De Witt County, Illinois - Chapter 4, 1882

j)vs.*^^^y EOLOGISTS have studied closely the strata r^ £J f^^ beneath the earth's surface, and evolved thereby knowledge that is rapidly taking its place among the exact sciences. I'pheavals of nature haje here and there arranged these strata like the leaves of a book, inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees, to be read by close observers, who have thereon indulged much speculation regarding the age of the earth, and attempted to assign to natural causes, reaching through almost incalculable stretches of time, their presence. These observations have been rewarded by a general acceptance of a classification of these strata, such as appears in the text-books of Geoloo-y of to-day. Here in De Witt county researches have not been made beyond the Quarternary, or uppermost stratum, save at one point, where the carboniferous system has, by boring, been penetrated, simply establishing a fact, patent to all geologists, that this county is underlaid with a wealth of coal which only demands capital and pluck in its exhumation to make its mining one of the great industries of her people. There are represented in Illinois the Quarternary, Tertiary, Carboniferous, Devonian, and Silurian systems. Beneath them may, and, if generally accepted theories be true, must be formations of other systems antedating these. Nature's terrible throes by earthquake or volcanic action have spared the empire State of the VaUey, so that her prairies spread out in beautiful repose, uninterrupted by unsightly masses of representations of long-past ages.

The Quarternary, or uppermost stratum, is possessed of greater economical value than all other formations combined, thus evidencing the wisdom of the Creator in His preparation of the earth for the habitation of man. It comprises the drift and all deposits above it, of whatever quality the soil may be. In scientific terms, it includes the alluvium, bottom prairie, blufi', drift of various thicknesses, which crop out here and there upon the surface. All those deposits which have been formed since the inauguration of the present order of things, might be appropriately classified under the head of Alluvium, as it embraces soils, pebbles and sand, clays, vegetable mold, all of which are found in De Witt county. Soils are a well-known mixture of various comminuted and decomposed mineral substances, combined and mingled with decayed vegetable and animal remains, and composing those ingredients so well adapted to the nourishment of the vegetable kingdom. They are formed by the action of water in form of rain or dew ; by atmospheric changes of heat and cold ; by decay of vegetable and animal matter. Those of this county are very deep and exceedingly productive. The vegetable kingdom has contributed largely to their formation. The luxuriant growth of prairie grass, high as a man's head riding horseback (as the old settlers are wont to say), dying with the touch of frost each autumn to form a thin layer of vegetable mold, or, being burned by the raging fires of the hazy Indian summer-time to add their mite of alkali, has contributed untold wealth to the fertility of the soil. Here and there, over this county, are clay formations cropping out upon the surface, kindly inviting the hand of industry to transform their barrenness into tile and brick, and thus contribute to the general good. Immediately underneath are evidences of the aqueous agencies in pebble and formative sand rock measures, only waiting to become useful in various ways that man's inventive genius has devised. Upon the surface everywhere, over the count}', are the monuments to the existence of a glacial period, in form of great boulders, composed of quartz, feldspar, mica, and hornblend. We look upon these massive rocks, and note nothing in common with the formations surrounding them. Bedded in the virgin prairie soil, poised upon its surface, their composition declares them of diU'ercnt origin from other rock, and the abrasions upon their surface, sometimes in deep longitudinal grooves, oftentimes well rounded in general outline, declare in plain words a long journey thitherward. Scientists have critically examined them. Evidently ihe storms of centuries have beaten upon them where they stand, and the hand of time has broken many a fragment and piled them at their bases, as if to number the years of their being. Speculations have been indulged as to their mighty journeyings from the far-ofl' North land during an age.when Manitoba waves would have been hailed as the breath of spring-time ; an age when animal and vegetable existence were alike impossible. Borne on before the resistless power of slowly-moving glaciers or icebergs, they wore dropped here and there on far-stretching prairies, or carried on to the very tops of mountains, like those of Missouri, where their piled up confusion leads to the idea of a battle-field of the gods. Who can number the ages that have rolled away since it paused in its course, or measure the time of its journey ? or who assays to count the time it occupied its place in the parent ledge before the glacier or iceberg wrenched it from its place and bore it away ? Did the hardy pioneers, as they utilized these boulders as burn-stones in their primitive mills, think that they spoke of an age when this world, which now rolls on in glorious sunlight, was enveloped in mighty avalanches of ice, being borne on^vard by centrifugal force from the poles to the equator ? And yet such is the accepted theory as to their presence. Some of the larger stand like silent sentinels iu the very heart of fine rolling prairies; others, again, are almost wholly embedded. Edom Shugart, when he built the first mill erected in this county, on Kickapoo creek, used one of these boulders, about two and a half feet in diameter, as a burr-stone, and on trial ground thirty bushels of corn in two hours. The second one thus utilized was by Henderson, when he constructed a horse-mill, in Tunbridge township, in the year 1830. In fact, the sole dependence of the early pioneers were these same " prairie dornicks," as they denominated these monuments to an age of more than arctic frigidity.

The prairies themselves, stretching out in their beauty, - nay, iu silent grandeur, - have invited man's genius to assign to natural cause their origin, and declare the years of their formation. Much scientific discussion has been indulged respecting them. Prof. Leo Lesquereux, in report of the State Geologist of Illinois, asserts that they, with their peculiar surface soil, owe their origin to the same causes that are at present operating to form prairies, though on a less extensive scale. The black, rich soil is doubtless, he says, due to the growth and decay of successive crops of vegetation, which, in the geological ages of the past, under a far higher temperature and more favorable atmospheric conditions than now exi.st, grew to an extent unknown since the appearance of man upon the earth. These prodigious crops of plants and grasses were from year to year submerged, and becoming decomposed, contributed their annual accumulations to the surface of the country. By the continuation of this process for untold centuries, and by the subsequent recession of the waters that once covered the eutire Mississippi Valley, a black, mucky soil was formed, and the whole regiou emerged as vast swamps or swales interspersed with hills and valleys, mountains and table-lands. These, by gradual growth, became outlined in prairies.

Other authority claims their formation to have been much more recent and less dependent upon aqueous action ; that the annual growth of plant-life as everwhere exhibited on these level plains, would, iu a comparatively few centuries of time, produce the depth of soil presented by our prairies. In corroboration of their theory, they would cite you to the fact that, underlying these prairies, are deposits of sand pebbles, and in places large stones, whose surfaces have been abraded by action of water, and further, that imprinted upon these rocks, and imbedded in these gravel pits, are animal remains, Molluscs especially, of the class denominated Acephals, embracing the orders Bryozoa, Brachiopods, Tunicata, and Samellibranchiates. The writer has, in a cursory examination of a gravel pit passed through by the Wabash Branch Railroad, in Creek township, found Brachiopods, well defined, as well as Samellibranchiates. It may be well to define ihese terms, to make his meaning yet clearer. The Brachiopods comprise those bivalve moluscs whose two valves are never equal, but are always equal sided ; they grow attached to submarine bodies. Samellibranchiates are lho.se molluscs which have gills in lamella;. To this class belong the oyster, fresh water and marine clams, and the like. Unquestionably these formations are indicative of a vast sea, extending throughout the length and breadth of the great Mississippi Valley. Whether the more recent deposits were the beginnings of the prairie soils or not, is a matter of conjecture, and yet undecided by scientists. In places, these gravel beds are surmounted with great masses of sand, whioh crop out upon the very surface, like that on the farm of Benjamin Mitchell, about two miles south-east of Clinton ; then again they are beneath a deep subsoil of clay, on which, in turn, rests the prairie soil. In places they are only reached after penetrating a bed of quicksand, or by passing through a cavernous structure that may be a subterranean lake. In support of this assertion we have but to present a few facts. In boring for water on the farm of Benjamin Miller, on section 31 in Creek township, after attaining a depth of sixty-eight feet, the auger fell from its attachments through several feet of space ; water, together with gas, rushed up to within a few feet of the surface, and since then the well has affl^rded a never-failing supply of pure water. The noise made by the fall of the auger was distinctly heard at the house some hundred yards from the barn.

where the boring was done. Again, anywhere in the vicinity of Kenney, this lake of water, if lalie it be, can be tapped at a depth of from eighteen to twenty feet, after reaching tlie clay subsoil which forms the base of the prairie soil. In reaching this subterranean lake, there is passed through about six feet of clay, or hard pan, then twelve feet of grave!, which forms a roofing over the water. The depth of the water varies greatly. The supply is simply inexhaustible. During the driest time of 1881 no diminution in the supply was discernable. Again, in Farmer City, though at a much greater depth, the same conditions obtain. In the vicinity of Clinton, it is-asserted, the same underground stream or lake has been penetrated. That it is simply a stream cannot be true, since it has been tapped at so many points, and that, too, in so many points of the compass. As indicative of its extensiveness, it may be stated that at Macon, in Macon county, on the 28th of October, 1881, two young men lost their lives, by reaching this lake, in digging a well, at a depth of one hundred and twenty feet. As recorded in a Decatur paper, "Fred Wilde and William Kalips were engaged in sinking a well. At the depth of one hundred and twenty feet the bottom seemed to fall from under them, and a rushing sound, as of mighty waters, was heard beneath them. They seized the bucket and gave the alarm, and were being drawn up, when the gas arising from the auful chasm cau.sed them to swoon and fall from the bucket." Water arose in this well, and remains stationary at a depth of about forty feet. Thus it will be seen that an underground. cavern, at least, extends under much of this part of the State; that in the vicinity of Kenney it becomes an extensive reservoir of water is certain. What is remarkable, is the fact that the roofing is made up of gravel and sand, - not solid sand rock, but sandstone in a formative state. Elsewhere, where underground passages or caves exist, the roofing is of limestone, and their presence as vast fissures is accounted for from natural causes. Not so hei-e. The existence of any opening below gravel or sand is an anomaly. The causes of its existence is a nut for the geologist to crack.

To follow up and read aright the strata that have been penetrated and are set forth elsewhere in this chapter would be of interest. To note the fossiliferous forms unearthed, and classify them as zoology would require, or the plant impressions, and arrange as botany would dictate, would be a pleasure - would carry one back into the vast eternity of the past, an eternity as vast and as incomprehensible to the mind as the eternity of the future. No mathematician can compute the years since coal, the stored-up sunshine and heat evolver for the coming ages, was a vigorous plant-life, reveling in an atmosphere to surcharged with carbon as to be incapable of sustaining other form of existence; and yet the coal measures would carry our feeble conceptions back to such an age. The testimony of the rocks beneath our feet, when recognized as things of growth, astound as they encourage us to further research. When the earth was encompassed in an air of carbon, doubtless the Creator could have rolled it together and brought about its destruction ; but it was to be fitted for beings endowed with reason - for immortal souls, as a home, hence it pleased Him to store away deep beneath the rolling waters that left the sediment of ages upon it, this wondrous plant-life that in turn comes forth as coal. It has been aptly said, that " coal is to the world of industry what the sun is to the natural world, the great source of light and heat, with their innumerable benefits." It furnishes the power that evolved the spirit of steam from water, which in turn propels the machinery run in the world's material interests; it weds the rough, uncouth ores of the mountains to the various arts devised by man's genius ; it renders the cold, cheerless winter such aid as dispels its gloom. Is it then surprising that such sums as have been expended in its search have been employed ? In De Witt county everything known geologically points to and indicates its presence.

At Farmer City a coal shaft was sunk a depth of 163 feet, passing through clays, gravel and quick-sand, seemingly a continuation of the subterranean passage elsewhere spoken of, and which was insufficiently guarded against by the use of heavy planks, which breaking away, inundated the shaft completely. After reaching the depth of 163 feet, the projectors were determined on finding the depth to the underlying coal-fields, by boring, which they prosecuted to the further depth of 476 feet 11 inches, through the following strata and formations:

Thus bv this boring only two veins of coal were penetrated, neither of which was of sufficient thickness to warrant its mining. The roofing over the second is described as soap-stone, with a thin layer of bituminous shale. The use of the term soap-stone in this record is unfortunate, since it is quite indefinite, and may be any of the many varieties of shale. The writer cannot secure terms more definite, save in two or three cases where from descriptions extended him, he has substituted more appropriate terms. A study of interest would be the age of these formations. Those of coal can be computed more accurately than any othe 3. It has been calculated that thirty feet of vegetable matter would be required to form one foot of coal. If so, the two veins passed through in this boring would indicate a depth of ninety feet of vegetable matter. To accomplish even this

To the south-west and north the coal mining is carried on as an industry of profit. At Decatur coal is mined at a depth of six hundred and eight feet. In reaching this no less than five different strata of coal were passed through. May not two of these be identical with those penetrated at Farmer City ? An analysis of the record kept at Decatur may aid in determining this question. A record is subjoined :

Thus coal was found at a depth of two hundred and ninety feet ; that at Farmer City at a depth of two hundred and twenty-nine feet. Pursuing this inquiry as shown by the record, find :

The vein is now being worked producing coal of a superior quality. At a depth of five huudred and eighty feet, a veiu of salt water was struck, which proved almost artesian, since in a single night it rose to the height of five hundred feet. Singular to relate, in sinking the shaft, it was not encountered.

Thus it will be seen that it is more than possible that the coal veins penetrated at Farmer City, and those at Decatur, are the same. The inference .to be drawn is, go deeper, and not only so, but the jjrobable depth is easily reckoned.

Tile Making. - This is an industry carried on quite extensively in this county, as the following exhibit of manufactories devoted to such work will show :

In Waynesville township, two factories, owned and operated by E. Davenport ; capacity, 200,000 feet per annum ; and by D. Atchison, with capacity for making 300,000 feet per annum.

Thus the aggregate capacity of these works reaches over twe and-a-half million feet per annum. During the past year quite that amount was manufactured here, most of which is dispoosd of at home.

Thus far the demand far exceeds the supply. The coming year will witness extensive additions to the works already in working order to meet this demand.

Natural Curiosities. - The field of the Geologist is wide. It not only reaches down through the evidences of past ages, but takes care of surface wonders as well. In De-Witt county, curiosities coming within its domain are scarce, but perhaps worthy a mention. On section 11, T. 19 R 4, there was found, a few years ago, a petrifaction, remarkable from the fact that it is of quite recent formation. It bears evidences of having been chopped with an axe, and was probably used as a pillar to one of the cabins of a pioneer. What should have caused a piece of timber to thus change from woody fibre to solid rock can only be conjectured. Nature's silent chemists are ever busy, and in her vast repository are re-arranging crystalline forms, thereby giving us new materials. Carbon, a heavy, deadly gas, subjected to a re-determination of its particles, presents us the useful charcoal, or changed again gives us the brilliant diamond ; so too, what is wood to-day, through a mysterious law of nature,

Economical Geology. - From the foregoing brief resume of has been accomplished in the way of geologic exploration in this county, it is readily seen that only the A. B. C. of what is in store has been made manifest. Sand, various kiuds of clays, gravel, have been used, aud coal has been found, although as yet not in workable quantity. That the time is not far distant when it will be is quite certain. The first utilized rocks were the prairie boulders in the construction of mill-stones, a use long since abandoned before the introduction of superior burrstone rock from other sections of the country. The second substance to be used in home arts was sand from various quarries. Sand of a superior quality has been an article of shipment from Mitchell's bank for years. The third article availed of, was clay in the manufacture of brick, aud then succeeded that in the making of tile. It has been demonstrated that tiling proves beneficial, not alone to swampy, mucky soil, but to high or rolling prairie as well, hence the conclusion that its use is yet in its infancy - that tile manufacturing may be numbered among the standard industries. Potter's clay has been found, but no use as yet has been made of it. The vast gravel beds underlying the greater portion of the county, in many places quite near the surface, and of great depth, will be utilized io the construction of roadways. There is no reason that the deep, mucky, miserable roads throughout this county could not be exchanged for gravel ways, excelled only by the shall-roals of the South Count the cost of making roads as they now are, together with the annual expenditure necessary to keep them in repair for a period of twenty years, then balance against this outlay that necessary in taking out and hauling this gravel upon them, and thus making highways both durable and inviting, and the balance will be in favor of the gravel roads from a financial stand-point.

From a stand-point of comfort no comparison can be instituted. The most impsrtant of all minerals underlying this county is coal. Its mineries will, in the near future, be compassed. Its depth is a grave consideration ; the passage through and walling against the subterranean waters graver. The required engineering skill will be forthcoming in the near future here, as it has when equal, if not greater disadvantages existed. Lastly, in this summing up of a word with reference to the surface soil. Can its fertility be exhausted? Does the farmer raise less corn or wheat to the acre now than when the first furrows were made across the bosom of these prairies ?

The presence of ulniic acid in great quantities in this soil tends to preserve the elements of its fertility' The impermeability of the clayey sub-soil has prevented the escape of these elements, otherwise the surface-soil would be lighter in character, and practically worthless for agricultural purposes. Further than this, the sub-soil itself is a vast repository, as has been practically demonstrated, of the very elements silica, lime, alumina, and ammonia, needed as fertilizers, hence deep plowing will tend to maintain the soil's great fertility. Here too is one of the advantages accruing from tiling the laud. In laying the tile the sub-soil is disturbed, part of it is spread upon the surface, and its good effects are noticeable wherever used.