Century history of Youngstown and Mahoning County, Ohio, and representative citizens, 20th, Part 3

Author: Sanderson, Thomas W., comp
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1074

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Along with this accumulation of snow, and probably one cause of the cold at that time, the highlands of Canada were uplifted several hundred feet above their present level. The snow compacted in its lower parts into ice by the weight of the mass above, and forced southward both by the slope and the pressure of the deeper accumulations to the north, was transformed into a mighty glacier which be- gan its slow but resistless march southward.

The surface of our county then was much more rugged than it is now, for it had been dry land for millions of years, and the streams had cut very deep valleys across it. The

moving glacier acted upon this broken surface like an immense rasp, of which fragments of hard rock frozen into its under surface formed the teeth. Moving from the northeast it cut away all portions of the surface, but, as it bore hardest on the hills, the general effect was to destroy inequalities, though soft strata were cut away more rapidly than were hard ones. Our rocks, wherever exposed, show the planed and grooved characteristics of gla- cial action. How much soil and rock this immense ice-plow shaved off from the surface, or how long our county was subject to its action, we cannot say. Finally, however, the rigors of the long winter began to soften. Once more the melting exceeded the snow- fall, and the ice-sheet was doomed. Slowly grew thinner and slowly its southern edge re- ceded northward. It was long after this change began before even the southern border of Mahoning county peered out from under its cover of ice, and much longer still, for the change was slow, before the ice had retreated beyond the northern boundary. As the glacier melted away, the immense amount of material which it had torn up from the rocks beneath, much of which had been pulverized as though ground between the upper and nether mill- stones, was left unevenly distributed over the rock surface, and it is this material, known as the "drift," . that constitutes our present soil.

EFFECT OF GLACIAL ACTION ON THE LANDSCAPE.

The rounded gravel knolls so common in the southwestern part of our county and the less common gravel ridges, are characteristic of glacial deposits, and are supposed to mark the places where the edges of the ice remained nearly constant for a long time, the rate of melting being just equal to the onward motion of the ice. Thus a heavy belt of material, forming what is called a Morain, was accumu- lated along the ice front. Detached masses of ice sometimes became deeply buried in these deposits and when long afterwards they melted, the gravel above them settled down,

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leaving peculiar pits and amphitheater depres- sions among the gravel knolls. This is the origin of some of our small lakes and catholes. To these causes we owe the variety of soil, and, to a certain extent, the variety of landscape found in different parts of our county.

Since the final retreat of the ice our streams have been steadily at work cutting their way through the drift. Of the stream channels cut in the rock previous to the ice age, smaller ones were probably obliterated by the grinding action of the glacier, but some of the larger and deeper seem to remain even yet, though deeply buried and sometimes com- pletely choked by the drift. The larger of our new streams as they found their way over the drift seem generally to have followed the course of the old channels, but they are some- times compelled to turn aside, and in that case they soon cut through the drift and have since been flowing over rocky beds, which, like that of Niagara, have been excavated since the re- treat of the ice. The boulders or "hard-heads" of granite and allied rocks so frequently strewn over our surface, are not our products. They were produced in the highlands of Can- ada long, long ago, packed in ice and imported duty free. Theirs was a long, hard journey of hundreds of years, and it must have been tedious even for a boulder. Only the most hardy among them survived to reach their journey's end, and they had their once sharp angles worn off and many had one or more faces ground smooth where they were pressed against the bed rock beneath the glacier and forced onward.

SURFACE FEATURES OF MAHONING COUNTY.

Viewed as a whole, the surface of Mahon- ing county may be regarded as an undulating plain, sloping gently to the north. its southern line running on or near the divide between the waters of the Mahoning on the north and the Little Beaver on the south, and having an altitude of from three to five hundred feet above the valleys of the north border. Topo- graphically, the county forms a portion of the

highlands of the southern rim of the lake basin, but since the rim is cut through by the deep gorge of the Mahoning, the drainage, though locally northward, is all carried through that channel into the Ohio. But little of the surface is even locally level, but con- sists of an alternation of broad valleys of ex- cavation, separated by rounded hills and table lands, with gentle slopes. It is all varied and picturesque, while at the same time it is well adapted for agricultural purposes, and is now very generally in a high state of cultivation. The soil is in some places derived from the de- composition of the underlying rocks; but it, for the most part, rests upon a sheet of drift material, for the county lies within the drift area, though reaching its margin on the south. The general slope of the surface, and part of the local erosion, seem to have been produced by the southern extension of a tongue or lobe of the great glacier, which, moving from the north, excavated the low country that lies be- tween the highlands of Geauga and Portage on the west and those of Pennsylvania on the east. By this agent the northern out-crop of rocks which underlies the county have been ground away, and a large amount of material transported southward from its place of origin. As the eroded rocks were largely sandstone and conglomerate, much of the transported material is sand and gravel. Glacial marks are seen on the exposed surfaces of the harder rocks in nearly all parts of the county, and they are especially noticeable on the sand- stone ledges on the northeast side of the Ma- honing in Youngstown and Poland and on the higher strata of the same character in the southern part of Canfield and Ellsworth. The direction of the glacial scratches is nearly north and south; but they are sometimes reflected by local impediments a few degrees either east or west.

One of the most interesting features in the surface geology of Mahoning county is the deep erosion of the valley of the Mahoning. In Trumbull county the river flows through a gently undulating country, and its banks are so low that it can hardly be said to have a well defined valley. This is due to the general

HISTORY OF MAHONING COUNTY

prevalence of soft, shaley rocks which have been broadly and evenly eroded. Soon after entering Mahoning county the river en- counters the conglomerate and the heavy bed- ded sandstones that overlie the coal. These form bold bluffs which gradually approach, until at Lowell, the valley is quite narrow and about three hundred feet deep; for the search for oil, which has been made at numerous points be- tween Youngstown and Newcastle, Pennsyl- vania, has shown that in this interval the river is now running considerably above its ancient bed. At the State line it was found necessary to sink through eighty feet of sand and gravel in the old channel before solid rock was reached : and in some wells, near the junction of the Mahoning and Chenango, pipe was driven one hundred and forty feet to the rock. These facts were among the first observed of those which led to the discovery that our prin- cipal rivers were flowing at a lower level when the continent was higher than now; the valley of the Mahoning, which is evidently excavated from the solid rock, must have been cut out when the drainage southward was much freer than at present, and this seems to have been one of the channels through which the lake basin, filled to a much higher level than now with water, communicated with the Ohio, and thus with the gulf. The fact that rock is fre- quently seen in the bottom of the river does not conflict with the statements made above. for the stream does not follow the line of its ancient bed; but when the old channel was filled, and the work of excavation began again, the course of the river crossed projections from the sides of the valley, and in these places has a rock bottom. The borings to which this reference has been made prove that there is a continuous, deeply excavated trough running beneath the bottom land of the valley.

GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF MAHONING COUNTY.

The rocks which underlie Mahoning county all belong to the carboniferous sys- tem. They include exposures of the Waverly

at base, the conglomerate and the lower group of coal seams, except the uppermost, No. 7, with their associated sandstones, shales, lime- stones, fire clays and iron ore. The dip of all the strata is toward the southeast, from ten to twenty feet to the mile; and as a conse- quence the outcrop of the different members of the series form irregular belts, conforming to the topography, but having a general east and west direction; but the outcrop of the rocks, which are lowest geographically, being lowest topographically, are found on the northern margin of the county, while the high- est cap the hills along the southern boundary. The extensive explorations for coal in Mahon- ing county show that the Waverly rocks for a long time formed the surface, and were exten- sively eroded before the deposition of the next succeeding rock, the conglomerate. Hence its upper surface is very irregular, showing hills and valleys over which the conglomerate and · coal measures were deposited, sometimes in local depressions with Waverly borders, so that both are found at a lower level than the adjacent outcrop of Waverly rock. This has produced much confusion in the search for coal; but all the drillers have noticed that the surface of the Waverly is reached at various depths and that hills of "bottom rock" cut out the coal. In such cases the coal was never formed on these hills, but had accumulated in lower ground surrounding them as a bed of peat that reached to a limited distance up their sides.

CONGLOMERATE.

Probably but little of the area of Mahoning county is underlain by the conglomerate. Patches of it are found in the northwestern corner, and these may extend for a long dis- tance southward: but the great sheet of con- glomerate which occupies Geauga county and the northern part of Portage county, thins out rapidly toward the east and between Niles and the State line it either does not exist, or is represented by a thin bed of sandstone with- out pebbles.

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS

FAMOUS COAL OF MAHONING COUNTY.

Coal No. One. This is the seam which urnishes the famous Brier Hill, or Mahoning oal, so extensively used for iron smelting and videly distributed through the markets of the orthwest. It is the same seam that is so argely worked in western Pennsylvania. The rue position of this coal seam is from twenty o fifty feet above the conglomerate. The uality of the Mahoning Valley coal is so ex- ellent and the coal field lies so near the Great akes market that it has become the basis of n extensive commerce, and the mainspring of ne most important iron industry of the West. The first development of coal mining in the alley of the Mahoning took place at the old rier Hill and Crab Creek mines near the orth line of Youngstown. The search for oal has radiated from this center in every irection, and as a consequence the country bout Youngstown has been more thoroughly xplored than any other part of the county. number of extensive basins have been dis- overed here, and several of them have been xtensively worked.

OSSIL NUTS AND FRUITS OF THE CARBONIF- EROUS AGE FOUND IN MAHONING COUNTY.

In the shale over coal number one, in Youngstown, also in the carboniferous sand ocks which cap the hills, are to be found eautiful specimens of the fossil nuts and ruits of the carboniferous age. Among the arieties found near Youngstown are the fol- wing: Trigonocarpon Triloculare, Trigono- arpon Tricuspidatum, Trigonocarpon Fraga- ordes (Mill Creek Park), Cardiocarpon longatum, Cardiocarpon Anulatus McGinni- i-this last named specimen was discovered y Mr. W. H. McGinnis, local geologist for lahoning county-also fine specimens of the habdocarpon Adamsii. The species known as rigonocarpon Gigantum has also been discov- ed here, but is very rarely met with. It is ore abundantly found near Lisbon, in Colum-

biana county. In Ellsworth township, Mahon- ing county, are found the most beautiful, per- fect, and highly crystalized specimens of Sele- nite, a variety of gypsum. They are much sought after by geologists from all parts of the world. They are indeed a most won- derful illustration of the simplicity of nature in the midst of diversity. In a stratum of iron ore which was formerly mined near the old Mill Creek furnace in what is now Mill Creek Park, the shales which hold the no- dules, are great numbers of very beautifully preserved fossil plants, several of which have not yet been found elsewhere, making this the most interesting locality of fossils yet found in the county. In the center of a block of coal, taken from the Wetmore mine, in Canfield township, a beautiful fossil fish was found with all its scales and fin rays complete ; it is a species of Paleonicus (P. Pettiganus), New- berryii; the writer hereof has also several beautiful specimens of fossil fish, about five inches in length, and well preserved. These species are Priscacara Pealie (Sunfish), also two specimens of fossil fish known as Dyplo- mistus Humilis ( Herring) ; they are imbedded in solid rock and show both the positive and negative sides.

In the spring of 1890 an exceedingly rare and valuable fossil was found by Prof. W. H. McGinnis of Youngstown. Upon a very crit- ical examination by Professor Orton, then State Geologist for Ohio, and Professor Colla- cott, of the Ohio State University, it was decided by them to be the fossil head of the Musk O.r. The fossil skull was found in a sand bank in what is now beautiful Mill Creek Park. This bed of sand is located near the "Narrows." and is about sixty feet high and extends to an unknown depth below the sur- face of Mill Creek. When Prof. Newberry made his geological survey of this portion of Ohio he visited this sand bank and declared that it was a former channel of the Mahoning River that had become completely filled up with gravel and sand, and that at the "Nar- rows" Mill Creek had worn its way through the sand and left the strata of sand and

HISTORY OF MAHONING COUNTY

gravel exposed. The following letter from Professor Orton shows the great importance of the discovery :

Ohio State University. Dept. of Geology. Columbus, Ohio, January 29, 1898. Prof. W. H. McGinnis, Youngstown. My Dear Sir: The skull proves to be musk ox, which has never been reported from Ohio before, the only two specimens ever hav- ing been reported found in the United States was one from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, and one from Arkansas. You have by your dis- covery and contribution to this Institution con- tributed to science a most valuable specimen, and for which you have the thanks of the In- stitution.

Yours truly, EDWARD ORTON.

Many other beautiful specimens of fossils have been found at various times in the rock stratas and coal measures of Mahoning county, which time and space will not now permit us to enumerate.

In the treatment of this subject, Local Geology, or the Geological Formation of Ma- honing County, the writer has endeavored to be practical, not drawing from the imaginary, but from the real facts as found in the great book of Nature; for what are the different stratas of rock but pages from the great book of Nature, created by God's own finger ?

For on every rock on which we tread Are written words, if rightly read, That leads us from earth's fragrant sod, To holiness, to hope and God.

W. H. McG.

CHAPTER II

PREHISTORIC RACES

Speculation on the Origin of the American Race-Antiquity of Man in America-Prob- able European Origin of the American Races-The Mound Builders.

On the discovery of the Western World by Europeans, there was much speculation among the learned as to the origin of its inhab- itants. The native Americans were different not only in color, but in many peculiarities of appearance, language and habits from any of the then known races of the Old World. Many interesting, and some wildly fanciful hypoth- eses were brought forward, and defended with great display of erudition. By some the new- found sons of the forest were declared to be the descendants of the "ten lost tribes of Israel." Others referred to the "Lost Atlan- tis." which was supposed to have formerly ex- isted as a sort of land connection between Northern Africa and South America, and to which an apparent but vague allusion may be found in Pliny. "Such connection," says Dr. D. G. Brinton, in his scholarly work, 'The American Race,' there once undoubtedly was but far back in the Eocene period of the ter- tiary, long before Man appeared upon the scene. The wide difference between the exist- ing fauna and flora of Africa and South America proves that there has been no connec- tion in the life-time of the present species."

Other scholars have since maintained that the continent was peopled from Polynesia, or di- rectly from China or Japan, but neither hypo- thesis will stand a careful examination in the

light of known scientific facts. Perhaps the favorite theory of the present day is that the first inhabitants came from northeastern Asia, either by way of the Aleutian islands or Behr- ing strait. There are a number of cogent facts which go far to destroy the plausibility of this theory, but which it is unnecessary to enter into here. The reader will find them fully con- sidered in the work above alluded to, and in the writings of other modern ethnographers.

ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA.

That man was here at a very early period, there is abundant evidence to prove, in the roughly chipped stone weapons, and other pa- leolithic implements. that from time to time have been found in deposits of gravel and loess dating back to the Glacial Epoch. In a bed of loess in the Missouri valley, Prof. Aughey found a rudely chipped arrowhead beneath the vertebra of an elephant. Again, a primitive hearth was discovered in digging a well along the old beach of Lake Ontario. According to Prof. G. K. Gilbert, this dated from a period "when the northern shore of that body of water was the sheer wall of a mighty glacier. and the channel of the Niagara river had not yet begun to be furrowed out of the rock by the receding waters." Some hundreds of stone

HISTORY OF MAHONING COUNTY

implements of the true paleolithic type, to- gether with some fragments of human skele- tons, were discovered by Dr. C. C. Abbot in the gravels near Trenton, on the Delaware.

These evidences, with many others which we have not space to mention, prove clearly that tool-making, fire-using Man "was here long before either Northern Asia or the Poly- nesian islands were inhabited, as it is well known that those parts of the world were first peopled in neolithic times."

PROBABLE EUROPEAN ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN RACES.

The modern geological discovery that at one time-about the middle and later glacial epoch-there occurred an uplift of the north- ern part of the continent, and also of the north Alantic basin, seems to answer the question, as to whence came the first inhabitants of the New World. According to Prof. Geikie, and other competent scientists,

this uplift amounted to a vertical elevation of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the present level, and re- sulted in establishing a continuous land con- nection between the higher latitudes of the two continents, which remained till the post- glacial period. This is confirmed by the char- acter of the glacial scoriæe of the rocks of Shetland, the Faroe islands, Iceland and South Greenland, which give unmistakable indica- tions of having been formed by land ice; and by a comparison of the fauna and flora of the two continents, both living and fossil. This land bridge formed a barrier between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, so that the temper- ature of the higher latitudes was much higher than at present. Says Dr. Brinton, after a thorough consideration of the subiect. "The evidence, therefore, is cumulative that at the close of the last glacial epoch, and for an in- definite time previous, the comparatively shal- low bed of the North Atlantic was above water and this was about the time that we find men in the same stage of culture living on both its chores." It thus seems conclusive that the earliest inhabitants of the American continent,

Came, as did the Spanish, French and English discoverers untold centuries later, though in a very different manner, from the region of Western Europe.

THE MOUND BUILDERS.

In this reference to the prehistoric inhab- itants of the continent, it remains but to add a brief word in regard to the so-called mys- terious race of Moundbuilders, whose works are found in parts of Ohio (though none in Mahoning county), and in some neighboring States.

The mounds, fortifications, and other relics left by this race, have in recent years been thoroughly investigated by competent and pains-taking scientists. They contain no evidence to prove that this people was in any essential respects different from the familiar red races whom the first white discoverers found in possession of the soil. Mr. Warren K. Moorehead, in his "Primitive Man on the Ohio," thus sums up the result of years of laborious exploration and careful investiga- tion of these relics :

"Nothing more than the upper status of savagery was attained by any race or tribe liv- ing within the limits of the present State of Ohio, all statements to the contrary being mis- representations. If we go by field testimony alone (not to omit the reports of early travel- ers among North American tribes) we can as- sign primitive high attainments in but few things, and these indicate neither civilization nor any approach to it.

"First, he excelled in building earthern fortifications, and in the interment of his dead; second, he made surprisingly long journeys for mica, copper, lead, shells, and other foreign substances to be used as tools or ornaments ; third, he was an adept in the chase and in war ; fourth, he chipped flint and made carvings cn bone, stone and slate exceedingly well, when we consider the primitive tools he em- ployed; fifth, a few of the more skillful men of his tribe made fairly good representations of animals, birds and human figures in stone. This sums up in brief all that he seemed capa-

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS

ble of, which we in our day consider remark- able.

"On the other hand he failed to grasp the idea of communication by written characters, the use of metal (except in the cold state), the cutting of stone or the making of brick for building purposes, and the construction of per- manent homes. Ideas of transportation, other than upon his own back or in frail canoes, or the use of coal, which was so abundant about him and which he frequently made into pendants and ornaments, and a thousand other things which civilized beings enjoy, were ut- terly beyond his comprehension. Instead of living peacefully in villages, and improving a country unequalled in natural resources, of which he was the sole possessor, he spent his time in petty warfare, or in savage worship, and in the observance of the grossest supersti- tions. He possessed no knowledge of surgery or the setting of bones, unless we accept as evidence two neatly knitted bones found at Foster's, which by some extra effort he may have accomplished. But while admitting these two specimens to be actually and carefully set with splints, we have scores of femora, humeri and other bones from Forts Ancient and Ore- gonia, which are worn flat against unnatural sockets, formed after the bones had been dis- placed. We have broken fibulæ and tibiæ which had never been reset. They were bent like a bow, and nature alone had aided them

in coming together. It has been the mistake of many writers upon the antiquities of Ohio, to accept as evidences of the civilization of these peoples the mere fact that they could build circular and square embankments, and great fortifications. Any school boy knows that he can form a perfect circle by taking hold of the hands of his comrades, placing one of the number at ten feet from the line, to observe that the rest keep properly stretched out. The boy at one end acts as a pivot, the other swinging in a circle, while the boy at the end farthest from the pivot marks upon the ground with a stick as far out from the line as he can reach. Four hundred men placed in lines of one hundred each can easily mark a square which will be but two or three feet out of geometrical proportions.

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Century history of Youngstown and Mahoning County, Ohio, and representative citizens, 20th, Part 3

Author: Sanderson, Thomas W., comp Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1074

Author: Sanderson, Thomas W., comp
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1074