Articles
Source: Today’s Story in Pennsylvania History -- Daily Stories of Pennsylvania. By Frederic A. Godcharles, Milton, Pennsylvania. 1924.
First Anthracite Coal Burned in Grate
by Judge Jesse Fell
February 11, 1808
The first knowledge of anthracite (coal) in America dates back to about 1750 or 1755, when an Indian brought a supply of it to a gunsmith at Nazareth (Pennsylvania) for repairing his rifle, the smith’s supply of charcoal having become exhausted.
Stone coal was used by the garrison at Fort Augusta, mention of which fact is made by Colonel William Plunket, who was one of the original soldiers sent to build this important provincial fortress. The records in the British War Office also contain references to its use there.
A certain Ensign Holler, of the fort’s garrison, wrote that in the winter of 1758 the house was heated by stone coal brought down the river from near Nanticoke and that a wagon load had been brought from a place six leagues from Fort Augusta, which point must have been at or near either the present Shamokin or Mount Carmel.
Anthracite had been used in the Wyoming Valley before 1755, and during the Revolutionary War it was shipped down the Susquehanna (River) for the use of the arsenal at Carlisle.
On November 25, 1780, the Congress "Resolved, That all the artificers in the department of military stores in Pennsylvania be removed to Carlisle and that in the future only an issuing store and an elaboratory fixing ammunition be kept in Philadelphia."
Immediately thereafter Colonel Blaine was directed to prepare stores, etc., for the troops, and during the month of December of 1780 nearly all the artificers were sent to Carlisle.
There is no doubt that coal from Wyoming was there used in the casting of cannon, as it could have been more readily brought down the Susquehanna (river) in bateaux than hauled from the seaports for that purpose. It is also well known that provisions were taken up the Susquehanna, and as coal was then known and probably mined, the bateaux in returning evidently conveyed the fuel to Kelso’s ferry, opposite Harrisburg.
The barracks erected by the Hessian soldiers captured by General Washington at the battle of Trenton, and sent to Carlisle as prisoners of war, later became one of the historic buildings of Pennsylvania. The building was one long used by the Carlisle Indian School and is still standing on the Government reservation there.
Pittsburgh, too, had used fuel dug from a high bluff before the town. Coal was known to have existed near the present City of Pottsville as early as 1790, when Nicho Allen is said to have discovered some of the black stones and tested their burning qualities.
An act approved by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, March 15, 1784, was "for the purpose of improving the navigation of the Schuylkill (river) so as to make it passable at all times, enabling the inhabitants to bring their produce to market, furnishing the county adjoining the same and the City of Philadelphia with coal, masts, boards," etc..
In 1766 a company of Nanticoke and Mohican Indians visited Philadelphia and reported to the Governor that there were mines in Wyoming. A survey of Wyoming in 1768 notes "stone coal" near the mouth of Toby’s Creek. One of General Sullivan’s officers in 1779 records the presence of "vast mines of coal, pewter, lead and copperas."
Obadiah Gore used coal in his blacksmith forge as early as 1769. He also used it in nailing in 1788.
The Conestoga wagons might have transported the products of the farm to market for many years more had not Philip Ginter, the hunter, in 1791 discovered "stone coals" under the roots of a fallen tree nine miles west of Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe).
About the same time that Ginter made his discovery coal was discovered by Isaac Tomlinson at what is now Shamokin. He had recently removed on a farm between there and Mount Carmel and found the coals lying in the bed of Quaker Run, a stream running through his farm and so called because he was a member of the Society of Friends.
Thus we see that the three discoverers of anthracite were Allen, Ginter and Tomlinson, and what is more remarkable, all these discoveries were made about the same time, and yet it is a fact that coal was mined at Wyoming nearly a quarter century before these "discoveries."
Philip Ginter did not exactly "discover anthracite." He knew all about the existence of coal at Wyoming and something of its use. But his discovery of coal in 1791 while hunting on the mountains where is now Summit Hill is the date from which the great business of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company originated, though it was twenty-nine years before the coal trade really began.
The date is usually accepted as 1820, the time that the Lehigh schemes got into action.
Ginter made known his discovery to Colonel Jacob Weiss, residing at what is now known as Weissport, who took a sample in his saddlebags to Philadelphia.
But the coal trade was active in Wyoming Valley as early as 1807, when the Smiths shipped a boat load to Columbia. George H. Hollenback shipped two loads down the river in 1813, and sent coal by wagon to Philadelphia. Lord Butler and Crandall Wilcox both shipped coal in 1814.
The use of anthracite for domestic purposes seems to have been discovered by Judge Jesse Fell, of Wilkes-Barre. The following memorandum was made at the time on the fly-leaf of one of his books:
February 11, 1808, made the experiment of burning the common stone coal of the valley in a grate, in a common fireplace in my house, and found 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
News of this successful experiment soon spread through the town and country, and people flocked to witness the discovery. Similar grates were soon constructed by Judge Fell’s neighbors, and in a short time were in general use throughout the valley.
In the spring of that year, John and Abijah Smith loaded two arks with coal at Ransoms Creek, in Plymouth, and took it down the river to Columbia; but on offering it for sale, no person could be induced to purchase. They were compelled to leave the black stones behind them unsold, when they returned to their homes.
The next year the Smiths, not in the least discouraged, took two arks of coal and a grate, and again proceeded to Columbia. The grate was put up, and the coals were burned in it, thus proving the practicability of using coal as a fuel. The result was a sale of the coal, and thus began the initiative of the immense coal trade of Pennsylvania.