Plymouth, Pennsylvania sits on the west side of Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley, wedged between the Susquehanna River and the Shawnee Mountain range. Just below the mountain are hills that surround the town and form a natural amphitheater that separates the town from the rest of the valley. Below the hills, the flat lands are formed in the shape of a frying pan, the pan being the Shawnee flats, once the center of the town's agricultural activities, and the handle being a spit of narrow land extending east from the flats, where the center of town is located. At the beginning of the 19th century, Plymouth's primary industry was agriculture. However, vast anthracite coal beds lay below the surface at various depths, and by the 1850s, coal mining had become the town's primary occupation.
Coal mining in Plymouth, Pennsylvania
The Smith Coal Mines
About 1806, Abijah Smith came to Plymouth from Derby, Connecticut, intending to mine, ship, and sell coal. Smith and Lewis Hepburn, his business partner, bought a 75-acre plot (Lots 45 and 46 on the Plymouth Township Warranty Map) on the east side of Coal Creek, and in the fall of 1807, Smith floated an ark down the Susquehanna River loaded with about fifty tons of anthracite coal, shipping it to Columbia in Lancaster County. The significance of Smith's shipment went unnoticed until 1873, when Hendrick B. Wright wrote in his Historical Sketches of Plymouth:
"Anthracite coal had been used before 1807, in this valley and elsewhere, in small quantities in furnaces, with an air blast; but the traffic in coal as an article of general use, was commenced by Abijah Smith, of Plymouth."
Beginning with the fifty tons of coal shipped by Abijah Smith in 1807, Plymouth's and the Wyoming Valley's coal industry grew steadily. In 1830, the Baltimore Patriot reported that "... a greater quantity of Anthracite Coal has been sent down the Susquehanna this Spring than in any former season. The Baltimore Company have sent three thousand tons, and from other mines about seven thousand tons were dispatched, making an aggregate of ten thousand tons."Baltimore Patriot, May 12, 1830.
The North Branch Canal
As late as the 1840s, whenever high water allowed, coal from Wyoming Valley's coal mines was shipped down the Susquehanna River on wooden arks. But by the end of 1830, canal boats began to replace arks as the preferred method of transporting coal and other goods to market. In 1826, the Pennsylvania Board of Canal Commissioners engaged John Bennett to survey the route of a new canal, to be called the North Branch Canal, to run alongside the north branch (the main branch) of the Susquehanna River from Northumberland to the New York border. In early 1827, Bennet reported that the canal was feasible, and in 1828, the state legislature authorized funds for construction. Charles T. Whippo—who had worked on the construction of the Erie Canal—was engaged to survey the route and supervise construction. The southern portion of the canal, as built, ran for along the west side of the river, from Northumberland to West Nanticoke, where a dam was built to divert water from the river into the canal. The work was generally complete by the fall of 1830. The first load of coal shipped on the canal from Wyoming Valley reached Berwick in October..
The canal was a boon to Plymouth's coal operators—who in 1830 included John Smith, Freeman Thomas, Henderson Gaylord, and Thomas Borbidge—and it encouraged others—such as Jameson Harvey and Jacob Gould—to open mines. Smith's teamsters led teams of horses deep into his mine, turned the team, loaded the wagon and then drove the team to the river bank to load the coal into canal boats. Gaylord—whose mine at the time was a tunnel at the base of Welsh Hill—improved on this method and built a gravity railroad that ran along what is now Walnut Street, down what is now Gaylord Avenue, to his wharf on the river.Samuel Livingston French, Reminiscences of Plymouth, Luzerne County, Penna. (New York: Lotus Press, 1915). A similar road, called the Swetland Railroad, ran from a mine tunnel in Poke Hollow adjacent to Gaylord's, down a route which later became Washington Avenue, across Bull Run to another wharf on the river. Freeman Thomas built a railroad from his Grand Tunnel mine to a chutehouse along the river near the entrance to the canal.
The early coal mines in Plymouth supported an ancillary industry: boat building. The arks used to transport goods on the river were built in a basin where Wadham's Creek entered the river. After the canal was built, the arks began to be replaced by flat-bottomed canal boats, built in the same basin with a distinctive design known as "Shawnee boats." Many of the town's young men became boatmen and were well known along the length of the canal for their distinctive call, "Shawnee against the World."
The Lackawanna & Bloomsburg Railroad
The 1858 Anthracite Map, prepared as part of the First Pennsylvania Geological Survey, illustrates Plymouth's mines and collieries at a moment of transition. The Lackawanna & Bloomsburg Railroad was largely completed and had begun to replace the North Branch Canal as the preferred method for shipping coal. In 1858, most mines in Plymouth were tunnels driven into the hillside above water level, with one exception: a shaft had been sunk in 1856 at the Patten Mine by experienced miners from England and Scotland. It was the first deep mine shaft in Plymouth and the first on the west side of the river—a harbinger of things to come. In 1858, all of Plymouth's mines were run by small local operators. This would soon change as large corporations, some affiliated with railroads, began to take control of much of the town's coal lands. The larger firms would be better able to handle labor disputes, and had the necessary capital to conduct deep shaft mining and operate the mines on a larger, more efficient scale.
The 1858 map (below), illustrates the path of the railroad. Several collieries appear at the west end of Plymouth, including the Harvey Mine, Grand Tunnel, Reynolds (Chauncey), French Tunnel (Jersey Mine), Reynolds (Washington Mine) and the Smith mine operation at the upper end of Coal Creek. The Wadhams mine appears along Wadhams Creek above Plymouth Village. A railroad branch line (Gaylord's Railroad) is shown running along Pine Swamp Creek (later Brown's Creek). One branch of this railroad crossed what later became Bull Run and led to a wharf along the Susquehanna River. Another branch railroad ran down to Henderson Gaylord's wharf, near what is now Gaylord Avenue. The Patten mine and Cooper mine (labeled as Galard) are shown along the creek. East of Plymouth village, John Shonk's colliery, called Rudmandale, appears where the Lance Colliery would later be, and above that, Shupp's Creek and Ross Hill are illustrated just before the Boston Mine was established.
Coal Mines in Plymouth, Pennsylvania
The Susquehanna Coal Company Mines
The Harvey Mine
Jameson Harvey was born in 1796, the son of Elisha Harvey and his wife, Rosanna Jameson. Harvey's farm, about , was located in Plymouth Township on the east side of the intersection of Harvey's Creek and the Susquehanna River. In 1832, he built a Federal-style farmhouse and barn, both of which still stand today greatly altered, on what is now McDonald Street. By 1830, probably inspired by his neighbor Freeman Thomas's Grand Tunnel coal mine, Harvey supplemented his farm income by constructing a coal tunnel. Perhaps learning from Thomas's experience, Harvey's tunnel was higher up the hill, and thus a shorter distance from the coal beds. Later, Harvey constructed one of Plymouth's first coal breakers. His mine was closer than any other to the Nanticoke Dam and the entrance to the North Branch Canal, and when the railroad arrived, it ran right across Harvey's property. These geographical advantages helped make the mine a very successful venture. In 1869, Harvey moved to Wilkes-Barre, and in 1871, he sold his coal lands to the Susquehanna Coal Co., which merged Harvey's mine with the Grand Tunnel into a new operation called the Susquehanna Coal Co. Colliery No. 3.E.O. Jameson, The Jamesons in America, 1647–1900 (Boston: The Rumford Press, 1901).
The Grand Tunnel
Freeman Thomas was an early land owner in Plymouth. In 1809, he acquired several patents for lots in the lower end of the township, calling his estate "Harmony", better known in later years as the "Grand Tunnel". About 1828, Thomas began to dig a tunnel through solid rock into the hillside, hoping to reach the famed Red Ash coal vein.Hendrick B. Wright, Historical Sketches of Plymouth, Luzerne Co., Penna. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: T.B. Peterson & Brothers, 1873). He must have succeeded by 1834, for on the 6th of August that year, he petitioned the courts for the right to build a gravity railroad from his tunnel to a chute house along the Susquehanna River just above the Nanticoke Dam.P. Frazer Smith, Pennsylvania State Reports, vol. LV (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Kay & Brother, 1868). The private railroad allowed Thomas to ship his coal to the iron forges in Danbury and to other points south via the newly built North Branch Canal. Thomas died in 1847, and in 1852, William L. Lance, Sr. became a tenant of Thomas's children, and the mine called "Lance's Grand Tunnel." Lance operated the mine until 1856, when he assigned his lease to the Mammouth Vein Coal Co. In January 1860, Mammouth abandoned Thomas's chutehouse and built a new one adjacent to the recently built Lackawanna & Bloomsburg railroad. In 1866, the Grand Tunnel Coal Co. operated the mine,Samuel H. Daddow and Benjamin Bannan, Coal Iron and Oil (Pottsville, Pennsylvania: Benjamin Bannan, 1866). and in 1871, the New England Coal Co. operated the mine. In 1871, the Susquehanna Coal Company took control of the Grand Tunnel.Reports of the Inspectors of Coal Mines...for the year 1871 (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, 1872). By 1935, the Glen Alden Coal Co. operated the Grand Tunnel but in September that year they leased the mine to George F. Lee, owner of the adjacent Chauncey Colliery.The Wilkes-Barre Record, September 26, 1935, page 13.
Susquehanna Coal Co. No. 3 Colliery
In 1871, the Susquehanna Coal Company, owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, took control of both the Harvey Mine and the Grand Tunnel, although James Hutchison stayed on as mine boss. After a boiler explosion in 1871, the SCC took down the old Harvey breaker and on July 27, 1872 began operating a new one, considered to be one of the largest in the district. It was designed by Charles F. Ingram, a mining engineer from Wilkes-Barre, and built by James Linskill, a carpenter from Plymouth.Wilkes-Barre Daily, August 1, 1872, p.3.
The Chauncey Colliery
The Chauncey Colliery was located between the Grand Tunnel and the Avondale collieries. It was one of the few Plymouth collieries to remain independent of the large mining corporations. The mine was most likely named after Chauncey A. Reynolds of Plymouth, who was working at the site as early as 1831.Wilkes-Barre Weekly Times (Wilkes-Barre, PA), July 7, 1900, page 8, column 3. Reynolds was said to have driven the first tunnel,Samuel Robert Smith, The Black Trail of Anthracite (Kingston, Pennsylvania: S.R. Smith, 1907). although another source attributes the name to Thomas Chauncey James, a veteran of the War of 1812 and for a time the postmaster of the Grand Tunnel post office.Wilkes-Barre Record, May 17, 1901, page 8. The Chauncey was also known as the Union Mine, and from about 1861 to 1866 the Union Coal Co., in association with Charles Hutchison, operated the mine, working both a shaft and a slope. At the time, capacity was about 50,000 tons per year.