James Jones Blythe

BLYTHE, SMITH, ALLERDICE, KELLY, HARRIS

Posted By: Susan Kelly Templin (email)
Date: 3/1/2009 at 23:24:31

The following article appeared in the evening issue of the Des Moines Tribune, 21 January 1953. Grandpa Blythe died on the morning of 21 January 1953. After shoveling the snow from his front walk, he sat down at the kitchen table to have a cup of coffee and died of a heart attack.

AT 88, HE DIGS COAL MINE IN YARD
from Along the Way Column by Herb Owens MYSTIC, IA:
Seventeen years after retiring on old age pension, James J. Blythe, 88 is digging a coal mine in his own backyard. Within 30 yards of the littlewhite house at the southwest edge of town the hardy little Scotch mine veteran has sunk a 5-by-5 foot shaft down 18feet in bedrock, then into a hillside toward a 3 foot vein of "good coal". "The coal I'm getting now is 'crop coal', asoft type which isn't good coal - in fact, it just smolders in a stove and turns into a clinker - but I know there'sgood coal ahead, not too far away." said Blythe. "I worked in the mines in this country and in Scotland, for 64 years.I started at 12 earning a schilling (about 24 cents) a day. Back in 1938 when I retired to make room for younger men,my top wages were $15 for 7 1/2 hours - at $1 a ton." "This is the first time I ever was a mine owner," smiled Blythe,who's wondering what happens to his Social Security if the mien hits "pay dirt".
ACCIDENT: Blythe's backyard mine came into being accidently. After a neighbor's home was destroyed, the little Scotbegan worrying about his own fire protection. He decided to sink a well to tap an old "water-filled" shaft. His wellwas "dry as a bone." Being Scotch, Blythe couldn't stand to see that well shaft "stand wasted." He'd known there wascoal in the well. He found a 2-foot layer of clay before the vein of crop coal. He scraped that away to have hismine shaft on bedrock. This mine wasn't the first Jim had opened. In fact it was Blythe who sank the first mine in thecoal-studded Mystic area. That was for John Seddon about 65 years ago. Since them Jim's had a part in the opening ofmost of the mines in this region. But digging a mine at 88 - he'll be 89 on April 18 - is not the same job at 58, or38. With his flashlight, Jim goes down a built-in ladder to his shaft. The dirt and "crop coal" he boroughs out iscarried to the surface in baskets. It's a slow, arduous task. "I only work at it 3 or 4 days a week, and then only ingood weather," he said. "After all, I'm still recuperating from a serious operation in 1949 - so I can't do the workI used to do." MOTHER: His mother having died when he was 9, little Jim Blythe went to work in the Scotish mines at12. At 18, the youth came to Galesburg, Illinois, where he worked for his American citizenship. Hearing that therewas "good work" in Appanoose County coal fields, Blythe came here in 1888 to work for Seddon. There wasn't much of atown at Mystic then. Jim married and fathered two sons here. Mrs. Blythe died in 1932. (Note: second wife, Ellen,died in 1930.) One son, James, is a welder in Centerville; the other, Tom, lives in Wichita, Kansas.