1/14/2004
James Kinney Farmstead main barn and summer kitchen longwall mining damage pictures.

Diary Entry:

The Hughes crew are still removing cribbing and cables. Mr. Polite, the hired archaeologist, came (late due to waiting for many school buses and even getting a ticket) from Youngstown office. He and David Bartsch of OVCC took off for the barn to find the pottery that Polite had discarded at the original digging of the barn trench. Since this site is within 50 feet of the original 1795 circa house Dr. Reichwein said these pieces would be pertinent to the site investigation. So Mr. Polite found these three pieces Bartsch and Polite were really "ticked" that I had told Reichwein about these shards. I gave them a rough time about taking these items form an artifact site on my property. I had them put the 3 peices of china on a piece of scrap wood and I took digital pictures of them. I noted that Mr. Polite stayed the rest of the day and did not find anything. He and I went over to the barn site and watched as the last of the trenching was done. In fact, we both saw it at the same time, a piece of china was in the backfill. He left it at the site in my care. I do not know why he did not want to take that piece along with the 3 others. Mr. Rucker of QES came to me with a long face this PM. He said the dug wells are going dry fast.Only 28 feet down to water in the circa 1795 well and it is 33 feet deep. Due to the predicted snow storm everyone took off about 3:00 PM today. Hughes guys had started at 7 AM so it still an 8 hour day and they drive for 90 minutes to get here from home at Ruff Creek, PA. Mrs. Stanford came to clean the house this PM. She was very sad about the condition of the house. She has been doing the cleaning here for over 3 years and feels attached to the old house. She brought her camera and took a number of digital pictures. She showed me a copy of a letter she received from Sam Spect, ODNR Division manager. He was responding to her letter at Christmas. He seemed to be blaming land owners for complaining when coal was taken by longwall even though we know of no longwall equipment in the US when any of the coal was sold. All the coal under our farm was sold to a room and pillar mining company and it was a long time before longwall mining came to the United States. No one who sold coal rights had any idea that such an invention would be used to cause such damage to the surface.

Floyd Simpson