Carbon township, Huntingdon borough

In The Mines Before Seven

Did you know? John Whitehead was put to work in the coal mines of South Wales before he was seven years old. Africa's 1883 county history says his father placed him in the mines of the neighborhood as a punishment for not attending the school he was sent to, and kept him at work there because he would not go to school.

It was not long before the boy was put in charge of what miners called the trap door, at two pence a day. After a few weeks his pay rose to four pence, and once he had become an expert at it, to ten pence.

He was born in Abersychan, Monmouthshire, South Wales, on August 7, 1832, and his working life began underground. He kept working in the coal mines until he was about twenty, and by then, the history says, he had become familiar with all the intricacies of the business.

He landed in New York about the middle of November 1854. On December 22, 1856, he engaged with Andrew Patrick to work in and develop the bituminous coal mines near Minersville for the Huntingdon and Broad Top Improvement Company, and soon brought them up to one hundred and sixty tons a day. In 1868 he leased one of the railroad company's mines, where others had failed to work at a profit, and made it a good paying mine. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Huntingdon.

Checked and confirmed. CONFIRMED 2026-10-30 against the sources listed: every factual sentence was tied to a verbatim passage and a script confirmed each passage is in its source. Where sources disagreed on a number, the number was left out.

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