USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Nanticoke > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 26
USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Ashley > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 26
USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Sugar Notch > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 26
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
*The writer was within the whirl of this tornado and received a gash on the cheek from a flying window-sash, from which he still bears the scar.
294
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
In 1837 a financial and business panic and depression occurred. Bankruptcy seemed to overtake the well-to-do in every direction. Specie payments were suspended by all banks. The currency in use among the people became in most cases valueless. State banks only were then in existence. There had been a United States bank, but it had very recently been suppressed. Money had always been scarce here for some reason, but since the canal had been finished, money, or its representative-bank notes-could be got; but now the holders of bank notes, called "bank bills" and "paper money," were good for nothing. The banks had "bursted" and their paper was valueless. "Shin-plaster" was the name given to the paper in use. All the banks in the State and probably in the United States suspended specie payments, and money was not to be got. It was felt severely in Hanover, but as very little of any kind of business except agriculture was carried on here, and as the people still made their own cloth and leather, their condition was incomparably better than those who depended for a living upon manufactures, mining and commerce.
Previous to this panic, routes for railroads had been surveyed and stakes driven in various parts of the township, but nothing was done towards building any until late in this decade. Some time after this panic, but as early as 1839, work was being done in build- ing the Lehigh and Susquehanna railroad from White Haven to Wilkes-Barre, and the township seemed overrun with foreigners. The company paid some of the wages in a kind of "scrip" like a bank bill in appearance, and of the value of $2.00, $4.00, and $8.00. The writer never saw any of them of a larger denomination than eight dollars. They were all redeemed in cash. No one ever lost anything by them.
In 1834, Jesse Crisman, a native of Hanover, living in the house near the end of the Wilkes-Barre bridge on the Kingston side, loaded a boat in the river with his wife and children, and live stock, and pigeons, and chickens, and started for Illinois. He floated down the river to Nanticoke and there entered the canal. At Hollidays- burg the canal, just completed in 1834, ended, and there was a rail- road to cross the Allegheny Mountains. The manager of the rail- road proposed to Crisman to take his boat out of the canal, put it on a car and take it and all it contained. across the mountain. This
295
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
was done, and Crisman's boat rested on the top of the mountain that night like Noah's ark. The next day it was taken down the mountain on the western side and put into the canal there (at Johns- town). It entered the Ohio river at Pittsburg where it floated down on its way to its destination .* "This was the first boat that ever crossed the Allegheny mountains."t
The Allegheny Portage railroad was 39 miles long-from Hol- lidaysburg to Johnstown. There were 10 planes to cross the mountain's elevation, 1398 feet on the eastern side and 1172 feet on the western side, with one tunnel on the route of about 850 feet in length. The cars were taken up and let down the planes by stationary engines situated at the top of the planes. On the levels between them locomotives and horses were used. The cars were arranged to take boats in sections of two, three or four pieces separately. The boats or sections assumed their proper element at Johnstown, and the sections were joined together in the canal. The canal on the west side of the mountain was abandoned in 1863; on the east side in 1874.
The Lehigh and Susquehanna railroad planes at (Scrabbletown) Ashley were originally intended for the same kind of service as the Allegheny Portage, but the plan was abandoned for some reason and no arrangement was ever made for the purpose.
In the early days of the republic an armed militia, organized and drilled, was considered the mainstay and safety of a free gov- ernment by the commonwealth. The constitution provided that the right to carry arms should not be abridged to the citizen. It was further considered the duty of every township to be prepared to perform its share in the defense of the State and the upholding of the laws. Each township had to enroll all its male inhabitants over twenty-one years of age and under forty-five, into a militia company. and appear at the place appointed twice a year for company drill. Each man had to provide himself with a gun of some kind and appear on the day appointed or be fined ($1.00) for non-attendance, for township drill generally in May, and in June for a "general" training-that was a whole regiment together-with
*Since writing the above, it bas been learned that Crisman never reacbed bis destina- tion, but was robbed and murdered in Pittsburg on his way to Illinois.
+Watson's Annals.
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
their officers, from colonel down to the lieutenants. Any one of the proper age enrolled was fined for not answering to his name at roll-call. The company elected its own officers, a captain and one lieutenant. The officers had to wear a uniform and sword. They might use their own judgment and taste as to these. .
The Hanover Green-now the Hanover Cemetery-was the place for the meeting and training of the Hanover company, and being a large vacant and grassy common, was frequently chosen for the general training, when there would be a whole regiment there. Sometimes the general training would be on the river com- mon at Wilkes-Barre. The uniformed companies would be at these general trainings as well as the ununiformed militia. Many of our older men now with military titles, received their titles as officers of these militia.
These militia organizations gradually fell into disrepute, as they took men's time from sober work and seemed to be useless; they were never called upon for any other service than this of two days each year of poor drilling and marching about a little, together with considerable drunkenness. The act enforcing it was repealed in 1848, though a relic of it remained for some twenty years after- wards in a military tax of fifty cents a year on each person of the proper age-unless he had served seven years in a uniformed military company or in the army and had an honorable discharge. This tax has now been abolished.
In 1838 Samuel Holland bought lands in Hanover for coal mining purposes-the John Bobb, the John Garrison, the Sterling, and the Andrew Shoemaker properties. He paid about twenty-five dollars per acre. This is the first land ever sold or bought for mining purposes in Hanover, unless it be the little pieces of an acre or half acre in the mountains, bought by some farmers, who could not find any coal handy on their own land that could be quarried out by them without greater cost. The Bobbs emigrated to Iowa, the Garrisons to a neighboring township. People were emigrating from the township to the West more rapidly than ever. Indiana had now for some time been receiving most of them. As we come near 1840 Wisconsin becomes the land of promise and the delight of the expectations of the young farmers, who could there get all the land they desired for one dollar and twenty-five
.
297
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
cents per acre and have no trouble to clear off the woods and brush. It was nearly all prairie land, ready for the plow at once, and said to be as productive as our river flats. All the talk among the farmers seemed to be "the West." Those who had been there and tried it and come back on a visit or to make the final collections on the farm they had sold here, would say to these Hanoverians :- "How foolish you are to stay here and work as hard as you do on, these stony and gravelly hills and thin soil, when you can sell this for enough per acre to buy forty acres for each one of these, and where you can raise 40 bushels of wheat to the acre, and here you can't raise 10. Why not go there?" The reasoning was unanswer- able-and they went.
1840. Total number of taxables on assessment roll 262
‹‹ houses
I54
horses
193
oxen 38
COWS 287
valuation . $60,413
Here it will be seen that the valuation has decreased more than $10,000. The assessment this year seems to be unreliable. Rail- roads were building and mines were being opened or attempts made in various places that failed. This brought in a floating population, that lived here a week or a month and there another. Large boarding shanties were built by the railroad contractors where from twenty-five to fifty or more persons were fed and lodged. This was assessed as a house. This swelled the population but not the assessment and number of taxables on the roll. Money was in circulation now.
1840-THE UNITED STATES CENSUS.
The number of inhabitants of the township this year according to the census was 1938=1212 to a house, on an average. Still the same method of taking the census was pursued as the preceding ones, only changed a little as to age-thus :-
Under 10 yrs., 10 to 15, to 20, to 30, to 40, to 50, to 60, to 70, to 80, to 90.
Males . . 255 99 91 364 207 79 29 21 7 3=1155 Females . 253 81 96 132 93 52 32 15 8 6= 768 All other free persons-(colored) I5
1938 1 Total
19*
1
298
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
an increase over 1830 of 65 per cent. This was the largest popula- tion the township ever had till 1870. Somewhere near four hundred of these may be considered as full grown men, working here only on the railroads newly building, and mines opening. These were the floating population-without families-a very undesirable lot. But the most of them voted.
This census report says there were-
"Engaged in agriculture in the township now 206
" mining 53
" commerce 5
" manufactures and trade 77
learned professions and engineers 3
Revolutionary pensioners
I"
It seems as if 330 at least of these ought to have been assessed. There were at least 330 full grown men here in addition to the usual population.
1840 TO 1850.
In 1838 to 1840 Samuel Holland dug a canal basin at the river near the present Dundee Shaft, built chutes there to load canal boats with coal, built a railroad from the basin to his mines back at the foot of the mountain about three miles distant, and com- menced shipping coal to market by canal down the river. This railroad was furnished with wooden rails, having flat iron on the top of them about two and a half inches wide and a half inch thick. The cars ran by gravity from the mines down to the basin, and were hauled back by horses. There was a store belonging to Holland and Hillman-who were partners for a time-near the basin on the River Road. They shipped about 15,000 tons of coal a year. The mines were on the land that Holland bought of Bobb, and on other land leased of Col. H. B. Wright, and of Jacob Rummage, and George Kocher, all now deceased. The present Warrior Run Mines are now on the properties of Wright and Rummage. Holland met with financial reverses in 1848, and the mines lay idle till 1865. The railroad and canal basin were abandoned and went to decay and have never been used since. Nothing but lump coal was shipped from these mines-nor from any other for that matter-unless on special order, when a cargo
299
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
would be broken up for stove and grate by hand, and also screened by hand. Such a thing as a breaker was not then known.
Mining was pretty much all done above water level where the water could run out of the mine without pumping. But, Holland had a little slope about thirty feet deep worked by horse-power with a "gin," and a little shaft with a wooden pump in it reaching from the surface of the ground vertically overhead to the foot of the slope underneath, and had the water pumped out there by hand. This little slope was close to where the Nanticoke branch of the L. & S. railroad crosses the Nanticoke Creek, near the foot of the Little Mountain on the Bobb lot. There was a tunnel further back into the Little Mountain on property of George Kocher. Three "drifts" or "gangways," where the Warrior Run Mines are now, were driven in on the coal itself, all above water level so that water drained out by its own gravity. Mining ought to have been cheap under such circumstances, for there was no pumping to be done, no fans to be run for ventilation, no foul air, no choke-damp, no explosive gasses to contend with as we have now. The moment mining began to be done below water level "fire-damp" and "choke-damp"-carbureted hydrogen gas, and carbonic acid gas-began to be met with. In other words, it would seem that when the mine was above water and dry it had no gas; when below water level and wet it was gassy.
In 1843 the Lehigh and Susquehanna railroad was completed from White Haven to Wilkes-Barre, tapping the Wyoming coal fields to help supply the growing New York and Philadelphia markets, together with the intermediate towns, by way of the Lehigh, Delaware, Morris and Raritan canals. The stationary engines at the planes were not run. Light freight and passengers were taken in cars drawn by horses the entire distance between Wilkes-Barre and White Haven. A few cars of coal were hauled up the planes and over to White Haven by horses in 1846, but it was found too expensive and stopped. The railroad was not opened for full traffic till 1847, and then horses were used to haul the cars everywhere on the road except up the planes and where the cars would run by gravity. The cars were taken up and let down the planes by steam engines situated at the top. From Ashley there are three long planes to reach the top of the Big
300
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
Mountain. The elevation of the head of the upper plane above the foot of the lower is a little over 1,000 feet. Originally there were "straps" of soft steel attached to a "truck" with which to pull the cars up and let them down. The strap was composed of four separate straps of steel, each about four inches wide and one-eighth of an inch thick and about thirty feet long, laid side by side parallel to each other and half an inch apart, and the ends riveted on a strong plate of steel. Then another set of four-inch straps were riveted on the same plate and another plate at the other end of them, and so on until the length wanted was reached, There were two sets of these straps to each plane, and two wooden drums about twenty feet in diameter at the head of each plane to wind them up on, and two tracks, but only one set of straps and one track was ever used while those straps were in use on the planes. That was sufficient for all the business they had to do. At the bottom of the plane was a "pit" for the "truck " to run into, to let the cars pass over it in going either on or off the plane. The trucks were made with an arrangement to throw the cars off the track in case the straps broke. About 1850 these straps were dis- carded for wire ropes, and about the same time or a year before locomotives were put on instead of horses. This was one of the best built and most substantial railroads ever constructed in the United States. Ross, of Wilkes-Barre, owned land on the lower plane some distance above the foot of it. He had a grist-mill there on Solomon's Creek before the railroad was built. When the rail- road commenced carrying coal to market a vein of coal was opened near the mill and coal mined and shipped from chutes standing by the side of the track on the lower plane. Holland and Hillman were the operators in 1847. These mines may have been operated afterwards by some other operator, as Holland failed the next year. Between five and ten thousand tons may have been shipped from here. This coal went by railroad to White Haven, where it was loaded into canal boats. All the other coal slipped by this road at this time was from the Blackman Mines. Col. Lee's Mines at Nanticoke shipped, probably, during this period from 15,000 to 20,000 tons of coal a year. These mines have been continually worked from the opening of the canal, and probably long before that, to the present time.
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301
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
The coal from all these and all other mines in these parts went by canal to market, and when the canal was frozen up, as it was in the winter, none could be sent in any way.
The above-named were all the mines in Hanover, and probably during the ten years from 1840 to 1850 there was not an average of more than 40,000 tons of coal shipped per year from all these mines in Hanover. About 1849 or 1850 as much as 100,000 tons were sent. Coal was mined for use by the citizens of Hanover and Wilkes-Barre at Carey's coal bed at Sugar Notch, and at Preston's bed, near Ashley, during this period, of perhaps from 1,000 to 2,000 tons each, per year.
The Mexican War came on in 1846 and some of our Hanover "boys" went to Mexico, and some were laid beneath Mexican soil, but we have no record of the names of the Hanoverians in that war, except John Sliker, killed, Samuel Sliker and David Howard.
It was only a small war, and only one company of volunteer soldiers went from Luzerne County. The war lasted two years, and the boys came home in 1848 in a canal boat by way of Pitts- burg, covered with glory. The tariff of 1842 had caused iron works and manufactories to start up in various parts of the country; that had stimulated business of all kinds, and men could get money for their work. The tariff bill of 1846, lowering the tariff to a revenue basis, caused most of the new operators in both coal and iron to go into bankruptcy by 1848, although the Mexican War had a tendency, as all wars have, to raise prices for the time being. At all events, our war and our manufacturing and mining enterprises in this case ended at the same time. The rolling-mill at South Wilkes-Barre was built and in operation about five years, when, in 1848, it was sold out by the sheriff for what the materials and machinery would bring, and carried away; and many of the houses that were built there rotted down without tenants. Wyoming Valley sank back again to a purely agricultural region. From this on till the Rebellion of the South dullness prevailed, and for such work as there was, low prices and, generally, pay in store goods. No mining for distant markets was done in Hanover, ex- cept at Nanticoke, until 1851.
In 1840 there were fifty-six log-houses in use, but no new ones were built after this year.
e
302
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
The Lehigh and Susquehanna railroad continued in operation, but as far as its coal carrying was concerned it received none for transportation except about 600 tons per day from the "Blackman Mines," now the Franklin. There was none from Hanover.
In 1849 the first breaker for breaking and preparing coal was erected in Wyoming Valley. This was at the Baltimore Mines in Wilkes-Barre. The Blackman Mines completed one the same year and almost at the same time. Previously the small coal only, as it came out of the mines, was screened into the different sizes.
1850. The assessment books have a total of 270 taxables resi- dent and non-resident. Farms and other property were now owned to a considerable extent by persons who did not reside in the town- ship. The valuation of property had been raised and :- The total valuation was now .
. $179,397
= number of houses (probably 70 were double) 230 horses (and mules) 188
oxen (single) 22
66
COWS 318
1850. United States census. The number of inhabitants in the township at this census was 1,506. There were no railroads build- ing now, and the township had lost more than 400 of the in- habitants it had in 1840. There would be an average of about 612 persons to each house. If there were 70 double houses there would be something like 572 persons to a dwelling. The decrease was over 22 per cent. in ten years.
This census was taken under a new law and is much more comprehensive than the old. It gives the number of native and foreign, white and colored, and the paupers, and criminals, and many other interesting matters. Hanover now had only one colored person in it. Some of these statistics will be compared below.
In 1850 there were still in use in the township 39 log-houses. They were constantly rotting down. Some of them were over sixty years old.
Act, March 3, 1845. Very material change in rates of postage on domestic letters :---
Half-ounce any distance up to 300 miles 5 cents.
over 300 « . IO
Every additional half-ounce or fraction, an additional postage. . Act, March 3, 1847. Letters to the Pacific Coast, 40 cents.
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1
CHAPTER XVI.
1850 TO 1860.
OON after 1850 larger coal companies began to be formed, with larger capital and more experience, and land was bought by them of the farmers for mining purposes. The owners of the back land were glad to sell their comparatively poor land for forty or fifty dollars per acre, and go West and buy land of a much better quality for one dollar and twenty-five cents. Coal land was sold in 1850-1-2-3 for fifty dollars per acre and some for less. Farms were now rented out to tenant farmers on "shares," that is, the tenant gave one-third of the produce of the farm as rent. The soil began at once to deteriorate in quality. The tenant cared little for the farm, and as it took, a great deal of manuring and care to keep the ground rich enough to produce wheat on the back land, they even gave up sowing that grain, and raised only rye, oats, corn and buckwheat. Indeed by 1850 very poor crops of anything were produced. Brush and trees were permitted to grow along the fences, many fields were permitted to grow altogether wild, and before 1860 some became entirely valueless for cultivation, and gave very little return for pasturage. Sheep, if they could have been raised, would have kept down the brush in such fields, but so many of the population of the township were now foreigners working generally at the mines, and each family having at least one dog, if not two, and three, that it became impossible to keep sheep. The writer knew one dog to kill 117 sheep in one summer, or spring, before it was itself killed, and it went all the way from South Wilkes-Barre into and through Hanover to do it.
Numerous coal companies were formed in 1854-5; they bought up tracts of land all over the township, paying part down,. the remainder to be paid on time at interest. Coal shafts were com- menced to be sunk on various tracts to a depth of seventy, eighty
304
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
or a hundred feet, engine and shaft houses were built, engines put up, and in a year or so suspended operations. Pay- ments on the lands ceased, and they were sold out by the sheriff. Some never got so far as to sink a shaft of any depth, but were sold out before a shaft was commenced. . Some of these small companies were consolidated with others larger, and the land was paid for and thus saved. The financial and business depression and panic of 1857 made an end of this attempt at coal mining, and no further progress was made till after the rebellion of our southern brethren caused a demand for much more coal.
At Scrabbletown-Coalville-now Ashley-where the Hartford Breaker stood-built in 1856, burnt down in 1884-a shaft was sunk in 1851 and a small mine opened. In 1856 a large breaker was erected over the old shaft-previously worked out and abandoned-and a slope was sunk at the foot of the mountain on the " Baltimore vein," the largest seam of coal known in Hanover. Here it is nineteen feet thick. At the Baltimore Mines in Wilkes- Barre the same bed was twenty-nine feet, when first opened. There is a tunnel here running into the mountain near the mouth of the slope, cutting the Ross and the Red Ash, two large veins back of or underlying the Baltimore vein. About all the coal has been worked out above water level at this mine, and they have sunk several "lifts" below the old slope bottom, and the mine is now very deep. This is called the Hartford Mine and is the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre No. 6. Since this breaker burned down, another near by, formerly belonging to the New Jersey Coal Co., but now to the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre, is used to prepare the coal of this mine, and is called No. 8.
The Dundee Shaft was sunk in 1857-8-9 to the greatest depth of any shaft in our coal region, between 800 and 900 feet. Sixteen seams of coal were pierced in sinking the shaft, from one inch, or mere streak, to six feet in thickness, the shaft going no deeper than this last one. No mining has ever been done there, though a good engine house and engine were erected and are there yet. The Dundee is near the old Hanover Basin, on the cross-road leading from the River Road to the Middle Road near the Nanticoke Creek. Nothing has been done at this shaft since 1859. The property belongs now to the D., L. & W. Co.
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305
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
Another shaft was sunk in 1855 some seventy to eighty feet deep on the Lorenzo Ruggles property near the Middle Road at the Hoover Hill school-house. Engine house and engine were erected, and so much done-stopped, abandoned, all in 1855-6. Only one payment out of five had been made on the property, and the sheriff sold it on Ruggles' judgment, who bid it in for his debt. The Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre now owns it.
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