Coal and the coal mines

by Homer Greene

In the Pittsburgh region the demand for coal increased with the increase of population, and at the beginning of the present century it was in general use, not only in the manufacturing industries but also as a domestic fuel, throughout that section of country. The first coal sent from Pittsburgh to an eastern market was shipped to Philadelphia in 1803. It was carried by the Louisiana, a boat of 350 tons burden, and was sold at the rate of thirty-seven and a half cents per bushel. From that time the increase in the mining of bituminous coal in the Pittsburgh region has been steady and enormous. Its presence, its quality and abundance, have induced the establishment of great manufacturing enterprises in that section of the State, and many millions of tons of it are sent every year to the markets of the seaboard.

Pennsylvania was a region much in favor with the North American Indians, and it is more than probable that they were aware, to some extent, of the existence of mineral wealth beneath her soil, long before white men ever came among them.

Besides the numerous outcroppings of coal which, in their journeyings, they must have crossed and recrossed for centuries, there were many places where the coal seams, having been cut through by creeks and rivers, were exposed fully to view. In this way, in the Wyoming district, the seven feet vein along the Nanticoke Creek had been disclosed, and the nine feet vein on Ransom’s Creek at Plymouth; while at Pittston the Susquehanna River had bared the coal seams in the faces of its rocky banks, and up the Lackawanna the black strata were frequently visible. But whatever knowledge the Indians had on the subject was, with proverbial reticence, kept to themselves. It is said that about the year 1750 a party of Indians brought a bag of coal to a gunsmith living near Nazareth in Pennsylvania, but refused to say where they had obtained it. The gunsmith burned it successfully in the forge which he used for the purpose of repairing their guns.

The presumption that the Indians knew something of the uses of coal, and actually mined it, is borne out by the following incident: In the year 1766 a trader by the name of John Anderson was settled at Wyoming, and carried on a small business as a shopkeeper, trading largely with the red men. In September of that year a company of six Nanticoke, Conoy, and Mohican Indians visited the governor at Philadelphia, and made to him the following address:—

“Brother,—As we came down from Chenango we stopped at Wyoming, where we had a mine in two places, and we discovered that some white people had been at work in the mine, and had filled three canoes with the ore; and we saw their tools with which they had dug it out of the ground, where they had made a hole at least forty feet long and five or six feet deep. It happened formerly that some white people did take, now and then, only a small bit and carry it away, but these people have been working at the mine, and have filled their canoes. We desire that you will tell us whether you know anything of this matter, or if it be done by your consent. We inform you that there is one John Anderson, a trader, now living at Wyoming, and we suspect that he, or somebody by him, has robbed our mine. This man has a store of goods there, and it may happen when the Indians see their mine robbed they will come and take away his goods.”

There is little doubt that the mines referred to were coal mines. The presence of coal on the same side of the river a few miles below Wyoming was certainly known, if not at that time then very soon afterward; for in 1768 Charles Stewart made a survey of the Manor of Sunbury opposite Wilkes Barre for the “Proprietaries’” government, and on the original map of the survey “stone coal” is noted as appearing on the site of what is now called Rosshill.

This valley of Wyoming, the seat of such vast mineral wealth, was first settled by people from Connecticut in 1762, and in the fall of that year they reported the discovery of coal.

These energetic, enterprising Yankee settlers could not fail to know the location of the coal beds before they had been long in the valley. Some of them were probably familiar with the English bituminous coals, which were then being exported in small quantities to America under the name of “sea coal;” and from the fact that our anthracite was known to them as “stone coal” it is probable that there were those among them who knew that the English people had a very hard coal which they could not burn, and to which they had given the name “stone coal.” Specimens of this Wyoming valley stone coal had already been gathered and sent to England for examination. Indeed, there is no doubt that the first anthracite coal ever found by white men in the United States was discovered in this valley. But these Yankee settlers could not make their stone coal burn. Repeated trials met with repeated failures. There was one among them, however, Obadiah Gore, a blacksmith, who would not be discouraged. In 1769 he took a quantity of these coals to the blacksmith’s shop conducted by him and his brother, put them in his forge, and continued his efforts and experiments until finally the black lumps yielded to his persistency, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the blue flames dart from them, and the red color creep over them, and of feeling the intense heat sent out by their combustion. But their ignition and burning were dependent upon the strong air current sent through them by the bellows; without that he could do nothing with them.

So this Yankee blacksmith, who was afterwards one of the associate judges of the courts of Luzerne County, became, so far as is known, the first white man to demonstrate practically the value of anthracite coal as a fuel. The success of Gore’s experiments soon became known, other smiths began to recognize the merits of the lately despised stone coal, and it was not long before the forge fires of nearly every smithy in the region were ablaze with anthracite.

The fame of the new fuel soon spread beyond the limits of the valley, and if the difficulties of transportation checked its use elsewhere, the knowledge of how to use it in forges and furnaces was not uncommon. The demand for it overcame, at times, even the obstacles in the way of shipment, and it was sent to points at long distances from the mines.