USA > Pennsylvania > Fayette County > Connellsville > Centennial history of the borough of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, 1806-1906 > Part 18
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John Taylor, a stone mason, who later figured in the build- ing of ovens near Dawson. This one oven was designed to make only 24 and 36-hour coke, because Nichols saw that the blast from the wooden bellows was not strong enough to consume 48-hour coke, which, because of the elimination of a greater proportion of gases, would be harder in cell structure. Also, while the oven was of the regular bee-hive type, as Nichols had seen erected in the Durham field, it was smaller, being only twelve feet square, erected of stone and having a hive of bricks. The coal for the charge was hauled from the Plummer mine, and the first smoke from a Connellsville coke oven went skyward.
This time Nichols saw his persistence bear fruit, and the year 1833 saw the first coke drawn from a bee-hive oven in this region. Nichols knew that Meason would desire coke. Norton communicated with the man who had failed where he had succeeded, and the result was that Meason con- tracted for all the coke that Norton himself could not use, Meason or his representative coming here to make the bar- gain. This surplus was boated down the Youghiogheny River to Mckeesport, thence up the Monongahela to Brownsville, whence it was hauled in wagons to Meason's foundry at Plumsock. Afterwards, some of this coke was hauled from Connellsville across the country to Plumsock in wagons. Norton soon saw his demand for coke greater than he could supply from his one oven, so, under Nichol's direction, he began making coke in ricks on the ground. Because of the excellence of the coal, this proved a decided success, and before long Norton was manufacturing many more times as much coke in ricks or pits than he was able to produce from his oven.
In 1834 Lester Norton purchased the Plummer farm for $37 an acre. It is probable that he had dreams of a gigantic iron and coke business, but he was unable to carry them into reality. Many years before he died he sold the foundry property, and he disposed of his farm, containing about seventy-five acres, to his son Philo in 1855, for $100
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an acre. But he had pointed the way to the manufacture of coke, and others were quick to grasp his ideas, and to use them to better advantage. After Nichols had completed the remodeling of the fulling factory, and the building of the first coke oven, he left this town, settling in Donegal, West- moreland county, and his presence there and his knowledge of what he had left behind can be traced in the long line of wagons that for many years continued to haul coal from the Plummer mines to the old furnaces in the Westmoreland hills, and the factories and distilleries in the vicinity of Laurelville. Deluded people-under their very feet was the same black vein, but years passed before the opening of their eyes, and the dark pits of compressed sunshine they were seeking !
Among the visitors that came often to Norton's foun- dry and little coke plant was one Herman Gebhart, at times a merchant, at times a manufacturer, always an enterprising citizen ; sometimes striving alone, sometimes in partnership with fellow townsmen. He was a warm friend of Norton's, and because of his oft-repeated visits to the foundry, became much interested, not only in the moulding of pots and ket- tles, and other shapes in iron, but in the making of coke. Just what influence his early interest in the business had on the infant industry will be observed later.
Besides being one of the first paper makers in Fayette county, Gebhart, in partnership with Asa Smith, operated, at one time, a nail factory on the present site of the B. & O. railroad passenger station. He later leased this to James Harvey White and Silas White. The latter, while on his way with his family to Louisiana, was detained here by the illness of his son, who died of smallpox, and was buried here. The Whites evidently did not prosper in the nail business, and subsequently the nail factory was converted into a foundry, and operated by John and Jacob Anderson. Geb- hart, it will thus be seen, was constantly in touch with the industries in which the need of coke was apparent, and Nichols, coming from England with his knowledge of the
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fuel there, probably diffused enough knowledge among the early residents here to keep the worm working in Gebhart's mind. Gebhart's ventures in the paper business proved suc- cessful for a time, but as the industry passed from the hills of Fayette county into the overwhelming gulf of the city factory systems, which also killed off the carding and full- ing mills in this vicinity, he was keen enough to withdraw from the enterprise before it had disgorged from his pockets all it had put into them. In 1842 he left Connellsville, and, settling in Dayton, became one of the prominent residents of that growing town. That he left Connellsville, and made his home in the district which later afforded a market for the great industry which was to grow up behind him, is one of the finger-boards along the highways of the coke trade. The history of the Connellsville coke region has always begun with the printed story of how the first coke made was boated down the river to Cincinnati, but from the fore- going facts it will be easily understood why it went to Cin- cinnati, why Gebhart was called in to help dispose of it after it arrived there, and why it was manufactured by a partnership including John Taylor, the stone mason.
James Francis is a name to be conjured with in this history. His deeds are set forth in other chapters, yet, of all the acts he accomplished, that which shines out most gloriously for this region today was, that when he died, William Turner, his brother-in-law, came into possession of some of his property and his money. Turner's father was William G. Turner, an Englishman, who was in turn a teamster or a surveyor, just as opportunity gave him display for his resources. The Turners had, like Nichols, seen coke manufactured in their native land. The younger Turner was also a surveyor, but he found so little to do that he kept tavern part of the time, and ere long had enough funds to erect the "Turner Inn," the old stone hostelry with the plastered walls now used as a company dwelling house at Trotter. Here he lodged the drovers and herdsmen, coming and going with their stock, and his fame spread far and wide
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as a royal host and entertainer. He also owned the only boat of consequence on the river at this place, which he called the "Walking Ritchey," named, it would seem, as an ironical slap at a certain old school-master who paraded the village streets, with his advice ever ready at the tip of his tongue, often when it was not asked for. As soon as the younger Turner got his raise of good fortune, he evidently began to look about for investment. He was acquainted with John Taylor, the stone mason ; Taylor had in the meantime come into possession of some land at the mouth of the Hickman Run on the Youghiogheny River, below Broad Ford. In 1841, Turner, who was the moving spirit, looked over the field, in order to pick out partners who would combine the brains and backing for the new venture in coke making. Taylor was a stone mason-he could build the ovens! Be- sides, he had the coal land. Turner himself knew how to make the coke. But whom might he select otherwise, to complete the partnership? Not only would he produce coke -he must market it. There were no railroads; only the river as a means of transportation. And what was a river without boats? "Zooks!" we can almost hear the English- man say, "I must get carpenters into this firm!"
And he did. His choice fell upon Provance McCor- mick and James Campbell. Turner seems to have been a sort of silent partner, notwithstanding the fact that he sug- gested the organization of the partnership, although, since he was not a stone mason or a carpenter, the reason why, in the notes of the early coke history, he does not stand out prominently until the finished product was ready for ship- ment to market, may be readily explained. The partners wasted little time. Taylor set to work at once, and erected the four bee-hive ovens, and after building them, was the man that mined the coal for them. The agreement concern- ing this partnership, its operations, and the divisions of the proceeds, would be an interesting document, if it existed today.
McCormick was a great-grandson of William Craw-
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ford, the pioneer of Stewart's Crossing, and from early manhood had been compelled to face big problems in the world. Up until 1830 he had been a teamster part of the time, hauling merchandise between Pittsburgh and Phila- delphia. After this he had for some time been employed in the manufacture of gun barrels for the Government. The new ovens were located at what was then known as Sedg- wick Station. All through the fall and winter of 1841, the little ovens continued to produce coke, and by the spring of 1842 the diminutive plant was ready for its shipment. Campbell and McCormick in the meantime had been busy on the construction of two flat-boats. Turner probably was in communication with Major Gebhart about this time, be- cause it is difficult to disassociate the idea of his actions from this time on with his partnership with the firm in the beginning. Gebhart had come back from Dayton to Connellsville, and stopped at Turner's home. Turner, learn- ing from him the rapid growth of the iron business down the Ohio River, asked him if he did not think it would pay to make coke here and ship it down the river by boats. Gebhart advised Turner that he believed the plan would be profitable, and the result of that advice was that, when the Hat-boats which McCormick and Campbell had built were loaded with two thousand bushels of the coke at Sedgwick, Turner purchased the cargo. He himself piloted the two boats down the Youghiogheny River, starting with a freshet in the spring of 1842, and reaching Cincinnati in safety. It does not seem probable that Turner had any dealings with Major Gebhart in Dayton as he went down the river with his boats. But when Turner tried to dispose of his coke in Cincinnati, he learned that he was sadly ahead of his time. The foundrymen called the coke "cinders," but they did not despise it so much on that account, since that was the early name of coke. Turner, in distress, had recourse to Geb- hart. The latter went from Dayton to the assistance of his friend, and it was through his influence entirely that Tur- ner was able to dispose of the half of the cargo by peddling
THE GATEWAY TO WEALTH IN THE CONNELLSVILLE COKE REGION
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from place to place, getting an average of eight cents a bushel. The other half of the cargo was then boated up the canal to Dayton, and there Gebhart induced Armstrong, the proprietor of the largest foundry in Dayton, to use the coke. There is an old tradition that in part payment for this Turner was given a patent iron grist mill, for which great things had been promised; that this mill was brought home by Turner and placed in the Strickler & Nickel grist mill in New Haven ; that it proved a failure, and was later sold for the puny sum of thirty dollars. Proof of this story seems elusive. At all events, the first partnership firm in the coke business was too easily discouraged. Turner evidently did not purchase a second cargo from the McCormick, Taylor and Campbell Company, and the ovens were allowed to be- come idle. But down in Dayton, Armstrong was using that one boat load of coke, and praising its qualities. Had there been means of easy communication at that time, it is almost a certainty that the hardy coke pioneers, instead of dissolv- ing partnership, as they did, would have been busy getting out the second shipment to go down the river. For not long after this transaction, the Armstrong foundry sent a repre- sentative here, offering a market and a fair price for all the coke that could be sent down the Youghiogheny.
Turner's history, after this venture, is not so clearly known, respecting his coke operations. That he did not give up his dream is certain. For old residents remember that he was accustomed to load his boat, "The Walking Ritchie," with coke, and take it down the river, bringing back in it domestic supplies. This seems to verify the story that after his venture with McCormick and Campbell and Taylor, he began the manufacture of coke in ricks on the ground at a point near what is now the Fort Hill works, under some agreement with Thomas Gregg, and that later, when Gregg erected a small plant of bee-hive ovens, Turner, in partner- ship with Richard Bookens, continued to boat the product down the river to the foundries at Cincinnati and other Ohio River towns.
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Notwithstanding the discouragement of Taylor, Mc- Cormick and Campbell, the little plant at Sedgwick was not long idle. A sturdy infant had been born in 1823, and his parents christened him James Cochran. His neighbors re-christened him "Little Jim." When a mere lad, with his brother Sample Cochran, he had been employed to wash sand at the banks of his uncle, Mordecai Cochran, along the Youghiogheny River a short distance below Broad Ford. The two boys became ambitious. They built a boat which would hold one hundred tons of sand. James Cochran seems to have done the work, because there is a record show- ing that he gave a half interest in the boat to his brother to pay for the lumber used in the construction. The two boys took a cargo of sand to Pittsburgh, where they sold it to the glass factories, receiving two dollars a ton. They sold the boat in Pittsburg also, and returned home each with about fifty dollars in pocket. Feeling rich, they leased two of the four ovens of the Fayette works at Sedgwick and after making two boat loads of coke each boat holding six thousand tons, they boated it down the river. The start was made April 1st, 1843. They had a covering of sand over one part of the cargo, and on this sand bed a large fire was kept burning. By the time they reached Wheeling, with no other covering over them than the blue sky, they discov- ered that the cargo of coke under the sand was afire. It was with difficulty that they prevented the fire from burning and sinking the boat. Before proceeding farther down the river, they erected a shed over the coke, and the larger fire was not necessary. When they reached Cincinnati, it was several days before they happened across Miles Greenwood. He was the man who started the Connellsville coke industry on its on- ward rush to gigantic proportions. He had been using Monongahela River coke in his foundries. Greenwood was. born in New Jersey in the year 1807. He moved to New York, thence to the New Harmony Community, whence he drifted into Pittsburg in 1825, where he learned the iron business. Three years later he opened an iron foundry in
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Pittsburgh, and then moved to Cincinnati, where he enlarged the business, employing, in 1828, ten hands. This was the size of his foundry when the Cochrans sold him their cargo of coke at seven cents a bushel. That the coke did him no harm is evident from the fact that in 1850 he had so pros- pered that his foundry was employing three hundred work- men. In 1861, still continuing the use of the Connellsville coke, his entire plant was turned into a Government arsenal, with seven hundred workmen employed, and during the Civil War turned out forty thousand Springfield rifles, two hundred bronze cannon, hundreds of caissons and gun car- riages, and one sea-going coast defense monitor.
From the time Greenwood first tried the modest cargo of the Cochran's coke, he would use no other. For the first consignment he paid half cash and gave notes for the other half, which notes he was able to pay before their maturity. The Cochrans continued to make coke at the Fayette works, which was enlarged in 1860 to thirty ovens. In 1865 Schoen- berger & Co., of Pittsburgh, purchased a one-third interest in this plant. The iron makers had at last awakened to the real worth of the Connellsville coking fields !
But in the meantime operations had been growing else- where. When Turner erected three ovens near Fort Hill, and was able to sell the coke in Cincinnati, Col. Alex Hill opened the vein of coal near the Thomas Gregg ovens, and erected there four ovens. Soon after he built eight more. This must have been about 1844 or 1845. These ovens were all of the same type, the bee-hive oven, and very small at that.
About this time, also, a new name came into the coke industry. Stewart Strickler was born in New Salem, Fay- ette county, in 1812. It is a noteworthy incident that this man had his birthplace in the old town which is today the hub of the busy circle of plants in the Lower Connellsville region. He moved into this district when young, and en- gaged in the business of boating eggs, and other produce, down the Youghiogheny River to Pittsburgh and other
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points below. In 1837 he failed financially, and found him- self plunged into debt. But he was made of stern clay. He remembered that at Jacob's Creek, where the old Trumball Furnace had operated for many years, but which had been out of blast for as many more years at this time, he had seen a great pyramid of iron ore slag and cinders. He knew that in the old process of smelting, much of the iron was left unextracted from the ore, and he conceived the idea of pur- chasing this pile of slag, boating it down the river to the Pittsburgh and Cincinnati mills, and there selling it to the proprietors. He built a boat, bought a cargo of the stuff, paying fifty cents a ton for it, and took it to Pittsburgh. He sold the whole cargo at $4.50 a ton. This seems like a scheme easily planned to us who live in these times where every scrap of the market, the home and the mill is turned into something else, but in Strickler's time this was a much keener example of industrial acuteness. The man who could realize profit out of an old stone furnace ruins in the bushes was the sort of a man who would not stop to delve deeper into the resources of nature. And so Strickler's next move was the purchase of ten acres of coal along the Youghiogheny River, which he did in the early forties. That purchase was the nucleus of the development which sprang up around the little village known as Jimtown, where the Sterling works are now located. There Strickler built six bee-hive ovens, and the coke produced therein he at first sold to the Cochrans. In 1855 he purchased 80 acres of the Jesse Taylor tract of coal, in the same neighborhood, be- cause he seems to have foreseen the advent of the railroad up the Youghiogheny River, and had a vision of the future prospects of coke making. His vision came true. And when, in 1857, the Pittsburgh & Connellsville railroad was built, he erected eighty ovens on this Taylor tract. Sterling is some distance up the hollow from the Youghiogheny River, and in order to get the coke to the railroad, Strickler laid a tram-road from his plant to the railroad siding. From the first this plant made money for its owner. The
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coke was sold to Graff, Bennett & Co., of Pittsburgh, who used daily in their foundries two thousand bushels. This contract was in force for several years, and from 1860 till 1864 the Pittsburgh company was supplied wholly, or nearly so, from this Sterling works. By this time the iron men were fully convinced of the necessity of Connellsville coke, and Graff, Bennett & Co. made Strickler an offer of thirty- five thousand dollars for a one-third interest in Sterling. Strickler accepted the bid, and a few months later Schoen- berger & Co. purchased the other two-thirds interest for forty-thousand dollars. Strickler, had he made investment of these funds, which made him rich at that time, in Con- nellsville coal fields, and in their development, would have left the wealthiest generation in Fayette county. But he seems to have been satisfied with his transaction, and later moved to Tennessee, where he died. As an instance of the rapid growth in the value of Connellsville coking coal lands, even in those early times, it may be cited that in the years between 1834 and 1840, Strickler purchased his father's farm at a price averaging thirty dollars an acre, and in 1864 he sold it to J. K. Ewing for two hundred dollars an acre; Ewing, in turn, selling it not long afterwards for double the latter sum.
But long before this the name of Norton had come back into prominence in the Connellsville region, as that identified with the making of coke, and the old Plummer mine was again associated with the infant industry. Philo Norton, the son of Lester LeRoy Norton, who had built the first coke oven in the Connellsville region, took up the manu- facture of coke in the year 1855. Many years before Lester Norton had died, he sold the old foundry property, but his son Philo had purchased the old Plummer surface and coal, and there he determined, in 1855, to erect coke ovens. The opening of the seam of coal was made near the top of the hill, on this farm of seventy-five acres, and the four ovens were built on the east bank of Mountz Creek, not more than two hundred feet from the present Davidson bridge, at the
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end of Eighth street. A road was excavated out of the side of the embankment, leading off from the Eighth street road, and from the yard the coke was hauled in wagons to the Pittsburgh & Connellsville railroad. Norton also burned the coal in ricks, and made five times as much in these pits as in his ovens. The coke, when burned long enough, was drawn out with hooks, and cooled with water thrown on by the bucketful. Philo Norton never shipped any coke in boats, all of his production going out on the railroad. He received three cents a bushel, aboard the cars. Norton asso- ciated with him in his enterprise John Meskinnin and Wil- liam Faber, and this firm made the first definite contract with the railroad for Connellsville coke shipments. This hap- pened in the year 1858. Graff, Bennett & Co. desired a regu- lar supply. Between Connellsville and Pittsburgh the rail- road company charged a freight tariff of twenty-two dollars a car. This rate, the consumers thought, was exorbitant, but there seemed no redress, because Graff, Bennett & Co. had no space for a storage capacity in Pittsburgh; only one producer in this region had such a capacity, and that producer was Norton's firm. Without storage capacity at the producing and the consuming ends of the industry, boat transportation was out of the question, since the Youghio- gheny River afforded boating stage only during freshets. Graff, Bennett & Co. therefore applied to Norton, in the hope that he might be able to lighten the burden of freight rates. Benjamin Latrobe was then president of the Pitts- burgh & Connellsville railroad, and, knowing his fondness for figures and tabulated prospectuses, Norton went to him with a sheet of convincing statistics. Norton, in his esti- mates, had allowed for only one freshet a year, when three could be depended upon ; he counted the cost of holding the production in stock for one year, charging ten per cent. interest on the money necessary; he counted the cost of handling at double the prevailing prices ; likewise he counted the cost at running it by boat to Pittsburgh at double the average price, and doubled the estimated cost for loss of
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boats, accidents and break-downs. The total cost for send- ing the coke into Pittsburgh by boat, on these figures, was a little less than six dollars a ton. Latrobe examined the figures, considered for some time, and then said: "You have put the matter beyond all doubt ; what do you propose to do?" Norton replied that his firm would give the rail- roads a rate of nine dollars a car. This rate was accepted, and a written contract drawn upon these lines. This con- tract is in existence today. Towards the close of the Civil War, Norton had on hand between three and four hundred thousand bushels of seventy-two and ninety-six-hour coke, which went to all parts of the country. Every car load brought back an order for more "of the same kind." In 1862, Norton sold out to his partners, who in turn took in others. Norton had had a twenty-years' lease on the David- son farm, with the privilege of a renewal for a like period of years, and when he sold out to Meskinnin and Faber these mining rights went with the deed. Daniel R. David- son was not then a member of this coke firm, because he seems to have been devoting himself to railroad building. He later sold the surface also to the firm of Meskin- nin, Faber & Bailey, who built the Davidson works. Norton had sunk the shaft for this plot of coal on the bank of the Youghiogheny River, and his intention was to mine the coal, and run the headings so that the main haulage would emerge from the hill opposite his four ovens. His plan was to build a block of ovens on the river, but when his partners came into possession of the lease and his interest, they erected the ovens on the present site of the works. These ovens were larger than others previously erected. The first oven, built by Lester Norton, made only fifty bushels of coke at a charge ; Philo Norton's ovens made each from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and ninety bushels.
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