In January of 1936, a 54-year-old Wapello County farmer and coal miner named Robert Lee Ruby lost his life in one of the area’s coal mines.
At the time, his death was considered a mining accident. But questions about exactly what happened have remained for generations.
Robert Ruby was born near Ollie, Iowa, and lived in the Blakesburg area. He was a farmer and also worked in the coal mines to support his family. Ruby had seven children with his wife, Myra, who had died several years earlier.
On Saturday, January 11, 1936, Ruby was working at the Bidwell Fuel Company mine located on the Henry Oswalt farm, about a mile south of Christiansburg in Wapello County.
Christiansburg was once a small rural community in the area, but today it is considered a ghost town.
According to newspaper accounts, Ruby was working with a coal car at the mine that afternoon. At some point, he went toward the mine cage and fell approximately 87 feet down the shaft. The coal car also went down into the shaft.
Ruby was killed in the fall.
The circumstances surrounding the accident were not clear.
There were no witnesses who could explain exactly what happened. Wapello County Coroner John Drake investigated the death but was unable to determine how Ruby ended up in the shaft.
One possible explanation was that Ruby had pushed the empty coal car toward the mine cage. The cage was operated by a horse, and it was believed the horse may have moved, causing the cage to rise and leaving the opening exposed. Ruby may have then fallen into the shaft.
But that was only one possibility.
No inquest was planned, and the death was ultimately treated as an accident.
Ruby’s funeral was held January 14, 1936, at the Christiansburg church. He was buried at Memorial Lawn Cemetery in Ottumwa.
For many years, that appeared to be the end of the story.
Then, decades later, Ruby’s family began talking about what they believed had really happened.
A granddaughter, Linda Jones, found an old newspaper clipping about Ruby’s death among her mother’s belongings. She began asking family members about the circumstances surrounding his death.
What she heard raised a much different possibility.
Family members told her they believed Ruby had been pushed into the mine shaft.
One relative reportedly said, “If I am not mistaken, they think he was pushed and did not fall.”
Another family member reportedly said they believed Ruby had been murdered but that no one knew why.
There was also a more troubling part of the family story.
Ruby’s daughter was a young teenager when her father died. According to later family accounts, she claimed that she had seen the person who pushed her father.
But she never identified that person.
Family members said she refused to reveal the person’s identity and eventually took the information to her grave.
There was also speculation within the family that money could have been involved. Ruby was considered to be doing reasonably well financially during the Depression because he farmed and worked in the coal mines. Family members remembered him as someone who helped people who were struggling.
However, there is no evidence showing that money was actually a motive.
There is also no surviving evidence identifying a suspect.
That is what makes Ruby’s death so difficult to classify.
The newspaper account from 1936 supports the fact that Ruby died after an unwitnessed fall of approximately 87 feet inside the Bidwell mine. The coroner could not determine exactly how the accident happened.
The later murder theory comes from Ruby’s family and was passed down through the generations.
There was never a known arrest or prosecution connected to Ruby’s death.
Today, the case is considered undetermined.
Robert Lee Ruby died more than 90 years ago, and nearly everyone who could have known what happened that afternoon is now gone.
Was Ruby simply the victim of a tragic mining accident?
Or did someone deliberately push him into that mine shaft?
We may never know.
What we do know is that on January 11, 1936, Robert Lee Ruby went to work at the Bidwell coal mine south of Christiansburg.
He never came home.
And somewhere along the way, an ordinary mining accident became a question that his family would carry for generations.
