De Land's 1903 History of Jackson County, Michigan gives coal only a few passages, but they are specific. The book says a coal mine opened at Jackson in 1857 and drew capital and labor to the city for years. One paragraph in the general history and one detailed sketch of an English mining family named Robson, read together, trace the industry from its first shaft on the Jonathan Wood property to the abandonment of the Porter and Big Slope mines.
Written from De Land's History of Jackson County, Michigan (1903). 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 1857 Discovery at Jackson
De Land lists the coal mine among the memorable episodes of Jackson's past, in the same run of pages that covers the prison industries of 1844 to 1850 and the railroad strike of 1877. The book calls the discovery and opening of the coal mine in 1857 "an event of marked importance" for Jackson. For several years afterward, it says, coal was a very prominent industry that attracted a large amount of capital and labor.
That passage does not name the 1857 mine, its owners, or its output, and the excerpt gives no tonnages, wages, or prices. It does name one local promoter. Benjamin Porter, Jr., came to Jackson with his father in 1838 and was known around town as "Little Ben." He spent many years in the brick-making business, and the 1903 history calls him a pioneer in the development of the coal mining industry. The book adds that he was prominent in the Masonic fraternity. It says nothing more about his mining work, and it never states whether the Porter mine named later in the book took its name from him.
The Shaft on the Jonathan Wood Property
The fullest account of the early mines sits inside a biographical sketch of John Robson. His father, Edward Robson, was a coal miner in Cumberland, in the north of England, who saved enough from his earnings to bring the family to America. They arrived in 1857 and went straight to Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania, where they mined for only about three months before deciding conditions were not what they wanted.
Edward and a younger brother then traveled through Illinois, Iowa and Missouri looking for work, but the sketch says the panic of 1857 had closed nearly all the mines. At Jackson they found men sinking a shaft on the Jonathan Wood property to mine coal. The sketch calls it the first extensive coal mining operation in the county. Edward was hired and made foreman as soon as the mine was ready to work, and he held that job until 1872, when the mine closed. The family moved from Pennsylvania to Jackson county in 1859.
The sketch gives no year for the start of the Wood shaft and does not say who the "parties" sinking it were. Edward Robson is the only foreman it names for that mine.
“From the time of his coming to Michigan until 1872, he was steadily employed in the Woodville mines.”
Woodville, Then the Porter and Big Slope Mines
John Robson's own working life gives the clearest timeline of the Jackson field in the book. After coming to Jackson county in 1859, he went to work in the mines, and from then until 1872 he was steadily employed in the Woodville mines. When those closed, he took work in the mines at Jackson and stayed until 1875, when he was made foreman of the Porter and Big Slope mines. He kept that post until 1893.
These are the only mine names in the excerpt: the shaft on the Jonathan Wood property, the Woodville mines, and the Porter and Big Slope mines, plus the unnamed "mines at Jackson." The sketch says both the Wood property mine and the Woodville mines shut down in 1872, but it does not say where Woodville lay or whether the two were the same works. Anyone tracing an ancestor who worked "at Woodville" or "at the Wood mine" should treat them as possibly separate places until another record settles it.
How the Mines Ran Out
The book gives two slightly different endings. The general history says the mines began to fail about 1880. It adds that a few were still worked when the book was written, but that the industry had been gradually declining as the best and most productive properties were exhausted.
The Robson sketch is blunter. It says that by 1893 it was no longer profitable to mine coal in Jackson and the mines were abandoned. Elsewhere in the same sketch, John Robson is said to have retired to his farm when coal mining in the county became an unprofitable industry. The 1903 history does not reconcile its own two accounts, so the safest reading is a long decline from about 1880, with the Porter and Big Slope mines closing in 1893.
“Mr. Knapp sold his interest in the developed mines, and returned to Jackson in 1851.”
The Robson Family in the Record
For family historians, the Robson sketch is the richest coal-related material in the book. John Robson was born in Cumberland county, England, on August 23, 1834, to Edward and Ann (Blackburn) Robson. He entered the Cumberland coal mines while still a youth. On April 22, 1857, just before the family sailed, he married Mary Robson, whose father was also a miner. The sketch says that the two families, despite the shared name, were not related.
Edward Robson died in 1891 at age eighty-one; the sketch says his fatal illness of six days was the first sickness of his life. Besides John, his children were Edward, who went to Alabama after the Civil War and took up a homestead; George, a farmer in Blackman township; and Joseph, who enlisted in the Third Michigan Cavalry, served three years, re-enlisted, and was killed when a boat blew up outside Mobile bay near the close of the war.
John Robson saved from his mining wages and bought cheap land near the city. One tract bought in 1861 for seventy-five dollars sold two years later for five hundred and fifty dollars, which helped him buy forty-seven acres. By the time of the sketch his farm had grown to two hundred and sixty-four acres, seventy-seven of them bought in 1898 in Spring Arbor township. He farmed corn and wheat while he mined, then turned to a dairy and creamery with Jersey and Durham cows. He was a Mason and an Odd Fellow.
The sketch names three sons, William, Joseph and Edward, all living on the home place, but a few lines later it refers to "the four brothers" running the business. That inconsistency is the book's, and other records would be needed to sort it out.
Jackson Men in the Lake Superior Mines
Not every miner or mine man in this book worked coal at home. John Western, a Devonshire-born landowner, was one of the investors in the Jackson Iron Mines on Lake Superior. Philo M. Everett, who settled in Jackson in 1834 and kept a store on the south side of the public square, left in 1847 to become superintendent of the Jackson Iron Mine and became a prominent citizen of Marquette.
Samuel O. Knapp, after superintending the woolen factory at the state prison in 1845 and 1846, went prospecting in the Lake Superior copper region. In the spring of 1847 he took twenty men to the mines in Ontonagon county for a group of New York merchants, and within four years the miners and their families there numbered three hundred. He returned to Jackson in 1851. A Jackson ancestor described as a miner in the 1840s or 1850s could belong to that northern story rather than to the coal shafts near the city.
Finding your ancestor in Jackson 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 Michigan database by surname.
- The county histories themselves: the biographical sections of De Land's History of Jackson County, Michigan 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
When did coal mining begin in Jackson County, Michigan?
De Land's 1903 history dates the discovery and opening of the coal mine at Jackson to 1857 and calls it an event of marked importance. A family sketch in the same book describes a shaft sunk on the Jonathan Wood property as the first extensive coal mining operation in the county.
When did the Jackson coal mines close?
The book gives two accounts. The general history says the mines began to fail about 1880 and that a few were still worked in 1903. The Robson sketch says the Wood property and Woodville mines closed in 1872 and that by 1893 coal mining in Jackson was no longer profitable and the mines were abandoned.
Which coal mines does De Land's history name?
The excerpt names the shaft on the Jonathan Wood property, the Woodville mines, and the Porter and Big Slope mines, and it mentions unnamed mines at Jackson. Edward Robson was foreman at the Wood property mine until 1872, and John Robson was foreman of the Porter and Big Slope mines from 1875 to 1893.
Where did Jackson County's coal miners come from?
The book does not give an overall account of the workforce. The one mining family it profiles, the Robsons, came from Cumberland, England, in 1857, mined for about three months in Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania, and then settled in Jackson county, where the family had moved by 1859.
Photographs on this page are in the public domain. About the images and their sources.