A Curiosity

Received an email from my sister, Gale. Here's a portion that poked my curiosity.

Also, Bill Lambert sent me this documentation made by the mining company when our grandfather was killed. Notice his age when he first started working in the mines! The actual report is in the 1921 WV Department of Mines fatality book, which is in the storage area at the state archives. The reports for this era were just single page pre printed forms filled out by the company, and sent in whenever convenient. At the end of the year, all of the reports were bound into a hard backed binder. While most of the info in these reports are not much more than my basic information, sometimes there are some interesting tidbits - such as, last words, employee evaluation, etc...

Year Died: 1921
County: McDowell
Company: Mill Creek Coal & Coke Co.
Name Of Mine: Tug
S/U: Underground
Victim: Lambert, Joseph
Inj Date: 29-Mar-1921
Died: 29-Mar-1921
Origin: American
Exp: 32 years
Age: 42 years
Occupation: Laborer
M/S: Married
DP: 6 Dependents
Cause: Slate Fall (U

Thought you might be interested. Hope all is well!

My grandfather died 25 years before I was born. I never heard stories about him other than he died in the mines and I never heard details of his death. I don't remember asking questions about him. If I did, my father probably didn't have much in the way of memories since he was eight at the time of his father's death. A few years ago an uncle who was younger than my father said he had only one vague memory of his father. In the memory his father was holding him. I guess he would have been about 4 at the time of the accident.

The curiosity is his age when he started working in the mines. If he died in 1921 at age 42 and had 32 years experience then he must have started working in 1889 when he was 10 years old.

Until now, I've never really been curious about my grandfather. I wonder what kind of man he was.