70 UNION COUNTY PAST AND PRESENT I
' In the 1920’s this property was operated as the Cooperative
' ° Company. In 193]; the mine was closed and dismantled. The out-
put at this time amounted to between eight and nine hundred
tons per day. The buildings were subsequently sold or moved
I away and all that remains of old John Tyler’s venture today is
a church and a few houses.
Another mine antedating the War between the States was
developed by the Higliland Coal Company at Uniontown. In 1858
mining privileges to =i,(_l0l) acres of land were acquired, and a
six-foot seam was opened. This mine became famous for the
quality of its coal, known as the best in the Ohio Valley. In 1865
this mine, like the Curlew, was destroyed as a part of military `
operations.
In 1859 a second mine at DeKoven, in the neighborhood of the
Curlcw, was opened. This mine, the Shotwcll—Morehead, in recent
years a subsidiary of the Pittsburgh Coal Company, passed into
the hands of Dr. Percival G. Kelsey, of Henderson, in 1874. About
it and its owner revolves much of the industrial and transporta-  
l tion history of the next quarter of a century. i
Under l€.clsey’s leadership a railway, known as the Ohio Valley
Railroad, was chartered in 1882 and built during 1885-86, for
the pur·pose of bringing into production the extensive coal fields .
within the county. _ _
Incidentally, this road, now part of the Illinois Central System,
greatly stimulated land clearing and the general development of
modern agriculture throughout the entire area. A bra•nch from
Morganhcld to Uniontown followed. The later extension of the
Louisville & Nashville northward from Madisonville to its pres-
ent junction with the Illinois Central completed the present rail 1
facilities of the county. Save for the coal workings earlier devel-
oped along the river, and for more recently developed mines
served by truck delivery, the mines, past and present, are adja-
cent to these railroads, and dependent upon them for access to `
other than local markets. b
This adventure into railroading followed other coal mining
developments. In Uniontown, where a mining venture of the
185(fs had ended about 1865 with the destruction of the mine  
by nre, a second mine, the Kingston, was opened in 1880. It  
originally employed a force of less than a dozen men, and its I
output was consumed locally. ;
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