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 29
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 29
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 29
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
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP. 329
Welsh, English und German; the native's were in the majority, but during the period now under consideration-1860 to 1870-the foreigners and their families far outnumbered all others. Now they were .Irish, Welsh, English, German, Scotch, Canadians, French, Polanders and Swedes, but probably nearly one-half of all the foreigners were Irish. The most of these people were very improvident. These were not the kind of people in general to keep houses, outhouses, fences, trees, fruit trees, vines, flowers or anything else in good condition and order for the next tenant to enjoy when they left.
The Lee Mines at Nanticoke were purchased of Col. Lee by the Susquehanna Coal Company in 1868, and have been enlarged and increased to a very large mine. Shafts have been sunk in Newport and new openings made in various directions, together with a large mine owned by them on the west side of the river, in what is called West Nanticoke. They control the canal and ship their coal mostly by that.
It has become useless to search the assessment lists for any reliable information as to population, or the number of houses, or of anything except the valuation for taxing purposes. The houses of the miners being nearly all double, and some of them more than double, the assessment would not show the number of dwellings.
The total valuation in 1870 of Hanover township . $538,086 Number of horses and mules . 192 " cows 269
Sugar Notch borough in 1870 122,905
Number of horses and mules 40 " ' cows . 40
Total valuation $660,991
United States census in 1870. The population of Hanover township and Sugar Notch borough in 1870 was :- Hanover township 3,035
Sugar Notch borough .
724
Total . 3,759
Ashley and Nanticoke were not organized as boroughs till after this date.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
1870 TO 1885.
HIS period will include the whole time from 1870 to the present time. C
The Susquehanna Coal Company, at Nanticoke, has several openings-shafts and slopes. There are four breakers, three of them only in Nanticoke, the fourth one being across the river in Plymouth township, with an average capacity of preparing over a thousand tons per day each. The coal sent by canal goes down the river and can be shipped in summer only. That shipped by railroad has heretofore been shipped by the Nanticoke branch of the Lehigh and Susquehanna railroad to Sugar Notch, where it is switched to the Lehigh Valley railroad and sent east to South Amboy, and along the line of the Pennsylvania railroad. Much of the Nanticoke coal still goes this way. The Susquehanna Coal Company is understood to belong to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.
The North and West Branch railroad, a road running up the river from Sunbury, on the east side, through "Honey Pot" by the east end of the Nanticoke dam, through Nanticoke to Wilkes- Barre, along the old canal tow-path from the outlet lock, was com- pleted in 1882, and belongs to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. That railroad will be used to transport the coal towards the South and West. At these mines Polanders and Hungarians especially congregate.
Nanticoke borough was incorporated in 1874. It is divided into eight wards, is a busy town, and is growing rapidly, but its business is mining now, and its population are mostly employes of the Susquehanna Coal Company. It includes within its boundaries part of Newport township, but about two-thirds of it is cut from
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
Hanover township. The part taken from Hanover is bounded north-west by the river, south-east by the Nanticoke railroad, south-west by Newport township line, and north-east by the westerly line of the Jameson or Hakes lot in Hanover, No. 22. It contains a number of fine brick buildings, a large brick school building, five churches and four breakers. There are some fine business blocks here-two newspapers are published, the Sun and the Tribune.
The old mill has disappeared. A fine stone bridge has been built across, the Newport Creek near where the old mill stood, but further up the creek than the place of the old bridge, and is large and high so as to reduce the steepness of the "black hill" that used to be there, but is there no more. The ground all around there has been filled in with coal dirt many feet deep, and now the place below the "corners" would hardly be recognized by one acquainted with it only some ten or twelve years ago. Nanticoke has a cemetery within its limits, or perhaps two, a Catholic and a Protestant. Nanticoke's buildings" are scattered over all the hills around for a mile or more from its "corners," or ancient center.
A wooden bridge for wagon and railroad use has been built across the river here, a few rods above the mouth of Nanticoke Creek. It is elevated high above the flats so as to be above the reach of floods, and a wooden trestling, planked like a bridge floor, reaches from the east end of the bridge to the high grounds back across the creek towards Main Street. This creek is sometimes called the East Branch of Nanticoke Creek. Further up the creek it was called Lee's Creek, Miller's Creek, Robins's Creek, Bobb's Creek, Rummage's Creek, and now Warrior Run Creek, but its true name is Nanticoke Creek. The Nanticoke railroad has a small depot close to the place where the old mill stood, but the ground is so filled in that one cannot now distinguish the spot. The backwater in the pool of the creek has been filled in with coal dirt, except room for boats to load at the breakers. The old ferries across the river have, of course, been abandoned since the bridge was built.
The North and West Branch railroad runs two trains each way per day of Passenger cars up and down on the east side of the river
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
from Sunbury to Wilkes-Barre. The stations from Nanticoke to Wilkes-Barre are Butzbach's, Plymouth Ferry, at the Lazarus place, and South Wilkes-Barre.
There are three small steamboats running from Wilkes-Barre to Nanticoke, touching at Plymouth and "The Rocks"-now Butz- bach's Landing-two trips each way per day, during the summer time. These boats are quite popular for excursions, and for families to get a little quiet, fresh and cool air in the hot summer months.
Sugar Notch borough was named after the notch or gap in the Little Mountain at that place, called Sugar Notch, because in the earlier times maple sugar was made there. There were hard maple trees in the notch and they were almost the only hard maple or sugar maple trees in Wyoming Valley. The Lehigh Valley rail- road passes through the borough from end to end and has two stations within it. On this road there are six passenger trains each way-up and down-per day. The Nanticoke railroad runs through this borough from end to end with a station at Plumbton called Warrior Run, supposed to be so named because the station on the Lehigh Valley road near by is called by that name. The station at Sugar Notch is called by the name of Sugar Notch. Sugar Notch borough is bounded on the north by a line six hundred feet north of the Nanticoke R. R., east by the cross-road at the old Gar- rison House and the same line continued to the conglomerate rock on the Little Mountain, south by the conglomerate rock to the west line of the Warrior Run land, west by the line of Warrior Run or Rummage lot to the northern boundary.
Sugar Notch, now in 1885, has three mines and breakers within its boundaries-Warrior Run, near Plumbton, Sugar Notch No. 9 at Sugar Notch, and the Hanover Coal Company on the side of the Little Mountain between Warrior Run and Sugar Notch. This last is a slope, and tunnel, and shaft. The breaker was put in operation in 1883, and is of a capacity to prepare about eight hundred tons of coal per day. They ship by the Lehigh and Susquehanna railroad over a siding to the Nanticoke R. R. near the line of land of Preston and the Knock place.
A slope was sunk, tunnel driven, breaker and tenant-houses built on the Espy place, and the village called Hanover. It be-
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
longed to the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Company-was operated a short time, but after the strike of 1877 it stood idle, till in 187.8 the breaker was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Nothing has been done there since. A number of very comfort- able dwellings had been built there-some twenty or more-and they stand there yet, mostly inhabited by Hungarians, who work for the company at Sugar Notch .. These workmen are taken every morning and evening up and down, to and from work, by an engine with a car or two attached. The station is called Hanover, on the Nanticoke railroad and the houses being on the North side of the railroad are within the borough of Nanticoke.
In 1872 a mine called No. 10, Sugar Notch, of the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Company, was opened and operated, with a breaker of the capacity for preparing one thousand tons of coal per day. This mine is a slope on one of the upper veins or beds of coal, and has other veins behind, or underlying it, cut by a tunnel from the foot of the slope inside. It is a large mine, but its capacity might be largely increased. The breaker is in Hanover township close to the easterly line of Sugar Notch.
Ashley borough was incorporated in 1870. Its south-westerly line is lot No. 9 of the first division of lots of certified Hanover, and its north-easterly line is lot No. 4 in the same division, both included. bounded south-easterly by the conglomerate rock on top of the Little Mountain, and by the Lehigh Valley railroad on the north- west. It had several other local names before it was called Ashley. The oldest name was Scrabbletown, then Peasetown, then Coal- ville, then Nanticoke Junction, and finally Ashley. The Lehigh & Susquehanna shops for repairing engines and building new ones, if necessary, are located here, and the foot of the planes, and the general dispatcher's office for the distribution of cars to the several mines, and the ordering and running of trains, are here. It is a town of considerable importance, had 2798 inhabitants by census of 1880, and has a bank, a fine brick school building, three churches, and it had two coal breakers within its limits, but the Hartford breaker No. 6, was burnt to the ground and utterly destroyed in January, 1884. Ashley is divided into three wards. It has a cemetery-located in Hanover township on the cross-road north-west of Ashley.
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334
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
The financial and business depression of 1873 caused much dis- tress about the mines in its final results. Men could not understand that wages had to go down, or else work stop, and in 1875 there was a long strike, with final submission by the workmen. Wages still went down, and in 1877, there was another long strike-six- months-and much destruction of property throughout the country. This strike was by railroad hands as well as miners and others, and an attempt was made to get up a political organization through these strikes and by the strikers, and for a time they had such a party here. Designing men stepped in and used it for their own purposes and benefit, and were elected to office, but it only lasted long enough to elect them at one election, when the workmen dis- covered the purposes of the leaders, and that ended its power.
After this strike ended came a couple of years of only half-time work and less, at the mines, and the price of coal so low that it was only by the greatest economy and closest care that any of the mines could be kept going at all, and many of them had to sus- pend entirely, and some of the individual operators went into bank- ruptcy. None, however, failed in Hanover.
The operators have adopted the method now of suspending work of all the mines for a certain length of time, sometimes for three days a week, sometimes for two weeks in a month, in all the anthracite coal regions, when the market gets overstocked. The wages of the men has been raised and is nearly up to the old prices of about 1873 .. Since the resumption of specie payments in 1879, the prospects seem to be growing better in the coal business, and the operators can more nearly estimate what they can do.
As this book may come into the hands of some persons who do not live within the coal regions, or of some who were originally from Hanover, but removed from here before any such thing as a breaker was known or any had ever been built, a description of one may be interesting to such a person. We will try to describe one of the least complicated kind. A breaker is made for the purpose of crushing anthracite coal and screening it from dirt, and separat- ing it into the different sizes for use. The first breaker known to have been built in these parts, and they were probably built here as early or nearly so as anywhere, was erected in 1849. It was built at the Baltimore Mine in Wilkes-Barre, and about the same time one
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
was built at the Blackman Mines. Screens had been used, run by steam engines before that a short time, but nothing up to that time had ever been used, run by steam power to break coal. The breaking had always been done by hand, and there was but very little of that done. Now, no coal is used in the East for domestic purposes, except that broken and prepared in a breaker.
A COAL BREAKER.
A breaker is a building of heavy timbers, from fifty to a hundred feet high, boarded up on the outside like the old-fashioned barn. It is in the form of a cross generally, the wings making it about one hundred feet wide with a length of one hundred and fifty to two hundred or three hundred feet. The coal is brought to the top of it, either by drawing the mine cars up there on an inclined plane, or by having the opening or mouth of the mine high enough up on a hill to run the cars as they come out of the mine to the top of the breaker on a level, the breaker being of course on ground low enough for the purpose; or in the case of a shaft the shaft- house is high enough to draw the cars at once from the bottom of the shaft to as high a point as the top of the breaker. At the top .of the breaker is what is called the "dump," or "tip." When the car gets there it is tipped up endwise, and a door in the end of the car opens and the coal slides out into a chute, or a large hopper. Men on a platform beyond and below this chute or hopper lift a gate from time to time, and let the coal slide down the chute to the platform where they are ready with picks to clean it of slate. On . the platform the most of the slate is broken off the coal lumps, and then the lumps are shoved into another smaller chute where they slide at once to a hopper situated directly over and close to the rollers-crushers-breakers. These rollers are heavy iron cylinders filled with sharp teeth, rolling or turning towards each other to crush up and break the lumps of coal as they pass down between them. Meantime the coal on its way from the chute or hopper to the platform has passed over a grating of iron bars that directs the larger lumps into a separate chute, but lets the small coal and dirt down through between them into another smaller chute. This carries the coal over still another grating with closer bars that lets the dirt fall through, into a chute which carries it to a "pocket"
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
where a boy, with a mule and a dirt car, hauls it away, out on the dirt bank; while the coal above, larger and smaller, is conducted by the chute to a large revolving screen, having different sized meshes, in sections, from end to end. The coal enters the screen at an elevated end, and as the screen revolves the coal rolls round till it comes to the mesh in the screen through which it can pass, when it drops through, or if it is too large for any mesh in the screen it goes on to the end perhaps fifteen or eighteen feet, where the coarsest kind that went in drops out. There will be all the sizes from broken, egg, stove, and nut, to chestnut; called also Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the number five being chestnut. There are three other sizes sometimes made or secured-lump, as it comes out of the mines, steamboat, a size smaller than lump, but too large for domestic use in houses, and "pea," a fine coal screened out of the "dust" in some breakers, and sometimes a still smaller size, called "buckwheat" coal.
Now as to the lump coal we had brought down to the hopper over the rollers. The rollers are sometimes. about eighteen inches in diameter and from thirty to forty inches in length, and some- times three feet in diameter and four feet long. They are cast whole, cylinder shaped, with heads and sides cast in one piece; the iron being from two to three and four inches thick, hollow inside. Holes are bored all around on the convex sides of these cylinders an inch or more in diameter and about five inches or more apart, into which are firmly set steel points three or four inches long taper- ing from two inches square at the base or butt to a sharp point. These rollers or crushers, or breakers, or whatever they may be called- for they go by different names in different places-are keyed and bolted on very heavy shafts or axles. There are two of these rollers, set or laid, side by side in their position in the breaker so placed that the steel points or teeth pass between each other as they revolve, and so that the body of the rollers shall not be nearer than four or five inches, or any distance desired. There is a heavy cog-wheel a little larger than the rollers, on each roller shaft, ar- ranged to fit each other so that when running the two rollers are made to turn together. They lie along side by side and revolve towards each other, and must be very strong, as whatever gets be- tween them must be crushed sufficiently to pass through. Some-
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
times stones and rock get in. They must be crushed just the same as coal, and be picked out by the slate pickers below. There are sometimes two and even three sets of rollers in one breaker, and there may be more.
The coal is fed in as fast as it will go through between the rollers. The rollers run with considerable speed, from 100 to 150 revolutions per minute. The crushed coal passes into a chute under the rollers, and is carried by it-that is, it slides down the chute by its own gravity or weight-to a screen or two screens re- volving like the one above described, and made like it, and goes through them. These chutes are arranged with flat screens or per- forated iron in their bottoms at proper places, so as to let as much dirt or dust out of the coal as possible on its way to the revolving screnes. The revolving screens are intended more to separate the coal into the several sizes, than for separating it from the dust. As the coal falls through the revolving screens it is caught in its different sizes in separate hoppers under the screens and from there slides down, each size in its separate long and narrow and shallow chute to large bins or pockets in the breaker, each size by itself, the pockets so arranged as to run the coal directly into the railroad cars on the track at the bottom of the breaker, by lifting a gate in the pocket. Along those little narrow-18 inches wide by 4 inches deep-shallow chutes that carry the coal from the screens to the pockets, boys larger and smaller are arranged, picking out the slate and rock that comes through the screens with the coal.
Some breakers are large enough to break and screen and pick eighteen hundred tons a day, 'and have as many as one hundred and fifty boys picking the slate. These are the "slate pickers"- boys ranging from ten to sixteen years in age, and sometimes old men too decrepit to do harder work.
Some breakers have water running over and through the screens all the time they are running to wash the coal, as it frequently comes out of wet places in the mines and coal dirt sticks to it. The breaker is a very large and costly structure, and not calcu- lated, from the kind of work it has to do, to last long. By much care and patching and removals of parts it may be made to last from twenty to twenty-five years.
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338
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
The coal intended to be sold as "lump coal" and "steamboat coal" is cleaned of slate on the platform below the "dump" or "tip," at the head of the breaker, and pushed into two large chutes that run (one over the other) from there to the ground at the foot of the breaker at the railroad tracks, where by lifting a gate it runs at once into the railroad cars. These chutes are always kept as full as possible, from top to bottom, so as not to break the coal in running down. The pockets will hold from twenty to a hundred tons each, according to size of breaker, and the lump and steam- boat each as much more. The breaker is intended to hold as much as one day's work of the mine, whether it be five hundred or eighteen hundred tons of cleaned coal ready and prepared to load into cars, but unless they are going to stop for some time they never fill the breaker full.
There are differences in breakers as in other buildings. Nearly all breakers have two sets of screens, one to the right and one to the left of the main rollers. Some have another extra screen for the small coal as it comes out of the mine to go through without going to the main screens that are fed from the rollers. And others again have still other screens for special work, such as saving "pea" coal and "buckwheat" coal. There are purposes for which this fine stuff can be used, but it seems as if the possible demand can never, hardly, equal the possible supply-but no one can tell what may be the demand in the future for pea and buckwheat and still smaller sizes. The coal business itself must still be considered in its infancy.
These breakers cost on an average, as they are now built, big and little, about fifty thousand dollars each. It is considered that the real waste caused by the breaking of the coal and the crushing and wearing of it into dust by passing through the breaker is about 15. per cent. by the time it gets into the railroad cars. Some breakers crush all the coal that comes out of the mine into the prepared sizes, and no lump or steamboat is made. These large sizes are used for iron making and for fuel - for steamboats and steamships, and for locomotive engines. Some locomotives, how- ever, now use pea and buckwheat coal. Pea and buckwheat are : used at the mines to raise the steam for their own use. At some mines the dust is used to produce the necessary steam.
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
It is understood in this mining region that from one-fifth to one-fourth of the material brought out of the mine in its operation, including all the dust or dirt, slate and rock, is thrown upon the dirt bank near the breaker as refuse. The breaker waste, or waste due to the breaker alone, being 15 per cent., the rock, slate and other impurities not due in any wise to the breaker is from 5 to 10 per cent. In regions of steeper pitching veins, and of thicker veins, the waste from impurities (everything not caused by the breaker) is greater still.
It is safe to say, that on an average, in this region, a breaker that has been in operation ten years will have hundreds of thousands of tons of such waste lying around it, piled up in some cases a hundred feet or more high. In most cases these dirt-banks have taken fire spontaneously, and some of them have been burning for many years. When the coarser materials are burning it lights up the sky, especially if there are any clouds near, and has the red look at night as if there was some very large building on fire. These dirt banks cover many acres of land in the immediate vicinity of each breaker. Strangers passing by on the cars think these banks of dirt or dust and slate are coal.waiting for shipment. There is no coal stored outside of the breakers waiting for a market. That used to be done when canals were the only or principal means of transportation.
A COAL MINE.
Mining in Hanover is pretty much all done now by two methods, viz: through slopes and shafts.
Ist. The slope, which is sunk in the seam or bed itself, down the pitch to the depth desired, and the coal is hoisted through it to the surface. There is a track all the way up the slope, from bottom to top, and the mine cars are hauled up by steam-power at the top, with a wire rope. There are generally two tracks, and one car comes up as the other goes down,
2d. The shaft, which is sunk vertically through rock and coal, until the bed or seam desired is reached. This also is worked by steam-power and two wire ropes, and the mine cars lifted from bottom to top and let down from top to bottom at the same operation.
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
When the point desired is reached by the slope or by the shaft two "gangways" are driven, one on each side of the slope or shaft, in the coal, and in the direction the coal runs, and at a declivity that will admit of the water running or draining readily to the outlet, that is, to the slope or shaft, where it is pumped to the surface through large pipes by steam pumps. The usual grade in such gangways is four to six inches in 100 feet. The gangways are driven night and day and a track of small T iron is laid in them as they progress for the mine cars to run on. There is a "dog-hole," as it is called, which is another gangway, as it were, smaller than the main one, or real one, parallel and near it, driven in the coal if there is room for it, at the same time with the main gangway, for an air passage. If there is not room for this dog-hole in the coal, then the air passage or airway is made of wood along the lower side of the gangway, and this wooden partition is called a "brattice." It must be understood that in the anthracite coal region all the veins of coal pitch, some four or five degrees and others at all angles up to ninety degrees.
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