About 9:30 a.m. May 27, 1925, the community of Coal Glen in southern Chatham County was rocked by an explosion at the Carolina Coal Co. mine. Two more explosions quickly followed.

Rescuers spent hours trying to save the trapped miners, but rocks blocked the shaft 1,000 feet down. In the end, only two men survived.

As a West Virginia mining community dealt with disaster this week, Beard, now 93, remembered the day her brother-in-law, Henry G. Hall, was killed.

She was at her family's home in Coal Glen when a man came running to the door. "He told us to get all the milk you can and take it to the mine," she said.

It was thought that if miners drank milk, the heavy liquid would force toxic gases from their lungs.

Beard recalled looking from atop a hill at the billows of black smoke below. She heard the whirring of fans in the distance.

According to a News & Observer article from May 28, 1925, "great fans" were used to suck toxic air out of the mine and push clean air down the shaft as rescuers worked to save the men.

Beard said her family headed a mile out of town to escape the fumes. When they returned at dusk, "I could hear the women crying and carrying on," she said.

By nightfall, 5,000 people had amassed near the mine shaft to learn the fate of the men, according to The News & Observer's article by Ben Dixon MacNeill.

It took five days to recover the bodies. The deaths of the 53 miners left about 40 women widows and 80 children fatherless.

Beard's sister, Clara, had a hard time recovering from her loss, she said. The couple had no children.

"It was bad for her," she said.

The mine's legacy

Remnants of the tragedy remain, though the town changed its name to Farmville after the accident.

At Bud's Barbecue restaurant in Cumnock, just over the Deep River from the mine, framed newspaper articles about the 1925 disaster hang on the back wall near the kitchen.

Owner Phil Burns said his mother collected the Sanford Herald articles, and his brother laminated them and placed them in wooden frames. One yellowed article from 1975 is about the 50th anniversary of the disaster.

"We have a lot of people come by who say, 'My dad worked in the coal mines,' " Burns said.

The mine closed for good in the 1950s. Today, the site is home to General Timber, a company that pressure-treats wood for fences.

The mine shaft, however, still sits on the property, camouflaged by tall red tips. If you squeeze between two bushes, you can see the half-oval entrance and beyond that, two rusty doors and the tracks that carried carts of men down the shaft into the darkness.

Art Williams, owner of General Timber, said he never goes to the mine and doesn't think about it. His company, though, pumps water from it to use in treating the wood. The mine was flooded years ago to remove methane gas, he said.

A few hundred feet from the entrance to General Timber lies the Farmville Cemetery. A small stone memorial to the miners sits near the entrance.

Beyond it are the final resting places for some of the men who were killed, including W.E. Byerly, who was 47. His tombstone reads "Loved by God and man."

(Researcher Denise Jones contributed to this article.)