Chat
|
Daily Search
|
My GenForum
|
Community Standards
|
Terms of Service
|
|
|
Hi Paul, this is indeed the same Leo J. Coady I have researched. Here is an excerpt from my book:
Leo J. Coady was born in 1889, the second of seven children who had arrived with regularity to James and Harriet Coady. Though the Coadys were Canadian, they had moved to Maine in an era when many were pursuing opportunities south of the border. Upon coming of age, Leo sought his own opportunity in the west. He found a natural fit to his interest in mining engineering in the wild and wooly mining capital of Montana, Butte. Like many western towns of its ilk, Butte had followed the roller coaster sequence of commodity booms during the 19th century — gold to silver to copper. It was copper that made Butte, Butte. The underground lodes were fabulously rich. They were also dangerous. Underground work was destined to take the lives of some 2,100 Butte men. The worst incident occurred in the mine at which Leo was working, the Speculator. During repairs to a service shaft of the mine, one of the men unintentionally set off a massive fire with his carbide lamp, killing 167 miners — to this day the worst metallic-mine disaster in United States history. It was a grim incident for the young mining engineer, mirrored by trouble above ground. In the days that followed, Leo witnessed a resurgent unrest among labor, the mysterious lynching of its spokesman, and a swift return to autocratic company control.
Steeled by such turmoil and now experienced in negotiating with Clyde Park’s own strikers of Bill Wade and friends, Coady had plenty of wherewithal to disentangle the legal mess and get the work started again. You couldn’t tell by looking at him. He was everything a Butte miner wasn’t. Impeccably dressed in a three-piece work suit, tie, and felt hat, he was mannered and spare-worded. His cooly professorial demeanor was accented by the red Chow dog aristocratically postured at his side. In contrast to the muddy and eternally rumpled Bob Hoffman, Coady remained safely above the mud and grime in what locals saw as a “fancy” car.
-----
Clyde Park was the location of an optical calcite mine in WWII. Calcite was mined for Polaroid's Optical Ring Sight, a sighting mechanism used on naval antiaircraft guns, airborned flexible gunnery, and the bazooka. Coady was in charge of the mining project in Montana for a year. He evidently was very effective from a mining standpoint and in dealing with recalcitrant landowners.
I have more on Leo if you would like to contact me directly at: lhughes@ensafe.com.
However, I have virtually nothing about their life in Canada or pre-1920 era.
Larry
Notify Administrator about this message?
Followups:No followups yet |
| http://genforum.genealogy.com/coady/messages/159.html | ||
 |
Link to GenForum Add Forum |
|