USA > Pennsylvania > A pioneer outline history of northwestern Pennsylvania > Part 66
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"About four years ago the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg entered into a traffic arrangement with the Pittsburg and Western for running trains into Pittsburg from Butler over the Pittsburg and Western tracks. This arrange- ment, of course, was continued when the Baltimore and Ohio secured the Pittsburg and Western. That agreement was made for twenty years, con- sequently it has still sixteen years to run."
Surveys for the extension of the road from Punxsutawney to Allegheny City were made in the fall of 1804. The actual construction of the railroad did not begin until March, 1898. The track from Punxsutawney to the Allegheny River Bridge was finished in June, 1889. Track-laying com- menced at Butler in January, 1899, and was extended eastward to Mosgrove.
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HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
The track was joined at Mosgrove Station in August, 1899, when the last spike, a silver one, was driven by Arthur G. Yates, president of the road.
The first regular train through to Allegheny City was run September 4, 1899, and regular through passenger service from Buffalo and Rochester to Allegheny began October 9, 1899.
That the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg is a good paying proposition needs no exploitation. Their coal territory and its productiveness in both coal and coke is shown in the average daily handling of one thousand cars of coal and two hundred cars of coke. The value is also shown in the numerous spurs that have been built into rich coal regions. The largest of these spurs is the twenty-eight mile extension to Ernest. From Ernest through Indiana County two lines are constructed, with a combined mileage of forty-two miles, one running to Slate Lick and the other to Elder's Ridge. The Slate Lick branch is operated from Indiana. Just outside of Ernest on the new line a tunnel is constructed. The tunnel and new branches are now completed.
At Ernest a fine steel coal tipple has been built by the Rochester and Pittsburg Coal and Iron Company, which is the controlled subsidiary com- pany. The structural steel for the tipple alone cost fifty-five thousand dollars. The main locomotive works, at Du Bois, Pennsylvania, were opened No- vember 4, 1901. They have facilities for making heavy repairs on twenty locomotives per month.
The traffic having reached the limit of economical operation on a single track, the construction of a second track was authorized. During the fall of 1903 the middle division of the main line from Du Bois to East Salamanca, a distance of one hundred and twenty-eight miles, or over one-third of the total mileage, was double tracked. The Pittsburg division is laid on one- hundred-pound steel rails.
The present officers of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railway Company are as follows :
Arthur G. Yates, president, Rochester, New York; Adrian Iselin, Jr., vice-president, 36 Wall Street, New York; John F. Dinkey, auditor and treasurer, Rochester, New York; John H. Hocart, secretary and assistant treasurer, 36 Wall Street, New York; W. T. Noonan, general superintendent, Rochester, New York; J. M. Floesch, chief engineer, Rochester, New York; Robert W. Davis, general freight agent, Rochester, New York; Edward C. Lapey, general passenger agent, Rochester, New York; E. E. Davis, super- intendent of motive power, Du Bois City, Pennsylvania; Perkins & Havens, counsel, Rochester, New York; C. H. McCauley, counsel, Ridgway, Penn- sylvania. George E. Merchant, ex-superintendent, has been twenty-five years in the service of the road, and is now not in active duty.
Under this efficient board the management of the road has been prudent, bold, aggressive, potential, and successful, and has now a mileage of 557.69 miles.
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HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
OTHER COAL ROADS
Paralleling the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railway through Brock- wayville is the Ridgway and Clearfield road. It is part of the Pennsylvania system and was completed about October, 1884.
The New York, Lake Erie and Western (branch) was extended into Jefferson County, via Crenshaw, about 1882. The coal freightage is and has been large over this road.
The Reynoldsville and Falls Creek road, seven miles long, was finished by Bell, Lewis & Yates, in September, 1885.
The pioneer steam railway in the world was opened in England in Sep- tember, 1825, and was called the Stockdale and Darlington Road. It was thirty-eight miles long. It is claimed that the Baltimore and Ohio is the pioneer steam railroad in the United States. It was built in 1830. In any event, seventy years later, our railroads are the wonder of the world.
In 1830 the railway mileage in the United States did not exceed sixty : to-day we have 182,746 miles, and the gross earnings of our railroads com- bined is over three million dollars per day. In 1830 we travelled at high speed, as railroad passengers, at six and ten miles per hour, but now we glide along at the rate of forty or sixty miles an hour as smoothly as our fathers did with their skates on ice or sleds on snow. To-day we telegraph around the world in nine minutes. What next?
In 1850 we had only seven thousand three hundred miles of railway owned and operated by one hundred and fifty-one companies, and with a few exceptions each road was less than one hundred miles in length. The New York and Erie was the only "Trunk Line," with a mileage of three hundred and one miles.
The amount of money now invested ( 1905) in railway property is about twelve thousand million dollars, and the number of employees are about twelve hundred thousand.
PIONEER COAL-MINING IN JEFFERSON COUNTY
The first stone coal discovered in America was by Father Henepin in what is now Illinois, on the Illinois River, in 1679. In 1684 William Penn granted the privilege to mine the coal at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1728 coal was discovered in Virginia.
Anthracite coal is bituminons coal coked and condensed by nature.
The first record of bituminous coal-mining is at New Castle, England. This coal was on the market in 1281. Stone coal was first mined and used in Western Pennsylvania near where Pittsburg now is, by Colonel James Burd. in 1759. It was dug from the hills of the Monongaliela. In 1807 stone coal was mined in central Pennsylvania and sold as a fertilizer. I quote the fol- lowing notice from the Bedford Gasette of June, 1807 .- viz. :
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" HUNTINGTON, June 4.
" STONE COAL .- Such of the farmers as wish to make experiment with stone coal as a substitute for plaster, in manuring their Indian corn, may be supplied with coal gratis upon application to Peter Hughes, at Mr. Riddle's mines, on the Raystown Branch. The proprietor of the mines offers not only to refund the carriage, but to pay the expenses of applying the coal, if upon a fair experiment it is found to be inferior to plaster, which now sells at two dollars per bushel."
The pioneers to dig coal in Northwestern Pennsylvania were mostly blacksmiths. Previous to the discovery of coal in this wilderness, the black- smiths burned their own charcoal, and used it for fuel; but it appears they early searched the runs with bags for coal, and picked up loose pieces, and occasionally stripped the earth and dug bags full of what they called " stone coal." They burned this in their fires, either alone or with charcoal.
" In 1784, the year in which Pittsburg was surveyed into building lots, the privilege of mining coal in the ' great seam' opposite that town was sold by the Penns at the rate of thirty pounds for each mining lot, extending back to the centre of the hill. This event may be regarded as forming the begin- ning of the coal trade of Pittsburg. The supply of the towns and cities on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers with Pittsburg coal became an established busi- ness at an early day in the present century or in 1800. Pittsburg coal was known long before the town became noted as an iron centre.
" Down to 1845 all the coal shipped westward from Pittsburg was floated down the Ohio in flat-bottomed boats in the spring and fall freshets, each boat holding about fifteen thousand bushels of coal. The boats were usually lashed in pairs, and were sold and broken up when their destination was reached. In 1845 steam tow-boats were introduced, which took coal-barges down the river and brought them back empty."
The first carload of bituminous coal hauled east of the Alleghenies came from the Westmoreland Company's " Shade Grove" mine, or what was later called the northside colliery in Irwin. The mine was opened in 1852 by Cole- man, Hillman & Co.
The coal was taken out of the mine and hauled to the platform of the freight station and loaded into an eighteen-thousand-pound box car, the standard of those days. It was sent forward as one of about twelve cars of like capacity, hauled by a wood-burning locomotive at about six miles an hour, with Philadelphia as its destination.
The first person to mine coal in Jefferson County for manufacturing purposes was John Fuller.
He was the first person to mine coal in what is now Winslow Township, or, probably, in Jefferson County. He mined for his own use a few bag- fuls occasionally from the bed of the creek near to and above the bridge on
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the pike, in what is now Reynoldsville. He hauled his first coal in a pung to his shop with an ox and a cow.
In what year Mr. Fuller first picked from the bed of the creek his little load of what was then and in my boyhood days called stone coal is not pre- cisely known, but of course it was shortly after his settlement, probably in 1825.
The first person to mine coal in the county for general use was a colored man named Charles Anderson. He lived in Brookville, and was called " Yel- low Charley." He was the first to operate, lease, mine, transport, and sell coal. He opened his pioneer mine about 1832, on the Joseph Clement's farm, north of and close to Brookville. The vein he exposed was about two feet thick. He stripped the earth from the top of the vein, dug the coal fine and transported it to Brookville in a little rickety one-horse wagon, retailing the stone coal at family doors in quantities of a peck, half-bushel, and bushel. The price per bushel was twelve and one-half cents, or " eleven-penny-bit," and a " fippenny-bit" for half a bushel, and three cents a peck. It was burned in grates. I had a free pass on this coal line, and rode on it a great deal. To me it was a line of " speed, safety, and comfort." Anderson was a " Soft Coal King," a baron, a robber, a close corporationist, a capitalist, and a monop- olist. He managed his works generally so as to avoid strikes, etc. Yet he had to assume the rôle of a Pinkerton or a coal policeman at one time, for there was some litigation over the ownership of this coal-bank, and Charley took his old flint-lock musket one day and swore he would just as soon die in the coal-bank as any other place. He held the fort, too.
Charley was a greatly abused man. Every theft and nearly all outlawry was blamed on him. Public sentiment and public clamor was against him. He tried at times to be good, attend church, etc., but it availed him nothing. for he would be so coldly received as to force him into his former condition. As the town grew, and other parties became engaged in mining coal, Charley changed his business to that of water-carrier, and hauled in his one-horse wagon washing and cooking water in barrels for the women of the town. He continued in this business until his death, which occurred in 1874. In early days he lived on the lot now owned by Dr. T. C. Lawson. He died in his own home near the new cemetery.
John Dixon who is now ( 1903) living in Polk Township at the advanced age of ninety-five years, was one of the pioneer miners, and was born in the county. He mined on the present Rose Township poor farm from 1840 to 1847. The pioneers to open and operate banks in Young Township, were Obed Morris and John Hutchison. Their first operations were about 1834 or 1835. The sales were light, the coal being principally used for black- smithing purposes and for a few families who had grates. Coal was sold at the bank for ten cents a bushel, and every bushel was measured in a " bushel box." The mining was done by the families. The census of 1840 reports but
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two points in the county as mining and using coal,-viz., Brookville and Rose Township. The amount used in Rose Township a year was five hundred bushels, in Brookville, two thousand bushels. Jefferson County coal is now shipped to and used from Arctic ice to tropic sun.
Woodward Reynolds commenced to mine coal for his own general use in the fall of 1838, and for about ten years he, John Fuller, and their neigh- bors, would mine what they wanted for their own use, paying no royalty for the coal whatever. A coal-miner then received ninety cents for a twelve- hour day.
In the year 1849, about the time Woodward and Thomas Reynolds com- menced to mine coal in what is now Winslow Township, the whole output of bituminous coal in that year in the United States was only four million tons. In 1870 it was 36,806,560 tons; in 1880 it was 71,481,569 tons; in 1890 it was 157,770,963 tons.
About the latter part of the year 1863, or the beginning of 1864, Hon. Joseph Henderson, Dr. W. J. McKnight, G. W. Andrews, Esq., I. C. Fuller, P. W. Jenks, and James A. Cathers, and possibly one or two others, organ- ized themselves into a company for the purpose of taking some measure toward bringing the coal lands and other resources of the county to the notice of capitalists who were seeking investments for their money. During the year 1864 geological surveys of the Brockwayville, Reynoldsville, and Punx- sutawney regions were made by J. P. Leslie, who has since made the geo- logical survey of the State, and the chemical analysis of the minerals were made by Dr. Guenth, the famous chemist of Philadelphia, after which an exhaustive report was submitted setting forth the advantages of the dis- trict. The expenses of this work, amounting to over three thousand dollars, were paid by the above-named gentlemen, who never realized anything from it. They, however, purchased some land during their transactions, and this was afterward disposed of at a profit, lessening their net outlay of money.
In 1865 a number of English capitalists visited this country, and the above-mentioned report was laid before them through the officers of the Catawissa Railroad Company, as will be noticed in the following letter, and it had its influence in securing the building of a railroad through this section. The road spoken of in this letter was never built, but the Penn- sylvania Railroad Company, in order to head it off, was compelled to force the building of the Low Grade division of the Allegheny Valley road. The movement of the above gentlemen was, we believe, the first organized effort to bring this county into prominent notice as one of the richest parts of the State in mineral and lumber, and resulted in bringing about the development of the resources of the county which have followed. We therefore record this as a matter of history, to be handed down to future generations :
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" OFFICE CATAWISSA RAILROAD COMPANY,
424 WALNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA, December 16, 1865. " MESSRS. W. J. MCKNIGHT, JOSEPH HENDERSON, G. W. ANDREWS, I. C. FULLER :
" GENTS,-I return you herewith the copy of Leslie's geological report, kindly loaned me for presentation before the English capitalists on their visit to this country. I feel that it had its influence among other things in deciding the question of building the new route through the counties lying between Milton and Franklin.
" Several corps of engineers are already making surveys to ascertain the most practical route, and it will be pushed forward with energy and despatch, the capital necessary for the same having all been promised. This measure, of course, meets with the utmost hostility from the Pennsylvania Railroad, as it is opposed to monopoly, and it is to be worked upon the principle that rail- roads are built for the accommodation of the community-trade and travel to be allowed to go and come as the parties may wish. We feel that this portion of the State will not allow their interests to be crushed out by it.
" P. M. HUTCHINSON,
"Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer." -Brookville Jeffersonian.
It was not until April, 1874, that coal-mining for a foreign market began in Jefferson County. In that year the Diamond Mine was opened just north of Reynoldsville. The pioneer to ship coal by rail from that mine was H. S. Belnap. He hauled his coal in wagons to the Reynoldsville depot and there from a platform shovelled the coal into the cars, and it was shipped to Buffalo. New York. John Coax, Jr., Thomas Jenkins, and others were his team drivers. The second drift opened in Winslow Township was the Pancoast. The third was the Washington Mine, located near Pancoast flag-station. The fourth was the Hamilton Mine, and the fifth the Soldier Run Mine. Follow- ing these, the Sprague Mine was opened at Rathmel, and the Pleasant Valley Mine was opened east of Reynoldsville. The Hamilton and Pleasant Valley Mines were owned by the Hamilton Coal Company, and the Soldier Run and Sprague Mines were owned by Powers, Brown & Co.
On June 25, 1890, Alfred Bell, George H. Lewis, and Arthur G. Yates, known as the firm of Bell, Lewis & Yates, bought out the interest of all these companies with considerable adjoining territory. Of this firm only Arthur G. Yates is now (1903) living, and he is president of the great coal road of this region,-to wit, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railway Company. Mr. Yates is an active, progressive man. His was the pioneer railroad to enter Jefferson County for the transportation of coal. Before the advent in 1883 of Bell, Lewis & Yates, the shipment of coal from this county only amounted to a few thousand tons a year, but by September 1. 1883. the
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Hamilton Mine employed one hundred and twenty-four men; the Sprague Mine, eighty-five men; Powers, Brown & Co., one hundred and thirty men ; Pancoast Mine, thirty-six men; Rochester Mines, four hundred and fifty men ; Falls Creek Mine, seventy men; Hildrup, eighty-two; Beechtree, one hundred and eighty-five; and Walston, fifty-five men.
I copy here from the Pittsburg Times of May 24, 1890, and as I was well acquainted with the Bells and these events, I have taken the liberty to correct what I quote.
" Alfred Bell came to Jefferson County about 1856 from Nunda, New York. He was a dignified and stately man, precise in his methods, careful in his operations, and with Calvin Rogers he operated a large tract of timber land which they had bought east of Brookville. The Bell holdings extended for miles from Bell's mills, up and around what is now Falls Creek and Du Bois.
"Frederick Bell came to Jefferson County about 1866, with his father, and the young man had his head-quarters in Brookville. A great deal of his leisure was spent in McKnight & Bro.'s drug-store. As the lumber business developed, he perceived the possibilities in the coal that underlay their vast acreage of land. When, in 1873, the Allegheny Valley Railroad pushed up the Red Bank valley, Frederick A. Bell interested with him two congenial spirits, and not long after the firm of Bell, Lewis & Yates was formed, and it speedily became the foremost power in soft coal circles in the Buffalo and Rochester country. Lewis was a Canadian who married Bell's sister, while Yates was a practical coal merchant of Rochester. The firm commenced to mine and ship the splendid soft coal of Clearfield County in March, 1877, making its opening on the Young tract of seven hundred and forty acres, or what is called the Rochester Mine at Du Bois, for which they paid a royalty of ten cents per ton. The firm marketed its coal at that date by the Allegheny Valley and the Buffalo, New York and Pennsylvania roads.
" Putting good coal in the market gave Bell, Lewis & Yates the easy control, and presently the firm had the largest docks on the lakes, and had created an export trade in soft coal, sending fully a third of its product to the international bridge at Black Rock for the Canadian trade.
" Mr. Yates sold the coal, and put the New York Central, the Grand Trunk, and other important concerns on his list, and came home from his sell- ing trip sometimes with single contracts for half a million tons. The firm grew and prospered and opened new mines and bought mines opened by others. But it was hampered by the lack of facilities for getting coal to mar- ket. By May, 1883, when the Rochester and Pittsburg road reached Du Bois, the company was ready to and did give it business, and later on when the Pennsylvania road, Ridgway and Clearfield, reached Falls Creek, Bell, Lewis & Yates afforded the roads an enormous traffic. New works were established, additional territory was secured, and one day Bell, Lewis & Yates commenced a tunnel and shaft at Sykesville, seven miles from Du Bois.
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Arthur G. Yates, born at Waverly, Tioga County, New York. December 15, 199
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
" The firm had extended its operations to Reynoldsville, and the Sykes- ville tunnel was dug miles under ground that the Reynoldsville works could be connected with a proposed new opening, but above all else to afford drain- age to the system, for the coal dips toward Sykes. It was one of the most stupendous engineering feats in this region or in the coal world. . The firm was now carrying coal in its own cars, and paying freight on a basis of wheel tollage with the roads. Meanwhile, the Rochester and Pittsburg Coal and Iron Company had been creating extensive mines, and developing great blocks of coal territory in Jefferson County, and in this corporation Bell, Lewis and Yates found a rival that was no mean competitor. In 1890 Bell, Lewis & Yates bought the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railway Company, as well as the Coal and Iron Company.
"In 1886 Clearfield and Jefferson Counties did not produce together five million tons of coal, but six years later they totalled more than ten million tons, and the bulk of the increase was that of the Bell, Lewis & Yates interests. Not only that, but a large proportion of the original product of 1886 was from its mines or those that finally came into its hands. In 1898 the product of the two counties climbed to almost twelve million, and the coke ovens of the affiliated interests made Jefferson the third coke-producing county in the State.
" Later, in 1896, Bell, Lewis & Yates sold their coal properties and their railroad-to wit, the Reynoldsville and Falls Creek roads, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railway Company, and the Rochester and Pittsburg Coal and Iron Company- to Adrian Iselin, and this vast property is now in the hands of these corporations.
" The superintendents of the Rochester and Pittsburg Coal and Iron Company have been Franklin Platt, James McLeavey, J. A. Haskell, and. since 1890, L. W. Robinson. The present officers are, president and general manager, Lucius W. Robinson; secretary, George L. Eaton; treasurer, George H. Cune.
" This Coal and Iron Company is now developing Indiana and Armstrong Counties with just the same energy that it developed Clearfield and Jefferson.
" Frederick A. Bell was one of the three men who brought the great enterprises into life, but Arthur G. Yates practically made them what they are. He took interest in Du Bois when the town was a struggling lumber and mining town, and probably has had as much, if not more, to do with its perpetuity and importance than John Du Bois, whose name it bears, for Du Bois is more of a coal and railroad town than it is a lumber town. The pros- perity of Reynoldsville, Brockwayville, Punxsutawney, Big Run, Falls Creek. and the vast region that embraces a population of one hundred thousand in its sixty miles of coal lands, is a monument to the perception and business tact of Arthur G. Yates, who knew what the coal-deposits of Clearfield and Jeffer son Counties would mean if they were opened for the markets.
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" Bell, Lewis & Yates owned the first of the gigantic concerns operating in this vicinity for soft coal. And in these days of great things, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg interests are still among the great institutions. Bell, Lewis & Yates were pioneers in the field, and they were highly successful.
"Arthur G. Yates, now president of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pitts- burg Railway, was and is a wonderfully successful man, and he created a mar- ket for coal in northern New York such as never had been dreamed of. Really the firm commenced business at a time most opportune, for when its coal started for market the product of the McKean and Tioga fields was not of the best, while the excellent coal of Jefferson County has never been outclassed.
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