History of Licking County, Ohio: Its Past and Present, Part 32

Author: N. N. Hill, Jr.
Publication date: 1881
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 826

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The catfish was plenty and of large size, but

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HISTORY OF LICKING CGUNTY.

there were no eels. The white perch and sucker were numerous and of large size; the black jack and clear jack were here and grew large, but have long since disappeared. The streams, no less than the forests, contributed to the support of the early settlers. Indeed so plenty were game, fish, fur animals, and the fruits and other spontaneous pro- ductions that it was hardly necessary to till the ground to procure subsistence.

Serpents were of many varieties and in great abundance. Especially numerous were the rattle- snake, the copper-head viper, blacksnake, garter snake and watersnake. They were often found in the cabins of the settlers and even in their beds. It was not unusual for the settlers to be bitten by them, but few, if any, deaths occurred from this cause, as the settlers understood the treatment of snake bites.

There was a snake den on the south bank of Licking river, a mile below Newark, in the year 1803, which the settlers determined to break up. They accordingly procured a quantity of powder, and blew it up, the snakes flying high in the air, and in every direction, killing many of them; still the survivors were sufficiently numerous to be more or less annoying and troublesome.

For many years the people were troubled with snakes, but the venomous kind have long since disappeared. Scorpions and lizards abounded, and were not in high favor with the pioneers.

Insects of various kinds were numerous and troublesome. Spiders, particularly, were plenty and of large size. Gnats, hornets, yellow-jackets, musquitoes and horse-flies were in great abundance and exceedingly annoying to man and beast.

The wolf and the more venomous serpents were the most formidable and annoying enemies of the early settlers. Panthers were much dreaded, but fortunately were not numerous. The fox, mink and pole-cat frequently made raids on the hen-roost.

Most of these animals, especially the more troublesome ones, have long since disappeared.

The distinct class known in pioneer times as the hunter, a class of which Elias Hughes and John Channel were fair representatives, has pretty nearly gone out of existence. So also has the class known as the trapper, represented by Billy Dragoo and Joel Williams. Those also known as fishermen, represented by John Sparks and John Scamma- horn, have almost disappeared as a distinct class. People change, and conform their lives to the times in which they live.

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CHAPTER XX.

MINERALOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY.

MINERALOGY OF FLINT RIDGE-PROFESSOR READ ON THE FLINT OF FLINT RIDGE-COAL DEPOSIT-ISAAC SMUCKER ON THE FORMATION OF MINERAL COALS AND THE PALEONTOLOGY OF FLINT RIDGE.

"Arts perfect forms no moral need, And beauty is its own excuse ;

But for the dull and flowerless weed Some healing virtue still must plead, And the rough ore must find its honors in its use." -Whittier.

TN mineralogy there is much to interest the scien- tist and business man, within the county lim-

its. Perhaps Flint ridge is one of the most inter- esting localities for the mineralogist. Hon. Isaac Smucker thus writes of it:

"Mineralogy has an admirable and extensive development in Flint ridge. There the mineralogical manifestations are not only diversified, but also highly interesting. Among the stones, rocks, ores, metals, clays, earths and minerals found on and in Flint ridge are the flint or buhr-stone, the sand-stone, the horn- stone, the lime-stone, the oil-stone, the conglomerate rock, the iron ore, the granite boulder, fire-clay, blue-clay shale, slaty clay, potter's clay, slate, bituminous slate, bituminous coal, and cannel coal.

"The economic value of some of the foregoing deposits has been considerable, at different times. To the aboriginal inhabi- tants the flint-stones of the ridge must have been of great value, as from them they made, during many passing ages, their knives, spear and arrow heads, and perhaps other implements and ornaments. The flint of the ridge was, for many years, extensively manufactured into mill-stones, or what millers called "buhrs," and liberal profits were realized, but of late years this branch of manufacture has been abandoned, the French buhr being found superior in quality. Moreover, the best quality of the flint of the ridge, which alone was suitable for buhrs, was mainly worked out, and what remains is not attainable, or, at least, is not so readily quarried as to justify the continued profit- able prosecution of the aforesaid industry. In many mills, however, in early times in Ohio, and until a comparatively recent period, the Flint ridge buhrs were used, and found to be an economical and excellent substitute for the French buhr, par- ticularly for grinding corn, rye and buck-wheat. It is also said that the purer portions of the flint made good oil-stones, and when crushed also served a valuable purpose in manufac- turing glass, and, I believe, also fire-brick.

"The iron ore of Flint ridge has probably not been found sufficient in quantity, nor of such quality as to admit of ex- tensive utilization, by the erection of furnaces; and it is too re- mote from such as are now in operation to pay transportation.

The same may also be said of the building stones of the ridge, and for the same reason their use has been limited. But the fire-clay, as well as the potter's clay, has been brought into market in the form of fire-brick, and in the manufacture and sale, to a considerable extent, of the well-known stone-ware, long and extensively known in Ohio and in the west.

" Bituminous coal has not been mined on the Flint ridge to any extent, its seams being too thin to admit of it with profit. But the cannel coal of the ridge has been mined and marketed for a period of more than forty years, and continues to be thus mined and marketed, presumably with a fair profit. It is used to some extent for the manufacture of gas in Newark, as well as for fuel purposes there, and in the neighborhoods adjacent to the mines. For a time, says Professor Read (see volume three, Ohio Geology, page 356), it was extensively used for the pro- duction of coal-oil, the following average yield being obtained from the distillation of a ton of coal :

Crude oil, forty gallons;

Refined oil, seventeen and one-half gallons ;

Lubricating oil, seven and one-half gallons ;

Paraphine, three and three-fourths to five pounds.

When crude petroleum was placed upon the market at two cents per gallon in 1861-62, this branch of industry was of necessity suspended, and has not since been resumed, owing to the impossibility of competing with the petroleum of the oil wells.

"The main entrance into the Flint ridge cannel coal bed is that of the Licking County Cannel Coal company, more than a mile from the western termination of the ridge, at a point, says Pro- fessor Read, about one hundred feet, by his barometer, and one hundred and four feet by other measurements, below Flint ridge, meaning, I suppose, below its highest point. The pro- fessor found it 'capped' by a thick bed of lime-stone, presenting with the coals, shales and fire-clays, the following section :

Earthy lime-stone, two and one-half feet;

Pure lime-stone, two and one-half feet;

Cannel coal, one foot;

Fire-clay, three feet;

Cannel coal, four feet;

Black shale, nine inches;

Cannel coal, ten inches; Fire-clay, thickness not given.

An analysis of the Flint ridge cannel coal giyes, approxi- mately, in round numbers, twenty per cent. of ash, thirty-seven per cent. of voltatile matter, and forty-three per cent. of fixed car- bon. President Orton, of the Ohio State University, pronoun- ces it the best cannel coal in Ohio (as can be seen by reference to volume four, page 913, of Ohio Geology).

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Professor Read, above quoted, says, regarding the flint of Flint ridge:

"Any one traversing this ridge for the first time would be sur- prised to find such a deposit on such a geological horizon. It simulates very accurately the broken-up debris of a vertical dike, the fragment often covered with perfect crystals of quartz, the rock itself being highly crystaline and often translucent. It is something of a puzzle to understand how such a deposit is found in a series of undisturbed and unmodified rocks. The adjacent surfaces of two blocks of the chert are often found covered with the quartz crystals of considerable size, as thoroughly interlocking with each other as if one were a cast and the other a matrix. I cannot imagine the conditions which would spread such a deposit over the floor of a sea or any other body of water. A substitution of silicious matter deposited from solution, in the place of a soluble limestone previously de- posited, is the only plausible explanation. This substitution has taken place over large areas in this part of the State, and has left these silicious deposits only upon the horizons of the different limestones.

Professor Read continues, regarding the coal deposit in different parts of the county :

"Coal No. I is, in several localities in the county, of sufficient thickness to be mined for local consumption. In some places it rests upon a thin bed of carboniferous conglomerate, in others upon the olive shales of the Waverly; a bed of fire-clay and a thin stratum of shale being sometimes interposed between it and these rocks.

"In Madison township, about two miles southeast of New- ark, about two hundred tons of this coal have been taken from Dr. Wilson's mine. The coal, as far as worked, was of fine quality, and reached a thickness of thirty inches. Near this point, a shaft sunk through the coal, disclosed the including strata as follows :

"First-Shale, four feet.

"Second-Coal, two feet.

"Third-Conglomerate.

"On this hill the limestone of the cannel coal is, by barome- ter, one hundred feet above coal No. I. On the southeast quarter of section one, Hopewell township, entries have been carried into the coal where it is reported to be from eighteen to twenty inches thick. On Lewis Baker's land, Mary Ann town- ship, it is found near the top of the hill, and, when opened, ranges in thickness from one and a half to two feet. The Con- glomerate here appears in a bed a few feet below it. .

"On Wesley Painter's land, in the west part of Fallsbury township, coal No. I has about the same thickness, and the including strata, are as follows:

"First-Gray shale, thickness undetermined.

"Second-Coal, one and a half to two feet.

"Third-Fire-clay, one foot.

" Fourth-Hard, white sand-rock, with Stigmaria.

"At an opening on Jacob Priest's land, in Fallsbury town- ship, this coal is from two and a half to three feet thick, in two benches; is bright and hard; a very good coal; but containing a rather large percentage of sulphur. On the whole this is the best exposure of coal No. I observed in the county, but as the roof is sandstone, it is more liable to be reduced in thickness as the entry is carried further into the hill.

"It will be apparent that the coal of the county is quite lim-

ited in quantity, and that, aside from the cannel, none of it is first quality.

"Citizens report that coal has been found on Alligator hill, a little east of Granville. Several excavations have been made into the hill, and one near the top. All expose shaly sand- stone, which can be clearly identified as Waverly, and the debris of the Waverly is strewn over the surface of the highest part. I think no coal can be found in the hills, in this part of the county. It is true that in several places on the western margin of our coal-fields coal is found, in one sense, below the Upper Waverly. It is found, topographically, beiow it, no? geologically, in valleys, on the slopes of the Waverly hills, which, in this neighborhood, rose above the old coal-marshes, and marked the original western limit of the coal-fields. My observations in this county, and northward, along the margin of the coal-field, render it very certain that the supposition some- times made, that the Ohio coals were once continued westward over the Devonian and Silurian rocks to the Indiana and Illi- nois field, and that they have since been carried away by ero- sion, is untenable."

The following extracts are from the address of B. C. Woodward :

"There is a directing and compensating Providence in nature. That which was denied to eastern Licking county by the bene- fits of the drift, was presented to it by the sweeping waste of waters. Stores of minerals laid up in prior periods were undis- turbed and kept for the use of civilized man. Ohio geologists have conceded to this but a little corner of Bowling Green and Hopewell townships as included within the great Alleghany coal-field. Yet there are small lenticular masses of coal, some in workable beds, in Madison, Franklin, Bowling Green, Hope- well, Hanover, Mary Ann, Perry and Fallsbury townships. These small, isolated coal-fields present an instructive lesson, for though remote from each other, the quality is so similar, that it may, with a single exception, be called identical in kind and quality.

"That exception is the cannel coal of the flint ridge; all other beds afford that variety called by miners cherry coal. It is dry, burns without much flame, makes a hot fire, and is valu- able fuel. The sameness of the coal in all the different beds, teaches that it was all produced under like conditions. This is shown, too, by the fossil plants associated with it in its sev- eral deposits. The cannel coal of Flint ridge is limited to a small district, perhaps not more than three hundred acres, is a workable bed, valuable for gas, oil or fuel. The working of this bed shows that active energies have operated here since the formation of coal. The fossil shells, especially the lingula, with other mollusks of the same age, indicate that it is an an- cient deposit. The Flint ridge itself, being composed of silica in a greater or less crystaline state, enclosing, in many instances, fossil shells, indicate that heat, and perhaps hot water, impreg- nated with silica, has been active there, with a force sufficient to upheave it to its present level.

"The Hopewell coal, in the neighborhood of Gratiot, is of true bituminous variety. This is a deep stratum, and one of the best coal mines in the State.

"Although the early settlers were fully aware of these coal deposits, they, from force of circumstances, did not for some years, give much attention to them. The clearing of the land furnished an abundance of fuel, and hence they did not need the coal. But as the forests disappeared, its importance was

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HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

more appreciated, and its extent more fully developed. Wher- ever coal is found, iron is associated with it. The Mary Ann furnace, in operation some thirty-five years, produced thou- sands of tons of iron from the ores of the county. The Gran- ville furnace was chiefly supplied with ores from the same coal region, and has produced several thousand tons of the metal."

The following extract from the address of Hon. Isaac Smucker, delivered at the Young Men's Christian Association rooms, January 2, 1880, re- garding the formation, etc., of mineral coals, will be found interesting in this connection:

"It is one of the well established facts of geology and chem- istry that all mineral coals are of vegetable origin, hence botany is enlisted to elucidate phenomena relating to them. They are composed of the strange, gigantic flora or herbaria of the past, the far past carboniferous epoch, innumerable specimens of which have been so faithfully preserved in our coal-beds. Geol- ogists teach us that the different strata or layers of coal were, each one, originally deposited at or upon the surface, and that deposits were repeated at intervals, of variable distances or pe- riods of time apart, being separated by parallel layers of sand- stone, shales, limestone and other rock formations, ranging in thickness from a foot or two to an hundred feet, and some- . times more, the deposit or production of which, between the various strata or beds of coal must have required the lapse of many thousands of years, perhaps in most cases many times tens of thousands of years. The numerous deposits of coal, and the intervening layers of stones of different kinds are cred- ited mainly to the indefinitely long geological period known as the carboniferous. I say mainly but not wholly, for I think it can be demonstrated that the process of coal production, or at least of the inferior kinds, such as peat and lignite is now going on in lagoons, marshes and bogs, and probably has been going on ever since the termination of the carboniferous or great coal age.

"That our coals, in all their varieties, embracing peat, lig- nite, brown coal, bituminous, cannel, anthracite coal, also coke, plumbago, or graphite, are of vegetable origin, seems to be a generally admitted fact, and if further proof were needed, it could be found by closely observing certain natural processes now going on; for in nature, coal, or at least peat and lignite, can be seen in various stages of formation where vegetable tis- sue is heaped up and accumulated in bogs. On digging deep down into these bogs where the woody matter is surrounded by moisture and other favorable condidions for gradual decompo- sition, it is ascertained that the slow process of transforming said woody material into the combustible called peat is going on. And when peat becomes hardened by the lapse of ages, by diminished moisture, by evaporation, through the action of the elements, and otherwise changed by other causes, it becomes lignite. It is known that in the oldest peat bogs in Europe, at or near their bottom, a thin stratum of coal is generally found, and that there is reason to believe that the entire material com- posing those bogs, if undisturbed, would ultimately, under a combination of favorable circumstances develop into coal-beds, the afore-named stratum at or near the bottom of the bogs, be- ing the incipient formation thereof. Those favorable circum- stances are, in part, the continued full growth, for an indefin- itely long period, of aquatic vegetation, the debris of which would ultimately, by depression or sinking of the locality, and

by water action, or by any other cause that resulted in inunda- tion, which would by its sedimentary accumulations, form a covering for those beds of vegetable deposits. Most of those sedimentary accumulations are sand, pebbles, gravel, clay, mud, and other earthy matter. Where the sedimentary deposit is sand, and all favorable circumstances are present and contin- ued in active operation for long ages, the present product would be a bed of sandstone; when, by reason of a strong current, pebbles were carried along with the sand and intermingled with it, the result would be a conglomerate sandstone, such as is found at the mouth of the Rocky fork, and all along through the "Licking narrows;" where earthy matter, gravel and clay are the deposit, the products are, of course, different; and where the deposit consists of a combination of any or all of those materiels, there is no difficulty in arriving at a correct knowl- edge of the facts in the case; and finally, when the sedimentary deposit is what is popularly called a kind of a clayey mud, if the requisite constituent elements are present, such as silex, alumina, oxide and sulphate of iron, potash, magnesia and carbon, the product will ultimately be shale or argillaceous slates. These shale and slate deposits are often found in layers immediately above and below coal-beds, and generally contain more or less of carbonaceous matter, and possibly other con- stituent elements of mineral coal, in limited quantities. The amount of carbon they contain is so small as to preclude their use as fuel, although they are, in a sense, combustible, and by heat can be reduced to their original elements. This may be chiefly because they have been so long in proximity to the coal deposits, where they were placed by the action of water, and solidified in pursuance of the operation of nature's laws.

"Water action, let it be borne in mind, is an important agency, indeed an essential instrumentality in coal production, and I might add also in most other productions, as well as in giving shape and form to the surface of our globe, for it has assuredly been instrumental in floating into position the mate- rials of which the earth is composed. The processes of coal formation, and the production of numerous other inanimate things of this world, are in active operation now, as they have been through the almost interminable geological ages of the past, and will so continue through the long cycles of the coming future. Indeed the process of creation itself is, in an import- ant sense, a continuity-thus far it has been a progressive work, is still going on, and may go on unceasingly. A day with the Lord, the Bible informs us, is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, that is, as one day of creation, by which is meant simply an indefinitely long geological day, age or period, as Hugh Miller, the author of "The Old Red Sand- stone," also of "The Foot-prints of the Creator, " and of "The Testimony of the Rocks," has maintained, making the six days of creation in Genesis to stand for six indefinitely long geo- logical days or periods. In these views of the biblical bear- ings of geology he has the concurrence of Professors Silliman and Hitchcock and many other Christian scientists.

"Cuvier, the great naturalist, taught that the earth had been inhabited by a succession of different series of animals that ultimately became extinct, and that those of each period were peculiar to the age in which they lived. And the same is true also of aquatic and marine animals. The extinction, from natural causes, of the huge animals that once existed in the Ohio valley, as their remains will show, such as the mastodon, the megatherium and the mammoth, and their substitution by others better adapted to existing atmospheric, climatic and

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HISTORY OF. LICKING COUNTY.

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general conditions, fully coroborate the views here expressed. And the same. is true of other animals, also of reptilian mons- ters now extinct, and of birds and insects, whose places have been taken by others.

"The main or essential factors in coal production, during the carboniferous period, were: first, an atmosphere so heavily charged with carbon as to preclude the possibility of the ex- istence of warm-blooded animals; second, a huge growth of aquatic vegetation; third, heat; fourth, water action; fifth, moisture; sixth, decomposition; seventh, weight or pressure; eighth, a favorable climate; ninth, time. And when and where all the foregoing conditions and elements are present and in ac- tive operation, the elements being in proper proportions and com- binations, and the climate is favorable for coal production, thep, of course, the result will be coal. Chemists have, by chemical combinations and processes, manufactured coal, and therefore know all about its constituent elements, but the chemist with his retort charged with materials for manufacturing coal is at a dis- advantage in competition with the production of nature's labor- atory. Of course the formation of coal, or rather of peat and lignite, is now a much slower process than it was during the ages of more luxuriant vegetable growths, and when carbon was so redundant as to render warm. blooded life impossible.

" 'In Holland, Denmark and Sweden,' says Lesquereux, ' the thick deposits of peat are separated into distinct beds by strata of sand and mud, giving the best possible elucidation of the process of stratification of the coal measures.' 'For their formation,' says Maury, 'these bogs require a basin rendered impermeable by a substratum of clay and an active growth of aquatic or semi-ærial plants, having their roots in water, while their branches and leaves expand on the surface thereof, or rise in the air above it, constantly growing in the same place, whose debris, falling year after year, is heaped up and preserved against atmospheric decomposition by stagnant water or great humidity in the air.' It was during the carboniferous epoch, the geological age of gigantic vegetable growths, when our principal and most valuable beds of coal were deposited; and then it was when all the most favorable circumstances for the production of coal were in their highest development; when, in fact, the conditions which tended most to promote the rapid for- mation of coal, in the different varieties, were all present and in active operation.

"During the carboniferous age of the earth's history, water covered very much more of its area than it does now, and por- tions of the continents were so little raised above its surface that a slight elevation or depression would change the lagoons, marshes and bogs into dry land, or sink them below the surface of the sea. When air passes over, or rests on oceans, lakes or rivers, it becomes laden with vapor, whose influence is very po- tent, as the power of vapor to absorb and retain is very many times greater than that of air; hence as water then prepondera- ted so largely over land, the atmosphere was heavily charged with moisture, which, as well as heat, was essential in a coal- producing climate. In fact the absence of annual rings or concentric circles, in carboniferous plants, found as fossils in our coal-beds, proves that there was no winter when and where our coal was produced; and as the same kind of coal-plants grew at the same time in Europe and America, as geologists have demonstrated, the same climate, substantially, must then have prevailed on both sides of the Atlantic. During the car- boniferous epoch the atmosphere was so largely charged with carbonic acid that, as already stated, warm-blooded animals

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History of Licking County, Ohio: Its Past and Present, Part 32

Author: N. N. Hill, Jr. Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Number of Pages: 826

Author: N. N. Hill, Jr.
Publication date: 1881
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 826