Nelsonville coal went to market by wagon before it ever went by canal boat. The 1883 History of Hocking Valley, Ohio follows the trade from blacksmiths digging coal out of the river bed to W. B. Brooks shipping some 200,000 tons a year, and its biographical sketches name dozens of men who dug, weighed and sold coal around Nelsonville, Buchtel, Floodwood and Lick Run. If your people mined in Athens or Hocking County, start here.
Written from History of Hocking Valley, Ohio (1883). Everything below comes from that book, and where it gives an opinion, we say so. You can read the full book free on the Internet Archive.
The great vein under Monday and Sunday creeks
In Hocking County, the 1883 history says, the coal field lies on Monday Creek and holds the great coal seam of Ohio, called the "great vein" or the "Nelsonville" seam because it had been mined at Nelsonville for so many years. The seam runs from six to thirteen feet thick, lies high in the Monday Creek hills, and is mined by drifting.
The authors thought Sunday Creek, the middle of the three eastern tributaries of the Hocking, was the best ground. On Monday Creek the seam sat high, with a lot of worthless crop coal. On Federal Creek it was deep and would need expensive shafts. Sunday Creek was the mean between the two. There the great seam averaged nine feet three inches in five wells and about the same in three shafts, across 35,000 acres. Seventy-five feet above it lay the Bailey's Run coal, about four and a half feet thick, which the book praises for coke, gas and parlor use. Higher still came the Pittsburg or Pomeroy seam, four to eight feet thick.
The book is openly promotional. It quotes Prof. E. B. Andrews as estimating that the coal of the Monday Creek and Sunday Creek district averaged eight feet thick, works that out to 3,840,000,000 tons on 600 square miles, and calls coal the "King of minerals." It also claims that Trimble Township and North Dover held more mineral wealth than any equal area in Ohio, "or perhaps in the world."
From blacksmith coal to canal boats
The first coal used came from the river bed and went almost entirely to blacksmith shops. In April 1830 two wagon loads were hauled to Columbus. The first was a six-horse load of fifty-eight bushels, sold by James Knight to Gill and Greer of Columbus at four cents a bushel, delivered. Little coal went to market until the canal was finished, although a bank on the north side of Johnson's Hill supplied local needs. The book says it is believed to be the first mine opened in the valley.
Once the Hocking Valley Canal was located, eastern capitalists and Ohio men bought up land along its line from Lick Run to Chauncey. Thomas Ewing and Samuel F. Vinton, joined by Nicholas Biddle and Elihu Chauncey of Philadelphia, did business as Ewing, Vinton & Co. and opened a mine about the time the canal reached Nelsonville. It was cut into the Nelsonville seam at the Dorr Run canal basin, at what became the west end of the village. Fuller & Walker, meaning James Fuller and A. B. Walker of Athens, opened a little farther up the river. The book names C. Fay, John Crothers, C. Steenrod, Launcelot Scott, J. F. Somers and L. Steenrod among the pioneer miners. Coal went by wagon from the mine mouth to the wharf and onto the boats in wheelbarrows.
Steenrod & Scott worked the old Steenrod works just below the village before dissolving. Scott then opened mines in Robbin's Hill, which passed on his death to his son-in-law, L. D. Poston. Mathew Van Wormer of Boston ran a mine just back of the village, and Dr. Robert Fulton worked across the river in what became Brooks's mines. The town predates the canal-era mines: Daniel Nelson, the original owner of the site, laid out the plat in 1818, and when Nelsonville was first incorporated in 1838 the tanner Charles Cable was elected its first Mayor. The book says the village's growth was "virtually governed" by the coal business, and that the Columbus & Hocking Valley Railway gave the trade another great push.
“…the first being a six-horse load, fifty-eight bushels, sold by James Knight to Gill and Greer, of Columbus, at four cents a bushel, delivered.”
Brooks and Poston, the big Nelsonville operators
W. B. Brooks, a Columbus man, came to Nelsonville in 1859 and, as Van Wormer & Brooks, bought 300 acres across the river from town. Van Wormer withdrew in June 1860. The Brooks mines had an ice-breaking machine and shipped the year round, moving coal from mine to canal in cars and loading it into the firm's own boats. In 1869 Brooks bought another 600 acres just north of town, known as section 19, and its newer mines had mining machines, improved screens and automatic pumps, all run on compressed air. By 1883 W. B. Brooks & Son put out some 200,000 tons a year, and their biggest day was 105 cars loaded and shipped.
The book is not consistent about when L. D. Poston started. The operators chapter says he began soon after the canal was completed in 1840, working with Launcelot Scott; his own sketch says he went into mining in 1852. Born in Hampshire County, Virginia, in 1812, he had come to Nelsonville as a merchant about 1835. His business doubled during the Civil War. In 1872 he bought 250 acres just east of town, leased it for twenty years to his sons C. L. and Wm. W. Poston and son-in-law E. P. Pendleton, and retired in 1875. He died Dec. 16, 1875. In 1880 Wm. W. Poston and Pendleton sold out to McClintick and Smith of Chillicothe, and the firm became C. L. Poston & Co. It had just bought 400 acres in the Monday Creek Valley, mined about 100,000 tons a year with about 165 men,.
Ashford Poston, also born in Hampshire County, Virginia, kept store and ran canal boats before taking up mining and shipping coal in 1863. He rented out his mine in 1880.
Smaller firms of the early 1880s
One of the Johnson brothers, brought up a miner, leased the Salt Well Hollow mines at Nelsonville in 1879 with his brothers Charles and Edward and half brother Joseph Slater. David Patterson of Columbus joined in 1881, making Johnson Brothers & Patterson. The two sketches disagree on the month: Johnson's says August, Slater's says July. Andrew Jackson Juniper worked five years as a miner for Brooks, began operating in coal in 1881, and with his brother Abner as Juniper Brothers employed some seventy-five miners a year.
Charles Henry Doan kept the books for the Nelsonville Mining Company until it was discontinued in January 1879, then in 1881 took over the same mine with J. E. Lama as Lama & Doan. Samuel Smith Dresback, once bookkeeper for the Lick Run Coal Company and assistant bookkeeper and weighmaster for T. Longstreth, joined George E. Hall in October 1882 as grocers and coal operators. In the fall of 1873 local stockholders organized the Merchants and Miners' Bank of Nelsonville.
“When he was nine years of age he went to work with his father in the coal mine of M. M. Butt and J. Smith.”
Beyond Nelsonville: Lick Run, Floodwood, Buchtel and Green Township
On the west side of the Hocking, the book lists small runs known only for their coal works: Lick Run, three miles above Nelsonville, where the Lick Run Coal Company worked at Brettland; Meeker Run; and Floodwood. Thomas Sheppard became superintendent of the coal works of the Buchtel Coal and Iron Company at Floodwood in August 1881. Joseph Wolf ran the mines at Old Floodwood for five years, and Josiah Wilson worked eleven years in the Floodwood mines.
At Buchtel the sketches mostly describe iron work. William B. Gilmore came there in 1877 as engineer for the Akron Iron Company, and Hosea Miller arrived May 9, 1877, to work for the same company. By 1883 the town had Buchtel Lodge No. 712 of the Odd Fellows, a Knights of Pythias lodge, and the Tom Dew Post of the G. A. R. Smith Spencer worked in the Bessemer mines before retiring in 1880.
In Green Township, Hocking County, Peter Hayden opened the Hayden Coal Mine. The Hayden Mining and Manufacturing Company, incorporated in December 1882 with Peter Hayden as president, C. H. Hayden as vice-president and John W. Jones as general manager, held some 2,800 acres and was building a sewer pipe factory. The mines could work about 130 men. Also in Green Township, the Craft Iron Company moved its furnace from Newport, Kentucky, in the spring of 1877. It went into blast Nov. 5, 1879, employed 130 men at furnace and mines, and got a post office named Glendale in 1879, though people called the place Craft's Furnace.
The book only touches on Perry County. It calls Shawnee a thriving mining and furnace town, places New Straitsville on Sugar Run, and mentions the coal works at Rendville and Corning on the Ohio Central. Published in 1883, the book says nothing about the strike of 1884.
Where the miners came from
The Nelsonville sketches read like a map of the British coalfields. Smith Spencer, from Burnley in Lancashire, reached Nelsonville in June 1854. Joseph Smith, born in Bradford, Yorkshire, went into the mine with his father at nine. Joseph Slater came from Staffordshire, near Birmingham, mined in Summit County, Ohio, and in Maryland, and was in Chicago until the great fire of 1871, when he came to Nelsonville. George Snowden, of County Durham, lost his father to a mine explosion when he was an infant. Ellis Edwards, born in Flintshire, North Wales, worked thirteen years in the Durham mines, came to America in 1865, mined in Pennsylvania, and reached Nelsonville in 1868.
John Dreany left County Armagh, Ireland, landed at New York in June 1852, mined at Pittsburg and in Virginia, and came to Nelsonville in 1856. He ran his own mine until November 1859, then took up canal boating; during the Morgan raid in July 1863 his boat was burned. Christopher Findling came from Germany as a child and grew up in the Pomeroy mines. William Edward Evans was born in Grayson, Kentucky, and worked mines in Kentucky and Lawrence County, Ohio, before reaching Nelsonville in 1874.
Plenty of local and Yankee men went underground too. Gideon L. Cooley, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, came in 1839 and worked in the mines thirty years. Alfred H. Carnes, born in Loudoun County, Virginia, mined at Nelsonville from 1842 until 1856. Alonzo P. Newton, Peter M. Butt, William H. Vorhes, and Amos and Eben Wilson of Wolf's Plains all spent years in the Nelsonville mines before turning to other trades.
The union, the lodges and the book's view of miners
On July 1, 1881, William Edward Evans was elected President of the Hocking Valley division of the Miners' Association of Ohio. He was also Treasurer of Franklin Assembly No. 453, Knights of Labor.
The lodges are worth chasing for a miner ancestor. The sketches repeatedly name Philodorean Lodge No. 157 of the Masons, Hockhocking Lodge No. 339 and Unity Lodge No. 568 of the Odd Fellows, Nelsonville Encampment No. 121, York Lodge No. 75 of the Knights of Pythias, and Phil Kearney Post No. 38 of the G. A. R. The miner Alonzo P. Newton and the superintendent Thomas Sheppard both served in Company G, Eighteenth Ohio Infantry.
The 1883 authors were not kind to miners as a class. They wrote that mining communities had not been known for science or morals, blamed habits formed in the old aristocratic countries, and predicted that education would change things.
Finding your ancestor in Athens and Hocking County
- Census records (free through 1950) list each person's occupation and town, so a mining family shows up decade by decade.
- Death records: search our Ohio database by surname.
- The county histories themselves: the biographical sections of History of Hocking Valley, Ohio hold hundreds of family sketches.
- Newspapers on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America carried obituaries, accidents, and local news.
Tell us one grandparent's name. We'll take a free first look at the records and email you back.
Ask about my family →Frequently asked questions
What was the first coal mine in the Hocking Valley?
The 1883 history says a bank opened on the north side of Johnson's Hill to supply local demand is believed to be the first mine opened in the valley. The first coal shipped out went by wagon: two loads hauled to Columbus in April 1830, the first sold by James Knight at four cents a bushel.
Who were the biggest coal operators at Nelsonville in 1883?
The book names W. B. Brooks & Son, putting out some 200,000 tons a year, and C. L. Poston & Co., mining about 100,000 tons a year with about 165 men. Smaller firms included Johnson Brothers & Patterson, Juniper Brothers, Lama & Doan and Dresback & Hall.
Where did Nelsonville's coal miners come from?
The biographical sketches name miners born in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire and County Durham in England, Flintshire in Wales, Coatbridge in Scotland, County Armagh in Ireland, and Germany, along with men from Kentucky, Virginia, Massachusetts and the Athens County farms around Wolf's Plains.
Does the 1883 History of Hocking Valley cover the 1884 strike?
No. The book was published in 1883. The closest it comes to labor history is noting that William Edward Evans was elected President of the Hocking Valley division of the Miners' Association of Ohio on July 1, 1881, and was Treasurer of a Knights of Labor assembly.
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