Biographical and historical cyclopedia of Indiana and Armstrong counties, Pennsylvania, Part 9

Author: Wiley, Samuel T. ed. cn
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Philadelphia [J.M. Gresham & co.]
Number of Pages: 652

USA > Indiana > Biographical and historical cyclopedia of Indiana and Armstrong counties, Pennsylvania > Part 9
USA > Pennsylvania > Armstrong County > Biographical and historical cyclopedia of Indiana and Armstrong counties, Pennsylvania > Part 9

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The Holland Land Company held several tracts of land in this county, and its history will be given briefly.

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1,822

Centre

GEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SKETCH OF

The Holland Laud company was composed of eleven merchants of the city of Amsterdam, who had acquired wealth by careful investments and fair profits. They had spare capital and sought to invest in the wild lands of western New York and Pennsylvania. Their invest- ments were made from 1792 to 1800. "These Dutch merchants were far in advance of the prevailing sentiment in Europe, as to the success and permanency of the experiment of free government." The title of the Holland Pur- chase is traced from James II., William and Mary and Charles II. to Robert Morris, who sold 3,300,000 acres of land in western New York, on December 31, 1798, to Wilhelm Wil- link, Nicholas Van Staphorst, Pieter Van Eeghen, Hendrick Vollenhoven and Rutger Schemmelpeuninck. This was their largest purchase from Morris and included a large portion of the land which had been in dispute between New York and Massachusetts for sev- eral years. In 1792 the above-named members of the Holland company purchased several large tracts of land in what are now Indiana and Armstrong counties.

Robert Morris was very prominent in the . Revolutionary war and took a great interest in the development of western Pennsylvania and western New York.

"It is an often demonstrated truth, that ' money is the sinew of war.' It was eminent- ly so during the revolutionary struggle, when its strength and usefulness in the cause of freedom were controlled by Robert Morris, a wealthy and influential merchant of Philadel- phia. He was born in Lancashire, England, in January, 1733. His father was a Liverpool merchant extensively engaged in the American trade, who came to America in 1744, and set- tled on the eastern shore of Chesapeake bay. His son, Robert, with his grandmother, followed in 1746, and was placed in a school in Phila- delphia, where an inefficient teacher wasted his time and patience. In 1749 young Morris was

placed in the couuting-room of Charles Willing, of Philadelphia ; and on the death of liis em- ployer, in 1754, he entered into a partnership with that gentleman's son, which continued thirty-nine years. That firm soon became the most wealthy and extensive among the importers of Philadelphia, and consequently they were the heaviest losers by the non-importation agree- ments, which gave such a deadly blow at the infant commerce of the colonies, after the pas- sage of the Stamp Act. Yet they patriotically joined the league, and made the sacrifice for the good of the cause of right.

" In November, 1775, Mr. Morris was elected to a seat in the Continental Congress, where his exceeding great usefulness was soon discovered. Its appreciation was manifested by placing him upon committees, haviug in charge the 'ways and means' for carrying on the war. In the Spring of 1776 he was chosen, by Congress, a special commissiouer to negotiate bills of ex- change, and to take otlier measures to procure. money for government. At that time no man's credit, in America, for wealth and honor, stood higher than that of Robert Morris. He was again elected to Congress after the Declaration of Independence had been adopted, and being favorable to that measure, he signed the docu- ment, with most of the others, on the second day of August following. Toward the close of that year, when the half-naked, half-famished American army were about to cease the strug- gle, in despair, he evinced his faith in the suc- cess of the conflict, and his own warm patriot- ism, by loaning for the government, on his own responsibility, ten thousand dollars. It gave food and clothing to the gallant little band under Washington, who achieved the noble victory at Trenton, and a new 'and powerful impetus was thereby given to the Revolution.

" Mr. Morris was continually active in the great cause during the whole of the war. He fitted out many privateers. Some were lost, others were successful in bringing him rich

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INDIANA COUNTY.

prizes ; and at the return of peace he estimated that his losses and gains were about equal. In May, 1781, about the gloomiest period of the struggle, Mr. Morris submitted to Congress a plan for a National Bank. It was approved, and the Bank of North America, with Robert Morris as its soul, was established, and became a very efficient fiscal agent. He was assisted by Gouverneur Morris ; and through the active agency, in financial matters, of these gentlemen, much of the success which resulted in the cap- ture of Cornwallis, at Yorktown, must be attributed. During that year Mr. Morris ac- cepted the office of Financial Agent (Secretary of the Treasury) of the United States. After the war he was twice a member of the Penn- sylvania Legislature, and he was one of the framers of the Federal Constitution. He was a senator in the first Congress convened under that instrument; and Washington appointed him his first Secretary of the Treasury. He declined the office, and named Alexander Ham- ilton as more capable, than himself, to perform the duties. At the close of his senatorial term Mr. Morris retired from public life, not so rich in money, by half, as when he entered the arena. Soon the remainder of his large fortune was lost by speculations in wild land, in the western part of the State of New York, after- ward purchased by an associatiou known as The Holland Land Company. On the 8th of May, 1806, Robert Morris, the great Financier of the Revolution, died in comparative poverty, at the age of a little more than seventy-three years."

"The geological work of 1877 in Indiana county has, among other things, established beyond doubt, that the rocks of the Lower Pro- ductive Coal measures cross the great anticlinal of Laurel Hill from the First Basin without suffering any material modification or change, either as regards their total thickness or in the number of their euclosed coal beds, limestones, &c .; and further, that they continue in what

for all practical purposes may be considered the same condition across the several basins to the west, as far at least as the eastern border of Armstrong county, where work will be resumed in the season of 1878, and continued thence to the Allegheny Valley, to be joined on there with the very complete work of Prof. White, extending west from the Allegheny river to the Ohio State line.

" The surprising regularity of the Lower Pro- ductive group throughout-the whole First Basin from the Moshannon to the Maryland line, is familiar to every reader of the Pennsylvania reports. This regularity, remarkable as it is, is no greater than prevails in the same rocks in the Second, Third and Fourth basins. One may go all over Indiana county from the Cone- maugh river to the Jefferson county line, and from Cambria to Armstrong, without exper- iencing any difficulty in identifying the coal beds and limestone deposits of the Lower Pro- ductive series, by the same guides that were used in operating in the First basin.

"The dominaut rocks of the series, as they pre- sent themselves in the First basiu, are repeated in Indiana county wherever these measures rise above water level; and here as there they are separated by very nearly the same vertical inter- vals, in many cases the intervals beiug exactly the same as in the section considered to be typi- cal of the Lower Productive measures in tlie First Great Basin. From this, however, it must not be supposed that an argument favoring the absolute parallelism of the strata would be pre- sented, because any such supposition is suffi- ciently disproved by the frequent local varia- tions in the measures, displayed either by the contraction or expansion of their bulk, or by slight modifications of the mineral character of the strata. It is, however, a fact, in whatever light it may be viewed, that the typical vertical section of the First Basin is repeated again and again in every basin of Indiana county, agree- ing too in every way with the work in the same

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GEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SKETCH OF

basins in Clearfield and Jefferson counties to the north. This is sufficient to show the regu- larity with which these measures extend over miles and miles of territory, and while not uni- formly parallel to a sufficient degree to en- able us to identify coal-beds in every case by means of the vertical distances separating them, yet the variations from what we may justly consider the normal condition can never produce confusion after the entire section is worked out.

"One of the chief points of interest in the In- diana County Survey, was the tracing westward of the now famous Johnstown Cement bed,- the rock that, for so long a time, was wrongly associated with the classical Ferriferous lime- stone of the Allegheny Valley. The non-iden- tity of these two strata was sufficiently pointed out and proved in the Report of Progress for 1876, and the subject requires no further elabo- ration. As regards the character and thickness of the rock in Indiana county, the reader must be referred to the detailed chapters of the vol- ume, in which every locality where the stratum was observed is noted. But it may here be said that this limestone band continues in an un- broken sheet westward across all the anticlinal and synclinal flexures of the strata to re-appear occasionally but in a very attenuated form in Mr. White's sections.

"The geological horizon of the true ferriferous limestone is so seldom above water-level west of Chestnut Ridge in Indiana county, and where it rises above the drainage line it has been so infrequently exposed by the farmers, that it would be inexpedient to attempt to de- fine its true relationship to the lower part of the group, because the sections in this region of country are necessarily imperfect. But its re- lationship with regard to the upper strata of the Lower Productive group, has been very clearly made out, and found to agree closely with the conditions prevailing in the Allegheny Valley.

"The position of the Ferriferous limestone as regards the lower strata of the group, may at the present writing fairly be regarded as uncer- tain. Some of the sections obtained in Indiana county would indicate that this limestone strata occupies a position between what we have re- garded in these reports as A and B coals, and there is no reason to doubt the entire correctness of these sections. Such a construction, though it would explain many facts observed in the First Basin, would nevertheless be in conflict with what for years has been held as the correct position of the Ferriferous limestone in the col- umn of the Lower Productive measures. As elsewhere intimated the facts at hand are insuf- ficient to reverse the opinion formed long ago by able and competent geologists; but it must at least be regarded as an open question and one that will be decided by the Survey of Armstrong county.

"Excepting in the case of the Upper and Lower Freeport beds, all names of coals liave been carefully omitted from this report; in their place capital letters are used, the same lettering that was employed all through the First basin.

"It was shown that the triple form of the Freeport group, - a classification adopted at the beginning of the present Survey, could not be maintained, and that to prevent inevitable con- fusion in the future, it was necessary to return to the original classification of the Freeport coals into two beds,-the Upper and Lower Freeport. This has been done in the present report, the name Middle Freeport disappearing from the list. The same bed is now called the Lower Freeport, but retains its letter of the First Basin, namely D'. The Lower Freeport of the First Basin report, goes for the present without a name, being known only by the let- ter D. It is the Darlington coal of Mr. White's sections, and throughout Indiana coun- ty as well as in the southern part of the First Basin it comes into the measures directly above the Johnstown cement bed.

INDIANA COUNTY.

"In the following schedule is shown the rela- tive position occupied by the principal strata of the Lower Productive series, together with the classification and lettering adopted for the coal beds in this report: It will be observed that the Ferriferous limestone appears under- neath coal-bed C, between this and bed B, where it is at present supposed to belong.

"For purposes of comparison the schedule used in the First Basin reports is placed side by side with that employed in the present volume.

INDIANA COUNTY.

FIRST BASIN.

Upper Freeport coal (E). Upper Freeport coal (E).

Freeport limestone.

Lower Freeport coal (D'). Middle Freeport coal (D'). Lower Freeport limestone.Middle Freeport limestone. Freeport sandstone.

Coal bed D.

Freeport sandstone. Lower Freeport coal (D).

Johnstown cement bed. Coal bed C.

Johnstown cement bed. Kittanning coal (C).

Ferriferous limestone.

Absent

Coal bed B'.

Coal bed B.

Clarion coal (B).

Coal bed A'. Coal bed A'.

Sandstone.

Coal bed A.

Brookville coal (A).

"The survey of the Lower Barren rocks in Indiana county, yielded very few reliable sec- tions. One of the best and most important, was obtained at Dilltown on Black Lick creek in the Ligonier Basin ; this section extends with- out a break from the Upper Freeport coal to the Morgantown sandstone, and although not complete in all its details, yet it shows many interesting features which resemble closely those observed in the same rocks in Somerset county, If to this Dilltown section be added the measures observed at Blairsville between the Morgantown sandstone and Pittsburgh Coal, the Barren Measure column will be com- plete, so far as its lengthi is concerned.

"The Western uplands of the county, though largely covered by Lower Barren rocks, contrib)- ute very little to our knowledge of the geology of these measures. In studying them the same

difficulties were encountered that have been met with by every geologist operating in these rocks in the western part of the State, namely, meagre exposures embracing only a few feet of rocks, and separated by wide horizontal inter- vals. Under such circumstances to build up a column of measures, it is necessary to supply numerous missing links to the chain, and in these gaps it frequently happens that we pass over the only recognized horizons of the group, so that our section teaches us nothing. The very nature of these strata causes them in weathering to conceal their basset edges, and excepting for the limestone deposits enclosed in them they offer no inducement to the farmer to explore them. In the natural exposures only the harder strata of the group are ex- posed, the small coal-beds being generally con- cealed beneath a mass of soft crumbling shale.

" But certain members of the series have al- ready been recognized as steadfast, and as con- stituting reliable horizons. These were repeat- edly identified at such parts of the county as in- clude them ; but the coals and limestones of the Berlin group, though likely present in some rec- ognizable form, could not always be satisfactorily established.

" The thickness of the group varies but little, maintaining an average of about 600 feet. These are its dimensions at Blairsville, and also at Saltsburg, the only points in the county where the entire series can be measured.

" The best known and most widely recognized members of the series are the following, omit- ting for the most part the coals of the Berlin group :

" The Little Pittsburgh Coal. The Little Pittsburgh Limestone.

The Connellsville Sandstone.

The Morgantown Sandstone.

The Elk Lick Coal.

The Green or Crinoidal Limestone.

The Black Fossiliferous Limestone. The Philson Coal.

GEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SKETCH OF

The Philson Limestone. The Gallitzin Coal. The Mahoning Sandstone.

Mineral resources.

" Excepting the small patches of Upper Pro- ductive measures at Blairsville and Saltsburg, the Lower Productive group are the only rocks that can be depended upon for coal in Indiana County ; and by reference to the geological map it will be seen at a glance that west of Chestnut Ridge these measures are chiefly below the pres- ent water line of the streams. They therefore underlie the whole of the western uplands, and to reach them at many points would require deep shafts, but fortunately for this part of the county such a necessity is avoided by sufficient coal having been raised at a few localities above water level for a short distance by the anticlinal axes. Cheap fuel, therefore, while not every- where obtainable in the western townships, is easily accessible from almost any point.

"In the Ligonier Basin (east of Chestnut Ridge) the greater part of the area is occupied by Lower Productive rocks, and coal therefore abounds in that section in prodigious quantities. Many hillsides contain for a long distance the entire Lower Productive group with all its en- closed coal beds, limestones, &c. Some day these vast stores of fuel will be needed for the arts and manufactures.

"The amount of available limestone in the county is no less great than the coal, while its distribution is wider and much more even, for layers of this valuable rock are intercalated not only in the Lower Productive group, but in the Barren series as well. Its use as a fertilizer of the soil does not seem yet to be fully appreciated in all parts of the county, and its too sparing use will account in large part for the unsatis- factory results frequently obtained by the farmers in tilling the land. Here and there, however, the advantages arising from its utili- zation are understood by the farmers, whose

fields present then a striking contrast to those barren strips of country, in which the soil, though made up of the same material, is ex- hausted from overwork and lack of proper treatment.

"The clays of the district include not only some excellent varieties of fire-clay, but also some valuable surface deposits, from which good bricks for building purposes have been made.

"The fire-clays, although existing in great abundance in all parts of the county, have as yet been developed only along the lines of rail- road communication. At these points the clays worked are of excellent quality, the bricks and retorts made from them being well and favor- ably kuown.

" The compact and heavy bedded sandstones prevailing in some parts of the county furnish building material almost without limit. This rock has been employed to a small extent with very satisfactory results.

"The question of the petroleum interests of Indiana county, although deeply affecting its citizens, is one with which this report is not concerned, having only to deal with the coal rocks. But in view of the excitement that pre- vailed in many parts of the district during the past season, in regard to the probabilities of finding petroleum at certain specified points, it may be said of the wells as yet put down within the limits of Indiana county that having failed in every case by many huudreds of feet to reach the oil-bearing sands of Venango and Butler Counties, they leave the petroleum question as it was before the holes were drilled. It can probably with safety be predicted that if oil exists in available quantities and at reasonable depths underueath Indiana county, it is held by the same rocks that furnish it in such great abundance in the counties to the west and northwest. The rocks thus indicated are the so-called Oil Sands, the nearest approach of which to the surface in Indiana county is in the

INDIANA COUNTY.

heart of the Conemaugh gaps through Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge. At both these places the First Oil Sand, the highest member of the group, is not more than 500 feet below water level, whereas at the centre of the basin, at Blairsville, the same rock is scarcely less than 2000 feet below the bed of the Conemaugh. Whether it would be reasonable to expect to find oil on the banks of the great anticlinal arches of Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge is a question foreign to the purpose of the present discussion. The centres of the basins have mainly been selected for such imperfect tests as have hitherto been made in this region.

" The Nolo anticlinal is a small subaxis split- ting the Ligonier basin lengthwise, and attain- ing its greatest development inside the limits of this district, beyond which it is scarcely known. So also with the synclinals (the Mechanicshurg and Centreville synclinals) on both sides of the axis ; to the south, as well as to the north, these are united into one great trough (by the disappearance of the anticlinal), and pass under the well-known name of the Ligonier Synclinal. Moreover the Marion- Fillmore synclinal is only the prolongation into Indiana County of Prof. Stevenson's Greens- burg synclinal, and the West Lebanon synclinal is the Lisbon synclinal of the south. Both of these axes, the Greensburg-Marion and the Lisbon-West Lebanon merge before reaching the Sandy Lick creek in Clearfield county into one trongh-the Reynoldsville; whereas . the Smicksburg synclinal, the same that crosses the Sandy Lick near Fuller's mills, is forced east- ward, going south by the disappearance of the Perryville anticlinal, and probably joins on somewhere to the Lisbon-West Lebanon axis.

" The Third' Axis, as it was named many years ago by Messrs. Hodge and Lesley in their early survey of the northern counties, was described by Prof. Stevenson in his report of 1876 as the Blairsville anticlinal ; but the name of this town is already occupied, and properly

for the synclinal, and as the county seat of Indiana is the only town of importance under which this axis runs, it furnishes the anticlinal with a more appropriate geographical name, if any such be desired. The name Perrysville (from the village of Perrysville in Jefferson County) is suggested for the second subaxis of the Fourth Basin, an axis hitherto unnamed, and the one that crosses the Little Mahoning above Smicksburg, and the Sandy Lick two miles west of Reynoldsville.

" With two exceptions, the rocks which make up the surface of Indiana county belong to the Carboniferous system. The exceptions noted are in the deep gaps of the Conemaugh through Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge anti- clinals, where for a short distance a few feet of Devonian strata are lifted above the drainage line.

" The Lower Barren and Lower Productive groups of the Carboniferous rocks are those with which we have mainly to deal in Indiana county. These measures are brought up again and again by the anticlinals and spread over miles of territory. At two places in the county a small portion of the higher Upper Produc- tive group is represented in the hills, these places being the regions between Blairsville and Black Lick, and Saltsburg and West Lebanon.

" In the following scheme of the formations is a list of the rock groups that underlie the high- est geological ground of the district, as for instance at Blairsville, for a distance of ten miles ; and it likewise includes at its top some two thousand feet of measures that at one time overspread this whole region, but which have been slowly swept from it in the course of time and carried downwards by the streams into the sea.

"I. The Carboniferous System.

1. Monongahela river coal series. Upper Barren measures, Absent in

a. Greene county group, Indiana

b. Washington county group, county. Upper Productive coal measures ; pres- ent only in part.

GEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SKETCH OF

2. Allegheny river coal series.

Lower Barren measures. Lower Productive coal measures. Pottsville conglomerate (Seral) ... XII

e. Sharon and Quinnimont coal group. Mauch Chunk red shale. Mountain limestone. XI

d. New river coal group. Pocono · sandstone (Vespertine)

(Mountain sands) X

II. The Devonian System.

1. Catskill sandstone (Old red) (? Oil sand group). IX

2. Chemung sands and shales.

3. Portage shales and sands. Black Lick 963

4. Hamilton formation.

Genesee black shales. VIII

Hamilton sandstone.

Juniata river coal group.

Marcellus black shales.

5. Upper Helderburg limestones.

6. Oriskany sandstone. VII

III. The Silurian System.

1. Lower Helderburg limestone. VI

Salina, Niagara, &c.

2. Clinton red shales and fossil ore V

3. Medina sandstone.

4. Oneida conglomerate. IV

IV. The Siluro-Cambrian System.

1. Hudson river slates, III

2. Utica slates.

3. Trenton limestone.

4. Magnesian limestone. II Chazy, Calciferous, &c.

5. Potsdam sandstone. I

V. The Cambrian System (South mountain).

VI. The Huronian System (Philadelphia rocks).

VII. The Laurentian System (Highlands)."

Along the line of the Pennsylvania and West Pennsylvania railroads in Indiana county the levels above tide are as follows :

Pennsylvania R. R.

Sang Hollow (in Laurel Hill gap) 1143

Conemaugh Furnace 1135

Nineveh 1141

New Florence. 1076

Lacolle .. 1056

Lockport.

1054

Bolivar

1033

Blairsville Intersection 1113

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Biographical and historical cyclopedia of Indiana and Armstrong counties, Pennsylvania, Part 9

Author: Wiley, Samuel T. ed. cn Publication date: 1891 Publisher: Philadelphia [J.M. Gresham & co.] Number of Pages: 652

Author: Wiley, Samuel T. ed. cn
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Philadelphia [J.M. Gresham & co.]
Number of Pages: 652