A Widow Sues the Coal Company That Buried Her Husband
Nettie Jones wants $10,000 from the Oregon Improvement Company for the death of Albert J. Jones in the Franklin mine explosion of August 1894 — one of a string of suits the company is answering by questioning whether the survivors even lived in Washington.
The complaint in the suit of Nettie Jones vs. the Oregon Improvement Company for $10,000 damages for the death of her husband, Albert J. Jones, in the explosion at the Franklin mine August 24, 1894, was filed in the superior court yesterday. The allegations follow in general the complaints already filed in a number of similar suits. The Oregon Improvement Company has made affidavit that Mrs. Jones was not a resident of the state at the time the accident occurred, and demanded a bond for security for costs.
“The Oregon Improvement Company has made affidavit that Mrs. Jones was not a resident of the state at the time the accident occurred, and demanded a bond for security for costs.”
Franklin, in the coal country southeast of Seattle, was a company town whose mine blew up in 1894 and killed dozens of men; today its ruins sit in a King County preserve. Then as now, the fight after an industrial disaster was less about grief than about liability — whether a dead man's family could even get into court, and in which county. The company's opening move was not to dispute the explosion but to question whether the widow belonged to Washington at all.
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