Chauncey Coal War Program Reveals Summer of Violence

Twenty-two people gathered at the fall quarterly potluck meeting of the Little Cities of Black Diamonds Council held at the Quaker Meeting House in Chauncey. Athens County Historian Marjorie Stone presented a video of an Athens Historical Society gathering of Chauncey residents that she led in 1998 where they accounted their first hand and family experiences during the summer of 1932. That summer, a 90-minute shoot out between the Ohio National Guard and striking miners at the Manhattan Coal Company left an 18-year old miner dead. Martial law was in effect in the village throughout the summer as disgruntled union miners bombed homes of mine bosses and exploded railroad bridges in protest over a lock out of the United Mine Workers at the mine and at the Sunday Creek Coal Mine #6 at Millfield.