OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 20

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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
March 16, 2005
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Historical Collections of Ohio
And Then They Went West
Know Your Ohio
by Darlene E. Kelley
Tid Bits - part 20
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Tid Bits - part 20

               Coal in Ohio

Coal has long been an important fossil fuel in Ohio. Its existance was
first noted as early as 1748, by frontiersman who told of a coal mine
which had been on fire at the mouth of Lamanshikola Creek, 
( present-day Sandy Creek.) Also mentioned in 1755 along the Hocking
River and in Tuscarawas Valley in 1772.

Although the date when coal in Ohio was first mined, is to me unknown,
we do know that the first reported production of coal was in 1800, three
years prior to Ohio's entrance as the 17th state of the Union. This was
mined from Jefferson County with a reported production of 100 tons.   
 
>From its modest beginning, Ohio's coal production grew steadily but very
slowly, until the mid 1800's. Early coal miners, primarily of English,
Scottish, and Welsh descent, cut and loaded coal entirely by hand and
moved the coal to local markets by means of wagons, carts, flatboats,
and then later by canal boats.

Completion of Ohio's canal system during 1830's and 1840's, allowed the
development of distant markets for coal mined from the interior of the
state. Gradually coal replaced wood as a fuel for home heating and
cooking, boilers in salt production, blast furnaces, steam mills, saw
mills, some oil and gas drilling rigs, and steaboats on the Great Lakes
and the Ohio River. The first coal-fired steamboat was the " Bazaleel
Wells, " built in 1820 at Steubenville, Ohio. In addition, coal was
distilled to produce coal oil for home lighting or gas for street
lighting.

During the mid- 1800's, Ohio experienced a transformation from an
agricultural to an industrial economy. This transformation provided a
great boast to the development of Ohio's coal industry, making Ohio one
of the largest coal-producing and coal consuming states in the nation.
Coal became recognized as an abundant, assessible, and inexpensive fuel,
especially for the generation of steam power.

In the late 1800's, steam power was adapted to generate electricity. The
first coal fired plant in Ohio was the Tiffin Edison Electrical
Illuminating Plant, in Seneca County. The electric utility industry
eventually consumed 90% of the coal mined in Ohio.

The first account of surface mining of coal was from a ravine near
Tallmadge, Summit County, Ohio, in 1810. Surface mining consisted of
mining coal that was exposed along hillsides, using picks and shovels
and in some cases horse-drawn scrapers. The coal and cover material was
excavated back into the hillside, perhaps 10 feet or more, until removal
of the cover was too impractical or difficult. Then at this point, coal
was mined by underground methods. However it was found that near surface
coal could be mined more easily, more quickly, more inexpensively, and
with fewer people, than coal from underground methods. A a result, there
were fewer undergound mines in Ohio, and fewer coal miners in the
earlier days.  However there continued the call for coal, resulting in
1898 with 1,155 underground mines in Ohio, and employed approximately
50,267 coal miners.

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        Doctors of Early Settlements 

To be a doctor in the earliest settlements was attended with many
hardships and difficulties. The inhabitants were for the most part, poor
and lived in primitive log-cabins, usually at considerable distances
apart. The pathes were connected by bad roads, and more frequently by
mere trails, usually places where the doctor encountered huge logs and
deep swails, with branches of overhanging trees, and nightly travel with
the element of danger. The doctor of those times, who was ready to
engage his professional duties under such circumstances was a man of
pluck and energy, devoted with fortitude and patience.

There was much of sickness and suffering amongst the people in early
Ohio, and the doctor was ready and willing to attend promptly as he
could to the most urgent of call of the sick. He was a popular
personage. Until then, perhaps, a neighbor or a dear friend could attend
the call for help.

Much of the time the roads were extremely muddy. The doctor, for such
emerency, always had " leggins." They were frequently composed of three
quarters of a card of green baize, rolled around the leg, and reaching
from the sole of the boot to four or five inches above the knee. They
were usualy tied on by wrapping the leg below the knee three or four
times with a kind of elastic woolen tape, sufficient length, and about
three quarters of an inch broad, and fastened with a bow-knot. Divers
and sundry pins made all secure. These articles of the profession were
often saturated with mud and water, while the horse and his rider were
also plentifully bespattered from head to foot with the same material.

It was important for the physician to have as his steady companion, a
speedy and reliable horse. The horse was usually of good breed and
sturdy enough to carry, not only his rider, but the saddle bags that
carried his medical equipment, and his tonics and medicines. His
saddle-bags stuffed with senna, snake root, chamomile flowers, calomel,
jalap, rhubarb, and spigelia, for the little ones with worms.
His horse being almost his truest friend.

The diseases of those times were usually serious. Malarial troubles were
always present; sometimes alone, but not sure, also to complicate any
other ailment that could effect the fame of humanity. Inflamation, such
as pleurisy and pneumonia, which were much more prevalent.

In the olden time, when a messenger arrived in hot haste after the
physician, it was always possible, before two words were spoken, to know
some expectant mother was in trouble. No man could truely discribe the
why and wherefore, but the experienced doctor always knew, almost at
once, when that difficulty had to be met; so he hurried, in good sooth.
The blazing log-fire, the only light in the cabin sometimes, shinning
upon the white ash puncheons, with cracks an inch or more apart, and a
half a dozen of the nearest female neighbors made up the main features
of the scene.

And now is all bustle. The jams, jellies,  and preserves, carefully laid
out by this auspicious moment, by the forethought of the mother, are now
displayed in prodigal profusion. And chickens, and ham, and eggs, and
all the substancials and luxuries that have been provided by care and
prudence, and self-denial, are lavishly set forth. The doctor is the
great man of the occasion; no good potentate was ever more devotedly
served, or had half so safely the hearts of all around him. At length,
suffice to say, a new and trembling life has been added to the
innumerable throng which journeys always towards the undiscovered
country. Something to live for, something to love, has been added to the
household; and the dark clouds of selfishness and hate, which are wont,
too often, to cast their shadows upon the human heart, have been put to
flight, at least for a time, by the sheer presence of innocence and
helplessness.

The doctor is the great man of the occasion. He is asked with a display
of reckless extravagence, and air suggestive of tons of sugar within
easy reach, if he will " take sweet'nin " in his coffee? And after all
is over, he goes home a happier, and perhaps a better, if not a rcher
man.

About the year 1839, a change in the type of prevailing diseases began
to take place. This fact was not really recognized at that time, but the
light of subsequent medical events leaves no doubt of it. Typhoid
symptoms began to appear. It is not true that the typhoid type was
suddenly established. Many were still affected with the higher of
inflamitory grades of disease, and they were treated accordingly, with
success. But more and more that kind of treatment was found to fail, and
in fact to prove imjurious, until, in a few years, the universal
tendency to a typhoid state of the constitution was clearly perceived.
Blood-letting, especially, went entirely out of practice; and the
waiting and sustaining plan of treatment was adopted. 

In the year of 1843 a general malady disseminated in Ohio. It was an
influenza, called the French La Grippe or "Tyler grip." Its most
prominents symptoms were sore and tearful eyes, copiously discharging
nostrils, pain in the forehead and over the eyes, sneezing and soreness
of the lungs and throat, and cough. Sometimes diarrhoea prevailed to a
large extent. There was remarkable depression of strength, and this
symptom was sometimes so pronounced as to cause death of aged or weakly
persons. Patients with weak lungs wuld often recover very slowly, or
would eventually die by the super added weight of the influenza.
Ordinarily the worst symptoms would abate in three or four days, but the
full recovery of the strength was a work of considerable time.

In the year of 1851 the cholera broke out in Bellefontaine. It made some
slight appearence before that time, as well as afterwards. But that was
the only time of great mortality and danger from the scourge. The
disease had been prevailing in Sandusky City, and a young man had come
thence to his home in Bellefontaine. He had come on a certain day, and,
although apparently well, he was dead the next day. He had died of
cholera. His brother, at whose house he was, also died in a day or two;
also another relative, who was making a box to receive the remains of a
cholera patient died, and was encased in the box made by himself. 
' Altogether, there were a dozen or fourteen deaths within a brief space
of time. A poor woman, who washed some of the clothing soiled by these
patients, died, together with her husband, from the same disease.

It was curious to see how great a solicitude spang at once among the
inhabitants of the town for the welfare of their relations who lived at
a distance. Fearful that sickness and dsiaster might reach them in their
distant homes many of the sympathetic citizens straightway betook
themselves thither to help them, and nurse them should they perchance,
become sick. Even some of the physicians had such conscientious calls,
and obeyed them. Not of one would entertain the proposition for a moment
that he was scared and ran away from the cholera.

We owe the following facts to the kindness of Dr. S.W. Fuller, of Logan
County, to recognize the history of the disease and reported it as it
was.

Marsh malerial fevers were endemic almost every year. Some serious,
however, they prevailed more severly then gophers, prostrating almost
whole neighborhoods. Now, happily, owing to the cleaning up of the
country, dainage of surface waters ad drying up of stagnant ponds, they
have abated, and no longer appear in an endemic form. Quinine has lost
its relative importance in the family, being at one time as much as a
staple as
our measles amd whooping-cough were epidemic in this period, and during
a portion of their stay they assumed a severe type, and were attended
with considerable fatality. Scarlet fever also prevailed to a
considerble extent, but scarcely attained to the proportions of an
epidemic.

Perhaps the most remarkale of these prevailing diseases which raged in
Ohio was that of small pox. It broke out May 8, 1842, and continued to
prevail until late in July following. The population of the village of
West Liberty would not exceed 500, and the number of cases, including
all varieties, from the measle like rash of the mildest form of
varioloid to the malignant confluent form, was nearly 150. the greater
number of which were in town. Some idea may thus be formed of the
seriousness of the outbreak and the distress that prevailed.

This was caused by a man who came from the State of Delaware, by the
name of Vickass. He had been visiting in the town of Seaford, in that
State, and upon invetigation, it was afterwards learned that Small pox
was rife there duing his visit. In twelve to fourteen days after his
return home, some three miles north of the village, small pox appeared
in his family. Dr. Marquis Wood attended on the family, and the disease
being of a mild type, he was in doubt as to its nature. One of the
oldest practitioners of the county was called in, and he decided that it
was chicken pox. It so happened that a young lady whose mother resided
in town was visiting the Vickass family. She returned home and
immediately entered the village school, in which there were twenty or
more children who were not protected by vaccination. She became ill in
school of variolous fever. She then abandoned the school, but her
illness was so slight and the eruption so triffling that no physician
was called to see her, consequently, two weeks of precious time was lost
in which to prepare for the enemy's onslaught. The onslaught went on to
other cities of Ohio and and further. 

As the migration of people came about from other states, other maladys
came with them. The country doctor was counted on more than ever. He had
to broaden his knowledge by learning and experience. Other knowledeable
doctors tuitored the other doctors of the smaller communities. 

Vacinations and new medicines were introduced and hospitals and people
were educated on cleanliness; so started a new era in medicine and
treatments.  And it all came about from our dedicated country doctors
and their trusty steeds.  

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Tid Bits to be continued in part 21