Part 1. From the Lykens Standard, 25 April 1902:
RECOLLECTIONS OF 40 YEARS
Regarding the Lykens Valley Coal Mines and Vicinity Adjacent
BY RICHARD NOLEN, ESQ.
Which first appeared in 1865 in the Upper Dauphin Register and Lykens Valley Miner, published by Samuel B. Coles and G. Washington Fenn.
Doubting not that it would afford pleasure to the present residents of your borough and vicinity to peruse recollections of by-gone years, I take the liberty of jotting them down for their benefit.
In the first place allow me to give you a brief account of the earlier history of the borough of Lykens and the coal mines, going back exactly 40 years., In the year A.D. 1825, a Mr. Jacob Burd Sr., and a Mr. Peter Kimes, living at that time near the lower end of Short Mountain, in what was then Lykens Township, Dauphin County, went out on a Sabbath day to take a walk, and reaching the top of the mountain paused; one of the having stick or cane in this hand carelessly dug it into the ground, when it revealed black dirt. This gave rise to an opinion that there must be coal in the mountain. Not long afterwards a party commenced digging and found coal and made a road to haul it down with wagons. This was the first commencement of the coal operations which have since grown into what is now carried on by the Lykens Valley Coal Company.
The tract of land upon which the coal was found consisted of 1,500 or 1,600 acres and belonged to Mr. Thomas Cope, of Philadelphia, who (it was then said) bought it some time before for the sum of $400 of which one-half was paid in store goods, and the other half in shoe buckles.
The land where Lykens and part of Wiconisco now lays belonged to one Mr. James Way of Chester County. After his death in 1826, his executor, George Pearce, who was married to a cousin of my mother, came up and procured the services of Mr. Isaac Ferree and his son Joel B. Ferree to survey the different tracts of Land. After they were surveyed he put them up for sale at public outcry down at the brick mill and sold the,. The conditions were that persons purchasing any tract of land was to pay immediately after the sale $25 in cash as hand-money. The tract of 48 acres where the town of Wiconisco lays was struck down to Mr. John Gilbert for the sum of $12. Mr. Pearce demanded of Gilbert the $25, according to the conditions, which the latter refused to pay, and would not take the land. Then Mr. Daniel Hoffman Sr. said he would take it, but according to the deed he only paid the $12 after all. After the latter’s death his heirs sold it for something like $50 per acre.
The tract of 67 acres where Lykens lays was struck down to Rachael Ferree and Jane Feree for the sum of $19.90. Joel B. Ferree and his sisters Rachael Ferree and Jane Ferree, subsequently laid out a town on said land, named it Lykenstown, and disposed of the lots at $11 each. They were all numbered and drawn by lottery, and some hundred lots were thus drawn and paid for. Some time afterwards Mr. Simon Gratz of Philadelphia, laid a claim to all this property by virtue of a judgment or mortgage against old Mr. Isaac Ferree, re-laid out the town and had it had it re-surveyed by Daniel Hoffman in 1840. The first purchasers all lost their lots with the exception of those whose deeds under the Ferree claim were recorded at a certain date.
On the 7th of April 1830, an act of assembly was passed forming a company to lay out a railroad from Millersburg to Bear Gap. The company which organized under the act was called the Lykens Valley Railroad and Coal Company, and is yet the same. Captain Henry Sheafer of Halifax, was appointed superintendent. In the fall of 1831, Mr. Shafer called on me at my residence about three miles below Bear Gap, wishing me to go up to the Gap to do some mason work. I went up in October and laid the foundation and built a stone chimney for a little log house which stood at the rise of a little hill near the old blacksmith shops. This was the first work done about the Lykens Valley coal mines. It is profitable to remember this and then return to those mines and your town today. We see now large and well developed works and mines turning out their hundreds of thousands of tons of coal per year, and a large, thriving, constantly growing town where was but a wilderness. The next work was done by me for a Mr. White. I built a chimney for a small shanty which stood a little above where the Short Mountain breaker now stands. This Mr. White had commenced opening a coal vein on the side of the mountain just above what was then called Peter Romberger’s farm, for the Lykens Valley Railroad Company. I had three miles to work every morning to get to my work, taking my dinner with me, and in the evening the same distance to walk home.
Here allow me to narrate a circumstance from which that neighborhood received the name of “Pinchgut.” One day a little after dinner-hour, while I was at work on the chimney to the little log home, as before stated. Mr. Henry Sheafer, for whom I was working, came riding up and asked me if I had anything t eat. I replied that I had nothing left after eating my dinner but a piece of dry bread. He asked me to give him the bread, which I did cheerfully, only regretting that I had nothing better to offer him, for any one who knew Captain Sheafer, knew him to be a gentleman in every sense of the word and a man of fine feelings. This occurrence of the scarcity of food is why I conferred upon that locality the euphonious title above mentioned.
The following spring, 1832, about the 1st of March, Captain Sheafer called upon me again and engaged me to go up and build a cellar for a log house just opposite where the big brick house now stands. Some time in the latter part of April, M. Michael Sheafer, brother of Henry, moved up from Halifax into this log house and boarded the hands coming to work in and about the mines.
The first miners that came to work at these mines were two Englishmen, one named James Todourf and the other William Hall. In April of that year Joel B. Ferree built a little log house in Lykens, which was the first building erected there. I done the stone work. The house still stands down at the lower end of your borough. The next house built was a small one put up by Samuel Zerbe, near the upper end of your borough. In September I built the pillars under the saw-mill on Rattling Creek for Joel B. Ferree; but during the summer of 1832 there was a number of small houses built up in the Gap for the miners.
Early in the spring of 1833, after the mines had been opened on the Lykens Valley side, there came a stout young Englishman to work in the mines. One morning he went to work in a merry mood, but in a short time he was brought out dead. As he was lying down undermining, there was a slide in the coal which caught him, striking his head and causing instant death. I was then inquired of where a preacher could be obtained to attend his funeral.
[Continued in part 2].
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From Newspapers.com.
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