History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 100

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
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The Northwestern Railroad Company, after grading that part of the road from Blairsville to Allegheny Junction and completing the masonry, failed, and was sold out at Philadelphia in May, 1859, and purchased by a committee of the bondholders. These bondhold- ers reorganized as the Western Pennsylvania Railroad Company, under a charter approved March 22, 1860. The work of completing the road was begun in the spring of 1868. The track was laid each way from Blairsville west, and Allegheny Junction east. Passen- ger trains were put on in the fall of 1864, and run from each end. The high bridge over Wolford's Run was finished in 1865, and through trains immediately put on, running between Blairsville and the Allegheny Valley Railroad at the mouth of the Kiskiminetas River. The bridge over the Allegheny was completed in 1865. In 1866 the road was completed from Free- port to Allegheny City.

PITTSBURGH AND CONNELLSVILLE RAILROAD.

About the middle. of June, 1847, subscription books were opened in West Newton for the capital stock of the "Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad." The formal opening of the road between West Newton, in Westmoreland County, and Layton Station, in Fay- ette County, a distance of thirteen miles, was made on Thursday, May 7, 1855. This was a big day' at the latter place, and the residents there most hospit- ably entertained their visitors. The road-bed lies close to the Youghiogheny River the whole distance,

but the grades are easy, and the road is smooth and well ballasted. Layton is eight miles from Mount Pleasant, and twelve miles from Connellsville.

Other information touching these roads may be found in the local departments of this work.

THE SOUTHWEST PENNSYLVANIA BRANCH

from Greensburg, the point of intersection with the main line, extends to Uniontown, Fayette Co., through the very heart of the Connellsville coke region. It extends through the county to where it crosses Jacobs Creek on the north side of Everson. Books were opened out for subscription to the capital stock of the company on Tuesday, 11th April, 1871, and kept open till the 21st. A. E. Wilson, C. S. Sherrick, James A. Logan, Israel Painter, and Samuel Dillinger were named in the act as corporators. The places desig- nated to receive subscriptions were Greensburg, Bethany, Painter's Mills, Connellsville, Stauffer's, and Uniontown, in Fayette County. The road was speedily finished, and in 1873 was leased by the Pennsylvania Company.

The stations on the road, with their distances from Greensburg, are these: Huff's, three miles; Foster- ville, four miles ; Youngwood, six miles; Painters- ville, eight miles; Hunker's, nine miles; Bethany, twelve miles; Tarr's, thirteen miles; Stonersville, fifteen miles; Hawkeye, sixteen miles ; Scottdale; seventeen miles; Everson, eighteen miles.

CHAPTER XLIX.

COKE.

Features of the Coke Region-Connellsville Coke Region-Pioneers in the Coke Business-Description of the Coal Business-The Properties of Coked Coal-Questions of Cost-Other Veins of Coal within the Con- nelleville Region-Growth of the Coke Industry-Statistics-Mount Pleasant Region-Moorewood Mines-Coke Crushing-Standard Mines -Other Companies about Mount Pleasant-East Huntingdon Town- ship Region -Scottdale Iron-Works-Scottdale Coke Region-At Stonersville-Latrobe Region-The Monastery Coke-Works-Latrobe Works-Soxman's Works-Loyalhanse Works-Ridgeview Works- St. Clair Works-Millwood Works-Irwin Region-Westmoreland Coal Company-Penn Gas-Coal Company-Sewickley Region-Ooke- ville Region.

THE geographical features of the "Connellsville coke region" afford useful suggestions to the statis- tician and economist. Like a mole near the left- hand corner of the lower jaw sits the coke-producing section on the brunette cheek of Pennsylvania, an elliptical mole about forty miles long, measuring northeast and southwest. Fairchance Furnace, at the southwest end, looks out across Mason and Dixon's line over the lumpy expanse of West Virginia, point- ing to the portly hills that hold buried under rocks and earth from the creating hand, and under the in- dolent conservatism of the laziest created people, more worth and energy than all the glowing acres to the north of it. From Fairchance Furnace F. H.

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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

Oliphant, in 1885, took specimens of iron smelted from blue lump ore with the use of coke, and ex- hibited them at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. He was not the primitive coke-user in this section, that honor belonging traditionally to old Col. Isaac Meason, who had a furnace near the Plum Rock Mill, in Fayette County; but Mr. Oliphant was among the first to hold up to outside capital the prospect of profitable investment. It was a decade and a half later before the influx of money from the East and North began to waken the blaze which is now roaring in thousands of ovens. The coke-burning section proper was towards the northeast, in a broken semi- circle of ovens about Latrobe, on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, about forty miles east of Pittsburgh ; southwest of Latrobe the black belt of country includes the flourishing towns of Connells- ville and Uniontown at the farther end, in Fayette County, Mount Pleasant near the centre, and Scott- dale not far from it.

CONNELLSVILLE COKE REGION.

In the summer of 1841, Messrs. William Turner, 8r., P. McCormick, and James Campbell employed Mr. John Taylor (father of Mr. Jesse Taylor, a mer- chant of Connellsville) to erect two ovens for the burning of coke on his farm, lying on the Youghio- gheny, a few miles below Connellsville, the lands now owned by the Fayette Coke-Works at Sedgwick Sta- tion. These ovens were built after the bee-hive pat- tern, with a fourteen-inch rise and flat crown, and held but sixty-five bushels of raw coal. During the summer a number of experiments were made with these ovens, but with unsatisfactory results. Nobody in the neighborhood knew anything about the manu- facture of coke, or had any but the crudest idea .or theory about it. The construction of the ovens pre- sented the most serious difficulties; they had not suf- ficient draught, nor held they a sufficient body of coal to make good coke. However, after repeated failures and reverses, one by one the faults were remedied and a tolerably fair quality of coke was produced with a show of certainty and regularity. This first good coke manufactured of Youghiogheny coal was made conjointly by the above-mentioned persons, having in their employ to operate the ovens four persons : William Kenear, J. R. Smith, George B. Norris, and David McFarland. So much for the employers and the employed, the time being the early part of the winter of 1841-42.

During the winter of 1841-42 these parties kept up the manufacture of coke until the spring of 1842, when they had enough to load a coal-boat ninety feet in length. At the first suitable rise in the river this boat was run down the Yough, down the Mononga- hela, and down the Ohio as far as Cincinnati in search of a purchaser for the new applicant for favor as a fuel. The search, moreover, seemed likely to be in vain, and disappointment and dejection added weight

to the samples hawked about the foundries of Cin- cinnati in coffee-sacks. At length, however, Mr. Turner found & purchaser in Mr. Greenwood, the wealthy foundryman and wine merchant, at six and one-fourth cents per bushel, half cash and half in old mill irons. Such was the introduction of Connells- ville coke into the commerce of the world.

The success of this first enterprise was a stimulus not only to repetition but competition. In the fall of 1842, Mr. Mordecai Cochran and his brother's sons began the manufacture of coke in the ovens operated the winter before by the parties above mentioned. They too were successful, not only in the manufacture but also in the sale of their ware, and Cochran is one of the kings of coke to-day. In the fall of 1842, moreover, Mr. Richard Brookins began mining on the western side of the river, opposite the original ovens, and built five ovens on the same plan as the original. He likewise was successful. Brookins also manufac- tured coke on the ground, but gave up this mode for the preferable ovens.

The next step forward in the coke business was in 1844. In the summer of this year, Col. A. M. Hill, one of the most famous coal operators of the Yough, bought the Dickerson farm, and erected thereon seven ovens after an improved plan, the diameter enlarged, and the crown raised, so that the charge was increased to about ninety bushels. Hill's energy and success gave great impetus and character to the business, which is felt to this day.

The lay of the country follows the lay of the coal basins. An old mining engineer whom we asked to define the extent of the coking coal field in this sec- tion said, "It's simple enough. Just imagine a fleet of canoes strung out ahead and astern along the valley west of the Chestnut Ridge and you have it. The basin is not a basin, it is a succession of canoes laden to the gunwales with earth and rocks and a little coal." The figure is not inapt. The coal vein which is tapped for coking purposes lies from sixty to one hundred and fifty feet underground along its longi- tudinal axis. As it approaches the Chestnut Ridge to the east it bends rapidly and then abruptly toward the surface, and crops out along the western slope of the ridge. The eastern gunwale of the imaginary canoe is in view of the geologist for miles as he stands on some peak of the ridge and lets his scientific eye ramble along the rocky slope. The other side of the canoe turns up against Dry Ridge, to the west. The bows of the subterranean craft are separated by the valley of the little streams tributary to the Monon- gahela and the "Dare-Devil Yough," which cut across the sides of the larger valleys. The cargo which weighs down this supposititious fleet is valueless of it- self, but the vessels themselves are worth more than all the galleons that ever sailed through the Spanish Main. The vein which supplies the coke-ovens of Fayette, Westmoreland, and Allegheny Counties with the soft coal necessary to the manufacture of coke is

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FAYETTE

Dunbar

COUNTY

O DUNBAR FURNACE

CONNELLSVILLE COKE Redstone Creek

COUNT Y

PENS

FAYETTE

LEMONT FURNACE

Uniontowny

S. P. R.R.

WESTS

PROPOSE

NSOUTH

OLIPHANT FURNACE

FAIRCHANCE

OUTLINE MAP CONNELLSVILLE COKE REGION SHOWING RAIL ROADS FURNACES AND COKE WORKS April pt 1882 Shipley & Campbell C.E. Engraved expressly for this Work

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M: Pleasant

JUUL

Tarr

HeGAS COAL

ID COUNTY

Scottdale

Ever son

Jacobs Creek

RAIL ROAD

Broad ford

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Dawson;

Connellsville

"GH. DIV.

New Haven

R.K.

PEL. L.

HIGHMAN SUN +

? Newton

LA RIVER

PITTSBURGH

WESTMOREL.

BROADFORD FAND ME

Mckeesport

BARREN' \ MEASURES

...

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405

COKE.

the same which supplies hard fuel to the stoves and ranges and engines of Pittsburgh, although the people of this section are back ward to believe the geologists' assurance of this fact. Knowing that they had a rich inheritance in their ten-foot vein of soft coal, they were like a family with a rich bachelor uncle, anxious that he should remain single. What has caused the difference in constitution between the two sections of the vein, divided only by a narrow, barren stretch, is yet a problem for scientists.

The coking coal is soft and porous, and yields easily to the miner's pick. It is comparatively free from sulphur, and can be shoveled into the ovens as it comes from the mine, without any preliminary pro- cess.

Gas-coal is hard and unyielding; little of it is made into coke, as it must be crushed and the sul- phur washed out of it before roasting. It costs from twenty-five to thirty cents a ton to mine coking coal, and about three times as much to get out gas-coal. Before coking, the coal mined in this section is value- less for smelting purposes. Thrown into the furnaces, with the enormous weight of ore and limestone upon it, it crumbles, and soon becomes a compact mass, through which there can be no draught and no distri- bution of heat. Besides it contains a percentage of sul- phur large enough to lower materially the quality of the iron produced. But put into the ovens and roasted, the sulphur disappears, and the soft, friable, black coal comes out a tough, spongy, gray coke, which bears heavy pressure without crumbling, burns with a hot fire, and by its open composition furnishes a nat- ural draught through it. This coke, manufactured by the simple roasting for a few hours of soft black coal in a bee-hive oven, is without a rival in the furnaces of Western Pennsylvania, and, except the anthracite coal in the eastern part of the State, almost without a com- petitor on this continent. It heats the iron furnaces of the near West, and has regular purchasers among those who smelt gold and silver from the Pacific hills. It has driven charcoal out of the market as a fuel for the manufacture of pig iron, and is every year crowding the anthracite into a narrow field of usefulness. It is used along with the natural hard coal in the furnaces of Eastern Pennsylvania, and with the aid of the new crushing-machines to reduce it to a convenient size, bids fair, in time, to supplant it for domestic use. It is simply a question of cost.

The known anthracite region is comparatively small. The yearly discoveries of prospectors are just begin- ning to open the eyes of geologists to the vast extent of the bituminous beds. As consumption creates a natural corner in the anthracite, prices will go up until the manufactured product of the soft-coal fields will go to the doors of the anthracite furnace at a price so much below the hard coal that no iron-manufacturer can use the anthracite and sell his pig at a profit. With coke the only fuel for the furnaces of America, it is a question of only a few years until, at the rates

ovens are multiplying, the coke-producing territory now developed is exhausted. It is a prospect which the coke operators are loth to took at, and they one and all contend that the day is far distant when the last oven shall be lighted in the Youghiogheny Val- ley ; so distant that no one now living need be fright- ened at a spectre which will not materialize until their grandsons are grandsires. How nearly their comfortable position is justified by the logic of supply and consumption, or how much self-interest there is in the brave front which they bear, is beyond our knowledge.

Let him who would study the country as it deserves climb to the top of Chestnut Ridge and turn back with the finger of science the earthen leaves of the book which nature has buried at his feet. Like the in- scription of the tower of Pharos, the maker's name stands out in deep engraving when the crust of clay is worn off, and the jealous hands of nature herself have rubbed off the dirt, and left the specimens of her better handiwork visible upon the western slope of the ridge, making the highest hill the best point from which to see the under side of the valley. According to the more or less certain traditions of geology, not only the Pittsburgh coal vein, but the upper coal meas- ures above it once spread in unbroken sheets from Middle Pennsylvania to Middle Ohio and far into Virginia. Little patches of these veins, and frag- ments of the less destructible rocks which are their geological neighbors, are still found scattered through all this stretch of country, where now the lower coal measures are near the present surface. Whether the general height of the continent was at that time so much above sea level is questionable. The ocean then flowed over the now rich farming counties of Bucks, Adams, York, and Lancaster, and the wide- mouthed marine monsters of that age grazed over the flat acres where the frugal Pennsylvania Dutch now pasture their mild-eyed milkers. That section of the State was afterwards lifted up many hundred feet, but the lift seems, by the geological structure of the State, to have been confined to the southeastern counties. Western Pennsylvania may have been higher above sea level, but could scarcely have been lower than it is now, considering the formations. But considered with relation to the surrounding surface, Western Pennsylvania must have been several thousand feet higher than its present elevation, from which height it has been degraded by the ceaseless wearing of its countless streams. No reason has been given to doubt, according to geologists, that the upper barren meas- ures lying high above the upper coal measures and the Pittsburgh vein once spread over the top of what is now Chestnut Ridge. If so, when that far-back convulsion of the growing earth heaved up the ridge that now borders the eastern side of the Connellsville coke region, it lifted not the present puny range of hills, less than fifteen hundred feet above the level of the river at Connellsville, and only two thousand two

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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

hundred feet above ocean level, but a sharp, ragged mountain chain almost five thousand feet above tide level. The western side of the ridge must have then had a fall of four hundred and twenty feet per mile, and it was down this tremendous slope that the moun- tain torrents began to tear away the hillsides and wash down the weather-worn debris from the summit.

Standing on Elk Rock, a weather-word fragment of conglomerate lying on the top of the ridge, about three miles from there,' the observer is geologically between one thousand and two thousand feet be- low the valley which stretches away westward from the foot-hills. The layers of coal, limestone, sand- stone, and shale, in various stages of decomposition, which compose the valley at his feet turn up at a sharp angle as they approach the ridge, and their more or lees regular outcrop marks the periods of the earth's growth as plainly to his geological eye as a genealogical table. The surgery of nature has here cut down to the bones of the earth, and standing upon the vertebral column of Western Pennsylvania he can trace the layers of flesh and veins and skin that, although now covering only the valleys, was formerly continuous over the spot upon which he is standing. His feet are among the early conglomerates that form the solid foundation upon which the vegetation- bearing superstructure was built. About two miles below him-beyond the outcrops of the Freeport coal veins, the lower coal measures and the lower barren measures-he can see, with the aid of a scientific imagination and a strong field-glass, the outcrop of the rich Pittsburgh vein, the coking coal, a long, bleached black line, rising and falling with the undu- lations of the strata, but keeping about the same dis- tance from the top of the ridge. The smoke from hundreds of coke-ovens will mark the outcrop in places where the coal is gotten out by drifting. His geological memory will carry his eyes back to the time, so far back that it seems almost eternity, when the trees which have been digested into coal in the cannibal stomach of their mother were bred upon the earth under the amorous kisses of the sun. He can trace with his mind's eye this black vein of con- served heat and energy as it dips down as if its back were broken under the weight of rock and earth, the upper barren measures upon it, and see it showing at the surface again along the rolling sides of Dry Ridge, towards the Monongahela River. About five hundred feet below the Pittsburgh vein, and cropping out correspondingly nearer the ridge, lie the Freeport veins, upper and lower, which in Tioga County are found in the tops of the high hills, and are now being drifted and the coal made into coke. The vein im- proves as it goes north, and the rocks overlying it are much harder than here. Still below the Freeport lies the Kittanning coal. Between the upper Freeport and the Pittsburgh veins stretch the lower barren meas-

1 Connellsville.

ures, five hundred and six hundred feet thick, con- taining shales, limestone, and sandstone, with a little fire-clay and a few thin seams of coal. From fifty to seventy feet above the Pittsburgh vein, Prof. J. J. Stevenson, of the University of New York, to whom we are indebted for much valuable and accurate infor- mation, found the Redstone or "Four-Foot vein," con- taining considerable sulphur. Seventy-five to one hundred feet higher, geologically, is the Sewickley. vein, three feet thick, lying just beneath the lower division of the Great Limestone, which is eighty feet thick, in layers with clay between. From forty to fifty feet above the top of the Great Limestone is the Uniontown coal vein, about three feet thick, never being good in quality and thinning out to nothing as it goes north. Still above that a hundred feet or more lie the Little Waynesburg and the Big Way nes- burg veins, mined in Washington and Greene Coun- ties.

The most accurate conception of the wonderful growth of the coke industry in Western Pennsylvania is to be obtained from a comparison of the number of ovens and the production of coke in the past few years. A short column of cold figures is more con- vincing than a page of general description. In 1870 one train a day, of the ordinary size of coke trains, would have been amply sufficient to carry the coke manufactured in the entire Connellsville region! Now there is one works which turns out on an aver- age 60 cars daily, and about 1700 private cars owned by the operators are employed exclusively in the transportation of coke. While the industry increased rapidly from 1870 to 1879, its growth in the past three years has been almost phenomenal. In 1876 there were 3260 ovens in the Connellsville region. On the Ist of May three years later the number had in- creased to 4114, and to-day there are 8091 ovens in active operation. The following table gives an accu- rate and careful count of the number of ovens at each works in the recognized Connellsville region, with the names of the operators and the railroads by which the products of each are shipped :

MAIN LINE, BALTIMORE AND OHIO.

J. N. Schoonmaker, Sterling ....

150

Jackson Mines Co., Jackson .....

James Cochran, Fayette ..

100

Laughlin & Co., Tyrone ..

130

Sample Cochran, Sons & Co., Washington 32

485

MOUNT PLEASANT BRANCH, BALTIMORE AND OHIO.

OveDE.

H. C. Trick Coke Co., Henry Clay ...

100

H. C. Trick Coke Co., Frick

100

H. C. Trick Coke Co., Morgan

H. C. Trick Coke Co., Wbite ..

140

H. C. Trick Coke Co., Foundry

H. C. Trick Coke Co., Eagle ..

H. C. Frick Coke Co., Summit

149

H. C. Erick Coke Co., Tip Top ..

H. C. Frick Coke Co., Valley ..

159

Mullen, Strickler & Co., Mullen ......

Boyle & Rafferty, Boyle's .... 259

116

J. M. Cochran's estate, Star.

Jos. R. Stanffer & Co., Dexter.

J. D. Boyle, Fountain .....

McClure & Co., Diamond

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J. M. Cochran's estate, Buckeye.

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MoCture & Co., Painter's ....

Charlotte Farmace Co ........... 60

B. F. Keister & Co., Franklin ......... 50

A. A. Hutobinson & Bro., Standard

800

Jemses Cochran & Co., Olfaton ......

9490

OTHER 'BALTIMORE AND OHIO BRANCHES.

OveDa.

J. M. Schoonmaker, Jimtown .... 808

Cochran & Keester, Oparggon.

100

John Nowmyer, Cors .......... 42

W. J. Ranney & Co., Fort Hill .....

Dunbar Furnace Co., Hill Farm.

A. O. Tintsmas, Mount Braddock 187

Percy Mining .......

Stuart Iron Oo ...

180

Total ovens shipping by Baltimore and Ohio ............ 8846

SOUTHWESTERN RAILROAD.

OTODE.

Dillinger, Rafferty & Co., Enterprise ..

Hurst, Stoner & Co., Union ...

8. W. Coal and Cokre Co ....... 188

Dillinger, Tarr & Co .........

Joseph R. Stauffer, Home .... 20

A. O. Tintsman & Co., Pennsville.

W. J. Rainey & Co., Eldorado.

225

Pittsburgh and Connellsville G. C. & C. On

295

Cambria Iron Co., Morrell ...

400

Cambria Iron Co., Wheeler .......

Mahoning Ook. Co. (limited), Mahoning.

100

Morgan, 14 Layng & Co., Anchor ...

100

Reed & Bro., Uniondale ....

Colvin & Co .... ......

Youngstown Cok. Co. (limited).

Lemont Furnace Co., Lemont ..... 150

Chicago and Connellsville Coke Oo 170

J. W. Moore & Co ....... 170

Fairobanco Iron Co ....................

Fayette Coke and Furnace Co ...

130

BRANCHES FROM THE SOUTHWEST.

Ovens.

Markle & Co., Rising Sun .......

103

J. W. Overbolt, Agent, Emma .....

O. P. Markle & Bons, Bemsemer .. 170

Morewood Coke Co. (United), Morewood 470

J. M. Schoonmaker, Alice ...... 900

A. C. Overholt & Co., West Overton. 110

Connellsville Coke and Iron Co., C. CL & I. Co ........ 200

Connellsville Ges-Qual Co., Trotter's ... 900

1489

Ovens shipping by Pennsylvania Railroad 4245

Total ovens in the region .....

8091

In this table is included only the territory which the strict constructionists call "the Connellsville region." Besides these there are on the outskirts of the region, as bounded by the exclusive Connells- ville people, the works at Smithton, Scott Haven, Shanor, Alpsville, and Saltsburg, aggregating 194 ovens, and the group of works at the northern end of the basin towards Latrobe. At the majority of these works the coal is crushed and washed, and the slack only is coked. Add these 1000 ovens, whose coal comes from the. same Connellsville vein, to those tabulated above and you have a grand total of 10,000 ovens. Each oyen will produce eight and a half tons of coke per week. Quite a number of operators say nine, but this is probably too high. The 10,000 ovens, then, now burning in the region yield 85,000 tons of coke per week, or 4,420,000 tons a year, of fifty bushels to the ton, making a produc- tion for 1882 of 221,000,000 bushels. If this quantity of coke were to be loaded on one train of cars, it

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 100

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: