thus compelling these gentlemen to suspend operations, and calmly wait and watch for the public mind to become. schooled in the treasures of the Lehigh. Men, however upright and honorable, who talked of its introduction into common use in Philadelphia, were deemed fanatics, and ridiculed accordingly; those attempting to sell the stuff for cash, compromised their integrity, and in some instances barely escaped arrest and maltreatment from the hands of the populace.

The late Hon. Charles Miner came to Wyoming in 1799, and for thirteen years afterward edited the Luzerne Federalist, a weekly newspaper published at Wilkes Barre, and conducted with such marked ability and success, that he soon became widely known as one of the strongest and most pleasing writers in the State. An accomplished scholar, an ingenious advocate, he combated the unsparing prejudices of the bigoted with an earnestness calculated to correct rather than offend.

No man labored with more unselfish fervor to unmuffle the coal-field or acquaint the masses with the grandeur of its character, than did the author of the History of Wyoming. Mankind, ever ready to embrace error, are slow to perceive great truths. The fallacy of employing stones gleaned from the mountain a hundred miles away for fuel, was so great, that the gray-headed octogenarian and the beardless youth-with all the intermediate conditions of life-laughed at the joke attempted to be played upon them. Old heads and young ones for once shared harmonious convictions as they arranged themselves as a unit on the orthodox side. Lectures delivered gratuitously explaining the power and character of the new combustible; certificates from Wyoming blacksmiths attesting its superiority; newspaper articles written with ability and patience, brought from the timid unbelievers not even a dull acknowledgment or approval. Or if a few assented to its possible future use in some capacity or another, they blended their assent with such a negative spirit as to

be little less obnoxious than the blunt, open hostility accorded it everywhere in Philadelphia, the only place coal was sought to be introduced. Quakers, acquiring a competency by the slow accretions of patient toil, were the first to menace and oppose the innovation of coal. As this respectable body, generally calm in its judgment, represented the great bulk of Philadelphia enterprise and intelligence, its decision carried a weight fatal and conclusive in the matter. Meantime, stone-coal, better understood among feudal rocks, began to receive especial homage in the Valley of Wyoming.

Jesse Fell-afterward Judge Fell-a plain, modest reflective blacksmith, living in Wilkes Barre, gave it its first successful impulse toward general domestic use. In watching the light blue flame issuing from the furnace of his shop, made livelier by a draft of air from the hale lungs of a bellows, he conceived the idea of inaugurating a coal fire into an ordinary fire-place. His plan, just and reasonable as it appeared in his own mind for a while, faltered before the strong weapon of simple ridicule.

In the leisure hour of an evening, he built up a jamb of brick work in an old fire-place in his house, upon which he placed four or five bars of common square iron, with a sufficient number up in front to hold wood and coal. He filled this contrivance with hard wood, after igniting which, he piled on a quantity of coal, sought his bed and was soon lost in slumber. This was done late at night lest the people of the neighborhood might again laugh at him for the persistency of his folly. Early in the morning as he awoke, he was astonished and cheered to witness the coal fire announcing its own unconscious achievement. That fire, kindling a glow of anthracite. throughout the world, carried the name of Judge Fell down in history. Such was the theme of universal rejoicing throughout the valley that the event was discussed at every fireside; the topic went with the people to church, and was diffused throughout the congregation at large;

by common assent, it entered for a while into all conversations at home and abroad; it silenced every adverse criticism as it gave the signal for long and mutual congratulations at the hospitable house of the judge, where friend and foe alike acquiesced in the truth that Wyoming was freighted with infinite fortune.

Judge Fell, long secretary of the Masonic lodge at Wilkes Barre, deeming the event worthy of note, wrote the following memoranda upon the fly-leaf of the Masonic Monitor, in the bold, beautiful off-hand style for which he was reputed :

"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 JESSE FELL.

way.

"FEBRUARY 11th, 1808."

A few ark-loads of coal went down the Susquehanna with the spring freshets from Wyoming to Harrisburg, where it was treated with the same indifference or derision shown preceding cargoes to Philadelphia.

The intercourse between the inhabitants of Wilkes Barre and Philadelphia being considerable in the unhur ried days of the stage-coach; and anthracite being found in abundance in 1812 on the upper waters of the Schuylkill, united auxiliary influences to bear upon the public mind in the city to such an extent, that the next year when Col. George M. Hollenback sent two four-horse wagon-loads of coal from Mill Creek to Philadelphia, it was sold with little effort to a few liberal patrons, among whom were the Wurtses, afterward conspicuous as pioneers in the Lackawanna coal-field.

Up the Lackawanna, coal was first burned in 1812, by H. C. L. Von Storch, of Providence. A bare body of it, washed by the high waters of spring, early exhibited its

bald, blackened features by the side of the stream, near his dwelling. The same body or vein can yet be seen lying equidistant between the bridge crossed by Sanderson's railroad and Von Storch's slope. Ignorant of the laws of mining, Mr. Von Storch dug up the coal as ordinary earth is dug. In an awkward grate, contrived from iron made at Slocum Hollow, he used the coal as a substitute for wood. His success was so complete, that although the woods encircling his clearing offered its timber and coal for naught but the trouble of securing them, the superior genius of the latter, as an economical agent, was acknowledged even here.

This stratum of coal, half-hidden under its rocky pillow, at once changed the entire tenantry and business aspect of the valley. William and Maurice Wurts, the real accoucheurs of this coal basin, were impelled hither in 1812 in search of coal, and while exploring every gap and gorge, came across this prominent out-shoot. They desired earnestly to purchase, and had it fallen into their possession, as it possibly would have done had it not been for the success of Von Storch in burning coal found upon it, aside from the many changes it would have effected in all the relations of the valley, it is barely possible that Honesdale, Carbondale, Archbald, or Olyphant would have arisen from the wilderness, or grown into towns of their present importance.

Nor can it be supposed that Scranton, with its irresistible expansion, would have been even in existence today as Scranton, if, from the operations of the Wurtses on Von Storch's farm in Providence, "Wurtsdale," or some other town, had sprung into being, because the men whose name it bears-especially the late George W. and the present Joseph H. Scranton, who have contributed as much, if not more, to shape the varied industrial interests of this section of the valley than any other persons connected with its history-would have turned elsewhere their really effective energies.

Bituminous coal, used to a considerable extent in Philadelphia at this time, being withheld from Liverpool by the collision with England, intelligent men who had acquired coal property and privileges for almost nothing, aimed to supply its place with anthracite. Hon. Charles Miner and Jacob Cist, Esq., both prominent in the improvements of the day, sent down an ark-load of twentyfour tons of coal from Mauch Chunk to Philadelphia in the fall of 1814. By personal address and the necessities of manufacturing interests, they disposed of it all with but little loss to themselves. As the cost of transportation, fourteen dollars per ton, to an unwilling market, exceeded the receipts, these gentlemen soon withdrew from the proprietorship of the mines. While Mr. Miner promulgated and widened a knowledge of the qualifications of the new fuel, Mr. Cist, a merchant by profession, a natural genius and mechanic, was the first person to construct a pattern for burning coal in stoves. The stove was a high, square affair, uncouth in style, and yet a great step in advance of coal grates in use at the time.

While the coal, in ordinary grates, burned without smoke, spark, or flame, the flues of the chimneys built without adaptation to its use, proved so defective that the dust and sulphurous odor filling the low-roomed houses from the fires were almost insufferable. The venerable Dr. Peck informs the writer that when he came into the valley, in 1818, there were but two houses along the Lackawanna where stone-coal had made invasions upon the green wood pile and smutty fire-place. One was Preserved Taylor's, the other at Von Storch's. At no place in Wyoming was there at this time more than a single grate used in any dwelling. Joseph Slocum, Lord Butler, Philip Myers, Charles Miner, Jacob Cist, George M. Hollenback, and perhaps a half-a-dozen others, comprised the entire number of individuals having even a single grate in their houses fifty years ago in Wyoming Valley.1

1 Dr. Peck.