Coal and the coal mines

by Homer Greene

It is certain that by the end of the thirteenth century the exportation of coal from Newcastle was considerable, and the new fuel had come to be largely used in London. But the people of that city conceived the idea that its use was injurious to the health of the inhabitants generally. The coal, being of the bituminous variety, burned with considerable flame and gave off a good deal of smoke, and the ignorance of the people led them into the belief that the air was contaminated and poisoned by the products of combustion. So they presented a petition to Parliament asking that the burning of coal be prohibited in the city of London. Not only was the prayer of the petitioners granted, but in order to render the prohibition effectual an act was passed making it a capital offense to burn the dreaded fuel. This was in the reign of Edward I., and is characteristic of the policy of that strong, unyielding king, whose ends, great and just perhaps, were too often attained by harsh and cruel means.

The coal industry was checked, but it was not destroyed; for, half a century later, we find Edward III. granting a license to the inhabitants of Newcastle “to dig coals and stones in the common soil of the town without the walls thereof in the place called the Castle Field and the Forth.” Afterward this town, owing to the fine coal beds in its vicinity, became one of the great centres of the British coal trade, from which fact doubtless arose that ancient saying concerning useless trouble or labor, that it is like “carrying coals to Newcastle.”

In Scotland coal was mined in the twelfth century and in Germany in the thirteenth, and the Chinese had already become familiar with its use. But in Paris the same prejudice was excited against it that had prevailed in London, and it did not come into use in that city as a household fuel until about the middle of the sixteenth century. This was also the date of its introduction into Wales, Belgium, and other European countries.

That coal was familiar, in appearance at least, to the natives of America, long before the feet of white men ever pressed American soil, cannot well be doubted. They must have seen it at its numerous outcrops; perhaps they took pieces of it in their hard hands, handled it, broke it, powdered it, or cast it away from them as useless. Indeed, it is not improbable that they should have known something of its qualities as a fuel. But of this there is no proof. The first record we have of the observation of coal in this country was made by Father Hennepin, a French explorer, in 1679. On a map of his explorations he marked the site of a coal mine on the bank of the Illinois River above Fort Crevecœur, near the present town of Ottawa. In his record of travel he states that in the country then occupied by the Pimitoui or Pimitwi Indians “there are mines of coal, slate, and iron.” The oldest coal workings in America are doubtless those in what is known as the Richmond or Chesterfield coal bed, near Richmond in Chesterfield and Powhatan counties in the State of Virginia. It is supposed that coal was discovered and mined there as early as 1750. But by whom and under what circumstances the discovery was made we have only tradition to inform us. This says that one day, during the year last named, a certain boy, living in that vicinity, went out into an unfrequented district on a private and personal fishing excursion. Either the fish bit better than he had thought they would, or for some other cause his supply of bait ran out, and it became necessary for him to renew it. Hunting around in the small creeks and inlets for crawfish with which to bait his hook, he chanced to stumble upon the outcrop of a coal bed which crosses the James River about twelve miles above Richmond. He made his discovery known, and further examination disclosed a seam of rich bituminous coal, which has since been conceded to be a formation of Mesozoic time rather than of the Carboniferous age. Mining operations were soon begun, and were carried on so successfully that by the year 1775 the coal was in general use in the vicinity for smithing and domestic purposes. It played a part in the war for independence by entering into the manufacture of cannon balls, and by 1789 it had achieved so much of a reputation that it was being shipped to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and sold in those markets. But the mines were operated by slave labor, and mining was carried on in the most primitive fashion for three quarters of a century. So late as 1860 the improved systems of mining, long in use in the North, were still comparatively unknown at the Virginia mines.

During the war of the rebellion these mines were seized by the Confederate government and operated by it, in order to obtain directly the necessary fuel for purposes of modern warfare; and upon the cessation of hostilities the paralysis which had fallen upon all other Southern industries fell also upon this. But with the revival of business, mining was again begun in the Richmond field, and from 1874 to the present time the industry has prospered and grown, and Virginia has furnished to the country at large a considerable amount of an excellent quality of bituminous coal. This coal bed covers an area of about 180 square miles, and has an average thickness of twenty-four feet. It is supposed to contain about 50,000,000 of tons yet unmined.

Another of the early discoveries of coal in the United States was that of the Rhode Island anthracite bed in 1760. Mines began to be regularly worked here in 1808, but only about 750,000 tons, all told, have been taken from them. For reasons which have been already given these mines cannot be profitably worked in competition with the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, in which the location and formation of the coal beds are greatly superior.

It is impossible to say when the coal of the great bituminous district of Pennsylvania and Ohio was first seen by white men. In the summer of 1755 General Braddock led his army through western Pennsylvania by a military road to that terrible defeat and slaughter in which he himself received his death wound. This road, laid out by the army’s engineers and graded by its men, was so well built that its course can still be traced, and it is seen to have crossed the outcrop of the Pittsburgh coal seam in many places. It is not improbable that a large number of the soldiers in the English army were familiar with the appearance of coal, and knew how to mine it and use it. Indeed, Colonel James Burd, who was engaged in the construction of the road, claims to have burned about a bushel of this coal on his camp-fire at that time.

Some of the English soldiers who survived that terrible disaster to their arms afterward returned and purchased lands in the vicinity, and it is reasonable to suppose that the coal was dug and put to use by them. A lease, still in existence, dated April 11, 1767, making a grant of lands on “Coal Pitt Creek,” in Westmoreland County, indicates that there were coal openings there at that date. Captain Thomas Hutchins, who visited Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) in 1760, mentions the fact that he found an open coal mine on the opposite side of the Monongahela River, from which coal was being taken for the use of the garrison.

From 1770 to 1777 it was common for maps of certain portions of the Ohio River country to have marked on them sites of coal beds along the shores of that stream in regions which are now known to contain seams of the great bituminous deposit.

Probably the Susquehanna River region was the first in which this coal was dug systematically and put to use. It was burned by blacksmiths in their forges, and as early as 1785 the river towns were supplied with it by Samuel Boyd, who shipped it from his mines in arks. In 1813 Philip Karthaus took a quantity of coal to Fort Deposit, and sent it thence by canal to Philadelphia. After this he sent cargoes regularly to Philadelphia and Baltimore, and sold them readily at the rate of thirty-three cents per bushel. This trade was stopped, however, by the building of dams across the Susquehanna, and it was not until many years afterward that the mineral resources of this section of the coal field were developed again through the introduction of railroads.