On a snowy winter afternoon in late January, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Joyce (Rajala) Wrobleski and she shared with me what life was like growing up in a mining location northeast of Virginia known as Minorca.
Mining “locations” were housing areas often built by and owned by mining companies where mine workers and their families could live within walking distance of the mines in which they worked. These homes were most often rented by the month by the company employees. Generally, the homes were one or two stories and had a “cookie cutter” functional floor plan. That is to say, they were of the same basic design. These housing areas remained until mining operations expanded requiring that the houses be sold and moved or torn down. When that time came, they were often sold to the respective renters for a nominal fee and they were then moved to vacant lots elsewhere. Minorca location was first established in the mid 1890s and, along with Higgins location, Upper and Lower Lincoln, Commodore, Franklin, Minowas, and Shaw, collectively made up the Village of Franklin. Sadly, only a portion of Shaw, located at the far east end of Virginia’s Chestnut street remains, giving us a glimpse of what largely undisturbed mining location houses looked like.
Joyce’s grandparents came over from Finland in 1906. Her grandfather (William Rajala) and his two brothers came first and he then sent for his wife and three children. Joyce’s father (William Jr.), having been born in Finland in 1899, was one of those children. The Rajala family moved into a house in Minorca location. Her grandfather worked in the nearby Commodore Mine. Tragically, he died young at age 36 of appendicitis, leaving behind a wife and seven small children. When Joyce’s father eventually came of age and married, he and his wife moved into an upstairs apartment of a house on 2nd Ave. and 2nd Street North in Virginia where Laurentian Monument now stores slabs of granite. This was the house where Joyce Elaine Rajala was born on February 4, 1929. The house is no longer there and she likes to joke that she was born upstairs of a vacant lot! Shortly thereafter, Joyce and her family moved back to Minorca location and stayed in an old mining company office building until Joyce’s father was able to build a home for his family in Minorca.
In order to accomplish this, Joyce’s father and his younger brother Olaf, went over to Kinney and tore down an old boarding house. They salvaged not only the lumber, but also the nails, by pounding them straight again (remember this was during the Great Depression) and they were subsequently able to build two new homes in Minorca location with the salvaged materials. Unfortunately, Olaf’s house burned down so he moved the garage from the back of his property up to the front next to the road and remodeled the garage into a home for him, his wife and their three children.
Upper Lincoln, Higgins, and Minorca were not isolated areas out in the country as we might now envision them. On the contrary, they were located right alongside of what was then the main highway from Virginia to Tower and Ely. Highway 7 was a narrow blacktop roadway when Joyce was growing up and she recalled that there wasn’t much traffic and what traffic there was moved rather slowly by today’s standards. As a matter of fact, after a fresh snowfall, the neighborhood children would grab their sleds and slide right down the highway toward Lincoln location before the sanding trucks came out and “ruined the sliding.”
A major difference between Higgins and Minorca location was that the houses in Higgins were company owned and rented whereas the houses in Minorca were privately owned but the home owners rented the land on which their homes sat for $1 per month from the mining company. Joyce’s grandmother was the rent collector in Minorca in lieu of having to pay rent herself. Higgins location was located on the east side of Highway 7 and Minorca was on the west side. While the locations had running water and eventually indoor plumbing, Higgins boasted cement sidewalks and two paved streets. The alleys were gravel. Minorca had a board sidewalk that extended almost all the way to 13th Street North which was then part of Highway 7. Higgins had two rows of houses back-to-back while Minorca had only one row of houses that were much like small scale farms where cows, chickens, pigs, and even turkeys were kept. Most Minorca properties had small barns or out buildings where livestock was housed.
Higgins also had a school house at one time and Joyce’s father attended school there. By the time Joyce and her older brother Richard came along, all the Village of Franklin students were bused to and from Virginia schools. Joyce attended the Washington School on northside. She said that while in school, the “location” kids tended to stick together and played and socialized with one another for the most part.
In March of 1936, there was a blizzard and Joyce’s father climbed up the ladder of the Higgins water tank to take a photograph of the snow covered Minorca location. As we sat at a table originally owned by her grandparents looking at those photos, Joyce was able to indicate and name off the owners of each home in Minorca as if the photos were taken yesterday…Skarp, Rinell, Richnoski, Rajala (grandmother’s), Thompson, Rajala (Joyce’s parents), an old abandoned mining company office where people sometimes temporarily lived, Lassila’s barn, where cows were kept by Mr. John Lassila for his milk business. He lived in Virginia’s Finntown and drove to his barn twice each day to milk his cows and deliver the milk to his many customers. Lastly, there was the home of Olaf Rajala, Joyce’s uncle and his family.
Cows grazed in the surrounding open pasture lands and watered in springs to the north that bubbled out of the ground. At the end of the day, the cows headed for home to their respective barns and even into their respective stalls all on their own along well worn pathways.
As we looked at old photos, Joyce fondly reminisced that it was a wonderful place in which to grow up for the children but she was quick to point out that it was a struggle for the often financially strapped adults. Everyone had a garden to supplement the family food supply. At that time, the open pit mines did not operate during the winter months and the workers were laid off so it wasn’t easy to make ends meet.
But for the children, there was always something to do for fun - but only after your chores were done, Joyce added. Berry picking, baseball games between the various locations, then swimming in Higgins pit to cool off, sliding and skating at the Lincoln location rink, skiing, riding their bikes on the wooden boardwalk in to Virginia, building forts in the woods, and, in later years, Joyce and her girlfriends attended Kit Kat dances at Virginia’s Recreation Building (now the Northland Building on 1st Street South), then walking home approximately three miles back to Minorca after the dances!
Joyce married and left Minorca location in the late 1940s, about the time all the Village of Franklin houses were being moved to allow for expanding mining operations. She and her husband Leo moved to a large farmhouse in the country and raised six children of their own.
It was a real treat to learn more about growing up in a mining location and seeing the old photos of how Minorca looked and I have Joyce to thank for so willingly sharing her stories and family photos with me. Many of the homes from the Village of Franklin were moved into Virginia’s Southern Drive in Ridgewood, Williams Addition, and northside. If you look carefully, you may recognize what were once company houses that all have a story to tell. When looking through rose-colored glasses that the passage of time allows us to look through, we might well imagine quaint mining locations during a simpler, and in some ways, maybe better time.
Author’s note: Pictures and information provided by Joyce (Rajala) Wrobleski. I’d also like to thank Betty Pond from the Virginia Area Historical Society for suggesting that I contact Joyce Wrobleski in the first place. – Doug Nelson
Resource: http://www.hometownfocus.us
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