USA > Ohio > Delaware County > History of Delaware County and Ohio : containing a brief history of the state of Ohio biographical sketches etc. V. 1 > Part 29
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73
Ft.
No. 1. Drift 3
No. 2. Beds three to four inches, with shaly inter- stratification 12
No. 3. Beds eight to ten inches 4
-
Total. 19
These quarries are in the southern corner of Harlem Township, on small tributaries to Duncan's Creek, and are probably in the upper portion of the Berea grit. Still further south, and adjoining Mr. Scott's, is Sherman Fairchild's section, which embraces good stone, and lies in a very favorable situation for drainage of the quarry. It is com- posed of beds of two to eight inches, with shale, making six feet exposed. * * * * *
Cleveland Shale .- The Bedford shale, which occurs below the Berea, in the northern part of the State, seems not to exist in Delaware County. The Cleveland, likewise, has not been certainly identified. This is partly owing to the meagerness
of the exposure of the beds of that horizon in Delaware County, and partly to the difficulty of distinguishing, without fossils, the Cleveland from the black slate ( Huron shale). This uncertainty is augmented by the attenuation or non-existence of the Erie shale, which separates them by a wide interval in the northern part of the State. There are few exposures of black or blackish shale in the banks of Walnut Creek, in Berkshire Township, that may be referred to the Cleveland. * *
Huron Shale .- This shale has a full develop- ment in Delaware County. Its outcropping belt is from eight to ten miles wide, and is divided by Alum Creek into about equal parts. It graduates downward into a shale which is much less bitumi- nous and has a bluish color, and which lies directly on the blue limestone quarried at Delaware. It has occasional outcrops on the west side of the Olentangy, but that stream lies, almost without exception, along the western edge of the black slate or of the shale underlying. Alum Creek, and nearly all of its small tributaries, afford fre- quent sections of the Huron shale; but they are so unconnected, and have'so great a resemblance one to the other, that they cannot be correlated. Hence, no correct statement of the thickness of this shale can be given. It has been estimated at about three hundred feet. It would be impossible to mention every point at which this shale is exposed in Delaware County ; hence, only those outcrops will be noted at which some features are disclosed which throw light on the general charac- ter of the formation. In the bank of the East Branch of the Olentangy, near the center of Sec- tion 1, Marlborough Township, at Kline's factory, the following section, in descending order, was taken. It belongs to the lowest part of the Huron :
Ft. In.
No. 1. Thin, bituminous and brittle, similar to the exposure at Cardington, Morrow County. 7 No. 2. Blue shale : calcareous, hard and compact, parting conchoidally ; less hard and en- during than limestone; concretionary, irregular and bilging ; seen in the bed of the river ; this may not be a constant layer ; seen. 6
Total. 7
6
Thirty or forty rods below the bridge over the Olentangy, just below the union of the East and West Branches, Troy Township, the same horizon is exposed in the left bank of the river, on Joseph
X-
170
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
Cole's land, covering, however, more of both num- · bers, as follows : Ft. In.
No. 1. Black slate. the weathered surface of which is divided into very thin beds; includes two beds of an inch or two each, of less bituminous shale, which is blue, if damp, but brown when dry and rusted .. 23
No. 2. Blue shale, yet in regular, thin bedding ... 6 4
No. 3. Same as No. 1
No. 4. Bluish or purplish shale, in thin beds. 3
6 No. 5. Black slate ... 8
No. 6. Massive blue shale, weathering out super- ficially in small, rounded pieces or short cylinders the upper ends of which are convex and the lower concave, the equiv- alent of No. 2: at Kline's factory 1
No. 7. Blue-bedded shale ; seen. 3
3
Total. 29 6
At D. laware, a quarter of a mile below the rail- road bridge over the Olentangy, the Huron shale appears in the left bank of the river, underlaid by the shale which has been regarded the equivalent of the Hamilton. There are no fossils in this un- derlying shale at Delaware, proving its Hamilton age, and it will be referred to in the following pages, to avoid a possible misuse of terms, as the Olentangy shale. The slate is of its usual thin beds, with some calcareous layers, which are black and about half an inch thick, hardly distin- guishable from the slate itself. Here also are the round, calcareous concretions, technically called septario, common to the lower portion of the black slate. The line of contact of the slate with the shale underlying, is quite conspicuous at some dis- tance from the bluff, the shale weathering out fast- er, allowing the tough beds of slate to project. The following is the section at Delaware, covering the lower part of the Huron shale and the whole of the Olentangy shale : Ft. In.
No. 1. Black slate ( Huron shale) 30
No. 2. Blue shale, without fossils, in thin beds or massive 8
.
No. 3. Blue limestone 4
No. 4. Shale, like No. 2. 1
4
No. 5. Blue limestone ... 3
No. 6. Shale, like No. 2. 5
No. 7. Alternations of blueshale and black slate 4 No. 8. Blue shale, like No. 2 4
No. 9. Shale with concretions of blue limestone, that part under the weather conchoidally like massive shale. These hardened cal-
careous masses are not regularly disposed with respect to each other, but fill most of the interval of six feet. They are six to eight inches thick, and two to three feet wide horizontally* 6
* No 9 here appears the same as No. 6, near the base of the sec- tion at Coles, in Truy Township.
No. 10. Shale ? (sloping talus), not well exposed 10 No. 11. Bituminous, nearly unfossiliferous, lime- stone of a black, or purplish black color, hard and crystalline. This black lime- stone shows a few indistinct bivalves. One, which is large and coarse, appears to be Avicula pectiniformis, Hall : seen 3 No. 12. Interval, rock not seen. 5
No. 13. Section at Little's quarry, in blue lime- stone (see page 96). The apportions are quite cherty and pyritiferous. It may be 25
- Total, 101 11
Above Delaware, the black slate and the Olen- tangy shale are frequently seen in the left bank of the river. The strike of the slate runs a little east of the river at the city, passing through and form- ing the bluff on which East Delaware is situated. The concretions of black limestone are from three inches to three and four feet in diameter, and some- times much larger. (The survey here copies a lengthy extract from Dr. J. S. Newberry, which, as it is pertinent to the subject, and moreover con- tains much of interest, we give it entire.)
" Much of the doubt which has hung around the age of the Huron shale has been due to the fact that it has been confounded with the Cleveland shale, which lies several hundred feet above it, and that the fossils (without which, as we have said, it is generally impossible to accurately determine the age of any of the sedimentary rocks) had not been found. Yet, with diligent search, we have now discovered not only fossils sufficient to identify this formation with the Portage of New York, but the acute eye of Mr. Hertzer has detected, in certain calcareous concretions'which occur near the base at Delaware, Monroeville, etc., fossils of great scien- tific interest. These concretions are often spher- ical, are sometimes twelve feet in diameter, and very frequently contain organic nuclei, around which they are formed. These nuclei are either portions of the trunks of large coniferous trees allied to our pines, replaced, particle by particle, by silica, so that their structure can be studied almost as well as that of the recent wood, or large bones. With the exception of some trunks of tree ferns which we have found in the corniferous lime- stone of Delaware and Sandusky, these masses of silicified wood are the oldest remains of a land veg- etation yet found in the State. The Silurian rocks everywhere abound with impressions of sea-weeds, but not until now had we found proof that there were, in the Devonian age, continental surfaces cov- ered with forests of trees similar in character to, and rivaling in magnitude, the pines of the present day.
r
James
Carpenter
ONE OF THE FIRST SETTLERS OF DELAWARE. CO. LIBERTY, TP.
171-172
173
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
"The bones contained in these concretions are of gigantic fishes, larger, more powerful, and more singular in their organization, than any of those immortalized by Hugh Miller. These fishes we owe to the industry and acuteness of Mr. Hertzer, and, in recognition of the fact, I have named the most remarkable one Din- ichthys Hertzeri, or Hertzer's terrible fish. This name will not seem ill chosen, when I say that the fish that now bears it had a head three feet long by two feet broad, and that his un- der jaws were more than two feet in length and five inches deep. They are composed of dense bony tissue, and are turned up anteriorly like sled runners ; the extremities of both jaws meeting to form one great triangular tooth, which interlocked with two in the upper jaw, seven inches in length and more than three inches wide. It is apparent, from the structure of these jaws, that they could easily embrace in their grasp the body of a man -- perhaps a horse-and as they were doubtless moved by muscles of corresponding power, they could crush such a body as we would crack an egg-shell."
One mile northwest from Delaware, Mr. Nathan Miller struck the black slate, on the west side of the Olentangy, at the depth of twenty-one feet, in digging a well. It may also be seen along a little ravine tributary to the Delaware Run, near Mr. Miller's farm, on the land of C. O. and G. W. Little. Limestone ouly is seen in the bed of the run a few rods further west. It is blue and fos- siliferous. A short distance still higher up the run the black member (No. 11 of the section taken in the Olentangy at Delaware) is seen in the bed of the same run. About a mile and a half below Stratford a little stream comes into the Olen- tangy, from the east, bringing along in freshet time a good many pieces of black slate. About a hun- dred rods up this little stream the beds of the black slate appear in situ in the tops of the bluffs, the Olentangy shale, with its full thickness of about thirty feet, being plainly exposed near its junction with the slate, while in the river the limestone beds of the upper corniferous are spread out over a wide surface exposure. In Liberty Township, two and a half miles south of the Stratford, the black slate may be seen on the farm of Mr. J. Moorhead, on the west side of the Olentangy, in the banks of a ravine the distance of a mile from the river. From a considerable distance from this point, in descending the Olentangy, the banks show frequent exposures of limestone. Near Mr.
William Case's quarry, five and a half miles below Stratford, the black slate may be seen by ascend- ing a little ravine that comes in from the east. Just at the county line, the slate appears in full force again in the left bank of the river, little streams bringing fragments from the west side as well as from the east. A perpendicular exposure on land owned by Granby Buell, of about forty feet, consists of about five feet of shale at the bottom. It is also seen on the west of the Olentangy, by ascending a ravine near the county line, on Archi- bald Wood's land, and again, by ascending another ravine about three-quarters of a mile north of the county line, on the land of F. Bartholomew. and it seems to extend about two miles west of the Olentangy at its point of exit from Delaware County.
The name Olentangy shale is given to that bluish and sometimes greenish shale which is so extensively exposed in the banks of the Olentangy River, in Delaware County, and which underlies the black, tough, but thin beds of the Huron shale. It has a thickness of about thirty feet. No fossils have been found in it. It is interstrati- fied with a little black slate, and in some of its ex- posures it bears a striking resemblance. at least in its bedding, to the Huron shale. The section which has already been given of its exposures at Delaware, is the most complete that has been taken, and very accurately represents its bedding and characters wherever seen in the county. It lies immediately upon a hard, blackish, sometimes bluish, crystalline, pyritiferous limestone, or on the beds that have been denominated upper cornifer- ous in the reports on the counties of Sandusky. Seneca, and Marion. In the county of Franklin. and further south, it is said to be wanting, and the black slate lies immediately upon the same lime- stone beds. It is also wanting in Defiance County, the black slate there also lying immediately on the beds that contain the only Hamilton fossils there yet discovered. This shale embraces occasionally a course of impure limestone that has a blue color and a rude concretionary appearance. On account of easy quarrying, it is a constant temptation to the peo- ple to employ it in foundations. It is found, however, to crumble with exposure after a few months or years, and change into a soft shale or clay. Large bloeks of it are washed out from this shale just below Waldo, in Marion County, by the force of the water coming over the dam at the mill. and have been somewhat used by Mr. John Brundage, near Norton, in Marlborough Township. This
174
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
1
shaly limestone near the base of the Olentangy shale is immediately underlaid by a very hard crys- talline limestone, which is sometimes black, but fre- quently purplish, containing pyrites in abundance and very few evident fossils. It is exposed and quarried just below Waldo, in Marion County, but is nowhere wrought in Defiance County. It is a persistent layer and occurs in Defiance County. In the report on the geology of Marion County it has been referred to the Hamilton, where it probably belongs, and seems to represent the Tully limestone of New York. The following section in the Olen- tangy shale will further illustrate the bedding and the nature of this member of the Devonian. It occurs along the banks of a little creek that enters the Olentangy River from the west, on land of F. Bartholomew, southeast of Powell:
Ft. In.
No. 1. Black slate, with black limestone con- cretions 20
No. 2. Blue shale, bedded like the slate but softer 3
No. 3. Black limestone, in a broken lenticular or concretionary course. 8
No. 4. Same as No. 2 5
4
No. 5. Black slate. 2
No. 6. Shale, same as No. 2 2
No. 7. Blue, irregular, shaly limestone, appear- ing concretionary; the same as washed out of blue clay near Waldo; comes out in blocks ; in one course. 4
No. 8. Same as No. 2. 10
No. 9. Same as No. 5. 3
No. 10. Same as No. 2. 2
No. 11. Same as No. 5. 1 No. 12. Same as No. 2 6
No. 13. Same as No 5. 1
No. 14. Same as No. 2 1
No, 15. Same as No. 5. 4
No. 16. Same as No. 2. 1
No. 17. Same as No. 5. 1
No. 18. Same as No. 7. 8
No. 19. Shaly (not well seen) ,15
No. 20. Hard, dark blue, bituminous limestone, with much chert and pyrites ; the chert is black, and hard as flint ; beds 3 to 12 inches (well exposed) 9 6
No. 21. Thinner blue beds, with vermicular or fucoidal marks and little chert; fossilifer- ous; sometimes coarsely granular and crinoidal, but mainly earthly or argil- laceous, and tough under the hammer ; within, this is in beds of six to twelve inches .. 6 No. 22. Limestone in thin slaty beds, so con- torted and yet so agglomerated by chert (which forms nearly one-half of the mass) that the whole seems massive ; the chert is dark. 3
6
No. 23. Beds of blue limestone of 4 to 10 inches, alternating with chert beds, latter about an inch thick ; where this number forms the bed of the creek it does not appear slaty, but massive and smooth, like a very promising building stone : the creek where it enters the river bottoms is on this number, and nothing more is seen .. 6
Total .80 8
Hamilton and Upper Corniferous .-- These names are here associated, because whatever Ham- ilton fossils have been found in the county have been detected in that formation that has been de- scribed in reports on other counties as upper corni- ferous, and because it seems impossible to set any limit to the downward extension of the Hamilton, unless the whole of the blue limestone be Hamil- ton. The shale which has been described as Olen- tangy shale was at one time regarded as the only equivalent of the Hamilton, from the occurrence of Hamilton fossils in a shaly outcrop at Prout's Station, in Erie County. But after the survey of the county revealed no fossils in that shale, it became evident that it could not be the equivalent of the very fossiliferous outerop at Prout's Station. and should not bear the name of Hamilton. That shale partakes much more largely of the nature of' the Huron than of the Hamilton. The name corniferous is made by Dr. Newberry to cover the whole interval between the Oriskany and that shale, the Hamilton being regarded as running out into the corniferous, its fossils mingling with typical corniferous fossils. In the State of Michigan. how- ever, the term Hamilton has been freely applied to these beds, the corniferous, if either, being regard- ed as receded. The lithological characters of the Michigan Hamilton are the same as those of the upper corniferous in Ohio, and it is hardly suscep- tible of doubt that they are stratigraphically identi- cal. In Ohio, there is a very noticeable lower hori- zon that should limit the Hamilton, if that name be applicable to these beds, and if palæontological evidence will not limit it.
*. * X- *
The upper surface of these beds can be seen on the Olentangy, near Norton, where they have been opened for building-stone. They are also quarried near Waldo, in Marion County, in a similar situa- tion, in the bed of the Olentangy. The only other undoubted exposure of the very highest beds belonging to this formation that is known occurs near Delaware, likewise in the bed of the Olen- tangy. It is mentioned in the section of the shale
2
175
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.
outcropping there, under the head of the Huron Shale, and is described as a black limestone, hard and crystalline. It is also included in No. 20 of the "section in the Olentangy shale in Liberty Township." The exposure near Norton does not show so dark a color, but varies to a blue ; it occurs there in even, thick courses, that would be extremely difficult to quarry except for the natural joints by which the layers are divided into blocks. The same is true of its outcrop near Waldo. In both places it is a hard, ringing, apparently sili- cious, tough, and refractory limestone, some of the blocks being over two feet thick. It is a very reliable building stone, but the abundance of pyrites that is scattered through it makes it very undesirable for conspicuous walls. It is exceed- ingly fine grained, and but slightly fossiliferous. At these places, not more than four or five feet of this stone can be seen, but it has an observed thickness in the southern part of the county of about nine and a half feet. It seems to retain a persistent character, for the same stratum is seen to form the top of the upper corniferous in Defiance County, on the west side of the great anticlinal axis. It is believed to be the equivalent of the Tully dimestone of New York. Below these very hard and heavy layers comes the stone quarried extensively at Delaware. The quarry of Mr. G. W. Little shows about eighteen feet of bedding, in courses three to fifteen inches thick. It is for the most part in a very handsome, evenly bedded blue limestone that shows some coarse chert, and, in places, considerable argillaceous matter, which renders the walls built of it liable to the attacks of the weather. The features of the Hamilton here seem very conspicuously blended with those that have been designated more dis- tinctively as belonging to the corniferous. The fossils are not abundant throughout the whole, but between certain thin beds many bivalves - Cyrtia Hamiltonensis, Spirifera mucronata, Strophomena (Rhomboidalis ? ), Strophomena demissa-and one or two species of Discina, and various vermicular markings, are common. In some of the heavier beds the fish remains that have been described by Dr. Newberry, from the Corniferous at Sandusky, are met with, as well as the large coils of Cyrto- ceras undulatum.
*
Between two and three miles below Stratford the lower corniferous appears on both sides of the river, and is described under the head of lower corniferous. But about fifty rods still further
down the right bank shows the Hamilton, or upper corniferous, again, having a thin and al- most slaty appearance as the edges of the layers are exposed in the river bluff. In some parts there, beds are thickly crowded with Spirifera, Cyrtia, and Strophomena ; these, indeed, being the only conspicuous fossils. These beds closely overlie the above-mentioned lower corniferous, although the superposition could not be discovered, showing the continuance of Hamilton fossils well down into the Delaware stone. At a point about five miles and a half below Stratford, Mr. William Case has a quarry on the left bluff of the river, in beds at the horizon of the base of the Delaware stone. A little above this quarry, a ravine joins the river from the east, its sides affording a fine connected section through the Olentangy shale, and the whole of the Delaware limestone, into the lower cornif- erous. The shale and overlying Huron are seen in ascending this ravine about fifty rods from the river. Descending this ravine, and including the rock exposed below Mr. Case's quarry, where a very prominent bluff is formed by the erosion of the river, the following succession of beds appears : Feet.
No. 1. Black slate (Huron shale), seen. 10 No. 2. Blue, or bluish-green, bedded shale; non- fossiliferous, embracing sometimes layers of black slate, like No. 1, of three or four inches in thickness ; poorly exposed (Olen- tangy shale), abou 90
No. 3. Bituminous, dark blue. or black limestone ; non-fossiliferous, rather rough, hard, and with some black chert, or flint (Tully lime- stone ? )
1
No. 4. Thin, blue, tough, finely crystalline beds, containing considerable black chert, or flint, associated with pyrites ; in the lower portion in beds of four to sixteen inches ; but little fossiliferous (Tully limestone ?), about 8
No. 5. Beds four to six inches, slightly fossiliferous : embracing some bituminous, slaty shale in irregular deposits about crowded concre- tions (Hamilton limestone ?). 14
No. 6. Tough, bluish-gray, sìaty beds of impure limestone of the thickness of one-quarter to one-half inch, with considerable chert (Hamilton ? )
8
No. 7. Heavier beds (six to twenty inches), but of. the same texture as the last; fossiliferous ; blue; the horizon of the best quarries at Delaware, showing the usual fossils and lithological characters (Hamilton ?). ........
6
No. 8. Crinoidal beds, fossiliferous, of a lighter color ; not showing blue ; generally mass- ive, or eight to thirty-six inches, but weathering into beds of three to five inches (corniferous limestone).
6
0
176
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY. .
No. 9. Heavy or massive beds of crinoidal lime- stone, which weathers off by crumbling into angular pieces of an inch or two ; light gray or buff, with large concretions of chert between it and the last. This seems to contain all the fossils characterizing the lower corniferous, as that term has been used in reports on other counties. Below, becoming more bituminous, less crinoidal, but equally fossiliferous (Corniferous lime- stone), seen. 11
Total. 94
*
*
*
That limestone which, in reports on the counties of Sandusky, Seneca, Crawford, and Marion, the writer has designated "lower corniferous," " is divisible, on account of strong lithological and palæ- ontological differences, into two well-marked mem- bers. The upper member, well exposed and ex- tensively burned for lime at Delhi, in Delaware County, lies immediately below the blue limestone quarried at Delaware, as may be seen by reference to the last foregoing section, and has a thickness of about twenty-eight feet. It is of a light cream color, crystalline or saccharoidal texture, quite fos- siliferous, and usually seen in beds of three or four inches. It is rather hard and firm under the ham- mer. It makes a lime not purely white, but of the very best quality. Where this stone is deeply and freshly exposed, it is seen to lie in very heavy layers, and as such it would furnish a very fine crinoidal marble for architecture. Its most con- spicuous fossils are brachiopods of the genera strophomena (?) Atrypa Chonetes, and others, with one or two genera of gasteropods, and occa- sionally a specimen of Cyrtoceras undulatum. There may also be seen in these beds different spe- cies of cyathophylloids, trilobite remains, and fish spines and teeth. This member of the Lower Cor- niferous occupies the position relatively to the Hamilton, of the corniferous limestone of New York, though it is not possible at present to say it is the equivalent of that formation. It would thus be the upper member of the Upper Helderberg of that State. It has a thickness of about twenty- eight feet.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.