Death at the Five-and-Dime: The Connellsville Explosion of 1911

 

Known as the "Coke Capital of the World", the Fayette County city of Connellsville rose to prominence in the late 19th century for its many beehive coke furnaces, which were instrumental in the production of steel. The community's rapid growth led to a merger with the neighboring borough of New Haven on May 12, 1911, thereby forming the first city incorporated in Fayette County.

While rapid growth and expansion come with many benefits, there are many drawbacks as well; old buildings are neglected and new structures are erected so quickly that little attention is paid to safety. And it was the latter which led to tragedy on the morning of January 12, 1911, when a gas explosion at a five-and-dime store ignited neighboring buildings and turned a section of North Pittsburgh Street into a blazing funeral pyre.

It was 10 o'clock in the morning when a gas leak in the basement of McCrory's Five and Dime ignited at the corner of North Pittsburgh and Apple streets. It was a busy store, just one in a chain of a hundred or so McCrory's stores owned by the company at the time. It was also a new store, the foundations having been laid in October of 1908 by the Connellsville Planing Mill Company, on the site of the old Rosenblum & Silverman building at 210 North Pittsburgh Street. 

The new owner, John Graham McCrorey, wasn't the type to take his time; he wanted the Connellsville store built as cheaply and as quickly as possible. The Daily Courier reported: The work of razing the frame buildings which occupied the site has progressed with much speed... The contractors will rush work on the new building and will lose no time getting started.

According to legend, John Graham McCrorey was so famously cheap that he legally changed his name from McCrorey to McCrory, in order to avoid the cost of paying for an extra "E" on his signs; but while the gilt-lettered signs read McCrory, the company retained the legal name of J.G McCrorey & Company until 1933. McCrorey, who opened his first dime store in Westmoreland County in 1882, had a simple recipe for success: gobble up every building that could be bought cheaply. Buildings that were in good condition were converted into McCrory dime stores, while the others were rented out by a subsidiary company, the McCrory Realty Corporation.

The strategy allowed J.G. McCrorey to expand quickly and cheaply, but at 10 o'clock on the morning of January 12, 1911, the company and its founder learned a hard lesson about the dangers of cutting corners. Just moments earlier, dozens of customers and sales clerks, almost all of them young women, had been going about their business, enjoying the ambiance provided by the store's piano player, oblivious to the invisible menace leaking from the pipes beneath their feet, in the basement where four carpenters were busy making long-overdue repairs to the foundation that had been built so hastily a little more than three years earlier.

It was the store piano player, Ada Mitchell, who first noticed a peculiar odor and reported it to her manager, Mr. C.L. Poff. Poff had just gone down into the basement to speak to the carpenters when the accumulated gas ignited. There about twenty customers in the store when the front wall of the building was completely blown into the street, and the wall of debris knocked down a large number of electric wires, producing a hissing, tangled mess that cut off communication from the outside world and prevented the rescue of the unfortunate victims who were being roasted alive inside what remained of the structure.

Miss Mitchell, who had returned to her piano playing duties after speaking to Poff, was hurled along with her instrument from the back of the building through its entire length, into Apple Street. Miraculously, she managed to survive with minor scrapes and bruises, as did all of the carpenters who were in the basement of the building. Several others, however, were not so lucky.

 

 

In the mayhem of the explosion, it was impossible to determine who was trapped inside and who had managed to run, or crawl, to safety. Three of the young female clerks were initially reported as missing, though officials believed the number of people trapped in the rubble could be much higher. The only person who knew the identities of the employees working that day was Mr. Poff, who had been taken to Cottage State Hospital for his injuries.

Poff, too, would survive the tragedy, and it was his quick thinking that undoubtedly saved an untold number of lives. Poff had opened a side door just after he had been informed of the smell of gas by Ada Mitchell, and it was through this side door many of the clerks and customers escaped in the harrowing moments after the explosion. Within a minute of the blast the entire building was engulfed in flames, and the building collapsed completely less than ten minutes after the explosion. Firemen from Connellsville were quick to respond, but refused to enter the building at first, for fear of electrocution from the downed power lines in the street. 

It was through this side door the rescue party of concerned bystanders entered, against the advice of the Connellsville firemen, willing to sacrifice their own lives for those of total strangers. A half dozen trapped clerks and shoppers were dragged from the burning building into the street, while the injured were carried next door to the office of Dr. H.F. Atkinson. But then the fire spread to the doctor's office, and the injured were taken back outside to wait for ambulances. To illustrate the sheer madness of the scene, one newspaper reported that a girl who was trapped by flaming debris actually bit into the hand of a man who was trying to rescue her, such was her state of panic and confusion-- and it was this confusion that ultimately cost her her life.

 

 

Meanwhile, the brave citizens of Connellsville continued to dart in and out of the five-and-dime in search of lives to save. Sadly, the flames forced the rescuers to abandon Mabel Wagner, an eighteen-year-old sales clerk who was pinioned beneath the debris. The imminent collapse of the structure forced them to also leave behind sales clerks Christabel Smith, aged 19, and Minnie Mulac, aged 15. Their charred bodies would later be identified by their parents by the jewelry they had worn on the day they perished. Nellie Mulac, Minnie's sister, was injured in the blast, and during her hospital stay spoke of her sister as if she were still alive, because no one had the heart to tell her that her younger sibling had been killed.

"I was standing at the candy counter when I felt an upheaval of the floor, which was followed by a mighty roar that seemed to deafen me," Nellie told District Attorney Henderson and County Detective McLaughlin from her bed at Cottage State Hospital. "I was surrounded by a mass of debris from which I extricated myself with difficulty. I began to crawl on my hands and knees to the door and, with the assistance of a man whom I didn't know, finally managed to reach the street and safety."

 

The Mulac family plot at Dickerson Run Union Cemetery

 

"I thought of my sister who was working back farther in the store," Nellie continued. "The side door was open and she escaped without much trouble. She is now at home with only slight burns on her arms and I expect to see her soon. It was indeed terrible, but we were both lucky to escape as we did."
Tears filled the eyes of the two men as they listened to the story; for they alone knew at the time that Minnie Mulac did not escape from the building.

The Mulacs at first refused to believe that Minnie had been one of the dead; the blackened corpse they had examined was far too small to be that of Minnie. It never occurred to them that human bodies shrink considerably as the bodyfat melts to liquid and the protein of the muscle dries out like a roast left too long in a hot oven.

It was this same overlooked detail that caused officials to hastily report that a little boy, perhaps no older than twelve, had been among the dead. It ultimately turned out these shrunken remains were actually those of a fully-grown 35-year-old Italian man, Francesco "Frank" Stirone. The only male to perish in the fire, Stirone had been standing at the post card counter with his wife and four children when the building collapsed. It would be almost a century before the details of his heroic actions were finally brought to light.

 

The grave of Frank Stirone at St. Joseph's Cemetery

 

Nellie Mitchell, a nineteen-year-old sales clerk, was reported missing, and was believed to be somewhere inside the building when it collapsed. She was later found, but the injuries she had sustained necessitated her hospitalization. She would ultimately survive the ordeal. But the same could not be said for another sales clerk, Miss Ada Pearl Thomas of West Overton.

Miss Thomas, it was later revealed by the Uniontown Morning Herald, had spoken of her death a few days prior to the tragedy, which many considered rather odd, considering that she was young and healthy. But, for some reason, she had become convinced that she was about to die, and had even begged her boyfriend to be one of her pallbearers. Her limbs had been burned off in the fire, and the torso was so unrecognizable that identification could only be made though her belt buckle, which had been a gift from her siblings.

 

The grave of Ada Thomas, St. John's Cemetery in Mount Pleasant

 
 A Volcano in the Middle of the Store

The explosion at McCrory's Five and Dime also triggered a gas explosion at the adjacent Citizen's Bank Building, and in the blink of an eye the flames had spread to other adjoining structures. These included Graham's Drugstore, the office of Dr. Atkinson, the home of Fire Chief J.W. Mitchell and the home of Mrs. Margaret Hetzel. Fire companies in Uniontown responded to the call for help, sending equipment and a large force of men to the scene. Less than two hours after it had begun, the fire was extinguished. "We were just two minutes after the alarm sounded in getting two lines of hose at work," said Fire Chief Mitchell. "The fire within the McCrorey building looked like a volcano in the middle of the store."

After the initial madness was over came the horrible task of sifting through the mounds of smoldering rubble and piles of charred merchandise for the unfortunate dead, but this would have to wait; the pile of debris would continue to smolder for days.

Attention was now turned to the injured, most of whom were transported by ambulance to Cottage State Hospital, which had opened eleven years earlier as a hospital for coal miners. Among those seriously injured were sales clerk Gertrude Otterman, aged 18; sales clerk William Miner, aged 18; sales clerk Nellie Mulac; assistant manager Charles Loomis, aged 29; and carpenter Lloyd Fisher. Mrs. F.E. Miller, a customer trapped inside the store, was taken to the county hospital, where little hope was held for her recovery. She managed to beat the odds. Those who were treated and released for minor injuries included sales clerk Marjorie Green, cashier Anna Furtney, sales clerk Rose Leighty, sales clerk Rose Jakes, sales clerk Mary King, carpenters Riley Smeak, Alexander Kooser and Cleveland Warrick, manager C.L. Poff and the store piano player, Ada Mitchell.

"It all came so suddenly that I don't remember much," said Mary King a few days after the disaster. "When I heard the report and felt the jar I rushed to the nearest door, which seemed to be locked. I remember pushing on the door and probably fainted, as the next thing I knew I was in mama's arms. I saw my coat, hat and furs on the counter and thought once of returning for them. Had I done so, I probably would have perished, as it was not a minute later until the place I had occupied collapsed."

 

 

Despite the tragedy of January 12, 1911, there was no shortage of escape stories that seemed uncanny, if not miraculous, in nature. For instance, Mrs. S.M. Morris of Indiana, who was at the store purchasing post cards, had just been handed her change by Mabel Wagner when the explosion occurred. The older woman was buried beneath piles of debris and merchandise, but found a "light at the end of the tunnel" and crawled through it, popping out on North Pittsburgh Street, none the worse for wear. Yet Mabel Wagner, the teenage clerk who had given her the change and was standing just inches away, was burned to a crisp.

Fritz Bogdansky, who worked at the office of the Connellsville Courier, was standing outside the five-and-dime debated on whether to go inside and purchase some cakes. As he stood outside trying to make up his mind, the building exploded. "There was a 'poof' and all of the sudden the whole front of the store blew out," Bogdansky recalled. He avoided injury by ducking into a back alley and running back to the newspaper office. His moment of hesitation may have saved his life on that terrible day.

And there was also no shortage of tales of heroism, not just from the residents of Connellsville, but surrounding Western Pennsylvania communities as well. Superintendent J.S. Jenks of Connellsville-based West Penn Railways and one of his employees climbed a pole with a high tension wire on it, in order to prevent the live wire from falling onto the crowds below. Firefighters from the nearby Davidson coal mine, led by Superintendent R.C. Beerbower, were among the first to respond to the scene. After giving all the hose he could spare to the city fire department, Beerbower took his wagon all over town, collecting ordinary garden hose from the residents. There humble hoses were used to douse the walls and roofs of surrounding buildings, preventing the fire from spreading. It was two of Beerbower's men, Samuel Halfhill and Charles Miller, who were the first to race into the burning five-and-dime store, where they saved the life of Mrs. Edward Miller by dragging her to safety. Upon learning that wires were down and vital information could not be relayed in a timely fashion, Western Union in Pittsburgh dispatched telegraph operators to Connellsville to establish a makeshift "communications center". Though it may have been an ugly day for the city of Connellsville, it was a beautiful display of the human spirit, as strangers risked their own lives without hesitation to save the lives of other strangers.

 

 

Frank Stirone: The Forgotten Hero  

 

The heroic, but long-forgotten, story of victim Frank Stirone was rekindled in 2006, when a bronze plaque was dedicated in his honor at the site of the explosion. Stirone was an immigrant coal miner, eking out a meager living and sharing a cramped home outside of town with three boarders to help support his wife, Maria, and their four children. Bringing home just $10 a week, shopping trips were a rare luxury, and it's easy to imagine the thrill the Stirones must have felt as they rode the trolley to downtown Connellsville on the morning of January 12. And it's difficult to imagine how, just a few short hours later, the horror that Maria and her children experienced when the gas exploded.

According to witness accounts, Frank was seen carrying a young girl out of the burning building. After carrying her to safety he rushed back into the inferno, never to be come out again. While J.G. McCrorey helped pay the funeral costs for the other victims, the Stirones were out of luck because of their nationality. Quite simply, Italians weren't held in very high regard in those days. Adding insult to injury, a special fund was set up to collect donations for the victims' families, but the pastor in charge of distributing the donations ruled that Mrs. Stirone was ineligible because of the paltry income she received from her three boarders.

It took 95 years for the city of Connellsville to recognize Frank Stirone's selfless and heroic actions on that fateful day. When a bronze marker, paid for by contributions from local Italian-American organizations, was placed on the wall of the rebuilt McCrory Five and Dime building (now the site of the City Church of Connellsville) in 2006, about twenty of Frank's descendants were on hand for the dedication.

 

The Aftermath

Once the flames died down, a new set of dangers emerged. There were damaged buildings all around, and County Detective Frank McLaughlin and Police Chief Rottler stood guard on North Pittsburgh Street, stopping people from using the sidewalk for fear they might be injured by shards of glass that continued to rain down from nearby windows. 

There was also the problem of treasure hunters. Many of those who were inside McCrory's Five-and-Dime at the time of the explosion left behind valuable possessions when they made a dash for safety. Mary King lost a gold watch and a purse containing three dollars, as well as her fur coat and hat. Anna Furtney and Rose Jakes had both left their fur coats behind, while others left bracelets, watches, pins and other jewelry. There was also about $40,000 worth of trinkets and merchandise, hundreds of dollars of petty cash, and other items that turned greedy locals into ghouls who were gladly willing to risk a fine or jail time for a chance to find valuables among the rubble.

Then there was the matter of an investigation into the cause of the explosion. It was the opinion of Detective McLaughlin that the carpenters, who had recently removed the gas meter to do their work, had failed to put it back together correctly. One of the carpenters, who was an employee of the Fayette County Gas Company, admitted that the meter was removed and the gas permitted to escape because a plug had not been placed in the main pipe that connected to the meter. He said that he didn't consider this a serious issue, since he believed the escaping gas was "dead gas" and would quickly and safely dissipate into the air. Charles Loomis, the store's assistant manager, told authorities that he had seen an iron plug placed in the pipe, but that the wrench that the carpenter had used to install it was the wrong tool for the job. There were other inconsistencies in witness statements as well; some of the clerks said the explosion had originated in the front of the store, while others declared that it had come from the rear.

 

Aftermath of the explosion

 

Other theories and explanations soon emerged. One source claimed that the gas company had shut off the gas after another tenant in the McCrory building had failed to pay his utility bills, but the carpenters-- believing the gas was shut off when it was not-- went about their work unconcerned. In any case, District Attorney Davis W. Henderson had his work cut out for him, and he wasted no time in interviewing scores of witnesses and potential witnesses. Ultimately, he reached the conclusion that many residents of Connellsville had already reached-- that the Fayette County Gas Company was negligent, and had not properly shut off the gas.

Four of the five victims of the explosion were laid to rest on Saturday, January 15, and the affair was marked by tears and anger. The Uniontown Morning Herald excoriated the Fayette County Gas Company the following day, not only for their negligence, but because they did not offer to pay a single cent of the funeral and hospital expenses for the victims. In its Sunday edition, the Herald broke professional protocol by calling out the gas company exclusively in capital letters, not in a headline, but in the very body of an article:

THE MILLION DOLLAR GAS TRUST, WHOSE CARELESSNESS, IT IS STATED, CAUSED IT ALL, WON'T EVEN PAY FOR THE COFFINS... THE LORD CAN BE MERCIFUL, EVEN IF THE GAS COMPANY LACKS A HEART AS MUCH AS IT LACKS A SOUL.

Minnie Mulac was laid to rest at Dickerson Run Cemetery, though her mother and sister were not there to witness the ceremony; Minnie's death had taken a toll on Mrs. Mulac's health, while Nellie was still in the hospital, believing that her sister was still alive. Mabel Wagner's body was transported several miles away to Addison, where it was interred at the St. John Lutheran Church cemetery. The casket containing the remains of Christabel Sarah Smith was loaded onto a train and delivered to Pittsburgh for burial. Frank Stirone was buried Saturday afternoon at St. Joseph's Cemetery after services at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church. The Stirone funeral was especially heart-wrenching, as the family had been all but penniless before the tragedy, and Mrs. Stirone was left to raise four young children on little more than the ten dollars that was recovered from Frank's wallet after the fire. This paltry sum constituted the bulk of the family's savings, and the Uniontown Morning Herald felt compelled to declare, once again in capital letters:

FRANTICALLY DOES THAT WOMAN IN HER NATIVE TONGUE CALL FOR GOD'S HELP, FOR THE FAYETTE COUNTY GAS COMPANY, THOUGH WHOSE CARELESSNESS IT IS STATED THE EXPLOSION OCCURRED, HAS NOT EVEN LOOKED INTO HER CASE OR OFFERED TO PAY A CENT OF THE FUNERAL EXPENSES.

While anger was directed at the Fayette County Gas Company by reporters, citizens, and families of the victim's alike, it was squarely up to the courts to determine who was at fault for the Connellsville horror. On the afternoon of Friday, January 20, a coroner's jury returned the following verdict:

We find the at the fire was caused by an explosion of natural gas in the basement of the J.G. McCrorey store, that the gas escaped from a supply pipe, which, through carelessness, had been left unprotected after the removal of a meter by Emerson Bittner, an employee of the Fayette County Gas Company. We therefore hold the said Emerson Bittner to answer charges before a grand jury.

Bittner was arrested immediately after the hearing and held under $10,000 bail to answer to the charge of five counts of involuntary manslaughter. At the hearing, when Bittner was called to the witness stand, he not only refused to testify, but had refused to be sworn in. He was acting on the advice given to him by gas company attorneys, who felt that nothing could be gained by Bittner's testimony. The public had already turned against the Fayette County Gas Company. It was a smart legal move by the gas company; by making a scapegoat out of the young Bittner-- who was hardly more than a kid at the time-- the public had a name and face on which to direct their anger, freeing the young man's supervisors and higher-ups from any blame. No further charges were brought against the gas company.

Later that year, the charges against Bittner were quietly dropped. Yet it would appear that Emerson Bittner's relief was short-lived. The guilt must have weighed terribly upon the young man's conscience; in February of 1915, local papers devoted a mere two sentences to his untimely death. Whether his death had been caused by illness, accident, or by his own hand, is not clear, but the Uniontown Morning Herald wrote that his funeral was attended by employees and officials of the Fayette County Gas Company.

Ultimately, justice was denied to every victim of the tragic explosion at McCrory's Five and Dime. The gas company was able to fend off every lawsuit while continuing to expand its operations and enjoy record profits, even during the recession of 1914. In 1916, the company had become so profitable that it awarded nearly one thousand employees a fifteen percent raise. It would have been interesting to find out what the parents who had buried their teenage daughters a few short years earlier thought of this-- the gas company never awarded them so much as a penny--  but by this time the Connellsville tragedy had faded from memory.

 

The site of the explosion, as it appears today

 

As for the J.G. McCrorey Company, it, too continued to flourish in the years following the fire-- even in 1913, when a new labor law went in effect prohibiting retail stores from making female employees work more than 54 hours a week. In the spring of 1913, the J.G. McCrorey Company opened its 102nd store in nearby Mount Pleasant. At its height, McCrory's boasted 1,300 stores nationwide, acquiring competitors like H.L. Green and J.J. Newberry one by one.

Today, the City Church of Connellsville stands on the site of the 1911 explosion, in a building that housed the Kingley Company clothing store in the 1930s and Harris' Mens Store in the 1950s, its cheery and colorful appearance belying one of the darkest moments in the history of Connellsville.