“It’s really a great day when somebody finds their grandpa’s name in that book,” Curator Aja Mason says, referring to a 1901 employee pay records book from the Big Four Mine in Boonville, Indiana. It’s one of the oldest artifacts in the Museum of the Coal Industry, which Mason and his founding partners opened in Lynnville in 2000.
The historical showroom sits on a portion of land that Peabody Coal Company donated to the Warrick County town in 1965. Museum Director Alex Taylor says the goal is to educate the public about the history of coal mining, from the tools to the methods to the workers. “We have about 1,400-1,500 visitors a year, and we put 2,000-2,300 volunteer hours into the museum per year,” Taylor says.
Artifacts include tools, hard hats, belt buckles, lanterns, and ledgers. One of the museum’s main attractions is Tinker Bell, a 1940 locomotive used from 1968-1999 at Peabody’s Lynnville Mine. Another feature is an electric shovel — which is being restored — built at the Bucyrus-Erie plant in Evansville.
Visitors can step back in time via replicas of a company house where mine workers resided and a company store where employees bought goods. A maintenance building houses coal-burning and wood-fired stoves as well as other equipment. “[The workers] would be paid so much for the week, and then they owed the company for stuff they bought through the company store,” Taylor says. “A lot of them were paid in company scrip, and they would have to spend that in the store.”
The museum hosts a fall Collectors’ Day and Toy Show, where visitors can buy and sell memorabilia and display mining models. Last summer, folks signed up for “A Date With Big Kate” at Peabody’s Wild Boar Mine. “Big Kate is a mining dragline [excavator] that Peabody runs near Lynnville, and it’s been shut down for the last couple of years. We were able to arrange a tour for people to visit the machine and get pictures next to it,” Taylor says.
Other events include a disc golf tournament, yard sale weekend, family and friends breakfast, and concerts. Between events, volunteers stay busy collecting items for exhibits. “It’s coming in faster right now than it ever did,” Mason says. “All the old coal miners are passing away, and so we’re adding stuff rather rapidly.”
