St. Benedict was home to the Carrolltown Coal Company's Victor No. 9 and No. 10 mines. (The same coal company owned Victor No. 1 through No. 6 at other locations west of St. Benedict. I'm not sure about No. 7 and No. 8.) Both mines were in the Lower Kittanning, or "B," seam. Victor No. 9 was opened as late as 1944, and possibly later.
Coal baron Rembrandt Peale owned Carrolltown Coal Company. He began construction of St. Benedict in 1901, which he named after Benedictine monks he met in nearby Carrolltown, Pa. Peale tried to treat his employees with more fairness than most coal barons, but still experienced labor strife in the 1920s; miners were represented by UMWA Local 2008. He died in 1934.
Along with other coal mining towns, St. Benedict's residents participated in the industrial baseball league with their team named the Robins.
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Coal company houses in St. Benedict must have been well built, because they are still in use in the 21st century.
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Like almost every other Pennsylvania coal mining town, after the houses were sold by the coal company to individuals, they were updated and modified.
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Houses for management.
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St. Benedict Presbyterian Church.
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Not much remains of the St. Benedict coal mines. Here is a small remnant of the slate dump.
December 2021 image by author
When I saw these buildings next to the vestige of the slate dump, I assumed that they were part of the Victor No. 9 and No. 10 mines. But they were actually part of a streetcar system, the Northern Cambria Railway Company. These were the engine and boiler houses.
December 2021 image by author
Car barn of the Northern Cambria Railway Co.
Sources:
Michrina, Barry P. Mines, Memories, and More - The History and People of St. Benedict, Pennsylvania. First ed., The Rembrandt Club, 2001.
Sisler, James D. Bituminous Coal Fields of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Geological Survey, 1926.
coalmininghistorypa.org
1944 Bituminous Coal Division Annual Report.
Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania, Part II—Bituminous 1915. Wm. Stanley Ray, State Printer, 1916.
Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania, Part II Bituminous 1907. Harrisburg Publishing Company, State Printer, 1908.
