Chapter 32

Chapter 32
pages 172 - 179

COAL AND STONE.

     Early times there was but little coal of any kind used here. The blacksmiths used a little charcoal, and the tinners and brass-foundry men still continue its use; but there never was much used. The most of people, in old times, warmed their rooms and cooked their victuals with wood (of which we have always had an abundance); but as coal was also abundant, and it took less trouble to prepare it, the use of wood was gradually abandoned, first for heating rooms, and afterward for cooking. When the first steam mills were built, it was thought necessary to have wood to propel them; but that is now an antiquated idea. I know no one who thinks it necessary to have wood fires for any purpose except for cooking, and but few continue to use it for that.
     Coal is so abundant, in this neighborhood, that there is no danger of the supply failing in a thousand years. The rein is usually four feet thick, and there is generally slate or stone on top of it. The usual way is to dig horizontally into the hill, leaving some pillars, and putting in some props to protect the miners from the weight above. If a mine happens to have no slate or stone above, it is generally considered troublesome and hazardous, and is abandoned. The coal of the vein generally used is very hard, and has a hill pressing upon it, and the usual way of getting it out is to pick out a little of the coal at the bottom of the stratum, and put in a blast of powder on top, and this will so break it down that crow-bars and picks will easily do the rest.
     When it happens that there is not more than eight or ten feet of earth on the coal, the practice is to strip it, as the term is: that is, to take the earth off of a portion of the coal, and then make a row of holes about two or three feet back from the edge, drop a plug of wood into each, and then drive an iron wedge in each plug, by swinging a large hammer and striking each wedge alternately, until all are driven fully down. By this time, it will be seen that there is a small crack running from one wedge to another. Two men, with sharp-pointed crow-bars, can, in a few minutes, pry all that strip off, and then repeat the process.
     At present, the amount of coal used in Peoria, to warm our houses, cook our victuals, run our mills, distilleries, and other numerous kinds of machinery, including the locomotives on all our railroads, is very considerable.
     Hundreds of families get their entire support by digging coal and bringing it to market. Our foreign trade in coal has never been very considerable, simply because coal abounds in every direction, and to whatever market we carried it, there were others always nearer the market than we, who could undersell us; yet we have occasionally, from the earliest times, sent some coal to the St. Louis market, and since the canal and the railroads have been in operation, we have sent some to Chicago.
     The great abundance of coal in the vicinity of Peoria is not a new discovery. The United States surveyor who surveyed the township west of the one Peoria is in, in 1817, made a minute on his field-notes, that are on file in the Surveyor-General's office, that he crossed a vein of coal, in running one of the lines, ten feet thick; and these field-notes I copied from the original, in December, 1833, and have the copy yet. As long ago as the 25th of March, 1836,I surveyed that land and saw that coal. It was not, however, so thick as represented. All the old settlers knew of the existence of coal in these hills, and Mr. John Bowls, as long ago as 1821, dug and took a boat-load of coal from this neighborhood to St. Louis for sale; and Joseph Moffatt, the father of the older Moffatts living below Peoria, and the grandfather of some of the younger ones, and the great-grandfather of the others, dug and took down the Mississippi, to some point below St. Louis, a boat-load of coal, in 1822. The greatest quantity of coal that has been shipped from this county has been taken from a place called Kingston, about sixteen miles below Peoria.
     Our coal was said to be inexhaustible, when it was thought we had but three strata of coal; but the Messrs. Voris & Co. have established the fact that we have five. In 1864, they dug an artesian well, across the lake, in sight of the city, in which they found two other veins of coal, of which we had no knowledge. From a long artcle describing this well, in the Peoria Transcript of April 25th, 1864, I extract the following: "At 120 feet, a four-foot vein of coal was found. At 207, salt water. At 235, another vein of coal, three feet in thickness. At 317, a vigorous stream of salt water, 2 1/2 per cent strength. At 734, another large quantity of water, containing sulphur, but otherwise fresh. This last water was found in a porous rock, and has increased in quantity as the drill vent down. The overflow has become so great that no more drilling can be done until a heavier set of tools can be procured. The upward rush of water is so great that it prevents the 400-pound drill from descending with sufficient force to effect any thing. The sand-pump, with a sixty-pound drill-sinker attached, will only go down about four hundred feet." "The water has been carried up in pipes sixty-five feet above the surface of the well. How much higher it would go there is no means of knowing short of getting pipe enough to run it to the top of the bluff. The first artesian water was struck at 317 feet, in a porous rock, that was 44 feet thick, and in which water was found all the way through. The last vein of water-rock is also porous, and has been penetrated forty-two feet. The well discharges at least 25,000 barrels of water per day." . . . "The total cost of the experiment, including the loss of the old well, is $4,325."
     The digging of this well added to our geological knowledge, for the Messrs. Voris & Co. furnished the State Geologist with a specimen of every stratum through which they passed, and it proved we had more coal in Illinois than we had supposed; yet, so far as concerned the purse of Messrs. Voris & Co., I imagine the digging of this well was decidedly a depletory process. The water rushed out at that well boldly and noisily five years ago, and does it yet; but to no purpose worthy of the great bustle and fuss with which it breaks forth. I supposed it would be turned to account to run machinery; or, on account of its supposed medicinal qualities, be the occasion of erecting an establishment for the resort of pleasure-seekers under the pretense of hunting health; but nothing of the kind has been done. The Germans some times have a Sunday beer-party there, and the proprietor of the Peoria House run a small pipe across under the lake to supply his hotel with the water; but whether the Messrs. Voris & Co. ever made any money off the spring is more than I know. Of one thing I am sure, it is a piece of property out of which money could be made; not out of the coal, for that is too plenty hereabout; but out of that well as a mill-privilege and as mineral water.
     I am not competent to judge of the medicinal qualities of this water; but it smells and tastes to me like the water of other medicinal springs I have seen, particularly that of White Sulphur Springs, near Warrenton, Va.
     Although Philip Renault reported to the government of France, nearly 150 years ago, that there was plenty of copper in this neighborhood, and lead in a certain locality in. Southeast Missouri, and his statement about the lead in Missouri has proved true, none of the present generation has found any mine of copper, or any other metal, in this neighborhood. Besides coal, as above stated, we have abundance of stone in the neighborhood. It is true we bring our stone from Joliet, and beyond there, but that is mainly, I presume, because that stone is more easily quarried than ours, and because that is quarried near the canal and a railroad, whereas all our limestone and most of our sandstone would require from four to seven miles' cartage to reach our city or a railroad. We have a great abundance of sandstone convenient, of a quality well adapted to building. There being some stone in our quarries which, when soaked full of water, will disintegrate by freezing, an early prejudice was produced against our sandstone generally; but everyone used to working in stone can easily tell that which is unfit to build with, and discard it. That this stone will stand wetting and freezing, when properly selected, is clearly proved by the fact that the piers of the two bridges across the river here are made of that kind of stone, and have for years endured the weather perfectly well.
     We have plenty of limestone within six or seven miles; but, because it is not convenient to a railroad, and does not lie in strata of equal thickness, it has not been much used for building. Much of it is, however, used for lime, and it makes a strong mortar, but is not so white as other kinds; and hence, although much of it is used for walls and plastering, where the color is no object, yet for fine work we get lime from Alton or Indiana.
     Another circumstance that has prevented our people from using stone for building has been the fact that brick costs less. We even build cellars of brick, in stead of stone. The first brick made here was made by Hon. Samuel Hackelton, in 1833, for the court-house. Those brick, and the most that have been made since, have been of an inferior quality; but this has not been because good brick can not be made of the clay in our neighborhood. It has been because the demand for brick has been so great that men could find sale for an inferior article, which cost them less expense and trouble. Besides, our people have heretofore been more concerned to get houses sufficient for our business than to get fine houses. A few experiments, however, by competent persons, have established the fact that superior brick can be made of our clay.
     Of late, however, some superior buildings have been erected in our city: some of brick and others of stone fronts. Some of our best brick fronts have been constructed of brick made in this vicinity, while others have been built of brick transported from St. Louis. Our stone fronts, however, have all been made from stone brought down the canal, from Joliet, or beyond that place. That may, in part, be from the fact that the stone in that region is more easily quarried and put into proper form than ours; but I imagine it is more because the people there are prepared with the skill and tools, and habits for the occasion. Like the people of Michigan and Wisconsin, who will saw timber and carry it several hundred miles south and sell it at a profit, to people who have more timber than they, but who lack the mills and habits necessary for successfully prosecuting, the lumber business. There is no lack of timber on the lower half of the Illinois river, and on the lower Mississippi and some of its branches it is more abundant than in the North.

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