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 ...