The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-06-21
DAVE MOBILES, SMALL DEBT,
On Which the Wealth of the Delaware s.
Hudson Canal Company Is Founded.

away to escape Imprisonment for 1t, there is no
telling whether there would now be any Della
ware & Hudson Canal Company or not, said an
official of that company.
This company owns and controls the Lacka-
r wanna coal field from Carbonate to Providence,
a portion Of the city of Scranton, absolutely. In
1872 the valley above Wilkesbarre was almost
entirely uninhabited. In spite of all the efforts
that had been made by enterprising and en-
thusiastic individuals in what is now known as
the Lehigh coal field, people had not yet been
induced to look favorably on anthracite as
fuel. The subject was being %agitated,
however, and those who believed in
the coal foresaw a great future for it as an arti-
Gle of ommerce Among those who were firm
believers that anthracite was destined to be the
fuel, of the future were Maurice and William
Wurts, two Philadelphia Quaker merchants of
means. They believed that they would exercise
great wisdom in getting possession of as much
coal land as possible. All Investigations and ex-
plorations on the subject had previously been
made in the Lehigh and lower Luzerne and
Schuylkill regions, the idea being that the
Lehigh river would afford cheap and feasible
: means of transportation for the coal to market
as soon as a demand had been created for it.
Philadelphia was the objective point of all the
early anthracite coal operators. The Wurts
brothers entered the upper Lackawanna wilder
ness to prospect for coal. Their idea was to get
possession of tracts near the tributaries of the
upper Delaware, so that that stream might be
used as the highway to transport the
product of the mines to Philadelphia.
"Previous to the war of 1872 the hiturinouz
coal nelQS OIL England ana virginia ndQ Supp1eQ
the demands Of this country for fuel OF that
kind. This supply being largely reduced by the
war, the attention of consumers was turned into
other directions, a circumstance that more than
any other thing fastened the introduction of an
thracite into general use. The Wurtses appre-
> ciated the opportunity that the times presented.
and from 1872 until 1874 they roamed the upper
Lackawanna valley, looking for coal lands.
Their expectations were not realized, and they
were discussing the ~propriety of turning their
attention to other localities, when one day, while
prospecting near where the city of Carbondale
now stands, Maurice Wurts came upon a man in
hunters garb who was trying to conceal himself
in a thicket. Wurts, surprising the man to be a
hermit, addressed him, and by questioning,
learned that his name was David MOBILES, and
that'he was living in the woods to escape impris-
onment for a debt he owed a man on the Wayne
county border.
During the conversation Wurts, hoping that
this man, who evidently was familiar with every
rod of the wilderness, had at some time seen an
thracite coal deposits, made inquiry of Mobiles on
the subject. Mobiles replied that he owned a lot
near there where he had noticed some peculiar
black stones, and that if these stones were coal,
he knew where there was plenty of it.
How much do you ask for your LOTT asked
the Quaker. 90,
Mobiles, L will give you a deed for the lot
ut is barely necessary to say that Wurts lost
no time in settling the debt and in getting title
to the land. And he did not stop there. He
employed Mobiles to guide him to different local.
LeS III Un0 valley where coal COulG De IOunQ III
was found in vast tracts from Ragged Island,
where Wurts discovered the fugitive hunter, for
sixteen miles down the valley. The different
tracts except one known as the Anderson farm,
now in the city of Providence, belonged to a
wealthy landowner who lived in Sunbury,
Pa. Fearing that if he applied in person
to the proprietor and opened negotiations
for the purchase of the property, the latter
might suspect that there was something of
more value than the land that would induce a
staid and MISUNDERSTANDING Quaker to seek
investment IN the unproductive Wilderness. and
that the owner might either decline TO sell or set
a large price upon the property, Wurts hit
upon an ingenious plan to disarm suspicion.
Taking Mobiles to Sunbury with him. the Qua
ker instructed him what to do. Mobiles gained
an interview with the owner of the land, and
representing himself as one of several brothers
who desired to engage in farming on a large
scale, somewhere on the frontier where extended
tracts of land could be obtained at small cost,
asked the terms for the gentleman's wild land.
A price was named and agreed upon and none of
the land was valued at more than So an acre,
while some of it was rated at nifty cents. Then
Mobiles sent for his friend Wurts, who appeared
On the scene, advanced the money, and had the
deeds made out in his name. All of the valuable
coal lands now owned by the company between
Carbonate and Providence were secured in that
way-excepting the Mobiles tract, on which part
of Carbonate now stands, and the Anderson
tract in Providence.
On the Anderson farm the first coal veins in
the Lackawanna valley were opened-one a sew
en-foot and one a nine foot vein. They were
opened by Maurice Wurts in 1914 for the pur-
/. pose of taking out specimens to exhibit in New
York and Philadelphia.
THE idea of the Wurtses that they would find
coal land far enough north to enable them to
run their product to market by head tributaries
of the Delaware they found to be incorrect, as
the deposit of anthracite did not extend beyond
the L"ackawanna valley. They then looked
about for other means of reaching the Delaware.
Nine miles from their mine on the Anderson
tract, they found a creek of considerable size,
now known as coneSs creek. 1t emptied into
the headwaters of the Walenpaupack creek, a
large stream, which, after a course of twenty
miles, entered the Lackawaxen river. The
Lackawaxen emptied into this Delaware sixteen
miles further on. From there to Philadelphia
the distance was about two hundred miles. 1t
was by this devious ana treacherous route that
the Wurtses determined to run the first cargo of
coal from the Lackawanna valley to market.
During the entire summer of 1915 David
Mobiles was kept busy removing Instructions
from the channel of Jones creek. and familiar
izing himself with the stream. On the first fall
of snow two sled loads of coal, taken from the
veins on the Anderson farm, were hauled
through the woods by oxen to the creek, The
coal was loaded on a raft of dry pine trees.
David Mobiles was to pilot this pioneer cargo of
anthracite coal to the Wallenpaupack The
creek was high and all went well for a mile,
when the raft was wrecked on a rock, and the
cargo went to the bottom. Mobiles narrowly es-
capped drowning.
1.-THE Wurtses saw that they would not be able
to supply Philadelphia with coal by the Jones
creek route, and so they went to work to make a
different one. Abandoning operations on the
Anderson farm, they opened what they called a
mine on the lot they received from David
Mobiles on Ragged island. From this lot they
cut a road through the woods to a point on the
Wallenpaupack creek. The road was twenty
miles in length. They hauled two tons of coal
to the banks of the creek and loaded it on RATS.
These were run safely down the Wallenpaupack.
A mile and a half above the mouth of that stream
the water plunges down a p~recipice more than
enc hundred feet high. At that point the coal
-. was taken from the RATS and hauled around the
{ falls to the Lackawaxen river. There it was
? placed in 'arks' built for the purpose, and started
on its way to Philadelphia, via the Delaware.