USA > Missouri > Missouri the center state, 1821-1915 > Part 9
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in consequence the inhabitants in general are denied the privilege of working. Therefore the quantity of lead is greatly reduced. For the years 1802 and 1803 the quantity of lead made at Mine a la Motte did not exceed 200,000 pounds weight, although about thirty men werc employed from four to six months in each year."
Up to 1804 Mine La Motte had yielded, according to the best information obtainable, 16,000,000 pounds of lead. Up to 1876 the total product had been 110,571,436 pounds.
The same year that Laclede came up the river to found St. Louis and that Burton found Mine-a-Burton, Francis Valle of Ste. Genevieve was developing Mine La Motte. This was the first of four generations of Francis Valles. The founder of the Valle family, Francis Valle, came out from Canada, where he was born, to Kaskaskia in 1730. Made commandant at Ste. Genevieve, he turned his attention to the lead industry. Mine La Motte took its name from M. de la Motte Cadillac. Like Renault, la Motte was seeking a silver mine. He located the wonderful deposit of galena, which was afterward called "the golden vein," and carried away some specimens. He was not a lead miner. Whatever Francis Valle may have thought about the silver tradition, he applied himself to the production of lead. The Indians brought in the metal rudely smelted and traded it. They resented the efforts of the white men to mine. Francis Valle and his sons built a block house to protect the mines. The Indians attacked it. One of the sons was killed. Operations were suspended, but there was demand for lead. Mining was resumed. Again the Indians attacked. Again occurred a suspension. It was only temporary Ste. Genevieve flourished on the trade. Spanish governors exercised a rather lax authority over the lead fields. The American Revolution created a more than normal demand for lead. Shipments of lead which were started down the river never reached New Orleans. The boats which had been loaded at Ste. Genevieve were found empty and adrift below the mouth of the Ohio.
The Valles were of the sturdy French pioneer stock which could not be daunted by disaster. They applied to the lead industry the same courage and persistence which gave to Missouri supremacy in many industries. With the Valles were associated in the early lead mining the Prattes and the Beauvais families. One of the Valles had three lovely daughters, who were wooed and won by three gallant Rozier brothers, Felix, Francis and Firmin. Good lead land went to the daughters for dowry. The Roziers acquired more lead land and were interested in mining enterprises.
Carbonate of lead was not known to be ore of lead until in the thirties. It was called "dry bone," and was rejected as worthless. In 1838 a Prussian named Hagan came to Mine La Motte, entered into an agreement with the Valles, bought up a lot of dry bone and smelted it. About that time forty lots of forty acres each were leased for ten years, and at the conclusion of the term an extension of three years was granted. Various parties mined and smelted under the leases. Janis was probably the largest producer. He turned out 5,000 pigs a year. There were four other furnaces which produced 3,000 pigs a year each. In the thirteen years the product amounted to 19,000,000 pounds. Then came ten years of litiga- tion between the Flemings and the Valles. The Flemings were Philadelphians and had bought at a partition sale. During the fight over the title there was little
RENAULT DIGGINGS IN WASHINGTON COUNTY
WOODEN SHOVEL Used by pioneer lead miners
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mining done. In 1861, about the time the case was getting out of court, United States troops burned and tore down the works. The mine was altogether too favorably situated to give aid and ammunition to the Confederates.
In 1868 the property passed into the hands of the La Motte Lead Company for a consideration of something more than $500,000.
The Beginning of Disseminated.
"The Flat River Country" was famous seventy-five years ago. Long before the Civil war miners burrowed all over the district seeking the pure galena. They didn't go down and disturb the lead disseminated in limestone under- neath. They did what was called surface mining, giving one-tenth of what they found to the owners of the land. There were fortunes, according to the estimate of those days, made out of the Flat River diggings. Some men accumulated from $40,000 to $50,000. Galena was currency. The stores took it in trade and heaped it up until called for. Jake Bower built a furnace at Mineral Point, and later John Evans built one at Hopewell. They had wagons which made regular trips through the Flat River district collecting the ore, for which they paid cash, and transporting it to their furnaces. Most of the ore from this district went to those two furnaces until La Grave built a furnace at Bonne Terre, which was nearer.
La Grave began to make the lead business hum about a year before the war. He was the pioneer of the St. Joe and Desloge enterprises. The best of the dis- seminated ore at Bonne Terre lies in the two old Spanish grants, each of a thou- sand arpents. One of these grants was ceded to Andrew Pratte about 1800, and the other to Buron Pratte, Andrew's younger brother, about the same time. The Bonne Terre settlement consisted of two houses when La Grave bought the Andrew Pratte grant and commenced operations. He made the investment and established his plants with the idea of working the disseminated ore, which up to that time had received almost no consideration. Neither La Grave nor anybody else knew of the vast deposits of this ore underlying Bonne Terre, but there was a bluff on the edge of the creek where a stratum of disseminated ore out- cropped.
La Grave went to work on this ledge. His process was rude, indeed. After getting out the ore he laid up heaps of poles, much after the fashion of children's cob houses, piled the lead-carrying lime-rock on top, and set fire to the wood. This gave the ore a roasting and made it brittle. Then he put it into hoppers with an old-fashioned grinding apparatus, something like a coffee-mill, run by mule power. This broke the rock from the galena, and washing by hand power completed the separation. The smelting was equally primitive. La Grave carried on this treatment of disseminated ore for several years, and he got the name of extracting a great deal of lead from the hitherto ignored deposit. But, to tell the truth, disseminated ore was the source of only a fraction of La Grave's output. He sent his wagons through Flat River and collected the pure galena from the surface diggings. His product was hauled to the Iron Mountain railroad and shipped to St. Louis. About the close of the war, or a year after, the magnitude of his shipments began to attract attention. Mr. Barlow, who was for a con- siderable period an officer of the Iron Mountain railroad, became greatly inter- ested in La Grave's work. He knew from the transportation records just what Vol. 1-4
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had been shipped, and he got the impression, which was general, that La Grave was making a fortune out of the treatment of disseminated ore. There were some negotiations. Mr. Barlow came down, looked over the property, and thought he saw a fine opening for capital.
The conclusion was that La Grave turned over what had cost him $900 for $80,000. Mr. Barlow brought the property to the notice of the New Yorkers and the St. Joe Lead Company was formed. The same capitalists who went in originally and paid such a big price for the land stuck to it with commendable grit, and after twenty years were reaping rewards in the form of dividends of from 10 to 15 per cent on a capital stock of $1,500,000, to say nothing of the extensive additions and improvements which made up a property that several millions of dollars would not buy. The enterprise had something of a struggle at first. The purchasers from La Grave thought they had bought all of his land, but when they began to cut some wood on what is known as "the pen diggings," he stepped in with legal proceedings and stopped them. Then it was discovered that La Grave had transferred to Barlow the Andrew Pratte grant of 1,000 arpents, and had retained about three hundred acres, which he had purchased at a different time, adjoining the Pratte grant. The manner in which the mis- understanding came about was this: When Mr. Barlow visited Bonne Terre to look over the place, La Grave was sick, and delegated an old Frenchman, who was familiar with the locality, to show the visitor around. The Frenchman fol- lowed the boundaries of all the land owned by La Grave, and Mr. Barlow thought he was getting all that had been shown him when the deed of transfer was made. Afterwards La Grave sold the 300 acres to Chicago men, who opened a shaft and found they had the disseminated ore in abundance. Nothing further was done toward working the deposit, and after some bargaining over the price the Chicago company sold to the St. Joe Company.
When La Grave was making the most of his venture at Bonne Terre, and Mr. Barlow was talking up the advantages of that investment as he understood them, Flat River experienced a boom. The district lies south of Bonne Terre, over a road that no man in those days traveled the second time for pleasure. It has the disseminated ore in great qauntities, and the existence of the deposits was gen- erally known. The mineral district lies in the heart of St. Francois county, about equally distant from the towns of Bonne Terre and Farmington. Half a dozen companies were formed to develop various tracts, and among them all a good deal of money was spent, but the investors either hadn't the grit or the deep pockets of the New Yorkers, for one after another the companies relapsed into a moribund state, and for nearly twenty years there was nothing done in the district. Buildings which had been erected rotted down. Flat River lost its place on the map. Land in the vicinity fell back to its legitimate value for the cordwood that could be cut from it or for the crops it would return to the in- dustry of the farmer. Seventy-five years ago the Flat River country was famous. Forty years ago it became famous again. Today it is more famous than it ever was. It is sending out millions, where during former periods of fame it sent thousands of dollars in pig lead.
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Bonne Terre.
Before Missouri fairly realized it Bonne Terre had become the largest lead producing works in the world, a community of ten thousand souls. It was mining and milling one thousand pigs of lead a day. A railroad, five engines and one hundred cars constituted the transportation part of the plant. The title deeds to 24,000 acres of land vested in the corporation. This land included eleven farms under a high state of cultivation stocked with blooded cattle and enclosed by sixty to seventy miles of fence. All of this had been achieved as early as 1887. What was possible in the disseminated lead district of Southeast Missouri had been demonstrated. The man to whom credit for success in detail must be given was C. B. Parsons. Coming from New York about 1867, Mr. Parsons was made the superintendent of the St. Joe Lead Company. In 1883 the plant was burned with little insurance. President J. Wyman Jones came from New York by the first train. In four months the works were up and running again.
The relations between this company and its employes well merited mention. The company maintained a store carrying a stock of $50,000, but there was no compulsion to trade there. The employes were paid twice a month, not in scrip, but in cash. They were permitted to organize in their own way. They voted freely without dictation. This was Mr. Parsons' policy. Everybody knew where he stood on the political issues, but when election day came he walked to the polls, voted and walked away without trying to influence, as an employer, his labor.
When Mr. Parsons was asked what was the secret of the great success of his company in lead mining, he replied that it was "economy." He explained that the various departments were so adjusted as to run in perfect harmony. There was no loss at any point. Just enough ore was turned out of the mine to keep the works at full capacity. The mill ground just enough to have the furnaces supplied. Each part balanced with the others.
Firmin Desloge, a native of the lead mining district of Southeast Missouri, was one of the pioneers in the disseminated lead ore development. His father came from France about 1818, was a merchant, dealt in lead and in lead lands. The second Firmin Desloge had his apprenticeship at the lead business in old Potosi. There were times when the industry staggered under adverse conditions. Two men-Charles B. Parsons and Firmin Desloge-remained steadfastly with it until they had fully demonstrated the yielding value of the disseminated ore. They found lead almost at the grass roots. They went down through lead bearing rock to a depth of four hundred feet. It is nearly fifty years since treatment of the disseminated ores was undertaken seriously. The production of the district in that time has been a steady growth from 6,000 to 100,000 tons of lead. Vary- ing somewhat with the price of the product, the district has been sending out from $6,000,000 to $10,000,000 worth of lead annually.
Valle Mines.
In the lofty range of hills known as Valle Mines, gophering for lead was commenced about 1828, according to the traditions of the locality. Long before the war there were furnaces which ran day and night, and people told of seeing trains of eighteen or twenty teams hauling the pig lead out to the Mississippi River for shipment. That was before the Iron Mountain railroad was built.
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From Bonne Terre to Valle Mines is only eight miles, as the crow flies, but the mineral deposits could not be more dissimilar in character and still be lead ore. At Bonne Terre the lead is disseminated in the limestone rock. At Valle Mines it is found in "caves," as they are called, mixed with tiff and iron and in some places with zinc. A shaft is sunk to one of these caves. Of course, it isn't a cave until the ore is taken out. Then the fitness of the term is apparent. From the cave a streak or seam of ore will lead off. It may not be over six inches thick or it may be two or three feet thick. The miners follow this on its winding way, and it takes them to another cave. Sometimes this streak will divide into other streaks, until there are perhaps fifty or sixty of them sprawling out in various directions.
Dr. Keith, of Bonne Terre, was more than a pioneer in this lead country. His great-grandfather came down the Ohio in a keel-boat from Pennsylvania, ascended the Mississippi as far as Ste. Genevieve and with others settled in what is now St. Francois county. He told an interesting story of how lead mining was carried on in early days.
Pioneer Lead Miners.
"The most of the tracts in this section," he said, "were acquired by direct grant from the Spanish Government. These grants were 1,000 arpents to the individual. That was the way the Spanish measured. An arpent is a little less than an acre. Very few of the owners of lead land worked the mineral. They let others come on and mine, and took a portion, 10 per cent, of what was found. These early miners went down perhaps 15 or 20 feet, but they took only the loose mineral. They didn't attempt to get it out of the limestone rock as is now done.
"One rule of those times, to encourage prospecting," said the Doctor, "was this: The discoverer of mineral was entitled to what there was in 100 square feet of ground. He didn't have to give up anything to the owner of the land. But of all he mined outside of the 100 feet he had to give to the owner the 10 per cent. There were Indians all through this country when the settlers came in, and they used to work the lead. The settlers found the places where the Indians had melted the ore. The aboriginal process was very simple. The Indians would heap up a lot of wood, throw the ore on top, and let the lead run out on the ground. Over on the Hill farm, which the St. Joe company now owns, there was one of these Indian furnaces, and when it was first found there were tons of slag around it, out of which lead was cleaned. Now there has never been any ore found on the Hill farm, and it has always been a mystery why the Indians smelted there, unless they knew of some deposit which the white men have never since dis- covered. There was a good spring close by, and I have sometimes thought they gathered the lead in other places and carried it there to reduce at a good camping place.
"The Indians were troublesome occasionally," continued the Doctor. "In those days the nearest place to get married was Ste. Genevieve. When two people made up their minds to it they got together some friends, started out and walked to Ste. Genevieve, had the ceremony performed and then walked back. Old man Frye, who lived to be 116 years old and is remembered by many people in this section, had an experience on his wedding journey that I don't think was ever duplicated. He was engaged to a daughter of Andrew Baker, one of the first
LEAD PLANT IN THE BONNE TERRE DISTRICT
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settlers. They set out one fine morning with about a dozen of friends, all in their Sunday clothes, to walk to Ste. Genevieve and be married. After they had traveled about ten miles a party of Indians came upon them and made them pris- oners. The situation was explained to the redmen, who seemed to take a humor- ous view of life. After deliberating a little while the captors stripped the whole party and let them go. The young lady was allowed to retain her shirt, but the others were relieved of every last rag. Such was life in the lead country in early times."
The Greatness of Granby.
In 1853 a Cornishman by the name of William Foster, who had been working at the old mines on Cedar Creek, twelve miles west of Granby, went up to the head of Shoal Creek to dig some wells. On his way back he stopped over night on the Richardson place, near here. In looking about next morning he was struck with the geological formation, and he readily got permission from Richard- son, who was holding a little farm under a squatter's right, to do some prospecting. A knoll which showed an outcrop of flint was selected as the most likely place. and Foster proceeded to dig. Within two feet of the surface he struck fine galena, and went to mining in earnest. This was the beginning of Granby. The news of the discovery spread and other prospectors flocked in. Madison Vickery was one of the first comers, and he made the second strike within a stone's throw of the principal street.
The hills upon which the rambling town is built were then covered with an almost unbroken forest. The settlers were few and far between, for these Ozark plateaus at that time presented little inducement to farmers. Soon after the pioneers, Foster and Vickery, had struck mineral, the Brocks made a great dis- covery, and after that time the locality in which they mined was known as Brocks' Hollow. In a short period the Brocks took out between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 pounds of lead ore. Granby boomed when that raise was noised abroad. Al- though the facilities for smelting were rude and the pig-lead had to be hauled by ox teams across the country to Boonville, on the Missouri, or to the mouth of Linn Creek, such a discovery as that of the Brocks was worth $50,000.
The rush to the new diggings was fairly under way in 1855. Between that year and 1860 the township had a population of 8,000, and there were 4,000 miners scattered over the hills, working in little parties. Four furnaces were in operation -- Johnston's, Plumber's, Livingston's and Long's. For several years miners took up claims where they pleased and sold their product to the highest bidder among the furnacemen. But in 1857 the Granby company, then known as Kennett, Blow & Co., came upon the scene. The most of the mining then, as now, was on "Section Six." This section was claimed as part of the land grant to "the South- west branch" of the Missouri Pacific, as the Frisco was first known. The road had not been built and the grant was unearned, but under some kind of a lease the Granby company got control of the section. The other furnacemen were closed out and the company took charge of the smelting without competition. The next step was to enforce the collection of a royalty of $2 per 1,000 from all miners on Section Six. This the company did successfully, although the miners swore and protested. There was nowhere else to take the ore. When the company settled
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with the miner it retained the $2 per 1,000 pounds out of what was coming to him, and if he didn't like it he could quit.
The war stopped everything, and the 4,000 miners scattered in all directions. Before operations were entirely suspended some of the product went South to supply Confederate ammunition trains, and later some of the product went North to make Union cartridges. Judge B. K. Hersey, the manager, joined the South, and Mr. Blow remained a stanch Union man.
Before the war the Granby company had begun its policy of buying up the land with mineral possibilities all around Section Six, and previous to Mr. Blow's death the holdings had reached 7,000 acres. Since then a great deal more has been added to the company's possessions. Purchases have not been limited to that vicinity. As other camps in the Southwest have developed, the Granby people have been early on the ground and have acquired eligible tracts.
The Shot Towers.
As late as 1875 travelers on the Mississippi steamboats were shown what re- mained of the once famous Rush Tower. At that point, near Herculaneum, a beetling cliff, 200 feet high, rises from near the river's edge. Out from the top of the cliff was built a platform and a cage. On that the lead was melted and dropped to the ground at the bottom of the cliff. It took its globular form and hardened in the descent. In this way the lead was turned into shot. There was no inclosure of this primitive shot tower. It was all outdoors, and operations had to be suspended on windy days.
In November, 1809, this notice appeared in the Gazette at St. Louis, informing the public of the inauguration of a new industry: "John N. Maclot having com- pleted the erection of his shot tower at Herculaneum-the first in the West- gives notice to his friends and the public that he will manufacture lead into drop- shot on reasonable terms." John Nicholas Maclot was from Metz. He was in Paris just before the French Revolution. Suspected of republican sentiments he suffered imprisonment in the Bastile. When released he came to this country. After some mercantile experience in Philadelphia, he came to St. Louis with a stock of goods, the year of American occupation. The opportunity to make shot appealed to his inventive mind and he went down to Herculaneum, a new settle- ment with Moses Austin, the Connecticut pioneer, was establishing. Austin was working the lead mines at Potosi. He proposed to make Herculaneum on the river the shipping point for the mines. Just below the town was a very high and overhanging cliff. To Maclot the conditions suggested a shot tower with the altitude provided by nature. About all that was needed was to build on the edge of the cliff the place to melt and drop, with the proper receptacle at the base.
This was the first shot making establishment west of Pittsburg. Maclot continued his manufacture some years. He dropped from the Herculaneum cliff the lad which made buckshot and bullets for the war of 1812. When the battle of New Orleans was fought on the eighth of January Maclot was there. He got off a letter to Mr. Cabanne, in St. Louis. This was what he wrote: "The enemy have reembarked leaving their wounded and prisoners. They landed 9,966 men. After the action, 1,906 were missing in the next morning's report. They acknowledge a loss in the various engagements of over 3,600. Their total loss may be put down at 4,000." Mr. Cabanne carried the letter to Colonel Charless.
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The Gazette came out with the glorious news. That night St. Louis illuminated. At least one candle burned in every window of the town "in honor of the brilliant success of the American arms at New Orleans," as Colonel Charless put it.
The City that Jack Built.
"In 1868 the Pitchers, father and sons, came to the locality which is now the city of Joplin. They were not miners but stock raisers. They bought a large tract of land on which to establish a ranch. For 2,000 acres they paid at the rate of $6.25 an acre. There had been some rude mining done in this region long before the war and the shallow shafts were to be seen. The field was unoccupied, however, when the Pitchers came to raise stock, and W. H. Pitcher. speaking of the fact that the possibilities of ore cut no figure in their investment, said: "When we bought the place we thought the holes left by the miners were a detriment to it, as cattle were liable to fall into them." Joplin is built, for the most part, on what was the Pitcher ranch. When there began to be a revival of interest in mining here the Pitchers sold 400 acres to Davis & Murphy. The price was $15 an acre, and the sellers thought they were doing pretty well. The buyers divided the acres into town lots, and Joplin was started. In July, 1871, the first house was built, of what is now the most widely known city of its size in the world. The origin of Joplin has been told in rhyme by a local poet laureate.
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