History of Summit County, with an outline sketch of Ohio, Part 32

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1104

USA > Ohio > Summit County > History of Summit County, with an outline sketch of Ohio > Part 32

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" The Cuyahoga shale is the upper division of the Waverly group, and is better exhibited in Summit County than in any other part of the State. It has a thickness of from 150 to 200 feet, and has been given the name it bears, be- cause it forms the greater part of the banks of the Cuyahoga, from Cuyahoga Falls, to the north line of the county. A short distance above Peninsula, the Berea grit sinks beneath the river, and the whole thickness of the Cuyahoga shale is revealed in the interval between that rock and the Conglomerate which caps the bluffs. In this part of the valley, the Cuya- hoga shale exhibits little variety in composi- tion, and consists of a mass of soft argillaceous material, inter-stratified with thin and local sheets of fine grained sandstone, rarely thick enough to serve as flagging. The surfaces of these sheets are marked with mud furrows, and, occasionally, with the impressions of fucoids. At the 'Big Falls' of the Cuyahoga, eighty feet below the conglomerate, a number of lavers of fine-grained sandstone, from six to twelve inches in thickness, and occupying a vertical space of about twenty feet, locally re- place the softer material of the Cuyahoga shale, and produce the beautiful waterfall at this locality. These harder strata may be traced for a mile or more down the river, but are not distinguishable in the sections of the

Cuyahoga shale in the northern part of the county. The sandstone of the Big Falls is a compact, homogeneous rock, almost identical in character and utility with the 'blue stone' of the East Cleveland quarries, although lying at a considerably higher level; the East Cleve- land stone being a local modification of the lower portion of the Bedford shale. The upper part of the Cuyahoga shale near the Big Falls, has furnished a great number of fine specimens of 'cone-in-cone,' and they are referred to by Dr. Hildreth, in his notes on Cuyahoga Valley, published in Siliman's Journal in 1836. This singular structure has given rise to much specu- lation ; it was, at one time, supposed to be or- ganic ; subsequently, the result of crystalliza- tion, and it is now considered by Prof. O. C. Marsh as of purely mechanical origin. The ' cone-in-cone' consist, as is well known, of a series of hollow cones, like extinguishers, placed one within another, and it sometimes makes up the entire mass of a stratum, several inches in thickness and many feet in lateral extent. It is by no means confined to this horizon, but is found in the older paleozoic rocks, in the coal measures, and is, perhaps, more abundant than anywhere else, in the cretaceous formation in the far West. This structure is apparently confined to rocks of a peculiar chemical com- position, viz. : to earthy limestones, or argilla- ceous shales impregnated with lime. The con-

cretions, which include the great fishes of the Huron shale, not unfrequently exhibit the ‘cone- in-cone ' strueture, and, in some instances. where the calcareous material forms simply a crust on the fossil, that crust still shows more or less of it. From the locality under consideration, in the valley of the Cuyahoga. I have obtained specimens of 'cone-in-cone' enveloping nodules of iron ore, and radiating in all directions from such nuclei. Specimens of this character, and the bones of Dinichthys, coated in all their irregularities, with 'cone-in-cone,' seemed to me incompatible with the theory that this structure is the product of mechanical forces, and appear rather to confirm the conclusion that it is an imperfect crystallization. Through- out most of its mass, and in most places, the Cuyahoga shale is very barren of fossils. This. however, is fully compensated for by the ex- treme richness of some layers and some locali- ties. This is the rock which was excavated in the formation of the canal in the valley of the

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HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY.

Cuyahoga, below the falls, and through which an effort was made to conduct the water of the river to the proposed town of Summit. In this excavation, the formation was fully opened for several miles, and yet, with the most careful search, at various times during the progress of the work, I was only able to obtain a mere handful of fossils. At the base of the forma- tion, however, immediately over the Berea grit, the Cuyahoga shale is sometimes crowded with millions of Lingula melia and Discina New- berryi. The same species also occur at the 'Big Falls' of the Cuyahoga, and the valley of the Little Cuyahoga, near Akron. In the up- per part of the Cuyahoga shale, in various parts of Medina County, and at Richfield, in Summit County, immense numbers of fossils are found, and those which form a long list of species. The Richfield locality is already quite famous, as extensive collections were made there before the commencement of the present survey by Messrs. Meek & Worthen and Dr. Kellogg. Quite a large number of crinoids were discovered here by the latter gentleman, which proved new to science, and were described by Prof. James Hall.

"The carboniferous conglomerate underlies all the higher portions of the county, and forms the surface rock over all the middle and north- ern portions, except where cut through by the Cuyahoga and its tributaries. Though gener- ally covered and concealed by beds of drift, the conglomerate is exposed and quarried in all of the townships north of Akron. It is, however, best seen in the valley of the Cuya- hoga, where it forms cliffs sometimes 100 feet in perpendicular height. The rock is about 100 feet in thickness, generally a coarse-grained, light drab sandstone, but in some localities, and especially near the base of the formation, be- coming a mass of quartz-pebbles, with just enough cement to hold them together. There are also some local bands of the conglomerate which are red or brown in color, and furnish a building-stone of great beauty. At Cuyahoga Falls, such a band has been quarried for many years, and has been used for the construction of the best buildings in the town. This stone is brown, contains much iron, and is very strong and durable. At Akron, a similar local strat- um in the conglomerate at Wolf's quarry, has a deep, reddish-purple color, and forms, per- haps, the most beautiful building-stone in the

State. This has been quite extensively used in Cleveland. Unfortunately, the quantity of this variety of building stone is not large. Its peculiar color is probably due to the fact that the iron of which it contains a large quantity, is in the condition of anhydrous sesquioxide, and has associated with it a small percentage of manga- nese. Splendid sections of the conglomerate are seen in the gorge of the Cuyahoga, below Cuya- hoga Falls. Here, nearly the entire thickness of the formation is exposed, and vertical and over- hanging walls of 100 feet in height give great variety and beauty to the scenery. In descend- ing the valley of the Cuyahoga, the walls of con- glomerate recede from the river, of which the immediate banks are formed by the underlying shales. By the washing out of these, the blocks of conglomerate have been undermined and thrown down, and thus the valley has been widened until in Boston and Northfield the con- glomerate clitt's are several miles apart. They still preserve their typical character, however, and this is well exemplified by the 'ledges' in Boston, which-like those of Nelson, in Por- tage County, on the other side of the conglom- erate plateau-are favorite places of resort to the lovers of the picturesque. The fossils of the conglomerate are exclusively plants. These are generally broken and floating fragments, but are exceedingly numerous, their casts often making up a large part of the rock. In certain localities we find evidence that they have been gathered by the waves into some receptacle, and heaped up in a confused mass, like drift- wood on a shore at the present day. Since the conglomerate is composed of coarse mate- rials which could be only transported by water in rapid motion, it is evident all delicate plants would be destroyed from the trituration they would suffer in the circumstances of its depo- sition; hence, we only find here the remains of woody plants, and of these usually only frag- ments. The most common plants are trunks and branches of Lepidodendron, Sigillaria and Calamites, also the nuts which have been de- scribed under the name of Trigonocarpon. Of all these, the calamites are the most common, and they are sometimes entire, showing not only the upper extremity but also the roots. More frequently, however, they are broken, and it is not at all uncommon to find the nuts to which I have referred, in the interior of a calamite, indicating that when floating about

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HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY.

they were washed into the hollow, rush-like stem. Generally, the plants of the conglomer- ate are represented simply by casts; their car- bonaceous matter having been entirely re- moved. Occasionally, however, a sheet of coal is found, surrounding the cast of each, and in some localities every plant is preserved in this way, the amount of coal enveloping the casts corresponding to the quantity of woody matter in the plant. Still more rarely, when many plants have accumulated, their carbon has made an irregular coal seam, but never exceed- ing a few inches in thickness, and a few rods or feet in extent. These coal seams, however, differ in many respects from coals of the over- lying coal measure, as they have no underclays, are very limited in extent, and evidently rep- resent heterogeneous collections of drifted, woody matter. The pebbles of the more peb- bly portions of the conglomerate are sometimes as large as one's fist, but more generally range from the size of a hickory nut to that of an egg. They are most always composed of quartz, but in every locality where they are abundant, more or less of them may be found which are composed of quartzite or silicious slate, which shows lines of stratification. Sometimes these quartz pebbles, when in contact with the im- pressions of plants, are distinctly marked by such impressions. This circumstance has given rise to the theory that they are concretionary in character ; i. e., that they have been formed where found, and are not fragments of trans- ported quartz rock. There can be no question, however, that these pebbles are portions of quartz veins, which have been brought hun- dreds of miles from some area where meta- morphic crystalline rocks have suffered erosion. In process of transportation, the attrition to which these fragments were subjected, commi- nuted all but the most resistant, viz .: the quartz. The banded, silicious slates which are represented in the pebbles that accompany those of pure quartz, as well as the internal ! structure of the quartz-pebbles themselves, afford conclusive evidence that their origin is such as I have described. *

" All the southern part of Summit County is underlaid by the productive coal measures, and workable seams of coal are known to exist in Tallmadge, Springfield, Coventry, Norton, Cop- ley, Franklin and Green Townships. The line of the margin of the coal basin passes from

Portage County into Summit in the northeast- ern portion of Tallmadge. It then runs west- erly nearly to Cuyahoga Falls, and then sweeps round to inclose what is known as Coal Hill ; the continuity of the coal measures being sev- ered by ' Long Swamp' and the valley of Camp Brook. On the east side of this stream, the outerop of the coal rocks passes southward to the valley of the Little Cuyahoga ; turning up this to the line of Portage County ; thence sweeping back on the south side of the valley across the township of Springfield to the vicin- ity of Middlebury. It thence runs southwest- erly to New Portage, where it crosses the Tus- carawas and strikes northwesterly through Norton and the corner of Copley to the Medina line. There is also a narrow patch of coal- measure rocks forming an isolated hill (Sher- bondy Hill) southwest of Akron, on the west side of Summit Lake. Along the line I have traced, we find the outcrops of only the lowest coal seam -- Coal No. 1 (the Briar Hill coal)- and this not with any great constancy, inas- much as the coal occupies limited basins, and their margins are exceedingly sinons and ir- regular. A large part of the territory which holds the place of the coal, fails to hold the coal itself. from one or the other of two causes, which frequently disappoint the miner in this region, as well as in the valley of the Mahon- ing. These causes are : First. that the lowest seam was formed from peat-like carbonaceous matter which accumulated on the irregular bottom of the old coal marsh, and the margin of this marsh ran into innumerable bights and channels, which were separated by ridges and hummocks where the coal was never deposited ; second, in many localities where the coal was once found, it was subsequently removed by erosion. The heavy bed of sandstone which lies a little above Coal No. 1, was deposited by currents of water moving rapidly and with such force as to cut away the coal in many channels, and leave in its place beds of sand, which, sub- sequently hardened, have become sandstone. These are frequently encountered by the miner, and are designated by him, as horsebacks. Hence this excellent stratum of coal has been discovered to be wanting over much of the area where it was supposed to exist, and has there- fore been of less value to Summit County than was anticipated in the carlier days of coal min- ing. The first mineral coal used on the lake

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HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY.

shore was sent to Cleveland by my father, Henry Newberry, from his mines in Tallmadge, in 1828. It was there offered as a substitute for wood in the generation of steam on the lake boats. Wood, however, was so abundant, and the population was so habituated to its use, that it proved very difficult to supplant this by any other fuel ; and it was necessary that nearly twenty years should pass before the value of the coal beds of Summit County was fully real- ized. Then coal-mining began with real vigor, and many thousand tons of excellent coal have since been sent every year to Cleveland from the mines in Tallmadge and Springfield. As has been stated, the coal of these townships proved to be very irregular in its distribution, and variable in thickness and quality. It is restricted to basins of limited extent, and is wanting over much of the area where it was supposed to be present. In the deeper por- tions of the basins or channels it occupies, the seam is from four and one-half to six feet in thickness. and the coal a bright, handsome open-burning variety, containing little sulphur, and a small percentage of ash. It is softer and more bituminous than the coal of the same seam in Mahoning and Trumbull Counties, but is still capable of being used in the raw state in the furnace, and is very highly valued both as a steam coal and a household fuel. In the southern part of the county, Coal No. 1 is more continuous, and has been proved, by recent researches to exist over a large part of Spring- field, Franklin and Green, and to reach into Coventry and Norton. Many mines have been opened in the townships referred to, and about two hundred and fifty thousand tons are now sent from this region annually to Cleveland. Most of this coal is similar in quality to that of Tallmadge, but in some localities, as at John- son's shaft in Franklin, we find a recurrence of the block character, which distinguishes the coal of the Mahoning Valley. In former years, nearly all of the coal used or exported from the county, was mined in Tallmadge, and this mainly from ' Coal Hill,' which lies between the center of Tallmadge and Cuyahoga Falls. Several mines were once in active operation in this hill. Of these mines, that of Henry New- berry was situated at the north end of the hill, and those of Dr. D. Upson, Asaph Whittlesey and Francis Wright on the east side. On the opposite side of the valley, mines were opened

by Mr. D. Harris and Dr. Amos Wright. In all these mines the coal has been nearly ex- hausted, as it was found to rise and run out in the interior of the hill. From this fact, a belief has come to be quite general, that the coal is pinched out in the body of this and other hills, by the weight of the superincum- bent material; whereas, we have here only an instance of what has been before referred to, of the thinning out of the coal on the margin of the old coal swamp. In the central and east- ern portion of Tallmadge, most of the land rises high above the coal level, and basins of coal will doubtless be hereafter discovered there, but the same canses which have rendered coal mining so uncertain heretofore, will undoubtedly limit the productiveness of the nominally large coal area which is included within the township lines. In the southern part of Tallmadge, the surface is occupied by heavy beds of drift, by which the underlying geology is very much obscured. Here, as in the adjoining township of Brimfield, in Portage County, nothing but patient and careful search will determine the limits of the basins of coal which unquestionably exist in this vicinity. As the dip of the coal rocks is toward the south and east, in Springfield, Green and Franklin, Coal No. 1 lies lower than in the more northerly townships where it occurs ; hence it can only be reached by boring, and that sometimes to the depth of 100 feet or per- haps even 200 feet. We have every reason to believe, however, that a considerable area in Green Township is underlaid by Coal No. 1, where it lies far below drainage; and it is almost certain that careful search, by boring, will reveal the presence of basins of coal in this township, such as are not now suspected to ex- ist, and such as will contribute largely to the wealth of the county.

" In Summit County the lowest seam of coal is usually separated from the conglomerate by an interval of from twenty-five to fifty feet, which is filled with shale or shaly sandstone, and, immediately beneath the coal, by a seam of fire-clay, from two to six feet in thickness. This fire-clay is, in some places, of good quality, and may be used for fire-brick and pottery, but it is generally more sandy and contains more iron than the under-clay of the higher seam-Coal No. 3-to which I shall have occa- sion to refer again. Coal No. 1 is usually overlaid immediately by gray shale, from ten

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HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY.

to forty feet in thickness. This shale contains, especially where it forms the roof of the coal, large numbers of fossil plants, which are fre- quently preserved in great beauty and profu- sion. About 150 species have already been collected from the shale of Coal No. 1, in the northern part of the State, and nearly all of these are found in Summit County.

" Coal No. 2 is found thirty to fifty feet above Coal No. 1 in many parts of Summit County- as in the Valley of the Mahoning-the second seam of coal in the ascending series, and which we have called Coal No. 2. It is usually from twelve to eighteen inches in thickness, and, though persistent over a large area, is nowhere in Summit County of workable thickness. Above Coal No. 2, and frequently cutting it out, is a bed of massive sandstone, which is a marked feature in the geology of the county. This is well seen in Coal Hill, Tallmadge, and extends through the southern part of the county, passing through Stark, where, in the valley of the Tuscarawas, about and above Massillon, it is quarried in many places along the bank of the canal. The thickness of this sandstone varies very much in different localities, and it may be said to range from forty to one hundred feet. It is also somewhat variable in character. but is often massive, and affords a building- stone of excellent quality. It may generally be distinguished from the sandstones of the carboniferous conglomerate by the absence of quartz pebbles. So far as I know, no pebbles are found in the sandstone over the coal in Summit County. In Trumbull and Medina there are some local exceptions to this rule, for patches of conglomerate are sometimes found there immediately overlying the lowest coal seam. In Summit County the 'pebble rock,' found in the explorations for coal, affords infall ible evidence, when it is reached, that the hor- izon of the coal has been passed.

" Coals Nos. 3 and 4 come next in order. Near Mogadore, in Springfield Township; the higher lands are found to be underlaid by a stratum of limestone, beneath which are usually a thin seam of coal and a thick stratum of fire- clay, the latter supplying the material from which nearly all the stoneware of the county is manufactured. From twenty-five to forty feet above the limestone to which I have re- ferred, is another, which also overlies a coal seam. Both these may be seen in Green

Township, between Greenburg and Greentown, and they may be traced thence southerly, through Stark, Tuscarawas and Holmes Coun- ties, and, indeed, nearly or quite to the Ohio River. These are the limestone coals that will be found frequently referred to in the re- ports on the counties that have been mentioned, and those on Portage, Trumbull and Mahoning. The lowest of these limestones lies from 130 to 160 above Coal No. 1; the upper limestone about 150 to 200 feet. Heute they will serve as useful guides in boring for the lower coal seam in those parts of the county where it lies considerably beneath the surface.

" I have already alluded to the former pro- ductiveness of the coal mines of Tallmadge, and have mentioned the fact that most of these mines are now abandoned ; the basins of coal in which they were located having been practi- cally exhausted. Considerable coal is, how- ever, still produced in the township, and it is altogether probable, that with proper search, other basins will be discovered, from which its coal industry will be revived. The 'Centre ' and a large area north, south and east of it, lie considerably above the coal level, and as the dip is southeast, there are some localities where the horizon of the coal is nearly one hundred and fifty feet below the surface. Over most of the district I have mentioned, borings should be made to at least the depth of one hundred feet before the search is abandoned. It should be remembered, too, that the basins of Coal No. 1 are frequently narrow, and the territory will only be fairly tested by borings made at fre- quent intervals. The principal center of coal industry in the county at present, is in Spring- field and Coventry. Steer's Mine, the mines of the Brewster Coal Company, and Brewster Brothers, and the Middlebury Shaft-all located near the line between the above mentioned townships-are now producing a large quantity of coal for shipment to Akron and Cleveland. The maximum thickness of the coal seam here is about five feet, and it thins out on all sides toward the margin of the basin. Doubtless here, as elsewhere, the basins of coal are connected, and future explorations will result in tracing such connection south and cast into other im- portant deposits. * * * **

" At the Franklin Coal Company's mine, in the Northern part of Franklin, the coal is four and a half feet thick, of good quality, closely

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HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY.

resembling that obtained at Massillon. It lies from sixty to one hundred feet below the sur- face, the massive sand rock above it ranging from forty to fifty feet in thickness. In the southwest corner of Franklin Township, the coal where opened is not as thick or as good as in the last-mentioned localities. At Steer's new shaft in Coventry, the coal is 43 feet thick, 90 to 110 feet from the surface, overlaid by 15 feet of black shale and from 30 to 40 feet of sandstone. Little coal has yet been mined here, but it seems to be of excellent quality. A sec- tion taken near the north line of Franklin Town- ship includes the following strata :

1. Sandstone. .40 to 60 feet.

2. Shale. .20 to 30 feet.

3. Hard iron ore .. 1 foot.

4. Coal ... 43 feet.

" On the land of Mr. Thomas Britton, one and a half miles east of Middlebury, is an im- portant deposit of iron ore, which I refer, with some hesitation, to the horizon of Coal No. 1. The drift from which the ore is taken exposes four feet of rock, which includes a thickness of about two feet of ore. Sherbondy Hill, west of Akron, is capped with the coal rocks, but gives no indication of any valuable deposit of coal. A band of iron ore, similar in character to that referred to above, but thinner, is exposed in this locality. A sheet of the coal measures under- lies the surface in the west part of Norton Town- ship, and a small area in Copley, but up to the present time no important coal strata have been found there. A boring made half a mile north of the center of Norton revealed the following section :

1. Earth 17 feet.

2. Shale .. 16 feet.

3. Conglomerate. 75 feet.

All the borings made for coal in the township give similar results, the conglomerate being struck after passing through a thin bed of coal shale. * * * *

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History of Summit County, with an outline sketch of Ohio, Part 32

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848- Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago, Baskin & Battey Number of Pages: 1104

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1104