young