Morewood massacre project 4
The Morewood massacre was an armed labor-union conflict in Morewood, Pennsylvania, in Westmoreland County, west of the present-day borough Mount Pleasant in 1891. Nine coal miners were shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies during a strike for higher wages and an eight-hour work day.
The United Mine Workers union, formed only the previous year, organized the strike against the local coke works owned by industrialist Henry Clay Frick. After a work stoppage beginning on February 2, weeks of increasing unrest, and evictions of mining families from company-controlled property, a crowd of about a thousand strikers accompanied by a brass band marched on the company store in the early morning hours of Friday, April 3. Deputized members of the 10th regiment of the National Guard under the command of Captain Loar fired several volleys into the crowd, killing six strikers outright and fatally wounding three more. Thousands attended their funeral.
A Pennsylvania state historical marker describing the event was erected in 2000 at the Route 119 overpass on Route 981 (Morewood Road).