Thurber Historical Association.

The Thurber Historical Association traces its origins to the loosely organized, informal reunions of Thurber residents and their descendants in the late 1920's. The Thurber Historical Association was officially incorporated on February 27, 1969. The majority of its members continue to be descendants of the coal miners who worked the Thurber mines from the late 1880's until the mid-1920's.

The agenda of the Thurber Historical Association has grown to include much more than reunions, which it still holds on an annual basis. The Thurber Historical Association actively endeavors to restore, preserve, and promote the history of Thurber, Texas, and the role the history of this once prosperous Texas boomtown plays in the overall history of the United States. Two of its most active members are Ruby Schmidt, historian and genealogist and the source of these records, and Dr. Leo Bielinski, who has spent many hours writing and preserving local history.

Once a major bituminous coal producing town in Texas, Thurber grew to be a thriving boomtown between 1918-1921. The largely migratory population of this town has been estimated at 10,000 at the height of Thurber's coal production in 1920-21. Coal was first discovered in Thurber, Texas, by William Whipple Johnson in the mid-1800's. Johnson experienced many labor difficulties with the widely diverse ethnic groups that worked the mines and the ever present unions attempting to organize them, and it was only after the mining operation was sold to the Texas & Pacific Coal Company in 1888, with the anti-union stance of its president Robert Dickey Hunter, that Thurber would reach its prominence as a bituminous coal producer. The boomtown of Thurber would be a wholly owned company town until the union finally organized the miners in 1903 after lengthy negotiations with W. K. Gordon, Sr., who was the manager of the operation in Thurber for the Texas & Pacific Coal Company at that time.

The history of Thurber, Texas, is more than a look at the tumultuous coal market of the early twentieth century, it is also a case study in the labor practices of the Texas & Pacific Coal Company and the practices of the labor unions that struggled for power in this small central Texas town. The growth of Thurber, and its lightening quick demise after the discovery of oil in nearby Ranger, Texas, have left a rich legacy of Texas history whose preservation and promotion is the primary focus of the Thurber Historical Association

Sources:

The New Handbook of Texas . Volume 6. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996. pp. 488-489.

Schmidt, Ruby. Interview by Sandi Ramos, 26 September 1997.

From the guide to the Thurber Historical Association Records AR399., 1888-1992, (Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library)