The Morewood Massacre

One community, tangled together by industry, poverty, violence, faith, family, and death

A NOTE ABOUT THIS RESEARCH

I am an enthusiastic amateur genealogist. I explore family history as a hobby, not as a professional historian or genealogist. This story grew from my research into my family's connections to the labor and industrial history of southwestern Pennsylvania. Where the historical record is incomplete, I have tried to distinguish documented facts from my own interpretations.

TWO CONNECTIONS TO MOREWOOD

Family history rarely sorts itself neatly into heroes and villains.
While researching my family's connections to the labor movement and the coal, coke, and steel industries of southwestern Pennsylvania, I encountered two men connected to my family in the history surrounding the Morewood Massacre of 1891.
They appear in very different roles.
George Keller was called to testify about the unrest surrounding the strike. Father Michael A. Lambing, pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish in Scottdale, became involved with the burial of men killed in the conflict.
One appears in the record as a witness describing a community under strain. The other appears in the aftermath, when that same community had to bury its dead.

Morewood Massacre Burial Site
Seven of the nine striking workers killed at Morewood in 1891 were buried in a mass grave at St. John the Baptist Cemetery in Scottdale.

Father Michael A. Lambing
Pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish, Lambing became involved in the burial of the Morewood dead.

Mount Pleasant and the Keller Connection
The area associated with the Shupe mill and Keller Alley, where George Keller enters the historical record surrounding the 1891 unrest.

In researching my ancestry and their involvement in labor movement in southwestern Pennsylvania during the period of Henry Clay Frick Coal, Coke, and Steel industry I found the following regarding Morewood Massacre and Mount Pleasant history late 1800s to early 1900. Two family connections, two very different roles in the same 1891 tragedy.

I want to share something I’ve been digging into this week, because it’s a good reminder that our family history doesn’t sort neatly into heroes and villains.

On April 2, 1891, the “Morewood Massacre” happened near Mount Pleasant. Sheriff’s deputies and a company posse fired on striking coke workers who were protesting Frick’s operations, and several men were killed. It’s one of the darker moments in the Connellsville coke region’s history. Two men tied to our family show up in the record of that day, and they show up on opposite sides of it.

George Keller, father in law of Amanda Smith Keller Gowton (who married my great grandfather John Thomas Gowton in 1890), was called to testify at the coroner’s inquest. The citation in book written by Cassandra Vivian titled, “Henry Clay Frick and the Golden Age of Coal and Coke, 1870-1920,” page 112, refers to George Keller as a watchman for Jacob or Oliver Shupe’s Mill. I interpret that not as his occupation but possibly enlisted to guard the Mill that sat across the street off Main Street in what was once called Texas Village.

Apparently protesters were allegedly terrorizing businesses and townspeople due to labor unrest. The alley across from the Mill and Shupe’s house at time was known as Keller Alley. George’s testimony backed up the Sheriff’s office, describing alleged intimidation of townspeople and businesses by some of the protesters.

So far I have no evidence whether he was a local business supporter or labor sympathizer or just ordinary citizen who got pulled into the inquest as a witness.

Father Michael A. Lambing, who was closely tied to the Gowton family and to St. John the Baptist Parish, was involved with burying the dead protesters at St. John’s cemetery.

So while Keller shows up on the law and order side of the story, Lambing shows up on the side of grief and burial.

Here’s why I think it’s worth sitting with. It would be easy to turn 1891 into a simple “workers vs. Frick” story, but the truth holds a lot more at once.

Frick had real industrial power. The workers had real grievances. Some protesters did resort to violence or intimidation. Law enforcement responded the way it did. Ordinary people like Keller got caught in the middle of it, and it’s entirely possible to sympathize with labor’s grievances while still being afraid of or opposed to what some protesters did.

And then you’ve got Lambing, left to deal with the dead once it was all over.

Keller’s testimony by itself doesn’t tell us his politics. It just tells us where he stood that day.

What I keep coming back to is that this is really a story about community, not ideology: Keller to Gowton to Lambing to St. John the Baptist to the coke industry to the strike itself.

One community, all tangled up together, dealing with industrialization, poverty, violence, faith, family obligation, and death, without everyone in it needing to be on the same side.