Col. H. B. Wright, author of "Historical Sketches of Plymouth, Luzerne Co., Pa.," in the chapter on Coal Trade and Coal Men, gives the following as his version of the pioneer trade:

"In the fall of the year 1807, Abijah Smith purchased an ark of John P. Arndt, a merchant of Wilkes-Barre, which had been used for the transportation of plaster, for the price of $24 00. This ark he floated to Plymouth, and loaded with some fifty tons of anthracite coal, and late in the same season he landed it safely at Columbia, Lancaster County, Pa.

"This was probably the first cargo of anthracite coal that was ever offered for sale in this or any other country. The trade of 1807 was fifty tons; that of 1870, in round numbers, sixteen millions! It may be fairly estimated that the sale of 1880 will reach twenty-five millions.

"Abijah Smith, therefore, of Plymouth, was the pioneer in the coal business. Anthracite coal had been used before 1807, in this valley and elsewhere, in small quantities in furnaces, with an air blast; but the traffic in coal as an article of general use was commenced by Abijab Smith, of Plymouth. The important discovery of burning coal without an air blast was made by Hon. Jesse Fell, of Wilkes-Barre, one of the Judges of the Luzerne county courts, on the eleventh day of February, 1808, and less than six months after the departure of the first cargo from the Plymouth mines. This important discovery, which led to the use of coal for culinary and other domestic purposes, enabled Mr. Smith, in the year

succeeding his first shipment to introduce it into the market. But even then, as is the case in most new discoveries, the public were slow in coming to the conclusion that it would answer the purpose of fuel. Time, however, has fully demonstrated its usefulness; and the rapid increase of its consumption, from fifty tons annually, to sixteen millions, in a period of little more than fifty years, is one of the wonders of the nineteenth century.

The statistical tables of the trade, which yearly appear in the public press, date the commencment in 1820. It is put down in that year at three hundred and sixty-five tons, as the shipment from the Lehigh region to market.

"In this there is error, for thirteen years previous to that time, as we have already stated, Mr. Smith had shipped coal from his Plymouth mine. But in fact the article had been put in the market long previous to 1820, by other persons than the Messrs. Smith.

"Charles Miner, Jacob Cist, John W. Robinson, and Stephen Tuttle, all of Wilkes-Barre, had leased the old Mauch Chunk mines, and in August, 1814, had sent an ark load of it down the Lehigh. Mr. George M. Hollenback sent two ark loads down the Susquehanna, taken from his Mill Creek mines, in 1813. The same year, Joseph Wright, of Plymouth, mined two ark loads of coal from the mines of his brother, the late Samuel G. Wright, of New Jersey, near Port Griffith, in Pittston. This was an old opening and coal had been mined there for the Smith's

forge as far back as 1775. The late Lord But. ler, of Wilkes-Barre, had also shipped coal from his mines, more generally known of late years as the "Baltimore Mines," as early as 1814, and so had Crandal Wilcox, of Plains township.

"My object in making these references is to show that the coal trade actually began in 1807 and not in 1820, as is now generally believed.

"But while the persons I have named did not follow up the business, Abijah and John Smith, his brother, continued the business down to the period of their respective deaths; and their children continued in the trade long afterwards.

"Abijah Smith came to the Valley in 1806,and in that or the following year he purchased some seventy-five acres of coal-land, on the east side of Ransom's creek, for about five hundred dollars. In 1807 he commenced mining; and coal has been taken almost yearly from the opening be made down to the present period.

"In the year 1808 his brother John came to the Valley. He bought the coal designated in the deed from Win. Curry, Jr.,as "Potts of Coal," on the adjoining tract of one hundred and twenty acres, for the consideration of six hundred dollars. This mine was soon after opened, and workings have been uninterruptedly continued ever since.

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"It is proper that we should examine into the details of the mode and manner of mining and transportation, as pursued by these early pioneers in the business. There are but few now engaged in the great trade who are aware of the troubles and sacrifices which attended it in its infancy. We will look at the child when in its swathing bands; it is now a giant, but fifty years ago it was in its infancy. The experiment which was perseveringly followed up, and beset on all sides by difficulties and hazards, resulted in a grand

success.

"The annual trade at the commencment was hundreds of tons, has now become tens of millions of tons. The price of coal land of fire dollars an acre, in the days of the Smith purchase, is now a thousand per acre. What the future demand for the article may be-or the annual production-the future alone can determine, hu

man foresight cannot; nor can it be said that the field is inexhaustble. There is a limit to it; and those who will occupy our places five hundred years hence, will say that our prophecy is not entirely fiction.

"In the early process of mining there was no powder used; this under the present system is the chief agency. It was all done with a pick and wedge. The miner did his labor by the day and received from fifty to seventy-five cents. The product of his day's labor was about a ton and a half; his time was from sunrise to sunset. The coal was transported from the mine to the place of shipment, in carts and wagons, and deposited upon the banks of the river, to be put in arks, in the time of the annual spring freshets of the Susquehanna.

"The process of mining with the pick and wedge was too slow and too expensive. Mr. Abijah Smith came to the conclusion that the ordinary powder blast might be made available in mining. He must have some one, however, who is accustomed to the quarries. There was no one here who understood the business.

"In the year 1818 he found he conld get a man for the work. This man was John Flanigan of Milford, Connecticut. His occupation was quarrying stone with the powder blast. He wrote to Mr. Flanigan to come and make the experiment, we say experiment, because it was contended that coal had not enough of strength and consistency to be properly mined with a blast. That the explosion would not reach far enough, and loosen and detach a sufficient quantity to make the blast economical in mining. In March of that year, Mr. Flanigan came on. The result of the experiment was a success. We may therefore chronicle the name of John Flanigan as the first man who ever bored a hole and applied the powder blast in the anthracite coal of Pennsylvania. An important era in the commencment of a trade that has become so immense in later years."

There appears to be many claimants to the honor of being the earliest in action in the coal beds, and some warmth of feeling has been mani fested in relation to the subject. It is conclusive at any rate, to state that in the United States,the

knowledge and use of anthracite coal do not extend back beyond ninety-five years. The Indians at Wyoming, it is possible, had some knowledge of the nature of the coal deposits.

It is recorded that two chiefs from the Valley, in company with three others from the country of the Six Nations, visited England in 1710, and it is presumed they witnessed the burning of coal, then in general use in the cities of England, for domestic purposes. The appearance of anthracite had long been familar to their eyes, and it is nothing strange if the spectacle before them of coals burning, made a deep impression on their minds. They would naturally infer that this fuel was nearly allied to the black stones of their own country. The seven feet vein of coal had been cut through and exposed by the Nanticoke creek, and the nine feet view at Plymouth had been laid open to view by Rausom's creek. The Susquehanna had exposed the coal at Pittston, and the Lackawanna at several points along its banks. If the Indians at that day were ignorant of the practical use of coal, they were at least acquainted with its appearance, and not improbably with its inflammable nature. That the Indians had mines of some kind at Wyoming, the following account fully establishes:

In 1776, a company of Nanticokes and Mohicans, six in number, who had formerly lived at Wyoming, visited Philadelphia, and in their talk with the governor, said: "As we came down from Chenango, we stopped at Wyoming, where we had a mine in two places, and we discovered that some white people had been at work in the mine, and had filled canoes with the ore, and we saw their tools with which they dug it out of the ground, where they made a hole at least forty feet long and five or six feet deep. It happened that formerly some white people did take, now and then,only a small bit and carry it away, but these people have been working at the mine and filled their canoes. We inform you that there is one John Anderson, a trader,now living at Wyoming, and we suspect he, or somebody by him, has robbed our mine. This man has a store of goods, and it may happen that when the Indians see their mine robbed they will come and take away his goods," &c.

Near the confluence of the Lackawanna with the Susquehanna, there is a vein of a useless silvery nature, but it is not presumed that the Indians referred to this. It is supposed that even if the whites had at different times carried away small quantities to test them, that having found it useless, they would not have returned to take away canoe loads, unless it could have been coal.

Stewart Pearce, in his "Annals of Luzerne," gives the following in relation to the early history of coal:

"In 1768,Charles Stewart surveyed the manor of Sunbury, on the west side of the Susquehanna opposite Wilkes-Barre, and on the original draft is noted 'stone coal,' as appearing in what is now cal'ed Rosshill. In 1769, the year following, Obadiah Gore and his brother came from Connecticut, with a body of settlers, and the same year used anthracite coal in his blacksmith-shop. We do not believe, as do some, that the Gores were the first whites who used anthracite on the Susquehanna for blacksmithing. Stone coal would not have been noted on the original draft of the manor of Sunbury, if it had not been known to be a useful article. Hence, when the first settlers came into our valley, the evidence inclines us to believe the knowledge of the use of anthracite coal was communicated to them by the Indians, or by some of their own race."

In 1776, two Durham boats were sent from below to Wyoming for coal, which was purchased from Mr. R. Geer, and mined from the opening afterward the property of Colonel George. M. Hollenback, above Mill Creek. From Harris's Ferry, now Harrisburg, the coal, "about twenty tons," was hauled on wagons to Carlisle, where it was used in the United States' Armory, recently erected there. This was done annually during the Revolutionary War.

Major George Grant, of Sullivan's army, writ ing from Wyoming, in 1779, says: "The land here is excellent and contains vast mines of coal, lead, and copper." Science and subsequent investigation prove that he was mistaken as to the lead and copper.

In 1791, Philip Ginther, while hunting, acci dently discovered coal at what is now called Mauch Chunk, and communicated the fact to

Colonel Jacob Weiss, who purchased the land, and soon after carried specimens of the coal to Philadelphia in his saddle-bags.

"He exhibited them to several persons, who called them worthless black stones, and laughed at the colonel's folly. But Colonel Weiss was not discouraged. In 1792, he and others formed themselves into a company called the 'Lehigh Coal Mine Company,' the first of the kind in the United States. In 1803 the company succeeded in getting two ark-loads, about 30 tons to Philadelphia, but no purchaser could be found.

As a matter of experiment, the city authorities at length consented to take it. An attempt was made to burn it under the boilers of the steam engine at the water-works, but it only served to put the fire out. The remainder was then broken up and scattered over the sidewalks in place of gravel."

Up to this time the blacksmiths in the vicinity of the mines, wherever discovered, were using coal in their shops. But no one had as yet discovered the art of consuming anthracite for domestic purposes. To Jesse Fell, of Wilkes-Barre belongs the honor of having first utilized it for domestic purposes. Having been familar with "stone coal," as it was then called,for many years, he concluded that a good draft of air was alone neceesary to make it burn freely. He accordingly constructed a grate of green hickory-saplings and, placing it in a large fire-place in his bar-room, filled it with broken coal. A quantity of dry wood was placed under the grate and set on fire, and the flames spreading through the

coal it soon ignited, and before the wooden grate was consumed the success of the new experiment was fully demonstrated. A wrought iron grate was now constructed, and set with brick and mortar in his fire-place and was soon glowing with the burning stone coal. Judge Fell (for he had been one of the associate judges for many years) made the following memorandum at the time on one of the fly leaves of a book entitled, "The Free Mason's Monitor :"

"February 11th, of Masonry 5808. Made the experiment of burning the common stone coal of the valley, in a grate, in a common fire-place in my house, and find it will answer the purpose of fuel, making a clearer and better fire, at less expense, than burning wood in the common way. JESSE FELL

February 11th, 1808.

The news of this experiment spread rapidly, and to convince themselves of the truth of the report the citizens from every quarter flocked to "Fell's Tavern" to witness for themselves the feasibility of appropriating the hitherto worthless stones to fuel purposes. The public house, in which this memorable experiment was made stood at the corner of Washington and Northampton streets, in the city of Wilkes-Barre.

It was shortly after this event that the Smiths, John and Abijah, noticed before by Hon. H. B. Wright as the pioneers of the coal trade, loaded two arks with coal and proceeded down the river to Columbia, where, finding no market they left the black stones behind them.

The term colliery as applied to coal-mining establishments, includes the mines, buildings and machinery employed, while the use of the word. collier, as applied to the individual operator, is as common in the coal regions as the word-miner.

To the outside world, the province of a colliery is peculiar, and one which takes in a vast field for thought and investigation.

In the earlier eras of coal mining the complications were few about the working machinery of a coal mine, the greater portion of the labor being performed by human hands, and too often, the hardest portion of it was alloted to women.

In modern coal-mining, and especially in the anthracite regions, these establishments are of immense proportions, employing hundreds of hands, and a vast capital. It is only at a late day that the primitive process of digging coal and other minerals by simply removing the surface earth, and quarrying the coal on the outcrops of the beds, has been abandoned to make way for a more scientific method of reaching the hidden treasures of the earth. From the natural construction of the earth, the original process may, in some localities, be still retained; for instance the old Summit mines of the Lehigh, where the great mammoth bed was uncovered to the extent of thirty acres, and produced 2,000,000 tons of coal up to 1847, when it was abandoned. A tree which had grown over this spot and extended its roots into the coal beds below, having been uprooted by the wind, revealed the coal to a hunter, who reported the discovery, and from

this grew the famous Lehigh coal mines. This bed for some portion of its extension was seventy feet thick.

Under ground work and the establishment of collieries next followed, thus dispensing with the tedious and often unprofitable quarry method. The first attempt at excavations where the mines existed above water level, did not extend beyond the formations of small galleries in the solid coal, with arched tops, and without timber supports. The most noted of these in the Wyoming Valley were on the outcrops of the Mammoth,so familiarly known hereabouts as the "Old Baltimore Coal Openings." These excavations are so large as to admit of horses and wagons to drive in and turn in the rooms or galleries thus formed. Many such openings are visible in the city of Scranton, which have been abandoned years ago. These openings are usually seen along the beds of the brooks, and the hill-side ravines, thus showing that man attacked coal where it first showed itself, for in prospecting for coal, when the soil of a district is already known to be underlaid by the coal formation the geologists usually follow these paths, watching as well for particles of the coal itself as the black carbonaceous slate, which is one of the commonest associates of productive coal-seams. This examination, which requires close attention and a quick and critical eye,is best pursued when the streams are shrunken in summer, or when the ravines are entirely dry, as the débris from the outcrops of all the strata swept into the channel by the freshets of the winter and