STONEGA, VIRGINIA
Duplex housing on "Quality Row" in Stonega, VA. I'm not surprised to see this style
of housing, which is so common to Pennsylvania coal towns, in Virginia. At least some members of the management of Virginia Coal and Iron Company,
the predecessor of Stonega Coke and Coal Co., were from Pennsylvania.
The bosses row in Stonega, called "Park Place".
Company houses in Lower Stonega - the White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant section of Stonega.
Upper Stonega, the African-American section of the coal camp, had the feel of a ghost town here. Called "Red Row", the houses were probably
built around 1896 when the Stonega coal mines and coal camp were first opened.
This was probably the school for African-American people during segregated times.
This church was still located at the other end of this section of Stonega. The entire Red Row section of Stonega has been demolished.
Red Row when it was still populated.
Dilapidated bath house at Stonega.
Stone foundations from the tipple (left) and the ruins of the machine shop (right) at Stonega. A beehive coke
yard, built in the mid 1890s, used to be located here, but it was destroyed a long time ago. Only the wall that the coke workers stood on remains. This coke works was idled in 1953, a year after
the last coal mine at Stonega was closed. A new coal mine and preparation plant, named the Wentz operation, opened in the 1960s at the edge of Stonega.
A 1976 article about the Andover Shopping Center appeared in many newspapers across America. It said, "The
company stores look ridiculous in the age of
shopping plazas, and the only real competition
between the company luncheonette and
McDonald's is that both serve rubber on sesame
seed buns.
"Still, there are in the nation obscure
pockets which company stores continue to pick.
One reportedly is in the tucked-away coal region
of the Virginia panhandle. There four locals of
the United Mine Workers have filed suit against
the Westmoreland Coal Co. in protest against the
practices and philosophy of the company's
stores.
"The miners have apparently been grumbling
about the Westmoreland situation since the days
when coal cooked the eggs of the nation, but the
arguments have only recently been formalized.
Attorney Strother Smith says at least one
Westmoreland store, the Andover Shopping
Center near Appalachia, Va., operates as if it
was still acceptable 'for men to owe their souls
to the company store.' Smith says he knows no
other labor issue in the area as sensitive as this one.
"Like voices from the medieval past of the
coal business, miners ay the Andover store uses
its credit and its services as an extention of
company hostility towards them. Roger Barker,
for example, a 28-year-old who irritates the
company with endless safety complaints, says
that he was fired for his militancy one time and
within minutes his company store creidt was
revoked. He had a paycheck pending from which
the store could deduct his charges, 'but all they
wanted to do was hurt me as much as they could,
in this case by denying me groceries.'"
I don't know - this seems to me to be a heavy-handed and one-sided article.
Image courtesy of Brian McKnight
Jan. 2007 image by author
Jan. 2007 image by author
Jan. 2007 image by author
Jan. 2007 image by author
Jan. 2007 image by author
1960s image courtesy of thejohnboswellblog.com
Jan. 2007 image by author
Jan. 2007 image by author
