History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 55

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 1314

USA > Pennsylvania > Fayette County > History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 55

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1 On the 27th of November, 1779, the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed " An Act for vesting the estates of the late proprietaries in this commonwealth." By the terms of this act the State paid the Penns £130,000 in annual payments of from £15,000 to £20,000, without inter- est, beginning at the close of the Revolutionary war, reserving to the proprietaries their private and manor property, which was in itself a princely fortune.

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HISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

like Philip of Macedon, its offspring, coke, is like the mightier Alexander, and the seat of its empire is the Connellsville coal basin.

In all the numerous accounts that have been written and published in recent years having general refer- ence to the manufacture of coke in Western Pennsyl- vania, very little notice has been taken of its origin and early history. What little has been said concern- ing these particulars, thongh to a great extent un- authentic and inaccurate, is generally received as correct, and little or no effort is made to investigate and search out the facts. It is but natural that a business so exceedingly remunerative as is the manu- facture of coke at the present time should engross all the thoughts and energies of those who are engaged in it; that their chief attention should be given to secure the largest possible yield of coke, making and transporting it at the lowest possible cost, and selling it at the highest obtainable price, without pausing to inquire where and by whom was first produced the article which brings them their wealth. Yet it can- not fail to be a matter of interest to note the humble beginnings of the business which has since grown to such gigantic proportions. In the preparation of the following account, which is based mainly on facts sought out and ascertained by one who is himself in- terested in coke manufacture,1 the object in view has been less to enter into details of the immense opera- tions of the present time than to notice the earliest known coke-making, the persons who were pioneers in it, and the subsequent attempts at its successful application and nse up to the time of the firm estab- lishment of the business, which is now by far the most important and valuable industrial interest of Fayette County and a large contiguous region. It has been stated (but not clearly proved) that coke was made and used in the manufacture or refining of iron in America before the war of the Revolution. If such was the case, the credit of its first manufacture was certainly due to Virginia, as that colony (having commenced mining in or about 1750, as has been noticed) was the only one which produced any coal at that time. Therefore, if coke was actually made in America before the Revolution, it must have been manufactured in Virginia, or, at least, from Virginia coal.

The earliest authenticated account of the manufac- ture and use of coke places it at Allegheny Furnace, in Blair County, in the year 1811. The reasons for the failure of that attempt will be referred to here- after. It is a fact undenied that the first use of coke in Fayette County was made in the refining of iron at

the Plumsock ( Upper Middletown ) Iron-Works by Col. Isaac Meason in 1817. It has been stated by an old resident of the connty that he has an indistinct recol- lection of the making of the coke at the place and time named, and that it was made in ovens similar to the "bee-hive" oven now in general use. But there must be grave donbts as to the accuracy of this state- ment, though it is, beyond all question, honestly made. He has most probably in mind the old Dutch baking-oven, but has, after the lapse of more than sixty years, come to the belief that it was done in ovens similar to the modern bee-hive. Coke-making in ovens was certainly unknown (or at least unprac- ticed ) at that time and for years afterwards.

In Armstrong County there was a furnace built for coke in 1819, called the "Bear Creek Furnace," be- lieved to be then the largest furnace in the United States. It was blown in on coke, but after a few casts the operators found that the (cold) blast of five pounds to the inch was insufficient for the successful use of coke, and thereupon the original purpose was abandoned and the furnace changed for the use of charcoal.

The Howard Furnace, put in operation in the year 1830, in Blair County, and the Elizabeth Furnace, built in the same county in 1832, were both con- structed with a view to the use of coke, and furnaces in Clearfield, Clinton, Lycoming, and Armstrong Counties, Pa., erected between 1835 and 1838, made repeated attempts at the manufacture of coke iron, all of which resulted in failure, from the fact that the cold blast was used and at a very low pressure. The iron-masters of the present time, with all their modern appliances, immense heating surfaces, and powerful blowers, and yet still continually striving for " more heat and more blast," can well appreciate the difficulties encountered in the making of iron in former days and by the old-time methods.

At the "Mary Ann Furnace," in Huntingdon County, Pa., in 1835, William Firmstone made good gray forge iron on coke made from Broad Top coal, but continued it for only about one month. The Georges Creek Iron Company, of Allegheny County, Md., built the "Lonaconing Furnace" in 1837, and made good foundry iron to the amount of about seventy tons per week on coke. The Mount Savage Company also built two blast-furnaces in 1840, and made successful runs on coke, but up to that time most of the attempts to nse coke in iron-making had resulted in failure and heavy pecuniary loss.

In 1836, F. H. Oliphant, of Fayette County, used coke at the Fairchance Furnace in the manufacture of iron from Blue Lnmp ore, and samples of the pro- duct were sent to the Franklin Institute of Philadel- phia; but the claim which has frequently been made that this was the first coke iron made as a regular product in the United States is inadmissible, as will be seen by reference to the facts and dates given above, coke iron of good quality having been made,

1 Most of the facts given in this narrative in reference to the earliest production of coke, and the attempts made through many succeeding years to use it successfully and profitably in iron manufacture, were fur- nished by Mr. George C. Marshall, of Uniontown, who has made the matter the subject of patient and persistent research, in which he has brought to light a great number of facts before unknown, but unques- tionably authentic and reliable.

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COAL-MINING AND COKE MANUFACTURE.

as shown, several years before Mr. Oliphant ever claimed its first production, and even then his claim was merely to have made a few tons.

The Great Western Iron Company built four coke- furnaces between the years 1840 and 1844 at Brady's Bend, Pa., and to that company belongs the credit of making coke iron as a regular product. Their fur- naces were built especially for the use of coke, and they never used any other fuel.

The credit of having been the first to make suc- cessful use of coke in the manufacture of iron has been given in some accounts to Graff, Bennett & Co., of Pittsburgh, but it will be shown hereafter that they did not enter the field until several years after it had been used with success at Brady's Bend.

The Cambria Iron Company built four coke-fur- naces in 1853. These furnaces were blown in on coke, and have continued to use it until the present time.

The coke used in the furnaces of Western Penn- sylvania up to and after the commencement of oper- ations by the Great Western Iron Company at Brady's Bend was made by a process called " ground ricking," the coal being placed on the ground in long or conical ricks, and then covered (except the spaces necessary for ventilation ) with earth, to smother and prevent it from burning up. This process, though it answered the purpose very well, was slovenly, and much less rapid and economical than the present method, and the coke produced was less uniform in quality.

Youghiogheny River, just below the mouth of Fur- nace Run, and that coal was boated down the river to them from Col. Hill's lands. This concurrent testi- mony establishes beyond a doubt the fact that a few ovens were built and put in use on the south bank of the Youghiogheny, near the mouth of Furnace Run, and that they were among the earliest, if not the first, ever built for that purpose, not only in Fayette County, but in Pennsylvania. It is true that both gentlemen named may be mistaken in their recollection of the date, but as their statements agree (and for other reasons) this is hardly probable. Accepting then the fact that there were ovens at that point at about the time indicated, and that (as both statements agree) the coal was brought to them from the Con- nellsville region, some miles above, on the river, it is difficult to explain why the ovens were ever built at that place, unless for the purpose of supplying the furnace near which they were located. If the object of their construction had been to produce coke for a down-river market, or for any other purpose than to be used in their immediate vicinity, they would never have been built at the mouth of Furnace Run, but in the coal-producing region, several miles above, on the river. And yet it can hardly be regarded as probable that Mr. Oliphant was the builder of those ovens, or that the coke made in them was used by him while he was proprietor of the Franklin Iron-Works. Those who had conversations with him on the subject of the use of coke in the manufacture and refining of iron all agree that he never made claim to having used it at the Franklin Works, but only to having made coke iron for a brief period at the Fairchance. If he had built those pioneer ovens at Furnace Run, and used their product at the Franklin Iron-Works, he would certainly have asserted the fact and claimed the priority. It is, then, and for these reasons, most probable that the product of those old ovens was used by Nathaniel Gibson in his Furnace Run Works be- fore they passed to the proprietorship of Mr. Oli- phant. Whatever may be the fact (which will proba- bly never be known with absolute certainty), the above statements are given here, not only because the sources from which they come are (the treachery of man's memory as to remote events and circumstances only excepted) perfectly and entirely reliable, but They are therefore submitted withont any attempt to explain the slight discrepancies contained in them, with regard to other matters accepted as facts.

The earliest date which has been given and per- fectly authenticated of the use of ovens for the making of coke, is the year 1841, the facts and ac- count of which will be given hereafter. But in this connection it is proper to give (and it would be un- fair and improper to omit) statements which are made by men of unquestioned and unquestionable veracity which indicate an earlier date. Mr. David Trimble, living at Little Falls, on the Youghiogheny, says that at a date which cannot be fixed nearer than that it was not earlier than 1830, and not later than 1836, he helped build one or more coke-ovens at or near the mouth of Furnace Run, and the assumption is that the coke produced was used at the Franklin Iron -. Works, which were located there and run by F. H. Oliphant. Mr. Trimble says the idea of building because each seems to support and confirm the other. ovens at that place was suggested by an Englishman named John Coates, who had seen them in operation in England. He also says that the coal for these ovens was brought from mines above East Liberty, In the year 1841, Provance McCormick and James Campbell started the project of manufacturing coke on the Youghiogheny, and succeeded in making some two thousand bushels, which they boated down the river. It is stated that the idea was suggested to them by an Englishman who was then stopping for a time in Connellsville, and who told them that in his native country, coal was made into coke for the use of foun- dries and furnaces. Such rich deposits of superior that the coke made from it was used for the " let-out" fire at the iron-works, and that the supposition then was that these were the first coke-ovens built in Penn- sylvania, if not in the United States. Corroborative (to some extent at least) of this statement is that of James Cochran (" Little Jim"), who has an indis- tinct recollection of seeing, before the year 1840, several coke-ovens standing on the south bank of the

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HISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

coal as were found in abundance in the vicinity of Connellsville would soon be utilized in that way, he said, if there were Englishmen there to do it. Camp- bell and McCormick became interested in the story he told, and having gained from him what informa- tion he possessed as to the method of making coke, they resolved to try the experiment, and if successful in producing the article, to boat the product to Cin- cinnati, in the expectation of selling it for the use of the foundries in that city.

Associating with them John Taylor, who was a stone-mason, and the owner of a farm on the Yonghio- gheny, including a coal-mine, which he operated in a small way, they commenced operations. Taylor constructed two ovens on his farm (near what has been known in later years as Sedgwick Station) and superintended the coking, the coal being taken from his mine. Campbell and McCormick, both carpenters by trade, built the two boats on which the coke was to be floated down the river. Their operations were continued during the fall of 1841 and the succeeding winter, and in the spring of 1842, a sufficient quan- tity of coke having been produced to load the two boats, they were started down the river on a high stage of water, and under pilotage of William Turner made their way in safety to Cincinnati. On reaching the city they found that the demand was not as brisk as they had hoped to find it. The new fuel was unknown there, and foundrymen regarded it with suspicion, calling it cinders. After a time, however, the owners of the coke succeeded in disposing of about one-half their stock, taking in payment coffee and some other

goods,1 and then, to close out, bartered the remainder . down the river) and Richard Bookens bought coal of Thomas Gregg, on

for a patent iron grist-mill which was highly recom- mended. The mill was brought to Connellsville, and soon after placed in the steam-flouring establishment of Strickler & Nickel, in New Haven, where it was put in operation, and found to be, if not wholly, at least so nearly worthless that it was sold for thirty dollars, and so ended the coke operations of MeCor- mick and Campbell, though it need not have been so. The part of their cargoes which had been traded in Cincinnati for the patent mill was afterwards boated up on the canal to Dayton, Ohio, and there sold to Judge Gebhart, who had previously been a resident of Fayette County, but then had a foundry in opera- tion in Dayton. There he used the coke in his estab- lishment, and found it so well adapted for his purpose that he soon after came to Connellsville and pro- posed to McCormick and Campbell to make more, and furnish him with all he needed, and at a good price; but the result of their previous venture in the coke trade disinclined them to repeat the experiment.2 In

1843 the ovens built by Taylor on the Youghiogheny were rented to Mordecai, James ("Little Jim") and Sample Cochran, who put them to use in making twenty-four-honr coke. When they had coked about thirteen thousand bushels, it was boated to Cincin- nati and sold for seven cents per bushel cash to Miles Greenwood," who in the mean time had become fully informed of the value of coke as a fuel. This is said to have been the first coke ever taken from Fayette County and sold for money, and in this view of the matter the Cochrans and Greenwood must be consid- ered as the pioneers of the coke business in the Con- nellsville region.

After this time, and before the year 1850, three or four ovens were built and put in operation by Stewart Strickler, the product being sold by him to the Coch- rans, by whom it was boated down the river and sold in Cincinnati. About 1860 thirty ovens were built and put in operation at Sedgwick, called the Fayette Works. Shoenberger & Co. purchased a one-third interest in them in 1865. Forty ovens were built on Hickman Run in 1864 by Cochran & Keister, who transported their coke on a tramway to the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad until 1871. Some time after the building of these works by Cochran & Kies- ter, the Laughlin ovens were built, also the ovens at the Jackson Works, above Sedgwick.

The Pittsburgh and Connellsville Gas-Coal and Coke Company organized abont 1860, and built forty ovens near Connellsville. The number was increased by John F. Dravo, who took charge in 1868. The

the Youghiogheny, near the site of the present Fort Hill Works, and manufactured coke from it, first by ricking, and afterwards in two or three ovens which they built near that place. They boated their coke down the river to Cincinnati, where they found the same trouble that McCormick and Campbell had experienced: no one knew the value of coke, and no one wanted it. At last a foundryman agreed to try a load of it if they would haul it to his foundry. He tried it, liked it, and purchased the entire lot. The narrative proceeds that Col. Hill soon afterwards built four ovens near the place where Turner and Bookens had made their coke, and later increased the number to twelve. The statement is given for what it is worth.

3 Miles Greenwood was born March 19, 1807, in New Jersey, to which State his father (Miles Greenwood) had removed from Salem, Masa. He was of English extraction on his father's side, and of Huguenot French and German on his mother's. The family removed to New York in 1808, and to Cincinnati in 1817. Miles in 1825 worked in the New Har- mony Community, and two years later went to Pittsburgh and learned iron-working. In 1828 he opened an iron-foundry, and later returned to Cincinnati, working for T. & J. Bevin. After three years he com- mence on his own account, employing ten hands. By 1850 he had three hundred hands under him. In 1861 his entire establishment was turned into a United States arsenal for the mammifacture of armis nud implements of war, seven hundred men being employed. He turned forty thousand Springfield muskets, over two hundred bronze cannon, hundreds of caissons and gun-carriages, and also a sea-going monitor. Ile constructed the Ohio Mechanics' Institute building, and to him the Cincinnati Fire Department is indebted for its efficient organization. For twenty years he was president of the Cincinnati Fuel Company. In 1>59 he was chosen president of the Cincinnati and Covington Bridge Company, and was also a director of the House of Refuge. In 1869 he was appointed a director of the Cincinnati Southern Railway. In 1832 lie married a Miss Hills. Two children of this marriage died in infancy, and their mother also died soon after. In 1836 he married Miss Phoebe J. Hopson, by whom he had ten children, seven of whom are living.

1 It is proper to state here that another account of Campbell and Me- Cormick's coke operation in Cincinnati says that about half their stock was peddled out and sold for money at an average price of eight cents per bushel, and the remainder tinded for the patent mill.

" It is related that not very long after Campbell and McCormick boated their coke tu Cincinnati, William Turner (the pilot who took their boats

BBE

THE DAVIDSON COKE WORKS,

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COAL-MINING AND COKE MANUFACTURE.

Connellsville Gas-Coal Company built their ovens in 1866. Watt, Taylor & Co. built forty ovens just be- low Watt's Station in 1869. In the coke-works above named were nearly all the ovens in the Connellsville coke region up to 1871, the last two named being all that were on the Fayette Branch until 1872, when Paull, Brown & Co. built one hundred ovens on James Paull's place. these figures, startling as they are, and it is only by another process of thought that it is possible to realize the vast amount of coke produced in the Connellsville region. Let us suppose that the entire product of the region for 1882 could be gathered together and loaded on railroad cars, all joined together in one immense train, so that there should be no break in its contin- uity ; that this train should be put in motion on the There are some facts connected with the history of coal and coke production in Pennsylvania that are curious as well as startling. Virginia produced coal years before it was mined in Pennsylvania, and the latter State received coal from Virginia for manufac- morning of a given day, and should move at the rate of fourteen miles per hour (which is above the average speed of freight trains), day and night, without a mo- ment's stop or the least slacking of speed. A person living upon the line of the road would see, hour after turing gas, and even for domestic use, as late as the ' hour and day by day, the interminable line of coke-

year 1850. Yet now, in regard to coal production, Virginia, as compared with Pennsylvania, sinks into utter insignificance, and Virginia, though older in coal-mining by many years than Pennsylvania, pro- duced no coke until within recent years, while the making of coke in Pennsylvania dates back almost three-fourths of a century.

It will be a matter of surprise to many, to learn the fact that Allegheny County never had a furnace within its limits from the time when the old Shady Side Fur- nace was abandoned, in 1794, until the year 1859, when Graff, Bennett & Co. built the Clinton Furnace, which was blown in on coke on the last Monday in October of that year. The next two were the Etna, built by Laughlin & Co. in 1861, and the Superior (two stacks), erected a year or two later. The Soho, the Isabella (two stacks), and the Lucy Furnaces were built in 1872. All these furnaces were constructed for coke, its superiority as a fuel having already been fully demonstrated when the Clinton Furnace was built in 1859.

The business of coke manufacture has been chiefly built up in the last eight years. In 1876 the number of ovens in operation in the Connellsville region was a little more than three thousand, producing nine hundred thousand tons of coke. In 1879 the number of ovens had increased to more than four thousand. For the present time (April 1, 1882) the accom- panying map of the Connellsville coke region shows within that territory the location of about eight thou- sand four hundred ovens now in operation, and there are several hundred more scattered along the out- skirts of the region proper, but not strictly within it and not indicated by the map and references, bring- ing the whole number in operation considerably above nine thousand, having an aggregate capacity of more than three hundred and fifty thousand tons per month. This capacity will be fully worked up to, and, in fact, exceeded in the present year, by reason of a large number of additional ovens now in con- templation and to be immediately constructed, making the coke product for 1882 more than four million two hundred thousand tons.

The immense proportions of the coke business can hardly be comprehended from a mere examination of

laden cars rattling past his door in endless procession ; night after night, through all the hours of darkness, he would hear the ceaseless clank and thunder of the rushing train, and each morning, on awakening from his disturbed slumbers, he would look out as before upon the steel-gray car-loads pursuing each other with undiminished speed along the railway track ; and not until after nightfall of the ninth day would he see the signal-light marking the rear of the train, whose head would then be more than two thousand eight hundred miles away ! Through all those days, each hour of the twenty-four would have seen the passage by a given point of more than twenty thousand tons of coke, all produced in the Connellsville region, and the greater part of it in Fayette County.

Though the manufacture of coke has already be- come an industry so gigantic in its proportions, and has grown with such remarkable rapidity from 1872 (and more especially from 1879) until the present time, there seems to be little reason to doubt that the sanie or perhaps an even greater ratio of increase will be sustained in the future for some years, and this is the view entertained by a majority of operators and others whose opinions on the subject are entitled to much weight. A principal object of manufacturing coke from coal is to furnish a fuel free from sulphur for use in the rednetion of ores and the refining of iron. The demand from this source must of course increase with the increase of iron-furnaces and the growth of iron-making. In the eastern part of Penn- sylvania, and in other localities east of the mountains, coke is used in blast-furnaces in connection with an- thracite, and the proportion of coke to that of anthra- cite used in this way is being constantly augmented in favor of the former fuel, which has also almost en- tirely superseded charcoal for use in the manufacture of pig iron. Large quantities of coke are sent to the far West to be used in smelting the ores of the precious metals, regular shipments for this purpose being made to San Francisco and other points in the gold and silver States. Another and still weightier reason for expecting a very large increase in the demand for coke is that within the past two years H. C. Frick & Co. have introduced machinery for crushing, screen- ing, and sizing coke for domestic purposes in compe-

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History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 55

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885 Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 1314

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 1314