Shiawassee County was never a big coal county, but for forty years people kept digging for it. The 1880 History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties traces the story from a pioneer's find on Coal Creek in 1839, through a New York company and an Ohio company that both quit, to the Corunna Coal Company, which by 1880 was raising up to a hundred tons a day in Caledonia township with miners brought in from Ohio.
Written from History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties, Michigan (1880). 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.
Alexander McArthur's find on Coal Creek, 1839
The search began with the state. In 1837 Michigan authorized a geological survey under Dr. Douglas Houghton, and his party passed through Corunna when, the 1880 history says, the place was a single log house occupied by John Davids. The surveyors judged from the character and dip of the rock along the Shiawassee River that coal ought to be there, but they found none.
Two years later, in 1839, Alexander McArthur found it on his own land, on the bank of Coal Creek in the southeast quarter of section 22, about half a mile west of the beds being worked in 1880. At first it came out in small amounts. Once word spread, buyers came from long distances, most of them blacksmiths, and McArthur loaded the coal onto their own wagons at ten cents a bushel.
McArthur is a name worth knowing if your people were early Corunna settlers. The book lists him among the original members of the Presbyterian church organized in the Corunna school-house on April 27, 1844, along with Mrs. Turza McArthur and Miss Margaret McArthur, and notes that by 1880 he was the only one of the seventeen founding members still living. He laid out McArthur's Addition to the village plat on Jan. 18, 1862, and in 1873 he signed the newspaper call that founded the Old Settlers' Society of Shiawassee County.
The McArthur Mining Company, 1864 to 1866
For many years nobody made an organized effort to mine. Then, about 1864, B. Brisco, master mechanic of the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad, helped McArthur examine the deposits. Investors in New York City took an interest, and the McArthur Mining Company was organized with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars. McArthur sold the company one hundred and twenty acres in section 22. The partners were McArthur of Corunna and Dr. G. M. Peck, Samuel Daskham, and Edward W. Lockwood of New York City. Dr. Peck was president and McArthur the local agent.
The company spent heavily. It put up engine-rooms, coal-houses, offices, and tramways at the mines, built an extensive wharf on the Detroit River with sheds, and opened an agency in Detroit. The weak point was getting coal from the beds to the railroad depot, which the book says cost a great deal. In the latter part of 1866 work stopped and the company dissolved.
“Two years later, in 1839, Alexander McArthur discovered coal on his land on the bank of Coal Creek, in the southeast quarter of section 22…”
The Ohio men: Briar Hill tests and a failed slope
The next push came from Ohio. In 1869 and 1870 the Briar Hill Iron and Coal Company of Ohio sent Charles Gilbert, described as a practical geologist, to examine the field. He drilled fifty-six test-holes and found coal in forty-six of them.
On April 1, 1871, Henry P. Gilbert bought the tested land from Chauncey Hurlburt, on the west part of the southwest fractional quarter of section 23. That December he sold an interest to George F. Perkins, John Stambaugh, and George Todd, men from Akron and Youngstown, Ohio. In 1872 they opened a slope and mined for about a year. It did not pay. The book says the work was abandoned after the company had spent ninety thousand dollars.
The Corunna Coal Company and its Ohio miners
The same group tried again. The Corunna Coal Company was organized on Feb. 26, 1873, to mine coal, fire-clay, and other minerals, with one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in capital stock, forty thousand of it paid in. The corporators were George F. Perkins of Akron, George Todd of Youngstown, and Henry P. Gilbert and Harry R. Gilbert of Corunna, with offices in both Youngstown and Corunna. On Dec. 5, 1874, the company bought the section 23 land and later leased adjoining tracts.
In 1877, after an investigation that convinced them large fields of coal remained, they opened a new shaft, which the book gives as seventy-five feet in length. It struck a vein from two feet three inches to three feet nine inches thick. The works for mining and shipping were finished in June 1877, and mining began.
The labor story is the part most useful to family researchers. Mining was new to men around Corunna, and the company at first had trouble finding skilled hands. It solved that by hiring nearly one hundred laborers from Ohio, seventy-five of them skilled miners. If an ancestor turns up in Caledonia township or Corunna in the late 1870s with an Ohio birthplace or an Ohio past, the mine is a likely reason. The book does not name any of these miners or say where in Ohio they came from.
Output ran from seventy-five to one hundred tons a day, though the book says the top figure was rarely reached in summer. Coal was first hauled two and a half miles to the Detroit and Milwaukee depot; a branch road from Corunna out to the workings, which the book dates to 1872, cut that cost. The 1880 stockholders were George Todd, George F. Perkins, Thomas Struthers, John Stambaugh, and H. P. Gilbert. George Todd was president and Todd Kincaid secretary and treasurer.
“From seventy-five to one hundred tons are mined daily, though the maximum quantity is rarely reached during the summer season.”
Owosso, Six-Mile Creek, and the deep borings
Corunna was not the only place people tried. Coal showed in the bank of the Shiawassee River at Owosso, and in 1857 or 1858 a shaft was sunk there for the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad Company on land of Judge Comstock. The 1880 history quotes State geologist Professor Rominger's 1876 survey, which describes the Owosso shaft as forty feet deep, close to the river inside the village, with two coal seams of fifteen inches each. Rominger called the coal rich and fairly free of sulphur, but the seams too thin to mine at a profit, and he wrote that several companies had tried and quit. A 307-foot boring near the railroad at Owosso hit a vein at about one hundred and eighty feet that was too thin to be worth anything.
Rominger also visited the two mines a mile or two east of Corunna. The northern one was abandoned when he saw it; the other, in a bend of the river, was working, and an oblique drift led down to its bottom, eighty feet below the surface. He judged the coal bituminous and of the same character as Jackson coal.
Six miles north of Owosso, near the mouth of Six-Mile Creek, a fifteen-inch bed lay under a black limestone, and people took coal from the river-bed when the water ran very low. Some parties sank an experimental shaft about thirty feet and drilled on to one hundred feet. The landowner, Mr. Ott, told Rominger the boring passed four coal beds totaling eleven feet. Rominger thought the record doubtful, noting that the men left after reaching one hundred feet and never came back.
The book adds that borings were made around the county over the years, some for brine to make salt, some for coal, and some for both, and that none had repaid the cost so far as was known. The best known was a hole one thousand and one feet deep on section 5 of Owosso township, put down by George Collier. Rominger also traced the coal-measures in the bed of the Shiawassee below Owosso as far down as St. Charles.
Test holes across the line in Clinton County
The same volume covers Clinton County, and its borings tell a similar story. A boring at Eagle in 1873 passed a thin vein and then a coal bed of thirty-six inches. At Ovid, on the county's east line, an 1878 boring found a vein about one foot thick at fifty-eight feet. A hole in Duplain the same year, not drilled for coal, went one hundred and sixty-seven feet without finding any. Rominger also described a fifteen-inch seam in the Grand River bluffs near Grand Ledge, good enough for blacksmiths, that was taken out now and then by men quarrying the sandstone above it.
Finding your ancestor in Shiawassee 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 History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties, Michigan hold hundreds of family sketches.
- Newspapers on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America carried obituaries, accidents, and local news.
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Ask about my family →Frequently asked questions
Who first found coal in Shiawassee County?
The 1880 history credits Alexander McArthur, who in 1839 found coal on his land on the bank of Coal Creek, in the southeast quarter of section 22 near Corunna. He sold it in small amounts, mostly to blacksmiths, delivered onto their wagons at ten cents a bushel.
Where did the Corunna coal miners come from?
According to the 1880 history, local men were unfamiliar with mining, so the Corunna Coal Company hired nearly one hundred laborers from Ohio, seventy-five of them skilled miners. The company's owners were also Ohio men from Akron and Youngstown. The book does not name individual miners.
How much coal did the Corunna mine produce?
The 1880 history says the Corunna Coal Company mined from seventy-five to one hundred tons a day from a vein two feet three inches to three feet nine inches thick, though the higher figure was rarely reached in summer.
Was coal mined at Owosso?
Yes, briefly. A shaft was sunk at Owosso in 1857 or 1858 for the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad Company on Judge Comstock's land. The State geologist found two fifteen-inch seams, too thin to mine at a profit, and wrote that several companies tried and gave up.
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