Robinson’s Cave Request Submitted

Although fund raising is still in the process, the New Straitsville History Group has submitted their request to place a historical marker at Robinson’s Cave, the unofficial birthplace of the United Mine Workers of America. Historian Mary Ann Reeves has been assisting group members in developing the language for the sign which, if approved, will read on one side: “On a forested hillside south of New Straitsville, the spacious 1,000 sq ft Robinson’s Cave offered a secluded location with great acoustics where large groups of Hocking Valley coal miners could meet in secret. Beginning about 1870, labor organizing meetings were held at the Cave by various emerging unions including the Knights of Labor. New Straitsville resident Christopher Evans, a well-known union organizer, used Robinson’s Cave to lead miners throughout the long Hocking Valley Coal Strike of 1884-1885. These meetings gave the miners a voice in the formation of a national organization called the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers (later renamed the National Progressive Union). The Cave was also where non-union miners met to plan to set the Columbus & Hocking Coal & Iron Company mines on fire in a desperate attempt to end the Hocking Valley Strike. The reverse side will read: In 1886, the Knights of Labor founded the National District Assembly #135, a rival for the Federation. Oddly, both headquartered in New Straitsville. Dissension between these two groups hurt the labor negotiations, but Evans continued to hold meetings to settle differences. In response to a miner’s death in 1889, Robinson’s Cave was used by the feuding miners to reconcile once and for all. Evans called miners together again in 1890 for the first organizational meeting of the United Mine Workers of America, the name formally adopted at their next meeting in Columbus, Ohio. This series of historic meetings is why Robinson’s Cave is referred to as the secret birthplace of the United Mine Workers.