Oswald J. Heinrich, mine engineer

Oswald J. Heinrich Biography

by Brady Lang, November 13, 2018

Oswald J. Heinrich was a mining engineer who was born on April 23, 1827 in Dresden in the Kingdom of Saxony in modern-day Germany. While in Germany, he studied architecture and drawing. He emigrated to the United States in 1850 as a result of the revolution in Germany. He settled first in Tennessee, where he married his wife, Louise Kuhn, then North Carolina and in 1854 moved to the area around Richmond, Virginia, where in 1869 he became the Midlothian Coal Mining Company's mining superintendent.

The company had gone downhill fast after the Civil War ended as a result of the lack of capital and financial slump the entire south was in. In the coal field around Midlothian, several mines and mining companies had previously invested tons of money into the coal business. This business made many men very rich. However, the mines had quieted since their hey-day in the 1830's to 1850's.

Heinrich supervised the restoration of the company's coal mining fortunes by repairing shafts and digging new tunnels. He also wrote many papers about the mines that he submitted to the AIME (American Institute of Mining Engineers). It looked like the company was going to be a success in the years ahead, but that all stopped in May 1876 when one of the highly explosive shafts exploded. 8 miners were killed and several were injured. The court hearings after this explosion caused Heinrich to be fired even though it was not his fault.

Later in his life he went out and became a mining engineer for mines in the West.

In 1877 he filed a passport application in which he provides his birth date and personal information. His eyes were blue, hair was gray, and was 5 ft 5 in tall.

Sources

Find A Grave: Oswald J. M. Heinrich (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/93881327/oswald-j_m-heinrich), Louise Kuhn Heinrich (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/93881325/louise-kuhn-heinrich), Armin Edmund Albert Heinrich (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/27513345/armin-edmund_albert-he...)

Historical Overview of the Midlothian Coal Mining Company Tract by Martha W. McCartney, link: https://www.midlomines.org/historic-overview.html

The Making of Virginia Architecture by Charles E. Brownell from Google Books, pg. 292,
link: https://books.google.com/books?id=WeVPAAAAMAAJ&q=oswald+j+heinrich&...

Midlothian Coal Mine Fire, link: https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/midlothian_1876.htm

FamilySearch.com, United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925, 1877 application for Oswald J. Heinrich

Here is a more full biography of Oswald J. Heinrich:

link: https://books.google.com/books?id=pOsRAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA133&dq=oswald+j...

The name of Oswald J. Heinrich first appears among the members of the Institute in the first volume of its Transactions, which records that he was elected at the Boston meeting, in February, 1873. That name has stood ever since upon our catalogue of active members. It has appeared frequently in the reports of our debates. It has been attached to many interesting and important professional papers. Henceforward it must hold a place, silent but significant, in the pathetic, lengthening list of our departed. From a present power, it is suddenly transmuted into a sacred memory. To how many of us this change brings a keen personal sense of loss, I need not say. All the older members of our body will certainly both mourn and miss him, whose joyous presence was the very incarnation of that good fellowship which has inspired our history, while his store of practical experience and wisdom, reinforced by wide and deep scientific study, and placed freely at the service of his brethren, illustrated no less the other and more serious purpose of our existence as a society.

Mr. Heinrich was born in Saxony, April 23d, 1827, and was, therefore, at the time of his death, which occurred at Drifton, Pa., February 4th, 1886, nearly fifty-nine years old. This long period he had so filled with varied activity that, reflecting upon his career, one might well have been led to think him older, while the elasticity and perennial youth of his spirit, and the hale vigor of his body, would have induced the contrary belief.

His father was the secretary of the late King Johann, of Saxony; and the son received the advantage of an excellent education, first at an academy in Dresden, and subsequently at the famous Royal School of Mines at Freiberg, then at the night of its glory. The elder Weisbach was pursuing with enthusiasm that twofold career of instruction and original investigation which redounded so greatly to his own credit and the credit of the institution; and other great men, each in his own sphere, were worthily doing their part to create the modern arts of mining and metallurgy. I mention Weisbach alone in this connection, because young Heinrich was his favorite pupil. Those of us who recall the brilliant and genial professor in his later years can imagine what must have been the joy of companionship with him in his prime. Teacher and pupil had much in common, and it is not surprising that they became intimate.

Heinrich was twenty-one years old when the wave of political revolution swept over Germany. Like all the high-spirited young men of his time, he was caught by it—a not unwilling swimmer. Side by side with his friend and fellow-student Zeuner, afterward an Oberbergrath and director of the Freiberg school, he fought on the barricades. The disastrous result of that movement is matter of history. Indirectly it was a great benefit to this country, though it seemed but a calamity to the Fatherland. It brought to our shores a host of refugees, the most noble and ambitious spirits of Germany, who came as exiles for Liberty's sake, and bestowed upon their adopted country a rich treasure of art, science, and enthusiasm. This was the best contribution the old world had ever made to the new since the landing of the Pilgrims. Among these later pilgrims was Heinrich, who came in 1850, and after getting married, proceeded at once to Tennessee. There he faced with a stout heart and ready hands the difficulties of his new situation. He was not ashamed to work; and as bricklayer, painter, cabinet-maker, etc., he earned his living in Tennessee. Afterward he moved to Raleigh, N. C., and again to Augusta, Ga., where he practiced as an architect. In 1854, he opened an office in Richmond, Va., as architect and mining engineer. To these professions he added the work instruction at the Richmond Mechanics' Institute and in private classes, in drawing, water-color painting, and mathematics.

At the outbreak of the rebellion, a commission in the confederate army was offered to him; but this he refused, not desiring to take up arms against the Union. But he could not get away from the South, where all that he had in the world was involved; and perhaps it is fair to infer that the prospect of a second exile for political reasons was not as attractive to him in mid-life as a similar outlook had been in youth. At all events, he accepted a technical position in the service of the confederate government, which secured to him the privileges of a non-combatant. He took charge of important mining and manufacturing operations, including the making of gunpowder, and was also employed in the construction of fortifications for the defense of Richmond. In the last year of the war he was superintendent of the confederate iron mines at Buckhannon, West Va. The collapse of the Southern cause left him at that place, entirely destitute. But he still possessed at Richmond a large and valuable geological collection, the accumulation of many years, illustrating the mineral resources of the Southern States. This was noted as the finest collection of the kind, had received several prizes, and was regarded with peculiar pride and affection by its collector and owner. Leaving his family at Buckhannon, and taking a few copper coins, the store of his children's "savings-banks," he made the long journey to Richmond on horseback, arriving at last to find that his great collection had been destroyed in the burning of part of the city attending its evacuation by the confederate government and its occupation by the federal troops.

Undismayed by this culminating disaster, he reopened his office as architect and engineer in the half-ruined capital, and began life anew. It was about this time that I first met him, making his acquaintance through the late Dr. Justus Adelberg, a man of the same class as Heinrich, and, like him, a refugee of the days of '49. Drawn together by our common love for our Saxon alma mater, Freiberg, Mr. Heinrich and I speedily cemented a friendship which was to me a source of pleasure and of instruction for twenty years. In him I found the first of many of our profession who saw the new, the only opportunity for the South in the development of its industry, which would at once repair the waste and assuage the bitter memories of war. With an undying zeal, to the end of his life, he urged this course, and contributed in every possible way to its advancement.

In the autumn of I860, he went back to Buckhannon to bring his family; and here he encountered the hardest blow of all, arriving time to witness, September 30th, the death of his wife, who had been the beloved companion of so many years of adventure and vicissitude. He was a warm lover of wife and children and home. More than once, during the days of war, he had run the gauntlet between the fires of the two armies, swimming swollen rivers, threading mountain passes, and following secret trails, only to snatch a few hours with that dear circle. Now he made a more peaceful but more lonesome journey, descending the James River to Richmond in a canal-boat, and bearing with him the body of his wife. The Richmond Gesangverein, of which he was for many years the president, sang over her grave her favorite songs; and the chapter of happiness and hardship in his life was closed. How little seemed the hardship and how great the happiness, those who have heard him talk of those early days can testify. In after years, he married again, and his affectionate disposition was happily mated, and his home was happy, though the children had grown and gone, and the morning romance was over.

In 1868, Mr. Heinrich became superintendent of the Wythe lead mines at Austenville, West Va., where he remained long enough to repair the effects of bad management and to make important new discoveries of ore. In carrying out this work, he exposed his life with characteristic recklessness, since the necessary careful survey of the dilapidated underground workings obliged him to labor in ground already caving.

In 1869, he took charge of the Midlothian colliery. It was while he occupied this position that he became a member of the Institute; and our Transactions show the extraordinary difficulty of his work and the extraordinary ingenuity and courage with which he conducted it. His paper on the Midlothian colliery in Vol. I. presents a thrilling picture of the hand-to-hand fight with danger and death in which he was for years engaged. I well remember the impression produced by his graphic description of this prolonged encounter—so free from boastfulness, yet so full of the joy of battle and of victory.

In 1875, he resigned his position at Midlothian, and went to Goderich, Canada, to take charge of the operations there in deep boring for salt. Already in Virginia, he had made extensive and careful use of the diamond drill; and his papers on that subject continue to this day the best source of accurate information for the engineer. In the following year, he visited Europe to inspect salt-works and study cognate questions. While there, he received from his old friend Gerstenhöfer the agency for certain inventions connected with the ammonia process for the manufacture of soda; and after his return, he labored hard to secure the introduction of that process in the United States. While he did not personally succeed in starting any enterprise of the kind, it has been done with signal ability by Mr. W. B. Cogswell, another of our members; and the views and arguments of Heinrich have been fully corroborated by the results of the experiment. On this subject also, he has left in our Transactions the evidence of his lively interest in technical progress.

In 1878, he accepted the directorship of the Industrial School for Miners and Mechanics, established at Drifton, Pa., by Mr. Eckley B. Coxe. Mr. Coxe was also a Freiberg graduate, and had been in his day, as Heinrich had been before him, a favorite pupil of Weisbach. He could scarcely have found a better man to carry out his views than Heinrich; and certainly the veteran engineer could not have found for his old age a pleasanter harbor—I will not say of rest, for rest was impossible to him; but of peace and freedom. Here he remained to the end; and of his work here he gave, as was his praiseworthy custom, a record to us, in his paper on the Drifton School.

His interest in the development of the South, particularly of Virginia, continued unabated. That State he knew thoroughly—" every cow-path in it," he used to say ; the geological map of the State which he constructed was the best in existence: and his comprehensive knowledge of its resources is shown in his paper on the Mesozoic Formation in Virginia, in Vol. VI. of our Transactions.

It was not given to Mr. Heinrich to achieve wealth, or to link his name with any one great work of engineering. Indeed, the mining engineer's task is not essentially constructive. The problems he solves, the difficulties he overcomes, the results he produces are in their immediate nature transitory. His highest achievement is the economical destruction of the cruder form of matter that it mav be sent forth in a higher form, to be lost in u-e. His "production" is for "consumption." Yet, if there be a structure of human society, rising like a noble edifice, to which every advance in the comfort, intelligence, and industry of the race contributes a new stone, the mining engineer, whose art is the mother of arts, and the inseparable sister of civilization, is indeed a builder and not merely a destroyer. In this noble work, our departed brother wrought bravely, skillfully, zealously; and it is with an honest pride as well as with a deep and true sorrow that we speak above his bier the last Glück auf!

• Bead before the American Institute of Mining Engineers, at Pittsburg, February 16th, 1886, by B. W. Baymond, New York City.