The 1888 Biographical and Historical Record of Vermillion County, Indiana gives mining only a few pages, but they are specific. It describes coal under most of the county, an iron furnace in Clinton Township that ran from 1837 to 1864, and one large new coal operation: the Norton Creek Coal Mines on the Clinton and Helt township line, with a company village called Geneva and an average of 300 men at work by the winter of 1887 to 1888.
Written from Biographical and Historical Record of Vermillion County, Indiana (1888). 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.
Coal under nearly the whole county
The book's geology chapter says the "coal measures" were the only rock formations found in Vermillion County, and that the uppermost vein of coal lay under just a few feet of soil. At the Horseshoe of the Little Vermillion it recorded a section showing two coal beds: an upper one two and a half to four feet thick and a lower one four to five feet thick, with fire-clay, shale and a thin clayey limestone between them.
The 1888 history judged that good coal underlay most of the surface of the county and was then mined "abundantly at various points." It offered eight feet of total thickness as a conservative estimate for the coal under every square mile. There were exceptions. Wells sunk below the limestone at Perrysville to a reported depth of ninety feet were said to have found no coal, though the book allowed that coal might be found nearby because the strata dipped irregularly.
For the wider picture the book leaned on Professor Edward T. Cox, appointed State Geologist in 1869. Cox put Indiana's coal measures at 6,500 square miles in the southwestern part of the state, running 150 miles from Warren County to the Ohio River, and Vermillion is on his list of coal counties. All of it was bituminous, and he placed the caking coal, in seams of three to eleven feet, in the western part of the field. The book's state figures for 1884 give Indiana's coal output that year as 1,722,089 tons.
Iron first: the Indiana Furnace, 1837 to 1864
The book's first mining story is iron. The county's ore was an impure carbonate found in nodules and bands; nodules supplied to a furnace on Brouillet's Creek yielded thirty-three per cent iron, and the county's ore ran from twenty-five to forty-five per cent. The opening of the iron mines and the building of the Indiana Furnace, in section 27, township 14, range 10, Clinton Township, began in 1837, and by 1839 the furnace was in full blast.
Stephen P. Uncles was chief owner and superintendent, with Hugh Stuart and Chester Clark as partners under the name Uncles & Co. The works later passed to Stuart & Sprague, then to E. M. Bruce & Co., the "Co." being David Sinton. In 1859 George B. Sparks, later of Clinton, bought a controlling interest, and G. B. Sparks & Co. kept the business going until 1864. The furnace turned out castings, largely stoves, and pig iron in large quantities.
The company office, a large general supply store and a score or two of cabins made up a village of its own. Captain John Lindsey, superintendent for many years, told the compilers that of the hundreds of men employed, all but one, a pattern-maker, voted the Democratic ticket, and joked that no one else could get work there. The place was well enough known in 1854 that the county treasurer, William Utter, advertised a tax-collecting stop at "Indiana Furnace" on January 10. By 1888 its 1,700 acres belonged to Sparks and were farmed; the book says all that marked the site was debris of rotting and rusting machinery and one or two log cabins.
“The company's office and large general supply store, and a score or two of cabins of more or less pretensions, made quite a village.”
Railroads open the coal
The 1888 history ties the coal mines directly to the railroads. Since the railroads came, it says, many large coal mines had been opened and worked, though some had been wholly or partly abandoned, either because of competition elsewhere in the country or because better mines were found nearby. Clinton, laid out in 1824 by William Harris and named for DeWitt Clinton of New York, grew slowly until the railroad was assured about 1868. By 1888 it was the largest town in the county, with a population the book could only estimate at 1,200 to 1,800.
The post office list helps place the railroad towns. Hillsdale, in Helt Township, sat at the crossing of the C. & E. I. and the I., D. & S. railroads. Cayuga, in Eugene Township, sat at the crossing of the C. & E. I. and the T., St. L. & K. Cayuga was brand new: Dr. Edward A. Flaugher moved his office there in October 1884, "being the first settler," opened its pioneer drug and grocery store, and became postmaster in March 1886. The book does not connect either town to coal.
The Norton Creek Coal Mines and Geneva
The one coal operation the book describes in detail is the Norton Creek Coal Mines, on section 5 of Clinton Township and section 32 of Helt Township, right on the township line. Development began in December 1884, with F. A. Bowen as proprietor and Charles P. Walker of Clinton as superintendent and manager. In the spring of 1885 the Norton Creek Coal Mining Company was organized under the laws of Wisconsin, with $40,000 in paid-up capital and its general office in Milwaukee. H. M. Benjamin of Milwaukee was president, and Walker was superintendent, treasurer and general agent for Indiana.
The property took in 255 acres. The mines lay about two and a half miles west of the Eastern Illinois Railroad and were tied to it by a spur track. The company also owned the old Briar Hill mines in Clinton Township, which were not being worked in 1888 but still had eleven company houses occupied by employees.
On the southeast part of section 5 the company built its large store and local office, which with twenty-seven tenement houses made up a village called Geneva, named for Walker's daughter. Walker's own biography places Geneva two and a half miles northwest of Clinton and says it was named for his second daughter. More tenement houses stood near the mines, all occupied by company employees. Coal sales in 1886 reached $160,000, and the company store took in $42,000 more. Crediting the excellent quality of the coal, the book reported an average working force of 300 men starting with the winter of 1887 to 1888.
“The business is increasing, owing to the excellent quality of coal produced.”
Charles P. Walker, the man in charge
Walker was a native of Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, Christopher Walker, was a merchant there and later at Connorsville and Logansport, Indiana, went into railroad work, and at his death in Chicago in January 1869 was treasurer of the Chicago & Great Eastern, later known as the Pan-Handle Railroad. The son started as a clerk in that railroad treasurer's office under his father.
Walker had lived in Clinton since the spring of 1874 and, the sketch says, had been engaged in coal production the whole time he lived in the county. He married Jennie Sammis, a native of Brooklyn, New York, at Logansport in 1872. Of their five children three were living in 1888: Nettie, Geneva and Charles P. Two others died young, one in her third year and one in infancy. He belonged to both the Masonic and Odd Fellows orders.
Finding coal families in the 1888 book
The book is thin on the miners themselves. It never names the 300 men at Norton Creek, says nothing about where they came from, and gives no wages, strikes or accidents. What it does show is that company employees filled the houses at Geneva, near the mines and at Briar Hill, and that the company ran its own store, so for a family that turns up in Clinton or Helt township in the late 1880s, the Norton Creek company is a natural lead.
Individual sketches add a few threads. One Clinton Township man named Martin (his first name is not legible in our copy) lived on section 22 and was "engaged in farming and coal mining" on his forty acres. He married Hannah Norton on February 14, 1850; she was born in Fayette County, Ohio, on April 25, 1829, and came to the county with her parents in 1848 before they moved across the line to Edgar County, Illinois. Clinton's lodges, such as Jerusalem Lodge No. 99 of the Masons, are another place to look; Walker himself was a Mason and an Odd Fellow. And the book's Perrysville poet, Dr. E. T. Spotswood, signed one dialect piece from "Coal Branch Hollow."
Finding your ancestor in Vermillion 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 Indiana database by surname.
- The county histories themselves: the biographical sections of Biographical and Historical Record of Vermillion County, Indiana 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
Where were the Norton Creek Coal Mines in Vermillion County, Indiana?
The 1888 county history places them on the line between Clinton and Helt townships, on section 5 of Clinton Township and section 32 of Helt Township. They were about two and a half miles west of the Eastern Illinois Railroad and connected to it by a spur track. Development began in December 1884.
What was Geneva in Vermillion County?
Geneva was the company village of the Norton Creek Coal Mining Company, on the southeast part of section 5, Clinton Township, about two and a half miles northwest of Clinton. It had the company store, the local office and twenty-seven tenement houses, and was named for a daughter of superintendent Charles P. Walker.
How many men worked in the Vermillion County coal mines in 1888?
The book gives a figure only for the Norton Creek company: an average working force of 300 men starting with the winter of 1887 to 1888. It says many other large mines had opened since the railroads came, some later abandoned, but it gives no count of their workers.
What was the Indiana Furnace?
It was an iron works in section 27, township 14, range 10, Clinton Township. Iron mining and furnace building began in 1837, and the furnace was in full blast by 1839 under Stephen P. Uncles. It made stoves, other castings and pig iron, and ran under several owners until 1864.