Back of postcard as written by George Atkins, June 1957
"Diamond Mine Braidwood, Ill. Mine flooded Feb 16-1883 drowning 72 coal miners, including my father, Samuel Atkins, and his brother, John Atkins. I stood with Mother at the mouth of mine and watched the water boil up to the surface sealing doom of all below."
The following excerpt regarding the Diamond Mine Disaster comes from The Wilmington Advocate dated February 19, 1883.
There are many persons who even yet do not
fully understand how the terrible affair of Friday could have
occurred. The first man who knew anything concerning the break
was the pump man, who is located at the bottom of the shaft, and
whose duty it is to keep the water out of the shaft and see that
the loading of the coal cart goes on properly. He had just sent
up a load of coal, and upon going back to the pumps he found the
water was rising rapidly, and the cause, he thought, was a lack
of steam power in the engines above. He accordingly went up and
saw the engineer, who said he had on as much steam as usual. The
engineer stepped into the cage and went down to see what was the
matter, and to his astonishment he found the water unto his waist
and rising rapidly. He also found a number of miners who had come
to the shaft to escape. An alarm was at once given by the "shovers,"
and all made for the top. The big whistles of the engines were
sounded three times, and the little hamlet recognized it as the
signal that the mine was flooded. Nearly four hundred distracted
women and children gathered in a few minutes, and the heart sickens
when imagination paints the scene that followed. The water in
the mines was rapidly rising, and the stealthy stream had swollen
into a roaring torrent. The miners had received a late warning,
and they started, some toward the main shaft and others toward
the air shaft, a little west of it. The tide met them before more
than twenty had reached the principal exit. Some had lingered
to warn friends or to collect tools. The rushing water, which
was descending like an Alpine torrent, with the impetus given
to it by a fall of eighty-five feet, struck many of the unfortunate
victims, whirling them away, and dashing them against the blackened
roof with irresistible force. Some struggled on with the seething
water up to their arm pits, but at points, where the roof sloped
downward, they found the waves touching the top, and recognized
the terrible fact they were to die like rats in that terrible
underground trap. One man dived three times under the sloping
roof and finally rose in the mine shaft and climbed into an elevator.
He was a good swimmer and knew the locality perfectly, hence he
was the only one of those whom the waters had shut off who escaped
when hope had deserted everyone else.
After thirty-eight days of pumping, the mine was emptied of water and preparations made to raise some of the bodies. The number of known victims total seventy-four, twenty-eight of which were recovered. The mine entrance was sealed. A monument to the lost miners was erected some fifteen years later.