USA > Indiana > Vigo County > History of Indiana from its exploration to 1922, Vol II > Part 25
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western country have appeared near the surface; and it would not surprise me if it should be brought forth In a thousand places where the shovel and the pickaxe have never yet been employed." -David Thomas, Travels Through the Western Country (1816), 172.
902
HISTORY OF INDIANA
later, the Buckeye Cannel coal company sunk a shaft and began marketing coal.
The coal mines of Vermilion county have been de- veloped since 1887, though mines had been worked there for neighborhood use for three-quarters of a century before. The Norton Creek mines, opened in 1884, by 1887 were employing 300 men; in 1910 there were 1042 men employed. The Bunsen company, owned by the United States Steel corporation, is the largest, its plant costing $3,500,000.
Prof. E. T. Cox, state geologist, was largely re- sponsible for opening up the Brazil mines. In 1853 some men loaded a car from coal obtained on the sur- face at Otter creek, took it to Indianapolis and dis- posed of it. However, before the field could be devel- oped, the war delayed the business. The coal soon won a reputation not only for ordinary purposes, for which it had been used since 1840, but especially for smelting. By 1884 there were 3,000 miners in Brazil and a monthly output of 5,000 cars. One railroad after another tapped the field until the whole neigh- borhood is now a network of tracks with lines run- ning from the field in all directions.36
The coal mining industry grew up in such a way that little notice was taken of it before the Civil war. There was such an abundance of firewood even in close reach of the largest cities that coal found little market. The only considerable factories were saw mills, which furnished their own fuel. There were many small mines, each supplying a few local black- smiths in the neighborhood, but no such thing in Indiana as a coal supply or a coal market. The rail- road locomotives used cord wood as did most of the steamboats. For this reason, also, the state govern- ment paid no attention to the business. With the
86 The following statistics will indicate the development of
903
COAL
opening of coal shafts in Clay, Vigo, Vermilion and Clinton counties in the seventies it was recognized that some legal precautions should be taken, at least to safeguard the lives of the miners.
A law of March 8, 1879, provided for the ap- pointment of a mine inspector whose duty was to visit each mine twice a year and ascertain if suit- able outlets for miners, in case of accident, had been provided; if proper mine maps were kept handy; if proper ventilation was provided for; if abandoned mines were properly marked; if cage covers, gates to shafts, ropes, and other machinery on which the lives of miners might depend were in good condition. Boys under fourteen years of age were not allowed to work in the mines and it was the inspector's duty to see that the law was not violated. Herbert H. Richards, who was appointed to this position in 1879, found 177 mines in operation, few of which were pro- vided with the means of successful mining. The Brazil Block company's mine at Brazil was the only one using a fan, and it had been put in recently.
the coal industry and its location .- Indiana Department of Sta- tistics, XVI (1916) 541:
County
Productlon Employees
Vigo
4,412,860
5,336
Sullivan
2,678,466
3,950
Vermilion
2,418,250
3,072
Knox
1,950,829
1,834
Greene
1,817,040
2,522
Pike
561,293
1,064
Warrick
340,058
606
Parke
303,840
469
Clay
280,054
986
Gibson
259,145
300
Vanderburgh
233,678
417
Davless
73,666
112
Fountain
17,742
34
Total
15,346,921
20,702
904
HISTORY OF INDIANA
Scarcely a General Assembly since then but what has added something to the mining laws of the state. The inspector is now a deputy of the state geologist who appoints him and to whom he makes his annual re- port.87
§ 161 CLAYS
The valuable clays are in Fountain, Vermilion, Parke, Vigo, Clay, Owen, Sullivan, Greene, Knox, Daviess, Martin, Dubois, Pike, Gibson, Vanderburg, Warrick, Spencer and Perry counties, in other words in the coal areas. The slowness with which the busi- ness has been developed has been largely due to a lack of definite scientific knowledge of the clay beds. In 1874 a remarkable bed of Kaolin was discovered in Lawrence county. This, as well as the other clays of the state, was briefly described by E. T. Cox in the reports of 1882.38 In 1885 Maurice Thompson tried to interest capital in this industry but with little apparent success.
One of the earliest ventures of this character was at Troy. What they called at the time a bed of
37 The technical literature on coal mining In Indiana is con- siderable. Every geological report made to the state has something of historical value. Much of this is based on hasty visits and is nothing but "observation". In 1896 W. S. Blatchley, state geologist, began gathering data for a detalled report on Indiana coal. This report, 1,750 pages, was published early in 1899. In the annual reports of the state mine inspector will be found data concerning individual mines, machinery used, output, and a great many other facts concerning the actual work.
38 Indiana Geology, 1882, p. 24: "Underlying all our coal seams are great beds of excellent fire clay. Good fire bricks are made In Clay and Vermillon counties, and the raw material is abundant in the southwestern regions. When the coming man bullds, not for today, but for all time, he will require permanent fireproof edifices, and will then avoid disastrous conflagrations by cheaply furnishing from this clay, window and door frames, roofs, cornices, etc., and ornamental brackets of terra cotta ware. The supply is sufficient to furnish the world, and when common
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905
CLAYS
potters' marl was discovered in the hillside near the Ohio river. James Clews, from the potteries of Staf- fordshire, England, undertook to develop the bed. A potters' company was formed at Louisville, potters from Staffordshire to the number of forty were im- ported, and when David Dale Owen was there in 1837 the first kiln was burning. Clay from the Mis- sissippi "chalk banks" was brought for making queensware. What became of the plant Dr. Owen did not tell, though in his report for 1838 he observed that the owners were in need of "pure flint" for the finer grades of porcelain. The work at Troy was continued, however, down to 1892 by B. H. Hincho, who bought the plant in 1862.
In almost every community in the state during the forties and fifties there was a brick yard in which was manufactured the common red bricks now to be seen in the old farm houses, especially prevalent in the southern part of the state.
An early attempt to manufacture Indiana clay products for the market was in the same county as the first pottery, Perry. This was a sewer pipe fac- tory, founded at Cannelton by A. D. Clark in 1862. This factory only recently was superseded by a much larger one, the Cannelton Sewer Pipe Company.39
In Parke county, near Bloomingdale, potteries were established as early as 1840. At Annapolis, nearby, the Coke Oven Hollow factory, established by H. R. Atchison, has been in operation since 1841, making for the most part vitrified stoneware. This clay was also hauled to Rockville or shipped away on the old canal.40
sense prevails, the clays of Indiana will be richer than the mines of Colorado and the golden sand of California. Durnig 1882 there were 2,769 tons of fire clay produced."
89 De la Hunt, History of Perry County, 113. Also, Indiana Geology, 1895, p. 123.
40 Indiana Geology, 1895, p. 47.
906
HISTORY OF INDIANA
At Clay City in Clay county a stoneware pottery was established in 1846 and from the same bed sev- eral thousand tons of clay were shipped to a pottery in West Indianapolis. In 1869 there were three pot- teries in the county : one in Brazil owned by Torbet and Baker, one owned by Isaac Cordroy, a mile northeast, and one at Harmony, owned by S. H. Brown. They were turning out 200,000 gallons per year. In Greene county at Owensboro a man named Reynolds operated a pottery in the early days. The Worthington pottery has been running since 1872. Where Loogootee now is Upton Stuckey operated a pottery in 1842. This continued fifty years. At Shoals a pottery was in operation from 1870 till 1892.
By far the larger factories of this kind are in the Brazil field, where they use the clays and shales underlying the coal.41 There were in 1904 five of these factories, all of recent establishment. The Wil- liam E. Dee Clay Manufacturing company of Mecca, Parke county, erected in 1894; the American sewer pipe company at Brazil; the Chicago sewer pipe com- pany of Brazil, established in 1893, are some of the older plants. The clay of this same region is now used extensively in the manufacture of hollow block and conduit ware. The Ayer-McCarel clay company, the Weaver clay and coal company, the Excelsior clay works, the Continental clay and mining com- pany, the McRoy works, and the Vigo Clay com- pany, all established since 1890, are leaders. Fire brick, dry pressed brick, architectural terra cotta, encaustic tile, ordinary building brick, drain tile, and paving materials are now made in great quantities and bid fair soon to rival the coal mines themselves in commercial importance. They are fulfilling, in a
41 Dr. Mansur Wright was turning out 40,000 bricks daily from his yards in Brazil in 1869.
907
OOLITIC LIMESTONE
large manner, the prophecy of the sixties concerning iron foundries. In 1914 the clay products were valued at $8,605,000. They were made in 231 fac- tories employing 5,512 hands.42
§ 162 OOLITIC LIMESTONE
The Owens in the Geological Reconnoissances made only one brief reference to the Bedford lime- stone.43 Dr. Winthrop Foote, who settled at Pales- tine in 1818 and whose sepulcher, hewn from a solid limestone boulder, is on the eastern border of Bed- ford, often assured his neighbors that the great wealth of Lawrence county was in its quarries. Such was his confidence that he bought up the land on which most of the quarries have since been opened. It was due to his enthusiasm that a stone cutter from Louisville came to Bedford in 1832. Some of the stone was used locally but of course no commercial use could be made till the coming of the railroad offered an outlet. As a proof that the stone will stand weather are the abutments of the old Rawlins bridge and the Rawlins mill near Bedford where after three-quarters of a century every mark of the mason's chisel is still evident.
With the coming of the New Albany and Salem railroad in 1851-2 and the possibility of transporta- tion, renewed interest was aroused. A civil engineer, named Davis Harrison, from Louisville, after locat- ing the railroad, turned his attention toward the de- velopment of the stone industry. Nathan Hall, who seems to have been the pioneer quarryman in the
42 The best historical sources for this section are Geological Report, 1895, 1904, and 1906. See, also, Lesquereux's articie in Report of 1862. County histories.
43 Geological Reconnaissance, 1837, p. 183: "Most of the limestones in the Oolitic series-that is, those occurring in the counties of Crawford, Orange, Lawrence, Monroe, Owen and Putnam-make good building materiais."
908
HISTORY OF INDIANA
district, opened a quarry where the Old Blue Hole is now and hauled his output to the railroad with oxen. It is said locally that some of the stone for the Indi- ana State House was thus transported. John Glover had opened a quarry just south of Bedford before the Civil war but the quarry was not reopened after that event.
Various references were made to the stone in geological reports but no great interest developed till the early seventies. In 1878 the Hollowell quarry in Dark Hollow, four miles northwest of Bedford, was opened by the Hinsdale, Doyle Granite company to supply stone for the Chicago city hall. In May 1878 the Dark Hollow stone company had opened the first quarry in this district. Their first large order was for the Indiana state house. In three years this company paid in dividends 100 per cent. The Bed- ford Steam stone works, 1886; and the Baalbec are the other two original quarries of this famous old district.
Buff Ridge, two miles northeast of Dark Hollow, is also an early quarry district. The Old Hoosier, opened in 1879, is the oldest of this group. From it stone has been shipped to all sections of the United States. Opened originally in a number of shafts, these by 1896 all had been run together until the quarry was twenty-five acres in extent and at that time had been worked from five to seven cuts deep, or about forty feet on an average. The Perry, Mat- thews and Buskirk quarry was opened in 1889; the Hallowell stone company, 1896; Hoosier No. 2, opened in 1885 to furnish stone for the Memphis bridge; the Buff Ridge, opened in 1891; and a few others, long since abandoned, constitute this famous group. Their switch, which resembles the freight yards of a city, joins the Monon at Horseshoe a few miles north of Bedford.
909
OOLITIC LIMESTONE
The Blue Hole quarry, one of the most noted in the whole belt, was sold to the Hinsdale, Doyle Gran- ite company in 1878, by whom it was developed. The Benzel quarry was opened nearby in 1890 by the Bed- ford Blue Stone company. In 1890 the Brown quarry was opened at the northeast corner of the city, and in 1892 the Salem-Bedford quarry, a half mile northwest of the Brown.
At Mitchell Hollow in 1890, at Fort Rittner as early as 1850, and on a large scale in 1860, at Rock Lick and at Fishing creek, all southeast of Bedford, quarries have been opened and operated successfully.
At the other end of the Oolitic belt are the Ro- mona quarries in Owen county on the Vincennes branch of the Vandalia railroad. This quarry was opened in 1868 by the Gosport stone and lime com- pany from whom it passed to the Romona stone com- · pany in 1885. The Lilly quarry at Romona, in 1890; the Bienert quarry at Romona, in 1870; the Keystone quarry, half way between Gosport and Romona, and the Old State House quarry, two miles east of Spen- cer (the last two are abandoned) are the principal mines of this region.
Between these extremes there is almost a con- tinuous series of quarries, located along the Monon railway and its branches.
The Big Creek district around Stinesville was opened up by a local quarryman named Richard Gil- bert, in 1828. His quarry was nearly a mile south of Stinesville in the east bluff. In 1855 Edward M. Watts and William M. Biddle opened up a complete stone mill on Big Creek less than a mile west of Stinesville. Here for thirteen years they quarried stone and shipped it away on the railroad. This was known commercially as the White River stone. Later companies in this district such as the Indiana Steam stone company, the North Bedford, the Terre Haute,
910
HISTORY OF INDIANA
the Griswold and the Stinesville, have kept this stone on the market.
The Elletsville district was opened by John Mat- thews in 1862. A mill was erected in 1864 and in 1877 the first channeler was put in use here at a cost of $6,000. John Kostenbaker opened a quarry in 1864; Major H. F. Perry in 1866; Sharp and Hight in 1869. These and their successors have continued some of their quarries to the present.
Next south of Elletsville is the Hunter Valley district, now one of the leading quarry centers of the whole area. Although Oolitic stone was used in the Bloomington courthouse in 1819, and in tombstones and other ornaments cut as early as 1856 by Jesse Carson, the commercial development was not begun around Bloomington till 1891 when the Morton C. Hunter stone company opened the quarries in Hun- ter valley, two miles northwest of Bloomington. This company was followed by the Chicago and Bloomington company in 1892; the Norton stone company in 1892; Perry, Matthews and Perring in 1893; the Star company in 1895, and the Hunter Brothers in 1895.
The Sanders district was opened in 1888 by the Oolitic stone company of Indiana, which in 1890 fur- nished stone for the Chicago auditorium. The Mon- roe County Oolitic company opened the Adams quarry in 1889 and since then a number of quarries have been opened in the district.
The entire area from Stinesville to Bedford appears to the traveler on the Monon now as a con- tinuous quarry. No attempt can be made here to follow the development of this business in detail. Machinery has largely taken the place of hand labor in quarry and mill. In 1879 there were 20 quarries in the field, 177 hands employed, and an output
911
NATURAL GAS
valued at $141,850, since when the business has grown to enormous proportions.44
§ 163 NATURAL GAS
The natural gas supply of Indiana began with the completion of the well at Portland, March 14, 1886. However, a few instances of flowing gas had been discovered before. Early in 1881 a flow was noted from a deep well in Fountain county. No develop- ment followed and the incident was forgotten.45 A gas well near Kentland in 1882 was described as throwing sand and water thirty feet in the air in violent periodic jets. Another well in the same place had been discharging gas for at least twelve years.46
The impetus to boring for gas came from Ohio where, near Findlay, gas was found in great quanti- ties. This led people to believe the field extended over into Indiana. Drills were put down in a great many places but without results. These failures led to a more careful study of the general situation. At Eaton, Delaware county, in 1876, a flow of gas had been obtained at a depth of 600 feet. Accordingly a local company was formed and the Eaton well sunk to 922 feet, where gas was found in the Trenton rock. September 13, 1886, the Howard Natural Gas and Oil company sunk a well in the edge of Kokomo and found gas in Trenton rock at a depth of 904 feet. About a month later a second well was sunk in the same vicinity with the same results.
44 No extended historical study has been made of the industry. The above account has been written from the Geological Reports, county histories, contemporary newspapers and some tradition. Of the Geological Reports the following are the best : 1837, p. 183; 1879, p. 229; 1880, p. 377; 1881, p. 29; 1896, p. 291; 1907, p. 310. These Reports are of a scientific character.
45 Geological Report, 1881, p. 115.
46 Geological Report, 1882, p. 57.
912
HISTORY OF INDIANA
These, it will be noted, were sunk the same year as the one at Portland where a depth of 990 feet was attained.47 By 1888 productive wells were in flow at Albion, Alexandria, Amboy, Anderson, Auburn, But- ler, Cicero, Dunkirk, Elwood, Fairmount, Farmland, Fort Wayne, Frankton, Greenfield, Greensburg, Hartford City, Jonesboro, Knightstown, Kokomo, Lafontaine, Lawrence, Lawrenceburg, Marion, Mont- pelier, Morristown, Newcastle, Noblesville, North Vernon, Portland, Redkey, Salem, Spiceland, Sum- mitville and Winchester.48 Several hundred other wells in all parts of the state were bored during this period. The years from 1886 to 1890 were referred to as the "natural gas craze." A glance at the map will show that the "gas belt" was Grant, Howard, Tipton, Hamilton, Madison, Hancock, Delaware, Blackford, Henry and Rush counties with a few out- lying pockets.
Excitement spread to all parts of the state. Ex- cursion trains carried crowds, daily, to see the won- ders. The wells meantime stood open, wasting thou- sands of millions of cubic feet of the best fuel in the world, merely to support flambeaus for visiting ex- cursionists. No one doubted but that the supply was perpetual." By 1900 it was clear that the supply was failing. The factories which had been attracted by cheap fuel began to look elsewhere for other fuel or a new location.
After 1900 the use of gas was rapidly abandoned. In 1905-6 the pressure at Muncie failed. This was in
47 Geological Report, 1885-6, p. 314.
48 Geological Report, XVI, 234.
49 Geological Report, XVII, 328. Between 1886 and 1897 5,400 live gas wells were drilled. Of these 2,800 had been abandoned in 1897. There were at this time 219 companies furnishing natural gas. Geological Report, 1897, p. 261. There is a good account by Margaret Wynn, in Indiana Magazine of History, IV, 31.
913
PETROLEUM
the heart of the field and marks the end of the era, although a few companies still continue to furnish small amounts.
§ 164 PETROLEUM
There was an exciting petroleum hunt in southern Indiana during the Civil war by prospectors from the Pennsylvania oil fields. They were attracted to the deep valleys of Crawford and Perry counties by their similarity to the Pennsylvania fields and by the oil springs that are found in southwestern Crawford county. No oil was found. The well on the Clark farm was sunk 648 feet and the one at Mifflin 1,180 feet.
The real discovery of the petroleum fields of Indi- ana was due to the widespread hunt for gas from 1886 to 1890. Thousands of wells were bored in all parts of the state but the gas hunters did not want to be bothered with oil. However, in some places oil without gas was found and in these places wells were developed. One of these was at Terre Haute where, in the course of three years, 54,740 barrels were pumped from the three wells. In 1865 Chauncey Rose bored a deep well in front of the Terre Haute house expecting an artesian well. Ata depth of 1,629 feet, in Corniferous limestone, he struck oil. In 1869 a second well on the bank of the river between Wal- nut and Poplar streets struck oil at 1,642 feet. A third well dug in 1869 reached a vein of oil which produced 25 barrels per day.50 There was the usual rush. More than a score of wells were put down in the vicinity but only one struck pay oil. This, the Phoenix well, has been the best paying well in the state.51 At Francisville, in Pulaski county, a well
50 Geological Reports, II, 135.
51 Geological Reports, XXXI, 539: "When the drill first struck the oil-bearing stratum on the night of May 6, 1889, the
914
HISTORY OF INDIANA
was opened in October, 1887. Here the borers for oil in 1865 had found gas and abandoned the well. In 1887 they bored for gas and were disappointed in finding oil. At Medaryville, E. W. Gillette opened three wells about the same time. In the course of three years oil wells had been opened up in all parts of the gas belt. The best of the field seems to have been around Montpelier, a district extending some fifteen miles in all directions from that town. This district was opened in 1890 by the Manhattan and Jackson oil companies. The best of these wells aver- aged about 50 barrels per day.52 None of these were large wells, such as all drillers continually expected to strike. However, the net production of the state increased steadily from 33,375 barrels in 1889, from the Terre Haute wells alone, to 4,680,732 barrels in 1896. By 1897 the output had begun to fail, the loss that year being 327,594 barrels, in spite of the fact that two new fields, Peru and Alexandria, were added. The latter field was opened in April, 1897, and by the close of the year 67 wells had been dug, 33 of which had produced 71,767 barrels.53
However the industry after a decline to 3,751,307 barrels in 1898 steadily rose to 11,281,030 barrels in
flow was so great that quite a lake of oil accumulated around the derrick, and there was some alarm lest a destructive fire should result. The drill was then pulled out of the well, and as soon as the end left the mouth of the casing a solid stream of oil four and a half inches in diameter shot into the air to a distance of forty to fifty feet. While running at this rate there was probably a little over a barrel a minute pouring from the well, and when the pressure decreased from the first spurt, which lasted only fifteen minutes, the flow steadied down to a four and a half-inch stream, spurting about three feet above the mouth of the well. A tank with a capacity of twenty barrels was put under the pipe, and it was filled to overflowing in just twenty-two minutes."
,52 Geological Report, XVI, 306.
53 Geologial Report, XXII, 166.
915
PETROLEUM
1904 which was the highest point ever reached. The sixteen years from 1891 to 1907 cover the most im- portant period of what is called the Trenton Rock petroleum in Indiana. There had been opened 23,- 712 wells in this field by the close of 1906. At that time there were 16,266 producing wells, or 45 less than there had been one year earlier. These wells averaged 1.19 barrels per day as against 1.59 a year earlier. For the first time also the number of dry holes and abandoned wells exceeded the number of new wells. These facts indicate the waning condi- tion of the business.
The Princeton oil field opened up in 1891. When the Southern railroad located its shops at Princeton it began prospecting for gas and coal. Traces of oil were found, but not till May 25, 1903, was a success- ful well driven, the Hoosier No. 2. Since then a con- siderable field has been opened up. This oil was found at a depth of about 1,000 feet, in sandstone. The field has since widened to Oakland City and Petersburg.
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