Although it has been within comparatively recent times that coal has come into general use as a fuel, yet there can be no doubt that it was discovered, and that its qualities were known, many centuries ago. To prove its use by the ancients, mention is sometimes made of a passage from the writings of Theophrastus, a pupil and friend of Aristotle and for many years the head of the peripatetic school of philosophy. This passage dates back to about 300 B. C., and is as follows: “Those substances that are called coals and are broken for use are earthy, but they kindle and burn like wooden coals. They are found in Liguria where there is amber, and in Elis over the mountains toward Olympus. They are used by the smiths.”
The word “coal,” however, as used in the Bible and other ancient books, usually means charcoal, or burning wood. It is claimed, and not without plausibility, that coal was mined in Britain prior to the Roman invasion. The cinder heaps found among ruins of the time of Roman supremacy in the island point to quite an extensive use of coal by the people of that age. But no writings have been found recording the use of coal prior to 852 A. D. In that year twelve cartloads of “fossil fuel,” or “pit coal,” were received by the abbey of Peterborough in England, and the receipt was recorded. It is said that coal first began to be systematically mined in Great Britain about the year 1180.
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.
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.
In 1776 the proprietary government of Pennsylvania had an armory at Carlisle in that State, in which they were manufacturing firearms to be used by the Continental troops in the war with Great Britain; and the first coal ever sent out from the Wyoming valley was shipped by them to Carlisle during that year and the succeeding years of the war, for use in their armory.
The next discoveries of anthracite were made in what is now known as the Southern coal field. It had long been a matter of tradition among the stolid German farmers of Pennsylvania that coal existed in the rugged hills along the Lehigh River, but no one succeeded in finding it there until the year 1791. It was then discovered by one Philip Ginther, a hunter and backwoodsman, who had built a rough cabin in the forest near the Mauch Chunk mountain, and there gave to himself and his family a precarious support by killing game, large and small, carrying it to the nearest settlement, and exchanging it at the village store for the necessaries of life. Telling the story afterward, himself, he said that at one time the supply of food in his cabin chanced to run out, and he started into the woods with his gun in quest of something which should satisfy the hunger of those who were at home. It was a most unsuccessful hunting expedition. The morning passed, the afternoon went by, night approached, but his game-bag was still empty. He was tired, hungry, and sadly disappointed. A drizzling rain set in as he started homeward across the Mauch Chunk mountain, darkness was coming rapidly on, and despondency filled his mind as he thought of the expectant faces of little ones at home to whom he was returning empty-handed. Making his way slowly through the thick, wet undergrowth, and still looking about him, if perchance something in the way of game might yet come within the range of his gun, his foot happened to strike a hard substance which rolled away before him. He looked down at it, and then bent over and picked it up, and saw by the deepening twilight that it was black. He was familiar with the traditions of the country concerning the existence of stone coal in this region, and he began to wonder if this, indeed, was not a specimen of it. He carried the black lump home with him that night, and the next day he set out with it to find Colonel Jacob Weiss at Fort Allen, now Weissport, to whom he exhibited what he had found. Colonel Weiss became deeply interested in the matter, and brought the specimen to Philadelphia, where he submitted it to the inspection of John Nicholson, Michael Hillegas, and Charles Cist. These men, after assuring themselves that it was really anthracite coal, authorized Colonel Weiss to make such a contract with Ginther as would induce him to point out the exact spot where the mineral was found. It happened that the hunter coveted a vacant piece of land in the vicinity containing a fine water-power and mill-site, and on Colonel Weiss agreeing to obtain a patent for him from the State for the desired lot of land, he very readily gave all the information in his possession concerning the “stone coal.”
In the Pottsville district of the Southern anthracite region coal was discovered at about the same time as in the Mauch Chunk field. This discovery too was made by accident, and the discoverer in this case also was a hunter, Nicholas Allen. He had been out with his gun all day, and at nightfall had found himself too far away from his home to make the attempt to reach it. He accordingly built a fire under a projecting ledge at the foot of Broad Mountain, and, lying down by it, soon fell asleep. He was wakened in the night by a strong light shining on his eyes, and by the sensation of great heat. Springing to his feet, he discovered that the ledge itself was burning, or, as he afterward expressed it, “that the mountain was on fire.” He could not understand the phenomenon, and remained in the vicinity until morning, when he saw, by daylight, that what he had thought to be a ledge of rocks was really a projecting outcrop of mineral coal, which had become ignited from his camp-fire of sticks. Whether this story is or is not authentic, it is certain that no practical results attended the discovery of coal in this region. It was not until twenty-six years after Obadiah Gore’s experiments in the Wyoming valley that coal was successfully burned here in a blacksmith’s forge. The attempt was made by one Whetstone, and met with the same marked success that had attended the earlier effort. But owing to the difficulty still ordinarily experienced in combustion, the coal of this region was not generally used until after the year 1806. In that year David Berlin, another blacksmith, experimented with it in his forge, with such complete success that a new impetus was given to the coal trade, mining was resumed, and the new fuel came into general use in the blacksmiths’ shops of the vicinity.
In the Middle anthracite district coal was not discovered until 1826. This discovery also was made by a hunter, John Charles. On one of his hunting expeditions he chanced to find a groundhog’s hole, and, laying down his rifle, he began to dig for his game. In the course of the excavation he uncovered a projecting shelf of stone coal. He made his discovery known, further explorations were set on foot, the coal bed was located, and a company called the Hazleton Coal Company was formed to work the field.
From these several points of discovery the search for anthracite coal was extended in all directions, the limits of the beds were eventually defined, and each field was surveyed and mapped with much care.