Champ Miner Dug 12 Tons Daily, Died of Flu


"He led the world in mining coal," says the epitaph on the Finzel Cemetery tombstone of Lawrence Finzel (1873-1919), and that's no exaggeration.

Eulogized as the "World Champion Coal Miner," Finzel was judged by Johns Hopkins doctors to be "the finest muscled man that ever came to the institution."

In 1915-1916, when he was 43 years old, Finzel averaged 12 tons a coal a day single-handed, three times what was expected of anyone else. He earned $2,360.60 that year, equivalent to $60,000 today, a fabulous sum for a miner at the time.

Understandably in demand, Finzel moved from place to place and set production records in Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, all while avoiding the accidents that crippled, maimed or killed so many -- including his oldest son, Bernard, who died in a February 1916 cave-in in Fayette County, West Virginia, age 14.

What finally killed Finzel at the young age of 45, when he lived on Bowery Street in Frostburg, was not the mines but the Spanish flu. Then as now, pandemics can claim even the strongest among us.

Finzel's son Laurence (spelled with a "U," not a "W") stayed out of the mines but sought, and found, dangers of his own. Under the Anglicized byline "Larry Allen," he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II correspondent -- but more about him in a separate post! He is buried in Dallas, Texas, not Finzel.

Finzel Cemetery is along Finzel Road north of Old Route 40 in northeastern Garrett County, just below the Pennsylvania state line.

Sources:

Polla Drummond Horn, Bucky Schriver and Barbara Armstrong, eds. Miner Recollections Volume Two. Frostburg, Maryland: The Foundation for Frostburg, 2019. Pages 145-146.


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