"Milam County Men at Work" by Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram:

Milam Co. Men at Work

by Jeanne Williams - Temple Daily Telegram

April 30, 2012

Coal miners immortalized in famed Waco photographer’s work

ROCKDALE - The stark, pitifully revealing black-and-white likenesses of men who toiled

in the dark and dusty shafts of Milam County’s early lignite mines are worth more than

the proverbial thousand words.

To add to the historic value of these rare “men at work” photographs is the documented

fact that a man known as the Matthew Brady of Waco visited the Rockdale-area mines for

a photo shoot.

Fred A. Gildersleeve’s models were cooperative, but each kept their respective

countenance somber. His subjects appear to have taken a brief respite from backbreaking

labor, and posed with a slight hint of curiosity and interest at the photographer’s

tools of trade.

Gildersleeve, according to accounts, favored the mid-19th century technology used by

Matthew Brady for his creations, hence his nickname. Even in the 1950s, he used an

antique box camera supported by a wooden tripod, which he maneuvered under a black

mantle to focus, before he fired a spectacular flash powder charge for artificial

lighting.

Though records do not reveal how many photographs Gildersleeve took or how long he

stayed in Milam County,

Baylor University’s The Texas Collection includes two sharp, contrasted images of

working men clad in hats, caps and heavy clothing and boots, each heavily powdered with

lignite dust and subterranean soils, and another of a coal train.

Historians to date have no stories to explain what propelled Guidersleeve to move his

ponderous photographic paraphernalia to the Rockdale coal mines, but images bearing his

trademark signature attest to the visit.

According to historical accounts, Gildersleeve, or Gildy, spent a half-century of his

life photographing every major event in Waco. Gildy’s photographs from 1905 to 1958

ran the gamut of events ranging from parties and picnics to Klan rallies and funerals,

as well as construction projects and aerial photography, according to accounts compiled

by writer Terri Jo Ryan of Waco.

Accounts do not reveal whether Gildy was hired to shoot the Rockdale photographs, or an

artists’ hankering to capture a working coal mine inspired the images.

Coal mining in Milam County with shafts, mules, rail cars and manual labor was a major

industry in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. The Rockdale Chamber of Commerce

website revealed that by 1895, six coal mines were in operation. Each mine area

supported a camp, store and saloon. Hispanics fleeing the Mexican Revolution came to

the Rockdale area and were employed in these mines, according to Chamber records.

Mining became a major industry to the area and Rockdale residents E.A. Camp and N.M.

Bullock served on the Texas State Mining Board. By 1914, Rockdale was shipping 7,000

railroad cars of lignite coal every week.

“A History of Rockdale” - published during the Rockdale Centennial in 1974, included an

article researched by Ida Jo Marshall titled “Lignite in the Rockdale Area.” The

article stated that seven years before Rockdale was founded, coal deposits were

surveyed by assistant state geologist Samuel B. Buckley showing extensive deposits of

coal beds in the county.

In 1867, seven years before the founding of Rockdale, the coal deposits of Milam County

were surveyed by Samuel B. Buckley, assistant state geologist. This survey showed

extensive deposits of coal beds in the county. In 1890, Herman Vogel opened the first

mine in Milam County three miles east of Rockdale. The slope-type mine was used and

coal was hoisted by windlass and mules.

Two years later the Rockdale Mining and Manufacturing Company began operating a mine

just 500 yards from the Vogel mine site. Since both mines were situated near the track

of the International and Great Northern Railway, the transporting of lignite to other

localities was greatly facilitated. In 1910, 14 mines and hundreds of laborers dug

enough lignite a day to fill 29 train cars. Frequent cave-ins occurred in the tunnel

mines, with the most serious trapping seven miners at the Vogel Mining Co. in 1913. A

cave-in in a creek near the mine shaft flooded the mine, trapping miners for five and a

half days.

The impending threat of cave-ins did not hamper production. By 1915 Milam County was

producing and shipping more than 7,000 cars annually. But the coal industry declined by

the 1920s and by 1949 McAlester Fuel Co. operated the only lignite mine nine miles

southwest of Rockdale.

Coal mining by shaft was replaced by draglines and pit mining when Alcoa established

operations in Milam County in the 1950s.

The backbreaking, dangerous drudgery of extracting lignite from underground tunnels

might have faded into historical oblivion, if not for a few books, newspaper articles

and Gildersleeve’s photographic personification of the laborers who toiled there.

jwilliams@tdtnews.com

All articles from the Temple Daily Telegram are published with the permission of the
Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram