xt7b8g8ffq72 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7b8g8ffq72/data/mets.xml Jillson, Willard Rouse, 1890- 1922  books b96-16-36620262 English State Journal Co., : Frankfort : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Coal mines and mining Kentucky. Coal industry in Kentucky  : an historical sketch / by Willard Rouse Jillson ... text Coal industry in Kentucky  : an historical sketch / by Willard Rouse Jillson ... 1922 2002 true xt7b8g8ffq72 section xt7b8g8ffq72 













           The
COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTucKy

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COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY

            An Historical Sketch






                      BY
        WILLARD ROUSE JILLSON
                  B. S., M. S., SC. D.
           DIRECTOR ANtD STATE GEOLOGIST OF TEE
             KENTUCKY GEOLOGICAL SURVEY



                  Member of the
             FILSON CLUB . KENTUCKY STATE
               HISTORICAL SOCIETY, ETC.







                  ILLUSTRATED








             THE STATE JOURNAL COMPANY
                   FRANKFORT
                     1922

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       Dedicated
          to the
          Men
who have labored to build
   this giant industry
           in
       Kentucky

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Author's Preface



   He who seriously reflects upon the growth
and the present extent of the coal producing
industry in Kentucky, must necessarily con-
sider at the same time the industrial growth
and strength of our country as. a whole, and
particularly that portion known as the Middle
West. Here intensive manufacturing has creat-
ed the markets which have reached out through
successive years further and further into re-
mote and inaccessible regions of our State to
acquire the great modern necessity-coal.
   There has been much of romance in the de-
velopment of the rich lowland and mountain
coal fields of Kentucky. The genius of Alladen
as it were but touched the ground where the
ploughboy sang, or solitary hunter trod; and
while we watched, the hills gave up their hidden
wealth, new cities breathed and grew, and
through the skies a rainbow of prosperity cir-
cled o'er our State from the Ohio's shore at
Uniontown to the Breaks of Sandy and :Cum-
berland Gap.
   The amount of detail surrounding this
notable industrial expansion is unlimited. If
carefully arranged, it would make many an in-
teresting volume. In this little book, the sub-

 

ject matter of which has been revised and re-
printed from the Register of the Kentucky
State Historical Society, Vol. 20, No. 58, Jan-
uary, 1922, the writer has endeavored to bring
together the salient facts only, to the end that a
short, readable story of progress might be
available to those interested. At a time when
many would propose new, untried solutions for
our taxing problems, it might be well to know
whereof we speak, and wherefore we act.
   For the privilege of reviewing- many old and
rare volumes, manuscripts, etc., the writer is
much indebted to the librarians of the Transyl-
vania University, Berea College, the Kentucky
State Historical Societv, the Louisville Public
Library, the Filson Club, the Library of Con-
gress, and the Field Museum of Chicago.



  Old Capitol,
  Frankfort, Ky.,
  January 10, 1922.

 







             CONTENTS


Preface.....                  .  

                 I.
Discoverv  and  Early  Use..................................

                 II.
A New Kentucky Industry.........................



                 IIL.
The Coal IndustryReborn...........................

                 IV.
Geologyand Production of Coal..............
In dex    ......................................................................................



9



17



37



49



(;5
79

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ILLUSTRATIONS



The Elkhorn Coal Field ........................... Frontispiece
The Pride of Western Kentucky .......................... 22
An Eastern Kentucky Bucket Line Tipple 30
The Pride of Eastern Kentucky .......................... 38
A Splendid Eastern Kentucky Coal Town 44
Modern Mine Equipment on Clover Fork... 50
A  Coal Mine in the Hazard Field ........................ 56
Mining Coal with a Steam          Shovel .................... 60
Map of Kentucky Coal Fields ................................. 66
A Unit Coal Mine and Town .................................  70
Middlesboro-A       City Built by Coal .................. 74

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           The
COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY

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COAL INDUSTRY in KENTUCKY


                     I.

     DISCOVERY AND EARLY USE.

   The story of the discovery and first use of
coal in Kentucky for heating and similar pur-
poses will forever remain shrouded in the ob-
scurity of the ages. While to the copper-hued
American aborigine must certainly be given
the credit for first seeing and using this great
present day mineral resource, at what time or
where within the confines of this state this mar-
velous accident occurred no one will ever know.
Doubtless in the dim past and long before his
race had experienced the intelligence of the
"Mound Builders," while on a hunting or war-
ring expedition, he found as he crossed some
stream or sandy bar, or shore, light, black frag-
ments of the mineral substance which we call
coal. To his primitive mind, these little peb-
bles at first meant nothing. Perhaps they were
picked up, and carried for a time, only to soon
be dropped with a growing fatigue or changing
  Read before the Filson Club in Louisville, Ky., Monday,

 


THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



fancy. At another time and in another mood
he carried fragments of Kentucky cannel coal
back to camp and at leisure carved out little
queer-shaped ornaments and beads, as a num-
ber of celebrated collections from this state
SlhOW. Y et strange as it may seem, neither
his history nor the material effects which he
left indicate that the Appalachian Indian knew
or made use of the coals of this region for either
cooking or heating.
   With all the known evidence against the
premise, it still seems odd that the Indians of
the eastern United States who were forever
picking up stones and putting them into their
fires for cooking purposes should not have at
some time, and probably remotely, thrown in a
lump or two of coal. It is a well known fact
that some of the tribes of the south-western
United States used coal in firing their pottery,
and the records of some of the earliest adven-
turers in the State of Kentucky show plainly
that coal occurred in abundance openly distrib-
uted over the ground at a number of points on
the Warriors' Trail from Cumberland Gap
north-eastward to the mouth of the Little
Scioto river. With these facts in mind, it
seems impossible to believe that the "Red
Man," lazy, yet shrewd as he was, would not
have known that this mineral substance would
  1 Prehistoric Men of Ky. Young. Filson Club, 1919, pp. 218,
                    [18]

 


THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



burn, giving much more durable and satisfac-
torv fire than wood. While we know that the
Indian and his ancestor, the Mound Builder,
did not frequent the interior of the eastern
coal field except on a very occasional hunting
party, he was continually crossing and camping
within the western coal field, as his relics
prove.2 In this part of western Kentucky there
never has been a time when fragments of coal
could not be plainly seen in many places and
picked up with little effort in hundreds of the
branches and along the river banks. There
never has been a time when coal has not been
exposed either by precipitous meander of
streams or through slide or fault in the hillsides
of the eastern Kentucky coal field, the Indians,
great game preserve. With these facts in mind,
though Anthropologists are agreed that the
American Indian did not commonly use coal for
burning purposes, it seems only reasonable to
assume that he knew of its highly combustible
nature and had used it when convenient count-
less thousands of times before the Caucasian
ever set foot on the soil of the new world.

        GEOLOGY OF COAL FORMATION.
  Difficult and uncertain as are those paths
which lead back to the actual discovery of coal
in Kentucky, the interested investigator who
2 Prehistoric Men of Ky. Shaler. Ky. Geol. Surv., Series
  II,  1876,  p. 30.
                   [19]

 


THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



would measure in terms of years the period
which has lapsed since first these coals were de-
posited by the inspired hand of Mother Nature,
will find he has yet before him problems by the
side of which his earlier quest becomes as
child's play. The man does not live who can
say with authority or any degree of accuracy
the number of years which have passed during
the long train of ages since the first coals were
deposited in this state. These were laid down
in the most recent part of what geologists rec-
ognize nowadays as the Mississippian epoch,
one of the latter periods of the ancient Paleo-
zoic. Where now known, chiefly in western
Kentucky, these sub-carboniferous coals are
very thin lenses widely separated horizontally
and vertically in the geological sections. Some-
times their thickness attains only a fraction of
-n inch, while the extent of the seam likewise
may frequently be measured in inches or in
feet. But coals they are in every respect, and
may be recognized as the tell-tale straws pre-
saging the coming of the world's greatest coal
making epoch, the Pennsylvanian period.
   So it is that in this state as elsewhere in
the Appalachain region the Coal Measures are
known as an almost numberless sequence of
coals, thick and thin, intercalated within an al-
ternating system of generally thick sandstones,
thicker shales, and very thin and somewhat
                     [20]

 


THE COA INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



rare limestones. In the lower group of Penn-
sylvanian formations known in ascending order
as the Pottsville, Conemaugh and Allegheny,
occurs nearly all of the coals which we know in
this state today. These range in thickness from
less than an inch to as much as six and eight
feet in the solid. Where is the man who can
ride through the creeks of eastern Kentucky or
the flat rolling bottom lands of the western coal
fields and seeing these great storehouses of
lent-up solar energy, refrain from wondering
for the thousandth time where it all came from,
-nd what the exact processes were in its forma-
tion 
  He who would see the recreation of this an-
cient workshop of Mother Nature must forget
for the moment the topographic appearance of
Kentucky today. He must travel backwards, as
it were, through flight of fancy, to a time count-
less thousands of years ago in the late Mississ-
ippian period, when as a result of broad crus-
tal uplifts far reaching in their effects, that
relatively small portion of the American conti-
nent which is known today as Kentucky was
gently and quite imperceptibly raised from
moderate ocean depths to elevations ever so
slightly above sea level. Conceive, if you will,
4that when the uplift had reached this impor-
tant point, vegetation growing along adjacent
shores spead its network of interlacing fibre
                    [21]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN IIENTUCKY.



over the new land surface. Great forests com-
posed for the most part of fern-like trees, which
were the predecessors of those we know today,
spread out and shortly covered in mattress
form of tangled root, twig and trunk, the new
made land.
   The crustal forces, however, which gave rise
to this broad uplift were not sustained, and
there set in almost immediately a period during
which the entire area now embraced within
the confines of Kentucky, as well as parts of
most of the adjoining states, were slowly de-
pressed. This depression occurred, however,
in such a way that there were periods of rela-
tively rapid movement alternating with periods
of more or less stability. During the periods
of relative stability, vegetation flung its mantle
out over the new made land. During the per-
iods of depression, the great forest mattresses,
representing the vegetal accumulations not in-
frequently of many centuries, were submerged
and completely covered by newly washed-in and
deposited elastic sediments which were to be
the sandstones and shales of today. Occasion-
ally some little basin-like area remained far
enough from the shore or stream debouchure
to preserve a fairly clear water in which came
to live migratory forms of marine and semi-
marine animal life. This sea life in raining
down and abandoning at death countless shells
                    [22]

 

























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THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



and tests, gave rise to thin and impure lime-
stones. The oscillatory cycle of basin filling,
swamp forests and subsequent slight submerg-
enice was many, many times repeated. Today
each separate and individual coal seam, be it
thin or thick, is. a certain and enduring monu-
ment to those relatively rapid though small
crustal changes of the earth in that far-off
Paleozoic time.
   Through the still lapse of the ages which
followed this great coal making epoch, these
Pennsylvanian coal measures became slowly
consolidated or hardened through regional heat
and pressure, the principles of coal formation
being undoubtedly quite as active today as they
ever were. During all this time no man saw
these processes take place. But the record of
the animal life of the coal making period is
plain. Innumerable fossils show that it was an
age in which invertebrate shell fish, bivalves
and clam-like animals predominated in num-
bers. But higher types of life were also pres
ent in large numbers. These were the low ver-
tebrates, the primitive and ancient fishes. Here
and there in numbers yet much in the minority
were the early amphibians of small figure track-
ing their way across the slimes and muds of
old shore lines and beaches. Air breathing rep-
tiles, though present, had not yet made their ap-
pearance in abundance, and as for the higher
                    [23]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



warm blooded mammals, their time was yet to
come by thousands of thousands of years.
   But Mother Nature was about her work
much the same as she is today. In the course of
time, following broad inundations and great
continental uplifts throughout North America,
that part of the Mississippi Valley known as
Kentucky had been a land area for many, many
ages. Broad-leafed, hard wood trees had not
only displaced the Paleozoic fern tree swamps,
but had become in their turn very ancient for-
ests. Through the Coal Measures formed in
those ancient periods now uplifted to thous-
ands of feet in some places above sea level, the
streams incessantly chiseling out their courses,
had carved in consolidated sandstones, mud
stones and limestones of the state, the topo-
graphic figure much the same as we see it and
know it today.
   As it had been the battle ground for a mi-
gratory and usurping vegetation again and
again in the geologic past, so, at this later date
it had again become a battle ground, but one
pre-empted by fierce and hostile tribes of dusky
Aborigines from the north and from the south..
Cherokees from the valleys of the Holston and
Clinch rivers of Tennessee, and Shawnees from
the broad forested stretches of the Scioto river,
found in eastern Kentucky, as did the Chicka-
saws and other tribes in the western portion of
                    [24]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



our state, a happy hunting ground, but one in
which there always lurked death and disaster at
the hand of an ambushed foe. With varied min-
eral riches well within their grasp, these Abori-
gines preferred to waste their time in slaughter-
ing their distant kinsmen. Whether the griev-
ances causing these conflicts were real or
fancied, it is a fact that in the inability of the
Indians to see and appreciate the coals of this
and adjoining states a great source of strength,
and material advancement to their position,
they had lost out in the coming struggle with
the white man long before Columbus ever set
foot on the soil of San Salvador in 1492.

          DR. WALKER'S DISCOVERY.

   Though La Salle in his hypothecated descent
from the headwaters of the Allegheny to the
falls of the Ohio in 1669-703 would have passed
by the eastern Kentucky coal field, he left no
record indicating that he found coal during
these explorations. To Father Hennepin,4 a
French Jesuit missionary, who in 1679 recorded
the site of a "cole mine" on the Illinois river
near the present city of Ottawa, Illinois, must
be given the credit for first noting the occur-
rence and practical use of coal in the United
  ' Life and Writings of John Filson, R. T. Durrett, 1884,
P. 32.
  4 Mineral Resources of U. S. G. S. 1909, p. 24.
                     [25]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



States. This ancient mine, however, was in
Kentucky, and though others are reported to
have seen the boundary and interior of the
state at various times from 1543 to 1700, it re-
mained for Dr. Thomas Walker on April 13,
1750, to be the first representative of the Cau-
casian race to discover and use the coal of Ken-
tucky. Five years later, in 1755,5 coal was dis-
covered in the Indian Territory north of the
Ohio river in what is now the state of Ohio.
In the same year Lewis Evans' map of the
Ohio-Kentucky region was published showing
coal in what is now Greenup and Boyd counties,
Kentucky.
   Dr. Walker's memorable discovery occur-
red, as his diary shows, the evening of the first
day that he set foot upon what is now Kentucky
soil. Dr. Walker, who was an able, ingenious
and observing civil engineer, as well as a phy-
sician, had been employed by the Loyal Land
Company of Virginia on December 12, 1749,
"to go to the westward in order to discover and
prepare a place for a settlement. 116 At the
head of a small party he had toiled through the
uncharted mountain valleys and passes of
south-western Virginia and Tennessee, and had
come up to the vicinity of the Cumberland Gap
early in April. His diary which has been so
  5 Mineral Resources of U. S. G. S. 1911, p. 25.
  ' First Explorations of Kentucky. J. Stoddard Johnston,
1898, p. 33.
                    [26]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



ably interpreted by J. Stoddard Johnston tells
of his important discovery, and gives by way of
inference, the first use of this mineral resource.
The diary reads:
   "April 13, 1750. We went four miles to a
large creek . . . and from thence six miles to
Cave Gap (Cumberland Gap) the land being
level. On the north side of the gap is a large
spring . . . this gap may be seen at a consider-
able distance, and there is no other . . . At the
foot of the hill on the north-west we came to
the branch . . . that made a great deal of flat
land. We kept down it two miles, . . . we came
out on the bank where we found very good coal.
I did not see any limestone beyond this ridge. "7
   It is easy to picture the scene that first night
in Kentucky. The locality to which Dr. Walker
came was Bell county, within two miles of the
Cumberland Gap. It was the combined occur-
rence of good drinking water and an almost
providential deposit of loose surficial coal
which caused Dr. Walker to locate his first
camp at this spot, which it may be noted was lo-
cated on one of the strategic points of the old
Warriors' Trail. At that time the English-
American whites were on friendly terms with
the Cherokees. Dr. Walker probably found no
occasion to detour from the good path, or con-
ceal his camp or its fire in any way. What
  "First Explorations of Kentucky. J. Stoddard Johnston,
1898, pp. 48, 49 and 50.
                    [27]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



thoughts must have gone through his mind and
those of his party as they sat there that night
toasting themselves before a good coal fire and
reflecting on the rugged country they had al-
ready passed, and the unknown territory before
them. Already familiar with coal in Virginia,
where it had been discovered in 1701, and was
at the time of his pilgrimage in its first process
of operation,8 Dr. Walker announced his dis-
eovery of coal in Kentucky in most prosaic
terms. He was to find and see a great deal of
coal before he had completed the territory of
eastern Kentucky. His diary states further:
   "April 23. . . . We all crossed the (Cum-
berland) river (four miles below where Bar-
bourville now is located). We traveled about
twelve miles and camped on Crooked creek.
The mountains are very small hereabouts, and
here is a great deal of flat land. We got through
the coal today. "9
   Dr. Walker had undoubtedly crossed what
is now known as Knox County and a part of
Laurel County and was in the region of the
Pottsville Conglomerate on the Laurel river.
We see further in his diary:
   "May 5-We got to Tomlinson river (a trib-
utary of the Laurel river). Here is plenty of
coal on the south bank opposite to our camp.' 9'0
  : New International Encyclopedia, 1920, Vol. V, p. 499.
  9 First Explorations of Kentucky. J. Stoddard Johnston,
1898, pp. 52 and 53.
                    [28]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



   This was undoubtedly the Inter-Conglom-
erate coal of eastern Kentucky which may be
frequently seen in the cliffs along the streams
of this section of the state.
   "May 12-Under the rock (Pottsville Con-
glomerate) is a soft kind of stone almost like
Allum. In passing below it a layer of coal
twelve inches thick and white clay under
that. I '10
   At this time Dr. Walker was no doubt in
the western part of Laurel County, and may
have been on a south-western flowing tributary
of the Rockeastle river. Day by day the jour-
ney to the north, and finally around to the
north-east and east continued. Though the
diary of Dr. Walker does not record for some
little time the occurrence of coal in his travels,
there is little doubt but what he found it fre-
quently and made use of it at his camps. These
inferences are not to be regarded as remote,
since we find that just before he leaves Ken-
tucky he makes the following statement:
   "June 19-We got to Laurel creek (head of
the Tug fork of the Big Sandy) early this
morning, . . . and attempted to cross a moun-
tain, . . . this ridge is nigh the eastern ridge
of the coal land.""
  10 First Explorations of Kentucky. J. Stoddard Johnston.
1898, pp. 58 and 60.
     First Explorations of Kentucky. J. Stoddard Johnston,
1898, pp. 70 and 71.
                     [29]

 
THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



   Reading between the lines, one sees in Dr.
Walker something of an able prospector, for he
clearly delimits the extent of the Appalachian
coal fields as far as Kentucky is concerned.
Though great credit is due him for his perse-
verance and insight which made posssible the
discovery and use of coal by a white man in
Kentucky 172 years ago, it must still be said in
all fairness that he probably had very little
conception of, and attached less importance to
the future of the great industry which he had
so casually opened.


             GIST EXPORTS COAL.
   Almost a year later Christopher Gist, anoth-
c-r early and able surveyor in the employ of the
Ohio Land Company of Maryland, set out from
Oldtown, a point on the Potomac river, and cir-
cling up through Pennsylvania and Ohio, came
down into Kentucky in the spring of 1751. He
had intended as were his instructions to go to
the Falls of the Ohio to find agricultural lands,
but being informed that warring Indians were
in that vicinity, he drifted to the south and after
merely glimpsing the broad level stretches of
what is now known as the Blue Grass, plunged
into the rugged foothills of the eastern coal
field. Here he soon discovered the occurrence
of coal, as his journal indicates.
                    [30]

 
























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THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



   "Wednesday, (March) 27, (1751) . . . On
all branches of the little Cuttaway (Kentucky)
river was plenty of coal, some of which I
brought in to the Ohio Company. "12
   On the following day he again reports the
discovery of coal as follows:
    "Thursday, (March) 28, (1751) . . set out
south-east fifteen miles crossing creeks of the
little Cuttaway (]Kentucky) river. The land
still being full of coal and black slate."'12
   He evidently regarded these mineralogical
discoveries as of some considerable importance,
for it is noted again on:
   "Monday, April (1), 1751 . . . went down
another creek to the Lick where blocks of coal
8 to 10 in. square lay upon the surface of the
ground; here we killed a bear and en-
camped. " 13
   To one who will read between the lines it is
easy to re-depict the scene which followed.
Gist and his party, travel-worn through many
months spent in the wilderness of the Indian
territory to the north, and now particularly
wearied from the rough Kentucky country
through which they had just come, found here
food, comfort and repose. That the occurrence
of coal for a fine fire was quite as much the
cause of their encampment as the killing of the
bear can hardly be denied. Gist at this time was
  PFirst Explorations of Kentucky. J. Stoddard Johnston.
1898, p. 154.
                    [31]

 

THEI COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



very close to if not on the Warriors' Trail, for
his journal shows that two days later, on Wed-
nesday, without having traveled any very great
distance, he came:
   " . . . to a small creek on which there was
a large warriors' camp, that would contain 70
or 80 warriors; their captain's name or title was
the Crane, as I knew by his picture or arms
painted on a tree."13
   As in the case of Dr. Walker, however, the
common occurrence of coal evidently soon palled
upon the imagination of Gist, who fails. to make
further metion concerning it. He continued his
journey of adventure across the ridges and val-
leys, on the tributaries to the North Fork of the
Kentucky  river, and finally left the state
through Pound Gap. He took back with him to
his employers, the Ohio Company, specimens of
the coals he found here. These were the first
coals to be exported out of what is now known
as the state of Kentucky Although found
within Virginia's western territory, Gist ex-
ported them, for he took them with him on May
17, 1851,14 when he passed through Wood's Gap
(Flower Gap) from Virginia to his home on the
Yadkin river in North Carolina.
  13 Firs-t Explorations of Kentucky. J. Stoddard Johnston.
1898, p. 155.
  14 First Explorations of Kentucky. J. Stoddard Johiston.
1898, p. 162.



[32]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



      KENTUCKY'S COALS UNAPPRECIATED.
   With the breaking out of the French and
Indian troubles in western North Carolina,
western Virginia and southern Ohio in 1754,15
the migrations of those pioneers who might log-
ically have followed in the footprints of Dr.
Walker of a few years ago were held up indefi-
iitely. The time was one of such gravity that
many families actually returned eastward to-
ward the old settlements of Virginia near the
Atlantic.'6 Among those who left their fron-
tier homes to find security west of the moun-
tains was Daniel Boone and his family. Such
fragmentary records as come down to us deal
principally with the border warfare which was
at that time of infinitely more importance than
any of the mineral resources of Virginia's west-
erin dominion. It was during this time, 1754
to be exact, that John Filson tells us that James
McBride made his pilgrimage across this state
and cut his namne on a tree at the mouth of the
Kentucky river.17 While he was certainly not
the discoverer of Kentucky, as Filson claimed,
he is illustrative of that group of intrepid ex-
plorers  who   continued  their  pilgrimages
through this state even during this period of ex-
treme hostility, and of whom only partial and
  Xt History of Southwest Virginia, Summers. 193, pp. 55,
56 and 57.
  is Daniel Boone. Thwaites. 1909, pp. 42, 43.
  1 History of Kentucky. Collins. 1882, p. 519.
  " Life of John Filson, Durrett. 1884, p. 31.
                    [33]

 

THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



in many cases unreliable information is now to
be secured. These men all came to Kentucky
looking for broad, rich agricultural lands, well
adapted to the plantation scheme of farming so
well worked out in central and eastern Vir-
ginia. They were, for the most part, not inter-
ested in any of the mineral resources of the new
area, and if they made any personal use of such
coals as they may have found in their rambles,
they probably failed to record it, since they re-
garded them as of little consequence.
   The treaty of Fontainebleau made by the
Freneh and English in 1762 resulted in a grad-
nal cessation of Indian hostilities,18 and in
1769, that memorable year, Boone with his party
started what has come to be known as the
"great invasion." Consisting of but small and
infrequent groups at first, these hardy pioneers
and their families treading the Wilderness
Trail became more and more frequent, until in
the latter part of the 18th century the stream of
home seekers was an almost continuous one.
Thousands thus found their way into what was
to be Kentucky. Such fragmentary records
as are preserved speak of the hardships of the
journey, the dangers from the Indians, and the
allurements of the promised land. While it
must be admitted that these pilgrims had for
their first and guiding motive a new, cheap and
  Is History of Southwest Virginia. Summers. 190, pp. 76-78.
                    [34]

 
THE COAL INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY.



good agricultural location, it is impossible to
believe that in passinig through the rich coal
fields of south-eastern Kentucky they did not
notice and make use of such coals for their fires
as were readily available.
   John Filson published his. book19 in 1784,
and included with it a map of the same date
showing the Wilderness as well as the War-
riors' Trails passing through Lincoln and Fay-
ette counties. He makes a considerable point
in describing the agriculture and climate of
Kentucky, and on his map takes pains to locate
the Stations, Forts, Salt Springs, Licks, Towns,
Building Houses, Mills and Wigwams. In east-
ern Kentucky he indicates the mountain region,
but he does not show a single coal outcrop or
mine. It may be thus surmised that at this time
the great coal fields of this state played a very
small and insignificant part in the domestic and
industrial life of the new   Commonwealth.
Throughout his book,19 there is no mention
made of the vast coal deposits of Kentucky.
  19 Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucky.
Filson. 1784.



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                      II.
    A NEW KENTUCKY INDUSTRY.
    Yet with the growth of the population, it
was only to be expected that interest would
eventually develop in the mineral resources of
the new area; so we find that a few years later
a number of prospectors have been making in-
vestigations throughout the state.20 Imlay in
his fascinating book speaks authoritatively of
salt springs, beds of coal, limestone, clay for
brick making, etc. Speaking of the mineral de-
posits of Kentucky, he says:
   " . . . It is particularly favorable that this
mineral (coal) lies at the heads of our larger
rivers; as it can be sent down with the greatest
facility. . . . S 21
   Imlay's statements have been more than
substantiated by subsequent experience. James
Hall, whose portraiture of early Kentucky is
unsurpassed, when traveling through the Ohio
valley and Kentucky during the first half of the
nineteenth century availed himself of Imlay's
economic information, and noted its accuracy.22
Towards the last of the 18th century the eco-
nomic demand for home-made hardware, imple-
ments of steel and iron, became so great, due
  V Topographical Distribution of the Territory of North
America. G. Imlay. 1792.
  21 A Topographical Description of the Western Territory
Of North America, etc. G. Imlay (map), Samuel Campbell,
N. Y. 1793, p. 125.
  2 Sk