12/27/2003
James Kinney Farmstead summer kitchen and main house pre-mining pictures.

Diary Entry:

My son Ron helped me in the AM with computer and getting things put away that might be broken when the longwall comes under. I got a call from Dinah Burns, a direct descendent of Ignatious Burns, who had been one of the first to run the farm as a drovers station before James Kinney bought it from George Burns, a son of Ignatious. Dinah Burns and daughter Maggie came out in the early afternoon for a tour of the place. Dinah is a great, great, great granddaughter of Ignatious Burns. I gave them a complete tour of the house and told them to remember how it looked. I told them to note that there were no cracks in ceilings, walls, and bricks and even though we have pictures they might have to vouch for this. I put up two pendulums in the barn, one in the middle of the upper floor at the grain bin and one in the first floor back of stall # 7. I put one in the milkhouse which was difficult as Hughes people had cabled the milkhouse and had braced the entrance door. My nephew Wayne Slater called me on his cell phone to advise me to move out of the house when the longwall goes under. I told him I was staying. Claude Luke (OVCC) called me to say that they were at a point 50 feet west of the house and they would be under the house at midnight. Channel 9 ran a piece about our farmstead again. My phone was ringing a lot, with people wanting to know why the coal company was not being respectful of our Historic property. There were no ODNR people here today.

Floyd Simpson