History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 35

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1532

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But the result of Mr. Miner's investigations, and of his exploratione of the Lehigh at that early day, was the hope that even then coal could be got down the Lehigh river to Philadelphia in arks from Mauch Chunk; and in December of 1813 he, in company with Messrs. Cist and Robinson, of Wilkes-Barre, leased the mines at Mauch Chunk and made arrangements to try the experiment. Mr. Robin- son withdrew early from their company.

Mr. Miner for a number of years represented old Luzerne (then embracing all of northeastern Pennsylvania) in the legislature of the State. Subsequently he repre- sented Lancaster, Chester and Delaware counties in congress; having for his colleague James Buchanan.

Jacob Cist, who was associated with him in their Mauch Chunk enterprise, was the son of Charles Cist, who with Robert Morris and others had formed the Lehigh Coal Mine company. He came to this valley in his youth, and commenced the mercantile business in Wilkes-Barre, but he was devoted to scientific studies and held a wide correspondence with scientific men. He understood better than any other gentleman of his day the geology of this region. Highly appreciating its coal, and clearly foreseeing its importance, he was ever ready to promote it appreciation abroad; and great reason have his respected descendants in this valley to bless his honored memory, his sound judgment and far-seeing forecast, verified in his short life by his wise and ample provision for them in the purchase of coal land.

After many and varied experiences, generally marked by sad failures, but these came upon men of unconquerable purposes, at length, March 13, 1837, the company was chartered to build a railroad connecting the Lehigh navigation with the north branch of the Susquehanna. The Lehigh & Susquehanna railroad was completed in time for the shipment of 5,800 tons of coal from Wyoming in 1846.

The Beaver Meadow railroad, chartered in 1830, was finished in 1836, extending from the Beaver Meadow coal basin, which is partly in Luzerne county, to its shipping point on the canal six miles below Manch Chunk, a distance of twenty-five miles to Parryville, the real opening of the Eastern Middle coal district-the rich mines in

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

the mountainous regions lying on the south line of the county. These coal fields are distinct from those of the Wyoming valley.

The Hazleton railroad, commenced in 1836, connected with the Beaver Meadow road at Weatherly, half way to the Lehigh, and the Hazleton coal was shipped on the canal at Penn Haven. The old "planes" are seen as you pass the mouth of the Quakake creek at Penn Haven, decaying relics of the past, in the midst of the progress bustle and active business rivalry of competing railroads of the present; instead of the lonely wilderness described by Josiah White in 1818, when with Erskine Hazard they "leveled the river from Stoddardsville to Easton, the ice not having all disap- peared, there being no house between the former place and Lausanne, obliging us to lie out in the woods all night." He further says there were but thirteen houses, including the towns of Lusanne and Lehighton, within sight from the river, and for thirty-five miles above Lusanne there was no sign of human habitation.

At the close of the year 1873 the coal lands of the Lehigh company were leased to the Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal company, which was formed by the consolida- tion of the Honeybrook Coal company and the Wilkes-Barre Coal & Iron company at a minimum rental of $500,000, on a royalty of twenty-one per cent. of the price of coal at Mauch Chunk. This included lands in Luzerne as well as on the Lehigh. The great financial failure of Jay Cook & Co., in' 1873, forced the New Jersey Central railroad into the hands of a receiver; the canals were abandoned and the Lehigh coal lands reverted to the original owners.

Asa Packer, native of Connecticut, a carpenter by trade, settled in Susquehanna county, whither he had traveled on foot from his eastern home, when a young man, found work upon the Lehigh, where his keen foresight had play and his great energy of character and indomitable will found material to work upon. He acquired coal prop- erty and projected a railroad to carry his coal to market from the Hazleton region. Following the river, his line absorbed the Beaver Meadow road, already in operation from Parryville to Penn Haven, where it received coal from the now abandoned planes. Crossing the Lehigh at that point, the towing path of the upper navigation occupying the west bank, his road followed on the east side to a point opposite White Haven, where by a substantial bridge it joined the Lehigh & Susquehanna railroad at its southern terminus, and thus had uninterrupted communication by rail with the great Wyoming coal field, and transportation without transhipment to tide water.

All this was not accomplished without opposition, and when, after the disastrous flood of 1862, which swept away the upper division of its navigation, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation company decided to abandon the water and extend its Lehigh & Susquehanna railroad from White Haven along its towing path to Mauch Chunk, the head of its canal, competition between the companies developed into keen rivalry for room and right of way along the narrow passes where there had been scant room for a tow path. The Lehigh Valley company, crossing from the east to the west side above Mauch Chunk, occupied available space by numerous sidings to accommodate its growing trade from the Quakake branch at Penn Haven, and the Lehigh & Susquehanna road had to draw upon the east bank of the stream at low water for material to make room for its tracks in the channel, alongside its rival.

The Lehigh Valley company met this new project by pushing the road north- ward from White Haven to Wilkes-Barre in 1866, competing with the Lehigh & Susquehanna road for through freight. A little incident, exciting at the time and now amusing, will show to what heat the friction of jarring interests had carried the immediate contestants. The Lehigh Valley road united with the Lehigh & Sus- quehanna road at grade, the bridge having been been built, of course, with a view to amicable trade. A long construction train of gravel cars crossed the bridge one evening, and was shunted upon the rival road with tools of all kinds, ready to begin operations on the new road, the high bluff on the White Haven side at the crossing

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

precluding any other arrangement. In the early morning an energetic employe of the Navigation company observed this intrusion, and taking an old locomotive up the track with a full head of steam, he let it loose upon the innocently offending train, and butted it into the Lehigh, a heap of ruins. The immediate result is not remembered, but it is a curious fact, illustrating, perhaps, the admiration of Judge Packer for pluck and energy, that the chief responsible actor in that day's drama has almost from that time been in the service of the Lehigh Valley Railroad company.

The navigation company improved the planes at Solomon's gap, and for con- venience of returning trains of empty cars, light freight and passenger traffic, made a light track for locomotive power from the head of the planes north by the Laurel Run gap and back to the foot of the planes, a distance of thirteen miles, to overcome the steep mountain grade by the planes, some three miles. The steepest grade of the back track is ninety-six feet to the mile. It was considered by many to be an almost impossible feat in engineering, but it was successfully accomplished under the supervision of Dr. Charles F. Ingham, of Wilkes-Barre, an able and experienced engineer.

In 1833 the legislature appointed Messrs. George M. Hollenback, Andrew Beau- mont, Henry F. Lamb, W. S. 'Ross, Charles Miner, Samuel Thomas, Joseph P. Le Clerc, Elias Hoyt, Benjamin A. Bidlack, E. Carey, Bateman Downing, Ziba Bennett, Jedediah Irish, Thomas Craig, Azariah Prior, Daniel Parry, Lewis S. Coryell, Joseph D. Murray, John C. Parry, William C. Livingston, Benjamin W. Richards, Robert G. Martin, Joshua Lippincott and Lewis Ryan, commissioners of the Wyoming & Lehigh Railroad company, who employed Henry Colt and Dr. C. F. Ingham, civil engineers, to examine the route through Solomon's gap and report. The elevation of the summit above the borough of Wilkes-Barre was found to be 1,251 feet, and above the Lehigh 604 feet, and the distance between the two points about fourteen miles. Grading for a double track was recommended, with a single track at first.' The commissioners, in an address to the public, say: "Persons of intelligence and capacity to judge estimate that 200,000 tons of coal and 3,000,000 feet of lum- ber, at least, will pass along this road to New York and Philadelphia from the vicinity of Wilkes-Barre, which now remain undisturbed where nature placed them, and the great and increasing trade of the Susquehanna, which now goes to Balti- more, will be diverted to New York and Philadelphia."

At that day, with rails of wood covered with a flat, strap-iron rail, operated by horse power, solid road beds were not so necessary as they are now. The Little Schuylkill railroad ran a light locomotive on such a track, but not with success. So, too, the Delaware & Hudson Canal company, with its first imported locomotive, a mere teapot in comparison with those of modern pattern, failed, because too heavy for the road. These estimates, ridiculous as they seem in the light of modern experience, were in accordance with the necessities of the times and the prospects they had of accom- plishing a deliverance in that direction. The coal trade of the year preceding did not reach 300,000 tons from all the regions. The year before the company put their road under contract the trade was nearly 700,000 tons.

From the beginning the course of the anthracite coal trade has seemed to baffle all calculations, and those who look back see many wrecks, while in danger them- selves of meeting the same fate, from want of faith in the future.

The failure of a loan in England to meet the cost of improvements to make good its loss of the upper navigation, and the sums thrown away in useless opposition to its rival roads, overwhelmed the Lehigh Coal & Navigation company, and its works passed into other hands, to be resumed as already stated. A modicum of the good sense of the early projectors might have shown them that there is room enough and market enough for all, and that competition for the coal trade must be open for the benefit of those most interested, the consuming millions scattered over the broad union of

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

States, from the great lakes to the gulf, and from the Atlantic far beyond the Mis- sissippi, even to the Pacific ocean.

The Wyoming coal field is the largest and most northern anthracite basin of Pennsylvania. In area it is something under 200 square miles, or about 127,000 acres. It is about fifty miles in length and about an average of four miles in width, and extends from a point above Beach Grove, on the west side of the river Susque- hanna, having a course about northeast, to its terminus a few miles above Carbon- dale.

Resting on the conglomerate rock of bright pebble stones cemented together, which lies in a cradle of red shale, its boundaries are easily traced along the out- croppings on the Kingston mountain on the west and the Wilkes-Barre mountain on the east, while the sinclinal axis or trough, dipping under the river, is carried deep below the rough hills of the lower townships, rising gradually with an irregular formation like solidified waves, until its measures thin out and disappear along the head-waters of the Lackawanna river, having the shape of a vast canoe.

The Susquehanna forces its way through the western boundary at the middle of the basin, where it receives the waters of the Lackawanna, which have traversed the upper regions of the basin's trough, and together they leave it at Nanticoke, taking a western gorge to Shickshinny, where the stream curves and crosses the lower point of the coal formation on its course to the ocean.

The cluster of small basins in the southern townships of Luzerne county, which are opened by the Lehigh improvements, belong to the second or middle coal field.

While Josiah White, Erskine Hazard and other enterprising citizens of Phila- delphia were seeking the black diamond among the rugged hills of the Lehigh to its upper waters in Luzerne county, and were solving the problem of its value as a fuel, other Philadelphians were exploring the northeastern borders of the county for mineral coal, and the passes of the Moosic mountain to find an outlet by the waters of the Lackawaxen and Delaware rivers to eastern markets.

Mr. William Wurts was the pioneer " who first conceived the idea of transporting coal of the Lackawanna valley to market by an eastern route." A note to an article on the Delaware & Hudson Canal company in The National Magazine, August 1845, for which acknowledgments are due to Mr. Charles P. Wurts, of New Haven, Conn., says: " With such views, as early as 1844, and while that valley was yet an unbroken wilderness, without road or bridle-path above Providence, he explored it and the passes of the Moosic mountain to find an outlet to the Lackawaxen and the Delaware rivers, selecting and purchasing such coal lands as were most eligibly situated in reference to that object."

On March 15, 1823, Maurice Wurts and John Wurts, who had conceived the bold enterprise of constructing a railroad and canal to their coal lands on the Lack- awanna river in Luzerne county, procured from the legislature of Pennsylvania an act authorizing Maurice Wurts of Philadelphia, his heirs and assigns, etc., to enter upon the river Lackawaxen, or any streams emptying into the same, "to make a good and safe descending navigation at least once in every six days, except when the same may be obstructed by ice or flood," from near Wagner's gap in Luzerne, or Rix's gap in Wayne county, to the mouth of the said Lackawaxen, " with a channel not less than twenty feet wide and eighteen inches deep for arks and rafts, and of sufficient depth of water to float boats of the burthen of ten tons." Certainly a modest beginning.

Forty two days after this act of assembly was approved at Harrisburg the legis- lature of New York passed "an act to incorporate the president, managers and company of the Delaware & Hudson Canal company," for the expressed purpose of forming a water communication between the rivers Delaware and Hudson, so that a supply of coal might be obtained from large bodies of this valuable article belong- ing to Maurice Wurts, of the State of Pennsylvania.

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

By an act of the Pennsylvania legislature approved April 1, 1825, and an act of the New York legislature of April 20, 1825, the two companies were consolidated and reorganized in this state as the "President, Managers and Company of the Del- aware & Hudson Canal company;" with power to construct and maintain such railways or other devices as may be found necessary to provide for and facilitate the transportation of coal to the canal.

Soon after the consolidation of the companies work was begun, and ground broken July 13, 1826. Parts of the New York section upon which work was first commenced were being finished when the contractor began work on the Pennsyl- vania section, which runs from Honesdale to the mouth of the Lackawaxen, a distance of twenty-five miles, at which point it is joined to the New York section by an aqueduct over the Delaware. The length of the canal from the Delaware to the Hudson is eighty-three miles, making the total length of canal from Honesdale to Rondout 108 miles. The act of assembly of April, 1825, at the same time authorized the company to assume all the rights originally granted to Mr. Wurts. The State had reserved the right to resume all the rights and privileges granted at the expiration of thirty years from the date of the law of March 13, 1823, without compensation to the company if the tolls received had already repaid the original cost of the canal, with six per cent. upon the capital invested.

The sites of both Honesdale and Carbondale were in the natural state of our northern wilderness when ground was broken for these canal improvements. Carbondale in 1828 contained one log cabin, built to shelter Mr. Wurts in his early explorations.

Honesdale has long been the county seat of Wayne county, a populous and flour- ishing borough. It was named from the first president of the company, Philip Hone, Esq.

The Delaware & Hudson Canal company's trade at first was feeble, and anthra- cite as difficult to introduce in New York as it had been in Philadelphia. Mr. John Wurts, many years afterward president of the company, wrote to Mr. Charles Miner, of Wilkes-Barre, a long and interesting account of his efforts to introduce coal upon boats on the Hudson to generate steam as motive power where wood had been used as fuel. It seems strange at this time that a city having constant com- munication with Liverpool and Glasgow should have had such strong prejudices against coal, or so little knowledge of its use. True, improvements in making coke and the discovery of applying the hot blast to the hard coal of Wales were just beginning to revolutionize the iron trade in England. It was not till 1833 that the introduction of hot blast to the furnaces on the Clyde reduced the cost of pig iron more than one-half. Then, wood was still cheap in New York. Not a boat could be prevailed upon to give it a fair trial, or voluntarily to lose a day for the purpose of testing this stone coal. The greatest concession gained was permission to work at night, while the boat was lying idle, in fitting the furnace at the company's risk, and in furnishing coal for the experiment on one of the small day boats. This was at last accomplished, and the fact demonstrated that coal was good to generate steam. In 1835 it was deemed an experiment of enough importance to receive special mention in the New York Journal of Commerce under the head, "Steam by Anthracite Coal," that the new steam ferry, " Essex," had been fitted up with Dr. Nott's patent tubular anthracite coal boiler, to use Lackawanna coal. The boat contracted for all its coal at $4 a ton.

The active competition between the Schuylkill canal and the Reading railroad, approaching completion in 1841, so reduced prices that permanent enlargement of the Delaware & Hudson canal was hastened to lessen cost of transportation and meet this competition. But it was not enough. Canals had their day and were out of fashion. The long, cold winters of northern climes, where the bright fires of anthracite coal are most needed to cheer the lengthened nights, render canals use-

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less more than half the year by their frosts, and the Delaware & Hudson canal com- pany, with an annual trade exceeding 3,000,000 tons, having reached the maximum capacity, controlled the trade on lines of railway leading from the heart of the Wyoming coal field to Canada, opening directly the very best prospective markets in the world, with numerous connections east and west at all important points along its route, insuring an almost unlimited demand for the products of its mines.

Like an oasis in the desert, the Pennsylvania Coal company through all the mis- fortunes and depressions of the coal trade, maintained its position as a dividend- paying corporation, and held its stock above par.

The reader will not confound this company with the Pennsylvania Railroad com- pany, which is now enrolled among the coal-transporting companies in this region, operating under the charter of the Susquehanna Coal company on both sides of the river at Nanticoke, and which owns that portion of the old North Branch canal from Northampton street, Wilkes-Barre, south.

The subject of this sketch was originally engrafted upon the Delaware & Hudson Canal company, the ambition of which was limited in extent of its landed posses- sions and powers of expansion by restrictive clauses in its charter. Two charters were procured from the legislature of 1838, both approved April 16. "The Washington Coal company" was probably organized first, and on April 1, 1849, was authorized to sell and relinquish its property to the Pennsylvania Coal com- pany, under which title the two were consolidated, and afterward absorbed the rights of the Wyoming Coal association, chartered February 15, 1851.

Large tracts of land were purchased in certified Pittston township ou the Sus- quehanna, and in Providence and Dunmore on the waters of the Lackawanna. A double track railroad was made, the cars propelled by stationary power and gravity by a series of inclined planes a distance of forty miles. Ground for this road was broken in 1847 and it was finished in 1850. The loaded track, as it is termed, or the track upon which the loaded cars are run, started two miles below Pittston, on the Susquehanna, with a plane upon which the coal from the Port Griffith mine was hauled, and a train of cars made up at the summit run by its own gravity to the town of Pittston, again to the foot of No. 3 at Pleasant Valley, and so on to Hawley, on the Hudson & Delaware canal, tapping in its course its mines in Luzerne, and on the Lackawanna, in the present county of that name. The return track carried the empty cars back to Port Griffith, dropping the proper proportion at the different mines in its westward course.

As a coal company, looking to large markets and to profits on coal far beyond the capacity of its canal, it was wise to be seeking new markets and encouraging the trade by every opportunity which presented. This foresight has been of great service to the Pennsylvania Coal company. When coal sold at $2.50 at Rondout this company paid no tolls, but when the price was above the sum one-half the increase was charged as tolls on the Delaware & Hudson canal. This arrange- ment, with the favorable terms for transportation on the Erie road, has given the company important advantages over rival companies. Without the heavy cost of locomotive railroads, owned or leased, or large indebtedness to draw interest from its treasury, it has been able to make dividends which sent its stock up to two hun- dred and eighty per cent. while other stocks were below par in the markets. In 1850, the year the gravity railroad was opened, it was credited with 111,194 tons upon the Delaware & Hudson canal.

Mr. William R. Griffith, a gentleman of wealth visiting Wyoming valley, became interested in its coal deposits, and was chiefly instrumental in promoting the organi- zation of the Pennsylvania Coal company, and in selecting its coal lands.

The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad was merged in the Lackawanna & Western Railroad company, and the corporate name changed to the name, style and title of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western in 1851, and with other small

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

charters and connections, uniting like mountain rills with larger streams, this great work was enlarged until it has become a thoroughfare for coal tonnage and for gen- eral transportation of freight and passengers from New York city to the far West and Northwest.

It is not many years since the valley of Wyoming was likened to that happy vale in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, in which "Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne." Col. William L. Stone, in the preface to his pleasant book, The Poetry and History of Wyoming, published in 1841, says: "The happy valley to which the illustrious author of Rasselas introduced his reader in the opening of that charming fiction was not much more secluded from the world than is the valley of Wyoming. Situated in the interior of the country, remote from the great thoroughfares of travel, either for business or in the idle chase of pleasure, and walled on every hand by mountains lofty and wild, and over which long and rugged roads must be traveled to reach it, Wyoming is rarely visited, except from stern necessity. And yet the imagination of Johnson has not pictured so lovely a spot in the vale of Amhara as Wyoming." Col. Stone had a rough journey over the mountains in the stage coaches, comfortable as they were to the mountaineers, as those who read the notes of his visit in 1839 will remember. But he had the full benefit of the glorious vision which bursts upon the traveler who, after a tedious day's ride from the Delaware, over Pocono and through the "Shades of Death," reaches the summit of the mountains bordering the valley on the east.

Sweet vale of Wyoming! whose Gertrude was once embalmed in every heart of cultivated Europe by the pen of Campbell, now deemed worthy of mention in modern guide books. Has the romance departed from it with the retiring red man ? and even the Gertrude of Halleck, seen on the next field, with

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History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 35

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.) Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago : S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1532

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1532