By Jared Olar
Library assistant
A few weeks ago, we recalled the Little Mine Riot of 1894, which was Tazewell County’s most serious incident of civil unrest in its history.
In February of this year, the Tazewell County Genealogical & Historical Society received a donation consisting of five pages of a legal claim for damages filed on June 22, 1894, by the brothers Edward and Peter Little, owners of the Little Mine which had been wrecked by the rioting miners on June 6.
The Society printed copies of these five pages from the Little brothers’ suit for damages in its Monthly, Aug. 2017, pp.1983-1988.
As we noted in the previous column, local historian Ben C. Allensworth said the Littles filed a claim for damages to their business and were awarded $7,710.60.
But the amount of their award was considerably lower than their claim, as the pages from their suit reveal.
The Littles filed for damages in the amount of three fourths of the value of their mine and its buildings and machinery. Their claim says their property was valued at $19,138.50, and they wished to be reimbursed in the amount of $14,353.87. That means Tazewell County paid them a little more than half of what the Little brothers sought.
Among the numerous items included in the inventory was the Power House Building; one 125 H.P. Westinghouse engine; steam pumps, heaters, and connections; several large tools including two electric coal drills and a coal mining machine; benches and numerous small tools, a steam heating apparatus; the Engine House; the Boiler House Building; two hoisting cages and the hoisting engine; and 4 kegs of aspheltum. The inventory included a claim for $1,000 of damages to the main shaft and mine, $185 of damages to the tramway and dirt dump, $150 for eight coal buggies and one water box that had been destroyed, and $38 for the escapement shaft that had to be torn up to rescue a mule that was trapped in the mine when the rioters poured oil down the shaft and ignited the oil to destroy the mine.
The Littles also included in their tally of losses and damages a Springfield rifle, a double barrel shotgun, a single barrel shotgun, and six revolvers, which had been “borrowed by E. LITTLE & BRO. and carried off by mob,” along with a 32-caliber Winchester rifle “carried away by mob and lost” and three revolvers “stolen by mob.” These were the weapons the Littles had used in their attempt to drive off the angry miners, resulting in the death of miner Edward Flower and the murder of the Littles’ employee William Dickson.
While most of the pages of the Littles’ claim papers are a typescript with some handwriting, the final page is a difficult-to-read handwritten document dated Sept. 11, 1894, issued by a committee of the Tazewell County Board of Supervisors and signed by all committee members. The document concludes, “Our Committee recommends the payment to the Little Brothers, in full [i.e., in fulfillment] of all claims against Tazewell County, the sum of Seven Thousand and Seven Hundred Ten Dollars & Sixty Nine Cents in three equal payments.” Allensworth’s account perhaps has a typographical error, showing 60 cents instead of 69 cents, but otherwise the stated award is the same.
