Perry County, Indiana - Chapter 10: Mining Developments of Coal Haven and Cannelton, 1916

As MANY of the pioneer settlers came into Indiana through Kentucky, so may an interesting parallel be drawn in observing that the earliest awakening to the real possibilities of the site which is now Cannelton came through Hav/esville, on the opposite side of the river; although coal mining on a small scale had been conducted among the hills of Troy Township by John Mason for several years before his efforts brought it to the serious notice of outside capitalists as affording favourable opportunities for profitable investment.

Somie time during the summer of 1835, General Setii Hunt, of Walpole, New Hampshire, a wealthy Eastern gentleman, who was passing up the Ohio River, observed while landing at Hawesville a heap of bituminous coal which, he learned upon enquiry, had been mined in Hancock County, near that village. With characteristic Yankee energy he delayed his journey long enough to lease from Mrs. Rebecca (Sterett) Lander a tract of land on the ancestral estate inherited from her father, the late Captain John Sterett, then proceeded home, where he immediately interested other New England men of means in the natural but undeveloped resources of a region which he regarded as most promising.

Samuel J. Gardner, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and James T. Hobart, of Boston, joined him in raising some $10,000, with which he returned to the Middle West, purchased from Mr. Cooper a tract of coal land also near Hav/esville, contracted for other lands at a price of about $50,000, to be paid for within a few months, employed hands and began mining. He sent to New Orleans many flatboat loads of coal, many of which encountered the misfortune of sinking on the way. Other cargoes, while sold at high prices, were never realized upon, General Hunt's agents decamping with the proceeds. The building of a saw-mill, at a cost of $10,000 proved a partial loss, and the purchase of a small steamboat was no more of a pecuniary success. The vessel met with countless mishaps, at length running aground upon a sandbar where it remained all summer, or until, in a fit of temper tried beyond endurance. General Hunt tore the boat to pieces as the ultimate cause of his financial disaster.

James T. Hobart had come in the meantime to this region, and after a thorough inspection, concluded that facilities for the production of coal were better on the Indiana side, so commenced preparations for work in Perry County. In the name of Gardner and Hobart, on October 30, 1836, he bought from Alney McLean and Tabitha McLean, his wife, three hundred and forty acres, lying in Sections 15 and 16, Township 7, South, Range 3, West, for $600. Part of the tract is within the present city limits of Cannelton, the corporation line following for some distance the north and south line between the two sections described.

During the next twelve months he appears to have procured the backing of additional Eastern capital, as, by an Act of the General Assembly of Indiana, on December 23, 1837, the American Cannel Coal Company came into existence, with a capital stock of $300,000, with liberty to increase the same to $500,000, should the company's business require it. James T. Hobart, Seth Hunt, Elijah Livermore, J. B. Russell, John D. W. Williams and their associates, successors and assigns, were named as incorporators, the object of the company being set forth as : "to mine stone coal at Coal Haven, Perry County, Indiana, and elsewhere ; to mine iron and other minerals; to manufacture iron, copperas and lumber ; to build steam- and flat-boats for the

In 1837 the company purchased from Gardner and Hobart, John D. W. Williams, Nicholas Hawley and others, 3,740 acres ; from James Cavender, early in the next year, 330 acres ; afterward 320 acres from Elijah Livermore ; and later 930 acres from other parties. By additional smaller purchases from time to time, the grand total amounted to 6,456 acres. In lapse of years, much of this naturally changed hands, (the company in every instance of sale retaining full mineral rights, with privilege of approach,) so that their acreage is now but a fraction of what it once was.

General Hunt, in 1839, exchanged his holdings in the company for the exclusive right to work the copperas interest of the mines, entering energetically into the new venture with all his remaining means. He erected costly apparatus on the hillside, near the head of the stream which for many years flowed down Washington Street in Cannelton, sending to New York for a cement that was warranted to resist the action of copperas water. It took him about a year to complete his copperas factory, and meanwhile he perfected arrangements to manufacture quercitron bark from the chestnut oak, of which he made a small quantity. At the first trial his guaranteed cement utterly refused to perform its promises, other important details were a complete failure, and General Hunt, reduced to his last dollar and much broken in zeal, went back East to return no more. In 1846 he was found dead in his chair at Walpole, leaving to his heirs only the exclusive right to manufacture copperas at Cannelton, a privilege still vested but never claimed.

Extensive operations were planned by the general agent, James T. Hobart, who began by laying off and fencing small tracts of arable land on which were erected rude log houses to be rented by miners, lumbermen and labourers, so that within a few months the population of Coal Haven comprised a dozen families.

Several mines were opened, the principal one being in the hill to the rear of where now stands the parochial school house built in 1915 for the Benedictine Sisters connected with St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church.

From this a tram-way, designed by John Mason, led in a westerly direction to the river bank at a point now occupied by the Southern Railway station, and along its rails the coal was conveyed in crude cars, or carts, to a tip from which it was dumped upon a large floating platform. Here a large painted sign called attention of passing steamboats to the new fuel, lauding its cheapness and extolling its merits as a steam producer. The first quantities taken on trial were small, and increased but slowly, though steadily ; yet for some years the sale of wood was also maintained, being kept cut and corded on the shore, as most of the boats still used it. Near the head of what is now Taylor Street, besides near Sulphur Spring, other mines were opened, from which coal was hauled in wagons to the wharf.

Two saw-mills were started ; one below the coal-slide, the other above, nearer the north bank of Casselberry Creek, at a point now the corner of Taylor Street and occupied by a tennis-court of velvet turf in the private grounds of E. Curtis Clark. A brick yard was also started by the company, but was shortly abandoned, a small grist-mill proving more successful.

Late in 1838 a large frame hotel was erected and leased to John Wentworth, the earliest boniface of the settlement, though his career as such was brief. Some time during the autumn of 1839 a fire broke out, against which there was no protection, so that hotel, stores, mills and residences were practically all swept away. Only the copperas factory which General Hunt had just deserted, escaped, its buildings, vats, troughs, etc., remaining until blown down by a high wind at a date some twelve years afterward.

General Hunt's departure was so quickly followed by the fire and the exodus of workmen whom it rendered homeless, that Coal Haven's annihilation seemed certain. The financial losses of the company had crippled their enthusiasm, and the spring of 1840 found weeds starting a rank growth in the deserted village. But four families continued to reside in its vicinity, - John Mason, James Cavender, James Hoskinson, John Wentworth, - and of these the first three had been residents prior to the company.

To the Hon. Francis Yates Carlile, of New Orleans, who arrived during the early summer of 1840, is due the renascence of Coal Haven, and his descendants may justly claim for him the distinction of having been the real founder of Cannelton, since his was the executive ability which placed upon an ultimately permanent basis the community which today exists as an enduring monument to his energy.

He was born about 1812 in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of William and Sarah (Yates) Carlile, both of whom died in his infancy, so he was reared by his maternal grandfather. Esquire Yates, of Salem, Massachusetts, who gave him the advantage of an education at Harvard. His great-grandfather, Thomas Carlile, had come from Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, and was a sterling patriot, appointed in 1777 as Captain of an Artillery Company in Providence, and reappointed in 1780.

After entering upon mining operations in Indiana Francis Y. Carlile habitually spent his winters in New Orleans, engaged in real estate, forwarding and commission business, meanwhile doing much in the field of journalism, a profession which he later followed, after leaving Cannelton, for several years in Evansville and Memphis, where he died February 16, 1866.

For thirty-five years he was survived by his widow, to whom he had been married, September, 1851, in New Orleans, Anna Louise Howard, of Matagorda, Texas, a daughter of Charles and Anna Walden (Blount) Howard, formerly of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Mrs. Howard was the granddaughter of Jacob Walden, who was on board the Ranger with

John Paul Jones and was by his side during his battle with the Drake. He also piloted Washington's army across the Delaware, and in Trumbull's celebrated painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware," Jacob Walden's is the figure next to that of Washington.

A gifted woman, intellectually her husband's peer, coming as a bride to join him in establishing their residence beside the Ohio River at the edge of the village he had created, Mrs. Carlile made "Elm Park" the earliest notably individual home in Cannelton. Three children were born to them - Francis Howard, Grace Lee (Mrs. Bolton-Smith) and Nathaniel Endicott, the two elder surviving as residents of Memphis.

An old print of the estate shows the mansion to have combined the characteristic Southern feature of a wide gallery surrounding the lower floor with many gables in the upper story, while the carriage-drive and ornamental planting bespeak a studied attention to landscape gardening, then everywhere in its infancy, though with the famous Downing as its American foster-father.

Some few of the old cedars outlived the dwelling itself, which was destroyed by fire during the 'seventies, after passing through several changes of ownership. A singular fatality has seemed thenceforward to overhang the place, three other houses on the site having been burned in succession, so the spot is now untenanted, its gardens a mere field, though a part of its osage orange hedge has grown to tree-like proportions.

February 27, 1841, Joseph B. Ball, then county surveyor by appointment, laid out a new town plat by order of the American Cannel Coal Company, 266 lots in all, comprising the central portion of the present city of Cannelton, in which have since been made only a few changes, such as widening the 16-foot alleys to 20 feet. It was thought that a new title might dispel the ill-luck of early Coal Haven, so from among Cannelsburg, Cannelton, Hobartsville, Huntsville and others suggested, the choice fell upon the first name, although Mr. Carlile's preference was for Cannelton and its use soon became general, so when a second survey was made, in 1844, on a larger scale, the name officially adopted was "Cannelton." This plat was recorded by Frederick Connor, of Troy, a grandson of Terence Connor, of Rome, and a cousin of Elias Rector, the pioneer surveyor under whom he had served the apprenticeship of his profession.

In 1843 James Boyd, a Scotch-Irishman of Boston, who had just become a stockholder in the company, erected a large store building on the river-front close to the north bank of Casselberry Creek, and somewhat later built his residence in the block below, between Taylor and Washington Streets ; a long, low structure which stood until the early 'seventies, shaded by a picturesque weeping willow tree harmonizing with its cottage type of architecture. This house is shown in a lithographic view of Cannelton, of which only one copy is known to exist, reproduced from a pencil drawing made about 1850-52, from the cliff back of Hawesville by a Louisville artist whose name is not preserved, although Captain Joseph W. Carlton, of Hawesville, who was a lad with him when he made the sketch, recalled the circumstance with perfect distinctness sixty years later.

The burning of Boyd's store by incendiarism led to an indictment for arson against William Ritchey, who was brought for trial before Judge Embree in Rome at the May term of court, 1844, James Lockhart as prosecutor represented the state, Samuel Ingle, of Evansville, appearing for the defendant, who received a twoyear sentence upon conviction. An appeal to the Supreme Court was taken by Ingle, on the ground that no value of the store burned had been alleged in the declaration. A reversal of decision was handed down, followed by a re-indictment and a second trial which resulted in Ritchey's acquittal.

of Taylor and Front Streets, another store v/as erected, of such durable material as to be practically fire-proof, its massive rock walls and slate roof - with the inscription "Built by James Boyd, 1844" deeply carved into the stone lintel of the central doorway - remaining a landmark along the river-front for three-score years, or long after its disuse as a business house. In 1904 the Cannelton Flouring Mills put up their modern fourstory manufacturing edifice on the Boyd corner and a portion of the original stonework is now comprised in the walls of their boiler room.

It is told that early religious worship was held in the Boyd building by the Methodist class which the Rev. Othniel A. Barnett had organized about 1838, with some twelve or fifteen members, among whom were William Knights and Lydia (Webb) Knights, Thomas Bristow and his sister-in-law, "Aunt Barbara" (Blocher) Mason, (whose first husband had been a Bristow,) long remembered as a most vigourous class-leader ; and Israel Lake and wife, at whose home in the river road the first services were conducted, before the log school house was used for meetings.

This school house stood near the first cemetery, close to the banks of Casselberry Creek as its course then ran, a few graves still remaining in the long neglected burying ground. The selection of such locality was decided, beyond question, by the fact that it was in fractional Section 16, which the law then arbitrarily set aside for school purposes, without the slightest regard for practical considerations of convenience. No names of the pioneer teachers have been preserved, and the schools had so little patronage from the miners as scarcely to deserve the title. James Boyd, by his personal effort and influence, did more than any other toward introducing Massachusetts ideals of education into early Cannelton, and through him a small frame structure was soon built on the school lot. The land later became the property of James Hoskinson when the school was removed elsewhere in town, and is now

An addition to the original Cannelsburg plat was laid out for Francis Y. Carlile to the south of Casselberry Creek, and touching the nickname "St. Louis," by which it has always been locally known, a story was long related which is here given for what it may be worth.

When the first large hotel built by the Coal Company was burned down in 1839, its lessee and landlord, John Wentworth, thrown out of business by the fire, announced his intention of moving to St. Louis, Missouri. He made full arrangements, but changed his mind on the eve of departure and merely went to the other side of Casselberry Creek. Much raillery, both goodnatured as well as sarcastic, was indulged in at his expense by the few citizens, who dubbed his new location 'St. Louis,' a name still clinging to Cannelton's first ward and to an election precinct through which runs the turnpike officially designated St. Louis Avenue upon entering the southern limits of the city corporation.