Tri-Counties Genealogy & History by Joyce M. Tice History of Bradford County PA 1770-1878 by David Craft Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA

BEGINNING at the east line of the State, Bradford is the third in order of the northern tier of counties of Pennsylvania. Susquehanna county borders it on the east; Tioga on the west; Sullivan and Lycoming on the south; Chemung and Tioga counties, in the State of New York, on the north; and the northwest angle of Wyoming enters its southeastern corner. But for this re-entrant angle Bradford County is nearly a parallelogram upon the map. Its northern line is the line of the State, laid, as was supposed, along the parallel of 42° north latitude, and its east line is nearly coincident with the meridian of 0° 48' 30" east from Washington. The location of the court-house at Towanda is given in the surveyor-general's report as being on the line of 41° 47' 0" north latitude, and on the meridian of 0° 25' 28" east longitude from Washington.

The Susquehanna river enters the county midway on its northern boundary; and the Tioga, flowing from the northwest and draining central southern New York, unites with it below Athens, and just five miles south of the State line. It may be here remarked that the name of this stream in Pennsylvania is Tioga, while that part of it which is in the State of New York is called Chemung. It takes its rise in the Tamarack swamp, in the township of Armenia, in this county, and after describing a course somewhat resembling an elongated letter C, enters the State near the sixty-seventh milestone, and joins the Susquehanna at a point less than twenty miles from its source. The Susquehanna river flows in about a straight line due south nearly to the center of the county, and then takes a southeast course, with nine horseshoe bends, until it enters Wyoming county.

During its straight course it flows in a rather wide valley of erosion in Chemung rocks. The rest of its tortuous course is through Catskill rocks, where it cuts a canyon through the synclinal Towanda mountain, and a deep narrow valley through the Chemung rocks, across the broad anticlinal valley to the south of it.

One-half of Bradford County is a high rolling country, into which enter two ranges of flat-topped, coal measure, synclinal mountains, connected with the great mountain plain of Lycoming county to the southwest and south.

Blossburg mountain crosses the west line and occupies Armenia township. A few high hills in Springfield and Smithfield, of which Mount Pisgah is the principal, are all that is left of the mountain along the trough which it formerly occupied. No doubt at one time there was a mountain canyon on the Susquehanna, in the townships of Ulster and Sheshequin, and the mountains must have reached the northeast corner of the county, and passed on into Broome Co., N. Y.

Towanda mountain forms the salient feature of the county. Being very broad and flat where it comes out of Lycoming county, it is split lengthwise into two by the deep canyon of Schraeder creek, is cut across transversely by the gorge of the South Branch creek, and was cut through, in early ages, by the Susquehanna river. Through Standing Stone, Wyalusing, Tuscarora, Herrick, and Pike townships its ancient existence is testified to, and it is, in fact, continued, as a range of high hill-country, nearly to Great Bend, in Susquehanna county. The right-hand branches of Wyalusing creek drain this high land southward, while the left-hand branches of Wysox creek, and the head streams of Wappusening and Apolacon creeks, drain it northward and westward.

In conformity with this configuration the two last-named creeks flow northerly, while the two former flow southwesterly into the Susquehanna. In the western part of the county we find Seeley's, South, and Bentley's creeks running north into the Chemung, while farther south, Sugar creek and the Towanda take almost a direct easterly course into the Susquehanna, which they reach within less than three miles of each other; while still farther south, the South Branch and Sugar Run run nearly north, the former being a confluent of the Towanda, and the latter emptying into the Susquehanna. The south line of the county is the water-shed between the North and West Branch valleys of the Susquehanna, the source of the Lycoming being at the southwestern angle of the county, and of the Loyal Sock in the townships of Overton and Albany.

Towanda mountain is about as high as Blossburg mountain; the railroad summit at the Barclay mines being 2038 feet; the head of the incline plane, 1753 feet; its foot, 1268; at Greenwood, where the Schraeder creek falls into the Towanda, 820 feet; at Monroe junction with the railway south to the coal mines of Sullivan county, at Bernice, 759 feet; and at the Towanda junction with the Pennsylvania and New York Canal Division railroad, on the bank of the Susquehanna, 741 feet. The height of the mountain above Towanda creek, which flows in a deep narrow valley of erosion, at its northern foot, is therefore over 1200 feet, and the depth of the gorge which splits the mountain is not far from 1000 feet; the sides being very precipitous, and crowned with cliffs of massive conglomerate, sometimes 100 feet thick.

The Susquehanna river, at Waverly, in New York, is about 800 feet above tide (the railroad grade is 826 feet). At Athens the railroad grade has fallen to 799 feet, at Ulster to 746 feet, at Towanda to 741 feet, at Standing Stone 709 feet, at Rummerfield 703 feet, at Wyalusing 681 feet, and at Laceyville, two miles below the Bradford County line, 666 feet.

Lycoming creek and Towanda creek, heading together in the southwest angle of the county at 1200 feet above tide, flow in opposite directions; the first, southwest to Williamsport (544 feet), the other east to Towanda (741 feet above tide). The former creek cuts a tremendous canyon transversely through the Alleghany mountain table land of Lycoming county, which in Sullivan county, next south of Bradford, attains altitudes above the sea of 2335 feet at Long pond, and 2285 feet on the turnpike, one mile west of Long pond. This is the highest recorded level on the Mehoopany plateau, in Sullivan county. In the early history of the country it will be remembered the path leading from the West to the North Branch of the Susquehanna passed up this canyon, whose deep, precipitous sides offered formidable obstacles to the traveler, according to the testimony of Conrad Weisser, Zeisberger, and Hartley, the last of whom declares the passage of the Alps was not more difficult.

The terminus of the railroad at the coal mines at Bernice, in Sullivan county, five miles south of the Bradford line, is 1875 feet high. Dushore, at the north foot of the Mehoopany mountain, and in the channel of the north branch of the Loyal Sock, which flows along the foot, 1590 feet. At New Albany, five miles north of the line in Bradford County, the railroad grade has fallen to 1194 feet; at Wilcox, 1120 feet; at Monroeton, after passing through the Towanda mountain, to 759 feet.

The surface rocks of Bradford County belong to only three of the geological formations, as they are now described in modern works treating on that science, which are called the Chemung, the Catskill, and the Carboniferous. As the last two of these, however, are very extensive series of rocks, presenting considerable variety, our Pennsylvania geologists subdivided them, called them by other names, and also by numbers. For the purpose of designating any particular part of the formation, these numbers and subdivisions are very convenient, although, strictly and scientifically speaking, they should only be distinguished by their fossils, as all adjoining beds containing the same fossils belong to one and the same formation. The following table shows all the names and subdivisions of the rocks in Bradford County:
 

The above are placed in the descending order, the coal measures being the highest, and the Chemung rocks the lowest visible in the county.

The western part of Bradford County, also the valley of the Towanda and Wysox creeks, and, in the lower part of the county, the valleys of Tuscarora creek and Sugar Run, are covered with the formation which Rogers calls VIII, or his Vergent or olive-colored shales, or what the New York geologists named the Chemung group. By the latter name it is designated in the text-books on geology. It must be borne in mind that the general dip of the formation is towards the south, therefore the farther we go north the lower rocks in the geological order make their appearance; also that the county is penetrated by two of the great flexures in the strata, which, from their containing coal, are called coal basins, running northeastwardly across the county, and in the lines of these basins the highest rocks visible in the county are brought into view. Separating these two lines of basins are two lines of upheaval called anticlinals---the reverse of the former, where, from the washing or wearing away of the former strata after the upheaval, instead of the highest rocks in the series being shown, we now find the lowest of all.

All the best agricultural lands of Bradford County are of this Chemung formation. This is because it is of an earthy (argillaceous) character, and contains less sand than the Ponent or Catskill. It also contains a small share of the carbonate of lime and a little of the oxide of iron. By the disintegration of these rocks, a fertile soil has been formed. The thickness of this upper or shaley part of the formation is about 2500 feet. At the headwaters of the Genesee river, north of us, it is 1500 feet, and at Catawissa, south of us, it is 3150 feet. These rocks are a vast succession of thin layers of shale, of a deep olive or greenish or light gray color, with thin layers of brownish-gray and green, and olive sandstone. The layers of both soft shale and sandstone are all very thin, and stone of sufficient thickness for building purposes is hard to find. There is a very great uniformity in all parts of this vast formation, and if you travel on the railroad from Wyoming valley northward to the State line, and north or east or west all over the southern part of New York, you will see this same Chemung group. The Erie railroad and its branches run on it three hundred miles. All the hills and railroad cuts show these same beds of soft mud rock with thin bedded sandstones between.

In some parts of the formation some of the sandstones are very coarse, and there are layers of conglomerate. A few miles west of Athens these conglomerates are found capping the summits of the hills. Some people have confounded them with the conglomerates under the coal, but this is entirely erroneous. A little attention to the foregoing description of the thickness and dip of the rocks will show the reader that these beds of conglomerate are many hundreds and even thousands of feet below the coal measures. Professor Rogers, the State geologist, visited the largest bed of this conglomerate, three miles west of Athens, where some excavations in search of coal were formerly made. He reports that the conglomerate is only "a few feet in thickness, and the pebbles, which are seldom larger than a pea, are chiefly of igneous quartz. They are more thoroughly water-worn and rounded than those of the coal conglomerate, and they are embedded in a coarse, sandy material, derived apparently from the subjacent formations."

The fossils in the strata above and below it show it to belong to the Chemung group. This same conglomerate is found in the southern part of the State. Its position is about one-third the thickness of the formation from the top. Specimens of this rock can be seen in the abutments and piers of the railroad bridge over the Tioga river at Athens. In southwestern New York and in the Pennsylvania oil regions, this and other series of coarse sandstones are the depositories of the petroleum.

Vegetable fossils are found among the sandstones of this group, showing the existence of land-plants. In many of the building stones used about Towanda may be seen flattened limbs of land-plants, with the bark turned into coal, which are among the earliest vestiges of terrestrial vegetation yet discovered. There are also found some other premonitory symptoms of coal in the form of specks of coal, a quarter or half an inch thick. But these are no indications of the existence of workable beds of coal, but only show that the world was approaching towards the coal-working age.

It is often remarked that Bradford County is the best county in the northern part of the State, having more good productive land, raising better grain, grass, and producing more cattle and butter than any other. While part of this is to be credited to the intelligence, industry, and thrift of its enlightened population, yet it is mainly owing to the large proportion of the surface being covered by the geological formation in question, called the Chemung group, with its soft shales containing so much clay and lime, whereas the other counties east and west of us, and the southern part of this county, have more of the next higher formation, consisting of harder, coarser, more sandy, red rocks, forming a more barren and less valuable soil for agricultural purposes. The productive land is not confined to the lower parts of the valleys, but extends over the high hills of the northern townships, for, if you examine the rocks where they are exposed, you will find a marked similarity throughout. As a general description, it might be said that the rocks of this county lie in a level position, for, compared with those in the eastern, central, and southern parts of the State, they are horizontal. But if we take a survey of a considerable tract of the country, we will find that the strata are far from lying level. Tracing any particular layer of rock, from the State line southward along the Susquehanna, or southwestwardly, you will find that it dips or descends slowly towards the river, and finally sinks below the surface, and other layers of rock, which are not found at all at the State line, appear on the surface, and also in their turn gradually dip towards the river. If you go farther northward, even to Canada, you will find all the great rock formations in the State of New York have this general southern dip.

Now take a general view from east to west. Entering the county from Tioga, you pass through a district similar to the northern half of the county; but between Troy and Burlington the high hills are covered with a different soil and a different kind of rock of a reddish color, the same that you see on the railroad on the high ground between Troy and Alba, also in crossing by the common roads any of the high hills between Towanda and Wyalusing. You see the same kind of red rocks belonging to the Catskill group, and very different from the hills between Towanda and Athens, which are composed of alternate layers of soft shale and thin layers of sandstone of a gray, green, or sometimes brownish color.

There are, in fact, in going from southeast to northwest across this county, two great basins with two upheavals of the rock formation between them, throwing them into a waving form. These waves, however, are wide, and their slopes are gentle. Moreover, they have little connection with the present surface, which is cut out into valleys by other causes, long after the rock strata assumed their present form. The first basin of our rock formation is a prolongation of the Blossburg coal basin in Tioga county. If you visit the mines at Morris Run you can walk through the gangways underground on one side of the valley, and satisfy yourself by ocular demonstration that the strata of coal and coal rocks descend towards the Run, and then rise on the other side in a regular basin or trough-like form. All the strata of rock above the coal and below it, as far down as they are exposed in any of our deepest valleys, have the same flexure as we here see in the coal beds.

If you trace the coal seams northeastward towards the point of Armenia mountain, you will find that it gradually rises in that direction until the coal runs out in the air and disappears. If you then pass on down the point of that mountain, in Bradford County, towards the village of Troy, you will see the red rock formations which lie below the coal making their appearance, and all bent, in the same manner as the coal bed, into a wide, trough-like form, and all gradually rising to the northeast. Hence we have in this county the empty Blossburg basin without the coal, and considerable tracts of the townships of Armenia, the south part of Troy and West Burlington, and the tops of the hills thence to Ulster, especially Mount Pisgah, covered with these formations next below the coal, consisting of the red rocks of the Catskill group.

The other basin referred to is that of the Towanda or Barclay mountain, which is the same in structure as that above described, except that it includes the formation containing the coal as well as the underlying rocks. Its great advantage is its geographical position, it being farther north and east than any other coal. North of it is the great, fertile, and populous State of New York, in which there is no coal whatever. The market for the coal, therefore, is close at hand. The coal is semi-bituminous, containing about seventy-five percent of carbon and less than seventeen percent of volatile matter, and is a species of coal well-adapted for steam purposes, blacksmithing, and the manufacture of wrought iron in rolling mills. It is only found on the summits of the highest mountains in the southwestern part of the county, and the deposit is of limited extent compared with the great coal fields of the State situated farther south.

The discovery of coal in the county is said to have been accidentally made by Abner Carr while hunting on the Barclay or Towanda mountain in the year 1812, the bed being exposed in a stream where the first mine was afterwards opened. The lands on which the coal was situated belonged to Robert Barclay of London, England, and afterwards to his son, Chas. Barclay, and the tract contained sixteen thousand acres. In 1853 these lands were bought by Edward Overton, Esq., of Towanda, John Ely and Edward M. Davis, of Philadelphia, who formed the Barclay railroad and coal company and Schraeder land company. The railroad from the North Branch canal to the mines, sixteen miles in length, with an inclined plane half a mile long and 475 feet high, was finished in the fall of 1856, and a little coal was shipped that year. James Macfarlane was appointed general superintendent, and had sole charge of all the operations of the company for the first eight years, until 1865, and established the coal business under great difficulties from the want of transportation on the very poor canal which was the only outlet to market. In the latter year he organized another company, called the Towanda coal company, which, in 1868, leased the mines and railroad of the Barclay coal company, and the stock soon afterwards came into the hands of the Erie railroad company, who have mined a large portion of the coal used on their road at these mines, amounting to about 200,000 tons per annum, and for three years more than 250,000 tons a year, as will be seen by the annexed tabular statement, which gives the annual production of each mine since it was opened till the present time, and which is in itself a succinct history of the coal trade of this county. The Pennsylvania and New York railroad was finished from Towanda to the Erie railway at Waverly in 1868, and from that time the coal trade assumed a magnitude which it never had before. The same railroad was completed southward to Pittston in 1869, making, with the Lehigh Valley and New Jersey Central railroad, direct connection with New York, and by the North Pennsylvania railroad with Philadelphia; thus furnishing to the county a magnificent line of first-class railroad without any expense, efforts, or sacrifices by the people of the county, such as are often required to secure such improvements. They are indebted for this great thoroughfare to the enterprise of Hon. Asa Packer and his co-workers of the Lehigh Valley railroad company.

The Sullivan and State Line railroad, extending from the Barclay railroad at Monroeton to the semi-anthracite coal mines at Bernice, in Sullivan county, twenty-five miles, was projected by M. C. Mercur, Charles F. Welles, Jr., Michael Meylert, and George D. Jackson, and was finished in the fall of 1871, forming another important avenue of transportation for the county of Bradford.

Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA

Published On Tri-Counties Site On 21 FEB 1999 By Joyce M. Tice Email: JoyceTice@aol.com You are the  visitor since the page was relocated on 05 NOV 2003 Bibliographic data for your source citations: Craft, The Reverend David; 1770-1878 History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of its Prominient Men and Pioneers, originally published 1878 by L. H. Everts & Co., Philadelphia, Reprint edition published by Tri-Counties Genelaolgy & History by Joyce M. Tice (rootsweb.com/~srgp/jmtindex.htm) 1999-2004.