18 - HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
CHAPTER IV.
PHYSICAL FEATURES.
GEOGRAPHY.
Lorain county is bounded on the north by Lake Erie, on the south by portions of Medina and Ashland counties, on the east by Cuyahoga and Medina, and on the west by Huron and Erie. Its capital town is Elyria, which is situated in longitude 82̊ 6' 49" west from Greenwich and in latitude 41̊ 22' 1". It is divided into twenty-one townships, most of which are five miles square, whose names are as follows: Columbia, Avon, Ridgeville, Eaton, Grafton, Sheffield, Elyria, Carlisle, LaGrange, Penfield, Black River, Amherst, Russia, Pittsfield, Wellington, Huntington, Brownhelm, Henrietta, Camden, Brighton and Rochester. The principal towns and villages named in the order of their population are Elyria, Oberlin, Wellington, Amherst, Kipton, and Grafton. The population of the county in 1870, by townships, was as follows:
Amherst 2,482
Avon 1,924
Black Rrver 838
Brighton. 508
Brownhelm 1,461
Camden 858
Carlisle 1,219
Columbia 892
Eaton 1,052
Elyria, exclusive of crty 1,038
Elyria City 3,038
Grafton 960
Henrietta 927
Huntington 834
LaGrange 1,309
Pittsfield 980
Penfield 749
Ridgevitle 1,477
Rochester 691
Russia, exclusive of Oberlin 1,319 Oberlin 2,888
Sheffield .... .... ........ . 973
Wellington township 610
Wellington borough 1,281
Total 30,308
* GEOLOGY.
There is perhaps no subject at the present time that excites a deeper interest among thinking and scientific minds than the science of Geology. Several
* By Jay Terrell.
reasons may be given for this, one of which is that it is the newest among all the sciences; another is that it upsets all of our old preconceived notions as to the age of the world. Whereas we had been taught that it was almost heresy to believe that the world was more than six thousand years old, and that Moses' account of the creation in its six solar days of twenty-four hours each was literally correct, geology has proven beyond a doubt that it has been as many millions or even more years in existence, and that it was countless ages before it was prepared for, or even was possible for man to have lived upon it. Hence at first many divines were found opposing this new science with its new theories.
These controversies have been fraught with very much good. They have laid the foundation for deeper thought and investigation, and now, instead of lifting up hands with holy horror at the teachings of this great geological book, we find our most eminent divines quoting it as authority to substantiate just what at first they supposed it disproved.
We have neither space nor time to go back over these old controverted grounds, whose errors, like cobwebs, are fast being brushed away by the hand of time as new light breaks in upon the intelligent mind. Neither have we time to open out this grand old book of nature, and commence at the beginning, every page of which shines like letters in gold, telling of the great Creator's power and goodness; how that, step by step, for millions of years, the earth was being fitted and prepared for the abode and happiness of man. (We use the term "millions of years" not that geological time can be counted or expressed in years, but this term, perhaps, gives us the best idea of the lapse of ages.) But we must begin almost at the very ending and only study a portion of that chapter that relates to our immediate surroundings.
We do not propose, therefore, in this brief chapter, to take the reader all over the world to teach geology, but shall confine ourself to Lorain county and that which pertains to and affects it.
Nearly every farm in the county has material enough upon it to fill pages with interesting matter, and if the geology of Lorain county was fully written up it would more than fill every page of this beautiful history. I shall, therefore, merely give an outline, and confine myself to what I have seen and what the rocks teach us. This will of necessity take us back into the far-away ages of the past when there was no human eye to behold the beauties in the morning dawn of creation (no less beautiful then than now), nor human hand to record their history; and yet the everlasting rocks have left their record as plainly and distinctly marked as if "graven with an iron pen." The geologist reads these "footprints of the Creator" with clearness and just as much assurance as the astronomer marks the course of the stars, or the historian records the events of a nation.
Geology being the newest of all the sciences, it is very probable that some of the theories now held by
HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO - 19
our leading scientists will have to be abandoned as new light breaks in with the lapse of time. It would indeed show but little progress and be very strange if this were not the case. It behooves us, therefore, to be very careful about adopting new theories until we are well assured that they are based upon solid foundation, or rather solid rock. I hold it as a cardinal principle that theories can always afford to wait until fully tested and facts are brought to prove the validity of their claims. There are, however, some theories in geology that must of necessity be founded on negative proof. For example: the great Ohio fossil fishes are said to have had no scales from the fact that none have ever yet been found with their remains. This, coupled with the fact that their structure was such that they seemed not to have needed scales, is deemed sufficient to establish the theory that they had none, although it is based upon negative testimony.
In some respects the study of geology has been with me a life work, and for many years some portion of each year has been devoted to practical field work. In Canada, and on the islands of Lake Erie; in Ohio, and other States; in summer, under broiling suns; in rain and storms; in winter, amid snow and ice, -have I tried faithfully to work out these grand problems of nature; and yet how little do we know of the great Creator's power and purposes. Evidently the world has passed through a thousand changes, all seemingly for the benefit of the last crowning act of creation- man.
We will now take up the geology of Lorain county in detail, beginning with the clay drift, the first formation or surface deposit, and so step by step, along down to the Huron shale, the lowest exposed deposit in the county.
The mechanical force which distributed this widespread drift, we will speak of further on, under its proper head, "Glaciers." The soil which rests immediately upon this drift, or clay-bed, and which we plow and cultivate, is of vegetable origin and produced by the slow process of the decomposition of vegetable matter. It is usually only a few inches in thickness over the surface except where it has accumulated on the lower lands, either by the wash from the higher lands or water standing a sufficient length of time to collect leaves, mosses, etc., which eventually became swamps.
This soil although quite thin, nevertheless bears the evidence of having been ages in its accumulation, ere it was able to sustain the first scanty growth of forest trees. Just what that first growth of forest trees in Lorain county was, we are unable definitely to determine; but from drift-wood which is more or less found under all our ridges, and some other "foot-prints," we are led to conclude, that our first forest trees belonged to the pine or cedar family.
For several years I have been led to believe that one race of trees succeeded another in the cycles of time; that is, they came in the order in which the climate and soil are prepared for, and adapted to receive them. This we know to be true of animals ; one race becomes extinct and another follows in its course and takes its place. As changes are constantly going on in the world, new beings are created to meet these changes, and the old ones, that can no longer exist under the new order of things pass away. These climatic and other changes, humanly speaking, are very slow: so slow, that to us they are not perceptible. To us there seems to be a profound rest; but these changes are just as sure and certain as summer and winter; sunrise and sunset.
The evidence of the succession of tree-growth is very clearly shown on Point-au-Pelee, one of the islands of Lake Erie. All over the higher lands, the soil is literally filled with red cedar roots, showing conclusively that there once existed on this island a dense growth of this species of conifers. These roots, lying as they do, intermixed with the hard clay drift, are as nearly imperishable as almost any thing can be, except it be the "everlasting rocks."
In all probability this was the first tree or shrub (it could only have been a shrub in its incipient stages) that took possession of the soil, and it must have held complete possession for a long period of time, until their slowly decaying leaves, with other scanty vegetation ultimately produced a soil sufficient for the sustenance of other trees, and a more rank vegetation. Around the margin of the island, on the almost barren sandy beach, I found the red cedar still flourishing where scarcely anything else could grow. These cedars must have been "monarchs of all they surveyed" for tens of thousands of years, until they slowly gave place to the growth of another class of trees, for which the accumulated soil of ages became especially adapted.
The next growth in the succession we find were truly "monarchs of the forest," great oaks. No such trees are now growing upon the island, nor indeed have been for many generations in the past, but their prostrate decaying bodies lie half buried beneath the soil of centuries, and are scattered here and there over the surface, among the thickly wooded timber of the present forest. As I stepped upon some of these trees, they would sink beneath my feet, as nothing but their moss-covered bark holds them together. Probably within the present generation they will entirely disappear, leaving no trace behind them as evidence of their having once existed.
No doubt there is many a missing link in the long chain of geological events, which, if we had them all connected together, we could read the sequences of time much plainer than we can now. Nevertheless there is still enough left to give us a tolerably correct idea of the progressive stages in the earth's history since the dawn of creation. A mixed growth of timber now covers the island, such as oak, hickory, ash, maple, etc. I give this as an illustration, to prove the succession of forest trees and the ages of time that must have elapsed, from the deposition of these drift clay-beds, until they accumulated a sufficient soil to sustain such a mass of vegetation as that
20 - HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
which now everywhere meets our gaze. I am of the opinion that the earth is, and always has been occupied at each successive period with the highest type of life, both animal and vegetable, that the conditions will allow.
The drift formation of Lorain county, is mostly the product of the Huron and Erie shales, intermixed with other material that has been transported long distances by the action of ice. These shales have been plowed, torn up, crushed, and massed together, by thee plow-share of the Almighty: an agency that the All-wise Father has used to fit and prepare this part of his heritage for the habitation of man - a power that has plowed and planed down mountains into valleys, and leveled the whole into vast plains. Such a power is, and only can be, immense fields of ice in the form of glaciers.
That these glaciers existed on the North American continent at one period in the far-away-past, and that they were the direct cause of the distribution of our clay-beds there can now be no reasonable doubt. These clays are more or less filled with fragments of lime, granite, quartz, gneiss, green stone and other pebbles, all foreign material, brought down from the mountain-side, and transported hundreds of miles from their place of origin—mixed and intermixed with these shales which were so evenly distributed over the underlying rocks.
The dairy-farmers of Lorain county owe to these shales, which were thus ground up and mixed together, their peculiar clay soil,— hard, tenacious, unworkable when wet, but when well drained, and seeded, nothing can excel it for grazing and dairying purposes. Along the border of the lake, especially in Avon and Sheffield, this soil is peculiarly adapted to grape culture; and here may be seen many beautiful vineyards, from which hundreds of tons of grapes are annually gathered and shipped to all parts of the country.
There is perhaps no part of the county where the drift is so well shown as on the lake shore in Sheffield township. Here commences a long line of beach which extends almost to Vermillion. The direct cause of this beach is that the glacier dipped deeper into the rock here than farther east, tearing up the hard shale to a considerable depth below the present surface of the lake, leaving the clay banks to come down to the water's edge. Farther east the shale being above the water, forms a bluff bank (we call it iron-bound shore) against which the waves almost constantly dash. At the eastern end of this beach the banks are about eighteen feet high. About half way from top to bottom the clay drift lies directly upon the Huron shale; the line of demarkation bementween the two: is as well defined as would be one board lying upon another. Farther on we find the shales torn from their bed and the upper portion thoroughly mixed and incorporated with the lower stratum, or base of the clay. The lower portion of the shale that was torn from the rock, was broken up, ground and shoved along, but still remained unmixed with the clay above, and unexposed to atmospheric changes; it therefore remains a stratum of broken shale between the clay and the solid rock below.
Still farther on we find where, in some way, the ice-field got a foot-hold in a seam in the rock and moved the whole mass bodily to the west several feet, making quite a large fissure; then, passing on over, filled this fissure to its very bottom with clay-mud and gravel. This great ice-field was working westward, and all through Sheffield it was on a downward grade: that is, working deeper into the rock.
Just before it reached the point where Lake Breeze is now situated, (it wasn't Lake Breeze then,) it plowed still deeper into the rock and soon dipped below the surface of the lake (it wasn't lake then either), and did not rise again above the present water level until it reached almost to Vermillion in Erie county.
The glacial action in this drift formation is as readily traced along this lake shore beach as may be the course of a river, and its " foot-prints " are as plain and unmistakable as those of a man or,a horse. No written record can be plainer or more easily studied, than can be the drift along this lake line. While so many scientific facts are left in such obscurity that it takes a long life of patient toil and research to comprehend only a few facts, here the drift which has been so little understood in the past is laid bare before us like a panoramic view, so that we may study it at our will.
There is no department in the science of geology that has been heretofore so little understood as the drift formation. This is accounted for by the fact that it was produced by different oauses and at widely separated periods of time. We are now coming to the light, and as we learn to classify these periods and depositions of drift, instead of massing them together into one general deposit, we are better able to understand their formations.
BOULDERS.
The erratic rocks, which we call boulders or " hard heads," that are so profusely distributed over the clay soil of Lorain county, are from beds of different deposits. They are composed of granite, quartzite, diorite, crystalline lime-stone, gneiss, silician slate, etc. Although of different formations and deposits, they are all classed with and belong to the Eozoic age of the world. It was called Azoic (that is, " without life ") until within a few years. Although there have been no fossils found in the Eozoic rocks, it is now very generally beiieved among geologists and scientific men that even in this very remote period in the earth's history there did exist some of the lower forms of animal and vegetable life. This, we think, is clearly proven by the abundance of graphite, iron and limestone that is found in these rocks, each of which is the direct product of either animal or vegetable organisms: graphite and iron are the products of the carbon of plants. When you pick up a piece of native
HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO - 21
iron ore to examine it, bear in mind that it was not produced like lava, by passing through a melting process, but that it is of vegetable origin. Although it may have, as all our Lake Superior ore has, passed 'through this metamorphic process, yet heat has nothing to do with its origin as iron, but was merely an after result of internal disturbances.
Limestone is almost wholly made up from the Walls and minute skeletons of marine organisms that -have the power of secreting the carbonate of lime which forms their shells. We have no reason to believe that iron or limestone were produced in the Eozoic age by any different process than it is now.
We find these rocks stratified, and that they were originally deposited in even horizontal beds, but have since been metamorphosed by heat, and are now much displaced and broken up by upheavals and internal forces. They are divided into two groups-upper and lower - called Huronian and Laurentian: Huronian, from their fine exposure on the north of Lake Huron;
Laurentian, from the lower St. Lawrence region, where these rocks abound. They are the surface rock over a broad belt of country, extending from Labrador, on the east, to Lake Superior, and then stretching away northward to the Arctic Sea.
The Adirondac Mountains, although outside of this belt, belong to the same epoch and formation, and were raised above the oceen at the same time. They are called the oldest rocks in the world, and deservedly so; for they are the oldest surface rocks now known, and never have been submerged since they were first raised above the old eozoic ocean. While most parts of our continent have been raised above the sea, only to be submerged again, (and this occurring many times, as each stratified formation plainly testifies,) yet these old eozoic rocks have proudly held their giant heads above the surrounding ocean almost from the time that the sun first penetrated the thick cloud of darkness that surrounded the earth, when God said, " Let there be light; and there was light."
We call the eastern continent the Old World; but the Adirondac mountains of New York, the region around Lake Superior and the Ozarks, of Missouri, are ages older than any land on that continent. The igneous rocks which underly these metamorphic rocks are of course much older than they; but all that we know about them is by their being thrown to the surface by eruptions, as they are nowhere found exposed on the surface. They have passed through inconceivable heat, first in the gaseous and then in the molten state, and were the first rocks formed by the cooling of the earth's surface, and are therefore not stratified. They belong to that age of the world of which they are the only record. We find these fused rocks frequently among our erratics of the iceberg drift.
Sir William Logan, an eminent Canadian geologist, estimates the eozoic rocks in Canada to be about forty- seven thousand feet in thickness. When we consider that all this vast rock formation was the accumulation from the destruction and slow wearing away process of an older continent, and that older continent perhaps from the debris of one still older, we can form but a faint conception of the myriads of ages that have passed away since "in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."
The boulders were broken and torn from these old eozoic rocks by glaciers coming down from the mountainous region of the north. As they shoved themselves out into this great inland sea of fresh water, which had been formed by the scooping out of the lake basin, they were broken up and floated out to sea. No longer traveling by land and grasping in their icy arms massive boulders and all other material that lay in their course; now they are icebergs, traversing the sea and carrying their boulders, sand, gravel and other debris whithersoever the wind drives them. We therefore call the boulders a part of the iceberg drift, as they were deposited by icebergs and not by glaciers.
The surface clay of Lorain county is glacial drift, and was deposited at the time the Lake Erie basin was formed. This was long before the period of which we are now speaking. At this time the clay had already been deposited, the glacier had passed on and left the basin which was now filled with water to the brim, from the summit on the south to the Canadian highlands on the north, and extending east and west from the Adirondacks to Lake Superior. We spoke of the mountainous region of the north from whence the glaciers which produced the icebergs came. Nothing now remains but the bases of these mountains to tell of their long ago existence, as they were eroded and worn away by these immense fields of ice.
Glaciers are being formed at the present time in the mountainous region of the interior of Greenland, and as they push their way to the ocean, the foot is shoved out into the sea, is broken up and rises to the surface. They are no longer glaciers, but icebergs. Floating away to the southward, they are often stranded on the banks or sand-bars of Newfoundland, and there perform the same work that these did here in the drift age, depositing large quantities of their debris over the floor of the ocean. In ages to come, when the bottom of the ocean shall have again been raised above the water, the same conditions will be found to exist there that we now find here.
The northern border of this great inland sea was along the base of the highlands in Canada, called by geologists Laurentian highlands. They are about three hundred miles north of Lake Erie. As these icebergs pushed out into the water from this northern shore, they were driven hither and thither by every stormy change of wind. They deposited their debris wherever and as fast as they melted. Sometimes being driven into shallow water, they stranded. Here they slowly melted away until they were light enough to clear themselves and float again. At such points they dropped larger quantities of boulders than elsewhere.
22 - HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
These places may readily be picked out all over the country, and many of our farms are made less valuable by the numerous boulders on some of their fields.
That these boulders were dropped from floating icebergs, is very clearly proven by their position as we now find them in our fields. Almost every farmer knows that these big boulders, or " hard-heads," are very difficult to get out of the ground, for the simple reason that the largest end is always in the ground. This of itself is almost conclusive evidence, aside from any other, that they must have fallen some distance through water, and in falling the larger end would naturally go down. We can account for this phenomenon by no other theory. We find no boulders in or upon the sand ridges, for the reason that the ridges were deposited at a later period, and consequently whatever boulders may have been on the surface are now buried beneath the sand.
The reader will observe that we have spoken of three different and distinct drift deposits, which occurred at different periods in the earth's history. We will therefore place them in the order in which they occur:
1st. Glacial drift-clay, sand, gravel, etc.
2d. Iceberg drift-boulders, sand and other debris.
3d. Water drift-flood-wood and sand ridges.
The great difficulty in studying the drift has been in not keeping the different periods and causes separate: this will enable us to do so. I am aware, however, that good authority differs with me on some of these points; but after great care and research, I think the evidence will bear me out in my drift theory.
It may be asked, how do we know that these boulders came from this northern region beyond the lake? In the first place, we have no evidence of glaciers pushing themselves into this great body of water from any other direction than on the north; and then, too, we find that these boulders exactly correspond with the rocks found in place along this northern belt, so that now we may readily trace some of the erratic rocks found here back to their original beds of deposition. I have lying before me a piece of granite, that is filled with graphite (black lead we call it, though there is no lead about it). This fragment I broke from a boulder on my father's farm, in Ridgeville, nearly forty years ago. We can now trace this graphite directly back to its home on the Georgian Bay, in Canada. Copper is not unfrequently found in the boulders of our county, plainly showing their Lake Superior origin.
Thus, by the composition of these boulders, and the minerals they carry with them, we are able to tell where they came from; and by the position in which we find them, and the grooves and markings on the surface rocks, we are enabled to tell how they came here.
ANCIENT FOREST BEDS.
Beneath the sand ridges there are more or less of the remains of forest trees, called "flood-wood." It was drifted into its present resting place when the lake was from one to two hundred feet higher than it now is, and covered beneath the sand when the ridges were formed. About forty years ago my father, in digging a well (on the ridge), one mile east of the center of Ridgeville, came upon trees about one foot in diameter, at a depth of fifteen feet below the surface. This wood, although changed, was not fossilized, but was soft and yielding, and could easily be cut with a sharp spade. I very well remember the men examining it very closely by whittling, tasting, smelling, etc., and after much deliberation pronounced it cedar wood. Their decision was probably correct, as all the timber, so far as I know, found beneath the ridges, is coniferous (cone-bearing trees). We have the record, however, in some localities, of hickory, sycamore, willow and some other kinds of wood being found beneath the drift. Au old forest bed was very widely distributed over the northern half of our continent. To give some idea of its magnitude and extent, I quote from different authorities the following:
"ROSS COUNTY, OHIO.-Wood apparently cedar, from a well thirty feet deep."-Col. Charles H Whittlesey.
"ALL THROUGH SOUTHERN INDIANA.-Ancient soil, with peat, muck, rooted stumps, trunks, branches and leaves of trees, sixty to one hundred and twenty feet below the surface, called 'Noah's Cattle Yard.' Wells spoiled by them."-John Collett.
"IOWA. -An old soil, with buried timber from forty to fifty feet beneath the surface, struck in sinking wells in several counties."-Morris Miller.
"WADSWORTH COUNTY, Wisconsin.-Timber resembling white cedar, from a wetl eighteen feet deep in the prairie region, and about two hundred and fifty feet above the surface of Lake Michigan."-J. A. Lapham.
"GRAND SABLE, SOUTH SHORE OF LAKE SUPERIOR.-Layers of roots, and timber of trees, sometimes twelve or fourteen feet thick, resting on clay, inter-stratified with gravel, three hundred feet thick."-Sir Wm. Logan, in Geology of Canada.
"MONTGOMERY COUNTY, OHIO.-Beds of peat, from twelve to twenty feet in thickness, containing quantities of coniferous wood, with twigs, branches and berries of red cedar; also containing hones of the elephant and mastodon, and teeth of the giant beaver; the whole covered with ninety feet of sand."-Prof. Orton.
"TORONTO, CANADA.-Trunks and branches of trees, embedded in yellow clay, at a depth of from ten to twenty feet from the surface." -Prof. Hind.
We do not wish it understood that these remains of trees and animals were all buried beneath a drift deposit at one and the same time; but we do say that all over this wide extent of country there once existed a heavy growth of forest trees, with animals of huge dimensions roaming through them, both of which have become extinct, and are now deeply buried beneath a drift deposit. From all the light that we can gather from these and other facts, it is evident that our continent has been raised and again submerged beneath the ocean several times since the eozoic age, at least all of it except the few localities heretofore mentioned.
MASTODONS AND ELEPHANTS.
Not only forest trees, but the remains of large animals have been found in many localities in Northern Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. These remains are mostly found in deep marshes and peat bogs, which were, when these animals lived, small lakes. In sonic instances, the leg and other lower bones of the mas-
HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO - 23
todon and elephant have been found in a standing position, showing that in going to these places for water, they must have been mired, and their great weight and clumsiness prevented their extricating themselves. These lakes have now become peat marshes by the continued accumulation of leaves, mosses and other vegetation which now cover their bones many feet deep. No remains of these animals have been found in this county, but it is possible that there might be, upon proper search for them in and about the swamps of Brighton and Camden; as, from the location of these swamps; I have no doubt that those places were favorite resorts for these animals.
A few years since, some of the ribs, vertebrae, a part of a tooth, the tusks and some other bones of a mastodon were found in Montville, Medina county. The bones were more or less broken, and were supposed to belong to a young animal. The tusks were broken off at their points, and were about four feet long, largest in the middle and tapered towards the point and base; the ribs, which were somewhat broken, were five inches wide.
In Cleveland the remains of a large animal were found in excavating a cellar on Ontario street. The knights of the spade and pick, not knowing what they were, or not caring, carted the most of them off, and they were dumped away, broken and destroyed. However, a few teeth and vertebrae were saved, and are now in the Western Reserve Historical Society rooms in that city. Dr. E. Sterling called my attention to these bones at the time. Upon examination they were found to be the remains of a very large elephant. (Elephas Americanus.) These bones were not found as usual in a low marshy place, but on high land, in sand and gravel. It is altogether probable that they were washed in and covered up when the lake stood at that level. These huge animals roamed over all of northern Ohio for a long time after the accumulation of its ancient soil and great forests, up to a recent period, geologically speaking, that is up to about the time of the formation of the sand ridges. Whether they became extinct about this time, by some sudden climatic or other change, or gradually died out, we are unable to determine. The only record we have of them is their bones and the location in which they are found. Their bones not being fossilized are liable to decay on exposure to the atmosphere, except the teeth and tusks, which being enameled are usually well preserved. There are, however, a few well preserved whole skeletons of these great American animals of our primeval forests.
TERRACES.
We now come to the last epoch or phase in the series of drift deposits: "Terraces and Sand-ridges." These belong to our present geological time, that is, there have been no great changes since their deposition, or rather they are the result of the last change in the Lake Erie basin. Although we speak of them as of a recent formation, or the last, yet we must remember that they were formed ages before man came into being. This was the last act in the geological drama that was performed to fit and prepare the earth for man's abode.
At no time previous to this epoch could man have lived upon the earth for a single year, but now all is changed, the right conditions have been reached as to soil, climate, and the class of animals suited to his wants; all is prepared and ready for his advent; and in his own good time the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.
Of the terraces I can only give a very meager description, having given them but a passing thought among my other researches in the county until about two years ago, when I became convinced that they held a very conspicuous place in the topogrophy of the county; I then commenced regular field work upon them and have traced out and located two of them quite satisfactorily. The last terrace now visible I found about one and a half miles from the present shore line, and at an altitude of forty feet above lake level. It follows nearly the present contour of the lake shore. It is very evident that the water receded to a broad river after these terraces were formed, and now by gradually wearing its way back inland, its shore follows nearly the same lines that it left in its precedence. I have traced this terrace most of the way from the -Vermillion to Black River, and all the way from Black River east fifteen miles into Dover, Cuyahoga county. I have no doubt but that it can readily be traced the whole length of the lake shore. At Avon Point it does not make the sharp angle of the shore, but merely makes a gentle curve to the north. The soil is clay, with its surface somewhat mixed with gravel. The timber upon it is mostly hard maple, beech and hickory, and that upon either side of it, is black ash, soft maple, elm, & c. Its rise from the north is very perceptible. and upon the farms through which it passes it is usually selected as the building spot if at all convenient, as it is the dryest land. These terraces were formed by the natural wearing of the water against the shore, at which level the water stood for a considerable period of time, and then by a sudden. receidence caused by the breaking away of the barrier at the outlet, the water dropped away from this line leaving it a natural terrace. Should Lake Erie, by the sudden breaking away of Niagara, be drained forty feet lower than it now is, its present shore line would form just such a terrace as the one now under consideration was when it was left by the retreating waters. Its many years of weather-wear since, has given it its present appearance and sloping condition. There is a succession of these terraces, each one higher than the last, as we go south through the county, one south of Wellington has an altitude of three hundred and sixty feet above lake level. Please remember that I reckon all altitudes from lake level,- that when I speak of any height, it is so many feet above the level
24 - HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
of the lake. Lake Erie is five hundred and sixty five feet above the ocean level.
These terraces no doubt continue on up to the summit, that is, the high-lands or divide, between the waters of the Ohio river, and Lake Erie, which here have an altitude of seven hundred and seventy-three feet. The highest land in the State, which lies southwest from here in Logan county has an altitude of nine hundred and seventy-five feet. Wellington stands at two hundred and eighty-six feet; Oberlin, two hundred and fifty-three feet; Elyria one hundred and fifty- five feet, and Amherst one hundred and twenty-two feet, gradually sloping away to the lake. These different altitudes are caused, partly by the glaciers plowing deeper into the rocks in its canter, and partly by the formation of these terraces by the retreating waters. The next terrace south of the one above described is the largest and most distinct of all of them. This was undoubtedly caused by the water standing at this level for a longer period of time than elsewhere. It lies about four miles back from the lake, at an altitude of about one hundred and five feet. In Amherst, Sheffield, Avon and a part of Dover, the old sand beach, called the Northridge, rests directly upon it, but in some places in Cuyahoga county, as in Dover, Rockport and Euclid, east of Cleveland, it is separate and distinct from the ridge, and very marked in its character.
I hardly deem it necessary to go back farther and trace out others of these shore line terraces, a description of these two being sufficient to give us all the knowledge we need as to their formation and character.
SAND RIDGES.
Our beautiful ridges, running through the county nearly parallel with the lake east and west, are the last link in the geological chain. They are the last landmarks, or rather the last water-marks, that were left by the retreating waters. Upon these ridges the pioneer first built his log-cabin; along them ran the first wagon-roads. The first settlers all strove to build upon, and cultivate the ridges. Their light sandy soil, natural drainage, and easy cultivation, made them a very desirable location for the pioneer. There are several theories as to the cause of their formation: one is that they are morains left by the retreating glaciers; (morains are the debris that is pushed out from under the glacier and left at its sides as it moves on over the surface); another is that they are off-shore sand-bars; but the one that is now most generally accepted is that they are old beach-lines left by the receeding waters in their successive stages of rest. There are three continuous ridges running through the county besides several local ones.
The Butternut Ridge was the first formed. At this level the water remained for a long period of time, until all the accumulation of that old beach was washed and blown up by the combined agency of the water and the winds; then a sudden breaking away of the barrier at the outlet caused the water to fall thirteen feet, and then another period of rest that formed Chestnut ridge. A breaking away of twenty-four feet more and we have Sugar ridge; of seven more and we have Center ridge. Here was a longer period of rest, which formed a continuous ridge the whole length of the lake. Another recedence of fifty- two feet brought it to the line on which the North, or last continuous ridge now rests. I have examined no less than ten of these sand ridges in our county and have taken their altitude in many places.
The fact that both terraces and sand ridges were the result - of old shore lines, naturally led to the question why do we not find sand-ridges as far south as we do terraces? This question, to my mind, is easily answered. The ridges were formed from the sand that was worn from the rocks by the action of water; hence these ridges are only found within the limits of the horizon of sand-rock exposure.
It is evident that these rocks could be worn but very little, if at all, while submerged; but when the water receded and became low enough to expose them as cliffs and shore lines, then the ever-ceaseless waves of summer, of which no rock-bound shore can resist their slow but sure advance, and the frosts and grinding ice of winter commenced their destructive eroding process, which ground from these rocks large quantities of sand, which was taken up by the undertow and waves and piled high upon the near shore beach.
We will now take up the ridges in the order in which we find them, beginning at the lowest or last sand beach formed, giving only their location, altitude and most interesting features:
North Ridge. -This ridge at Avon, one mile east of the center and four from the lake, according to my measurement in 1866, has an altitude of one hundred and six feet. At the centre it is some sixteen feet higher, composed of finer sand, blown up by the winds into a broad knoll, upon which the early settlers buried their dead, and upon which now rests the beautiful Avon cemetery. This ridge bears nearer the contour of the present lake shore line than any of the other ridges. It runs through Avon, Sheffield, southeast corner of Black River, Amherst and Brown- helm. I shall only give the townships in our county in which these ridges are located.
Centre Ridge. -In Ridgeville this has an altitude of one hundred and sixty-two feet. In the eastern part of. Ridgeville, it takes the form of a double ridge, beginning on the farm of Laurel Beebe and extending about a mile and a half to the farm of Ichabod Terrell, when it divides into two distinct ridges, and these continue on to the western part of the township, where, on the farm of John Cahoon, they unite again into one ridge. In this double ridge is remarkably well shown the part the winds played in the formation of these ridges. The north, and very much the lower half, is coarse sand and gravel, while the south and larger part is composed of fine sand, which, being
HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO - 25
lighter, was separated and blown up from the coarser by the winds, day by day and year by year, as it accumulated upon the beach, until it was piled high above the other. I can give no other theory for this phenomenon. This ridge was used as the first wagon road in the county, and as long as stage coaches were inn, it was the old stage road between Buffalo and Detroit. It lies through Ridgeville, Elyria, Amherst, extreme northwest corner of Russia and Henrietta.
South, or Butternut Ridge, in Ridgeville, has an altitude of two hundred and four feet. It runs through Ridgeville, northwest corner of Eaton and Carlisle. A description of either one of these three continuous ridges is a description of the other two, with the exception of its location and altitude. The balance of the ridges in the county are intermediate or local. Of these,
Chestnut Ridge is the longest. It lies between the center and south ridges. It commences in Olmsted, Cuyahoga county, and runs through Ridgeville, northwest corner of Eaton, and ends in Carlisle. Its course is northeast and southwest, its altitude one hundred and eighty-one feet.
Sugar Ridge lies in Ridgeville, between the Chestnut and Center ridges; commencing a mile southwest of the center of Ridgeville; it runs due southwest two miles, and has an altitude of one hundred and sixty- seven feet.
Stony Ridge is another of the Ridgeville ridges, and is rightly named, it is the stoniest ridge in the county, and the stoniest one I ever saw. It begins about a mile and a half northwest from the center, and runs west-northwest. From its peculiar location with reference to the other ridges, and the topography of the surrounding country, and also its formation being water-worn sandstones, many of them quite large, I am inclined to believe that this ridge was formed as an off-shore sand bar in shallow water, and not as a sand beach. These water-worn sandstones are from the Shelly cliffs of the Ohio sandstone, and are so thickly scattered over the surface that in many places cultivation is impracticable until they are picked up and thrown into heaps. They are thin, flat, rounded stones, from the size of gravel to fifteen or twenty pounds weight. It seems to me impossible that this ridge could have been formed as a beach line. I therefore give it as my opinion that it is an off-shore, shallow-water sand bar.
Murray Ridge is a short ridge two miles west of Elyria, in that township. Its course is nearly north and south; it branches off from the main or center ridge to the south; altitude, one hundred and ninety-eight feet.
Middle Ridge commences in the extreme southwest corner of Sheffield, runs through the northwest corner of Elyria, and through Amherst in a southwesterly direction; altitude, one hundred and forty-eight feet.
Whittlesey Ridge is about two miles from the lake, and has an altitude of from ninety to one hundred 4 feet, It extends southwest from Beaver creek in Amherst to the Vermilion river in Brownhelm. It is the nearest of all the ridges to the lake that runs parallel with it.
A ridge runs out from Elyria west of north through the township upon which is located the Black River road. Its altitude is about one hundred and fifty feet. It is a spur or offshoot from the Center ridge. Often while driving along this beautiful ridge, have I looked off across to the east and north over the well cultivated farms, and pictured to myself this arm of a great inland sea coming up to the very foot of this ridge and extending off to the east along the slope of the Center ridge, forming in this obtuse angle a beautiful bay. This was long before there was a human being upon the face of the earth to behold the beautiful things that God had created; and yet there were no less beautiful things then than now, with all the teeming millions of human eyes to behold with wondering admiration.
The main ridges all run parallel with the lake, and as a consequence presented a barrier to the natural drainage of the land. The water coming down from the higher lands on the south, settled in behind these ridges, forming ponds or small lakes, Which, as vegetation slowly accumulated, finally became swamps. Hence we find on the south side of all our ridges, these swamps.
ROCK FORMATIONS.
By the fossil remains of the fauna and flora, in the geological strata of past ages, the geologist is enabled to read with tolerable certainty the condition of the globe at any given period of its history. Fossils are the working capital of the geologist, for by these only can he tell equivalent rocks and their relative positions. No Silurian fossils are ever found above or below the Silurian age ; Devonian fossils are never found in the Silurian or carboniferous ages; but each distinctive age had its own peculiar animal and vegetable life for which it was then adapted; that is, the fauna and flora which belonged to that and no other age. This is also trne of the different epochs and subdivisions of time. No fossils are found in the one that belong to the other. Hence, when the Silurian age closed, with it closed all the teeming millions of animal life that then existed; and so it is with each successive age. No bridging over from one age to the other; no connecting link between the two. But, on the contrary, the line of demarkation is very plainly drawn between each successive age of the world, by means of the fossils they contain.
I do not wish to be understood that we do not find fossils in one age that may not represent in some way those of another, for we know that we find trilobites which are a crustacean in the very lower Silurian, and we find living crustacean to-day but no trilobites. The farmer knows that he gathers apples from apple trees, and hickory nuts from hickory trees. Just as sure does the geologist know when he finds a fossil
26 - HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
to what class of rocks and age it belongs. " By their fossils ye shall know them."
CUYAHOGA SHALE.
The highest or first surface rock in Lorain county is called the Cuyahoga shale, from its fine exposure on the banks of the Cuyahoga river. It underlies all the southern part of the county, and is the first rock above the sandstone, having its out-crop along the streams through the middle and southern portion of the county. It is a fine, hard, impervious, argillaceous, gray shale, with occasionally thin bands of pearly sandstone running through it, but is of no economic value. In its decomposition it produces a cold, wet, tenacious soil, of little value for tillage; and it is well for the farmers that they get but little of it. It is one of the most uninteresting of all the series. It holds no minerals of value and but few fossils of interest. Much of its upper portion has been removed by glacial attrition, leaving its average thickness about one hundred and fifty feet.
The Cuyahoga shale is the uppermost member of the Waverly group. The Waverly is of carboniferous age and is the lowest group of carbonifereous rocks. In Lorain county this group is subdivided into four members, namely: Cuyahoga shale, Ohio sandstone, Bedford shale, and Cleveland shale.
SAND ROCK
AND ITS ECONOMIC VALUE.
In the fall of 1877 I made a tour of the rocks and quarries of Elyria, Amherst and Brownhelm. For years I have occasionally visited some one or more of these magnificent quarries, but never before made a tour of the whole. I was hardly prepared to realize the vast magnitude of the work going on here. The stone annually handled is simply enormous. In nearly all these quarries work was being vigorously pushed although it was late and in the closing season. It was cheery and pleasant to hear the click, click of the pick, chisel and drill, as I went from quarry to quarry. I found more or less fossilized wood, apparently coniferous (cedar family), but no shells or other animal fossils. Although at Berea, in the same formation, there has been found shark's teeth (cladodus), and a species of shells (lingula scotica).
Iu Clough's quarry I found a seam in the rock that deserves more than a passing notice. It was about two feet wide from top to bottom and nearly vertical, extending from the top to the depth they had quarried, fifty feet, and how much farther we cannot tell, but undoubtedly to the very bottom of the rock. There are two causes combined which could have produced this singular break, although they may have been long ages apart: an internal disturbance which raised the rock and opened the seam. But had the rock remained in its raised position the crevice would not have been of uniform width, but would have been V shaped, or widest at the top; or, had the rock settled back to its original level, the seam would have been closed. This last is probably just what was done, as we find it of the same width all the way from base to summit, filled with bluish clay and fragments of stone, some of them showing erosion. Now it hardly seems possible that this massive rock of millions of tons in settling back to position could have moved at its base sufficient to have left such a seam as this, and certainly it would not have been filled with such a mass of hard clay and other material that we now find in it.
But in the ice period there was another agency at work: the great glaciers, which passed over these rocks (for their marks are on them) from east to west, tearing down mountains and filling up valleys in their course. This power, and this alone it seems to me, was adequate to have separated this rock (the break having already been made) and moved it to the west sufficient to leave this crevice which we now find filled up with clay-mud and other debris.
I do not wish to be understood that this is the only possible solution of this strange phenomenon. But after giving it careful study, this is the theory I have arrived at. I also found a similar break nearly in the center of the Worthington quarry.
We found upon inquiry at the different quarries that the number of men employed during the season is about six hundred. And here let me say that the gentlemanly proprietors and their foremen laid as under many obligations for valuable information. They were all, without a single exccption, willing to stop and show us through their quarries and machinery, and also to give any information desired in regard to the quality of stone, shipments, etc. We found these foremen not only well informed, intelligent men, but some of them quite good geologists, who could talk about other rocks than Amherst sandstone.
In nearly all these quarries the rock is very massive but easily accessible; standing, as it does, in ledges, the stripping is comparatively light. None of them have as yet gone to the bottom of the rock. At Worthington's they have gone down sonic eighty feet and not touched bottom yet.
There are many small quarries scattered here and there throughout this whole sand-stone district, mainly used for home consumption and local trade.
We will now try to give a description of this vast deposit, its distribution, composition, economic value, etc. It is the most valuable element in all our goo, logical series, and reaches its greatest maximum of excellence in quantity, quality and accessibility in the. quarries at Amherst and Brownhelm. These rocks underlie the whole eastern half of the State, and have their out-crop from Brownhelm on the north and west, through the entire central portion of the State to Portsmouth, on the Ohio river. Although deeply buried in many places by drift deposits or the Cuyahoga shale, yet they are readily accessible in more than fifteen counties in the State: of which Lorain, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Trumbull, Medina, Fairfield and Pike are the most important.
HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO - 27
These rocks have a gradual thinning out as they go east and south, so that in Tennessee and Kentucky there is but very little if any sandstone in the series, and in eastern Ohio and Pennsylvania argillaceous Material enters largely into the composition of its beds. Its greatest thickness is obtained at its very northwestern out-crop. Here it attains a depth of eighty to one hundred feet or more. At Amherst and Brownhelm the topmost layers are removed as strippings; when a few feet of flagging is generally obtained, and then the solid homogeneous rock is reached. At Independence, in Cuyahoga county, nearly all the flagging material has been removed by glacial erosion leaving about twenty-five or thirty feet of massive sandstone. At Berea it is still different. Here the flagging stone comprises nearly one half of its entire thickness, or about twenty feet of flagging to thirty feet of building stone; so that at Berea its entire thickness is only about half of that at Amherst. There are good quarries at Elyria, Ridgeville, Columbia and Avon. The stone at Ridgeville does not come above the surface, but is of very superior quality, fine in texture, very white, and free from iron and clay balls. The upper stratum of these ledges at Amherst and Brownhelm, stands about sixty or seventy feet above the natural drainage of the surrounding country, consequently there has been for ages, atmospheric moisture passing through these rocks, thoroughly oxydizing the iron they contain; thus leaving those cheerful mellow tints, so highly appreciated by the architect and builder. The prevailing color is a light warm buff or drab, changing as the rock deepens below drainage, to a light gray or dove color, and at its base to a bluish tint, known as " blue Amherst," and very highly prized in the New York market.
The texture of the stone is fine and homogeneous, usually without iron, and very few flaws or breaks, so that it is very readily worked into any desirable shape or size, working very easily under the pick or chisel, and yet retaining with faithfulness all its markings.
Its strength is equal to ten thousand pounds to the square inch, one thousand pounds more than the celebrated brown stone of Connecticut; four times that of the best brick, and much stronger than the best marble or granite.
Its durability is greater than any other known sedimentary rock; being nearly pure silex, it resists the erosive action of the atmosphere to a wonderful degree, and is not affected by weathering any more than the very best Scotch granite. Its durability is beautifully shown on the rocks north of the Haiderman quarry, where there are very fine glacial grooves and markings, which have remained intact for ages. and also in the hieroglyphic markings on the surface rocks on the farm of J. J. Rice, in Amherst township. Here these markings must have lain exposed to the denuding agencies of the frosts and storms of a thousand years or more, and still the sharp markings of the pick are plainly visible to this day.
It is also very refractory and will resist the action of fire where limestone, marble and granite are, entirely destroyed. This was very clearly demonstrated in the great Chicago fire. Its chemical analysis is as follows:
Siticic acid (the substance of pure quartz) 90.22
Alumnia 6.25
Peroxide and protoxide iron 2.37
Lime 0.87
Magnesia 0.26
Alkalies 0.03
100.00
Thus it will be seen that the great beauty, strength and durability of this rock will command for it the highest price in any market. Hence, as a building stone, it is shipped to nearly every city in the Union, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from Her Majesty's Dominion in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. From the Amherst quarries some of the finest buildings of Boston, New York, Chicago and St. Louis were constructed; as were also the Parliament buildings of Canada.
We have only spoken of it as a material for building purposes. Thousands of tons of grindstones and coarse whetstones. are made and annually shipped to all parts of the civilized world, and in New England they come into competition with the best Nova Scotia stones; and for dry grinding they are not excelled anywhere.
The annual product of these quarries is quite large. We have the average figures before us, kindly furnished by the different companies, which show the annual shipment of block stone to be three hundred and eighty-five thousand cubic feet. Of grindstone, eleven thousand two hundred tons and of other stone large amounts. Total annual receipts over *500,000, and the business is increasing from year to year. This great deposit so widely distributed over our State belongs to the Waverly series, and is of carboniferous age.
The question is often asked, how and why are the different names given to the different geological formations, and how divided. The equivalent of our Devonian rocks were first described and classified at Devonshire in England, hence the name Devonian. The Silurian from Siluria, in Wales. The Huron shale (which belongs to the Devonian) was determined and located, as to its relative position to the other rocks, on the Huron river, hence its name.
The Waverly sandstone was brought into note by the large quarries at the town of Waverly, in Pike county, from which this stone was taken to build the massive locks of the Ohio canal. The first geological survey in 1837 gave these rocks the name of Waverly sandstone; but they have been called by so many local names since that we adopt the name " Ohio sandstone." Our present State geologist called them . "Berea grit," from the fact that at Berea the first grindstones were manufactured from it and sent into market, which brought them into such a world-wide reputation. The name Waverly is retained and attached to the class of rocks to which this belongs.
28 - HISTORY OP LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
The outcrops of these rooks at Amherst and Brown- helm, of which we have been speaking, were once high bluffs against which a great inland sea dashed its ever-ceaseless waves for countless ages, wearing away the softer portions and leaving those ledges like little islands amid a boundless ocean.
BEDFORD SHALE.
The next rock below the sandstone is the Bedford shale, which is about seventy feet in thickness. Its upper portion is of a reddish color, caused by the oxidation of iron from the sandstone lying immediately above. This is the only red shale in the country, and is a good guide to those in search of the sandstone. This red shale is well exposed in nearly all the creeks and gorges the whole width of the county along the base of the sandstone. The best exposure of the Bedford, however, is shown on the Vermillion river in Brownhelm township, at and near the mouth of Chance creek. Here the banks are one hundred and thirty-two feet in height, and nearly the entire thickness of both the Bedford and Cleveland are shown together. The upper strata of the Bedford are red, the middle and lower portions a dull bluish gray.
The Vermillion river was so named from the color this shale gives to its banks. The upper strata being red, as it crumbles and dissolves, the storms wash it down from above thus giving the banks at a little distance the appearance of having been painted red. On Black river the Bedford is also well exposed, and here is shown its uneven upper surface which was cut away by currents of water while it was soft clay.
These channels were filled with sand which was eventually hardened into stone. This will account for the uneven lower surface of the sandstone at Grafton and other places.
There are some very interesting fossils in the Bedford, although they are not numerous, for which see chapter on " Fossils."
CLEVELAND SHALE.
I quote from Prof. Newberry, a description of this shale which is better than any I can give:
"This Is a black bituminous shale from fifty to sixty feet In thickness, which is well exposed beneath the Bedford shale in the valleys of Black and Vermilion rivers. It contains over ten per cent. of carbonaceous matter, and this gives it a black color by which it may at once be recognized when freshly broken. Where long exposed, its carbon is burned out by oxidation and it becomes gray; hence its out-crops, taking the color of the other gray shales in the series, may not be identified without some excavation.
"The only fossils found in the Cleveland shale of Lorain county up to the present time, are rhomboidal enameled fish-scales. These belong to a ganold fish, probably a species of Palceoniscus but no entire individual has as yet been obtained. The Cleveland shale has no economic importance, except that it is clearly the source of the petroleum found at Grafton and Liverpool"
Since the above description of this shale was written by Prof. Newberry I have made this shale an especial study, and have finally discovered in it the remains of some of the most remarkable placoderm fishes the world has ever known, nearly, if not quite equal to those of the Huron epoch for which see chapter on " Fossils."
This shale is literally filled with sea-weeds and other carbonaceous matter. There are good exposures on nearly all the streams emptying into Lake Erie, from the Vermillion, east; but the best are found on the Black and Vermillion rivers. Here may be seen its entire thickness at a glance, and the student in geology may use his pick, and chisel, with a fair prospect of success. There are thin bands of cone-in-cone lime running through it. From its peculiar structure at first it was taken to be fossiliferous, but upon careful examination it was found to be mechanical, and not organic. Some of this cone-in-cone takes the form of half a clam-shell, and as they slip out from the rock in this shape with their folds and serrated edges, it is difficult to persuade one's self that they are not fossils. We often find a group of these, very uniform in size, shape, and appearance; but mostly the cones are massed in together wedge-shape, and can only be taken out by breaking up the rock. At present the economic value of the Cleveland shale is but slight. There can be distilled from it about ten gallons of petroleum to every ton of shale, and the time may, and probably will come when, with improved machinery and bettor knowledge, this will be made an additional source of wealth to our county. It is impossible for us to even remotely comprehend the vast resources of the earth. What wise provisions there have been made for the comfort and happiness of man! -" Treasures new and old" hid away in the great storehouse of nature, ready to be brought to light and use, as man needs them along down the course of time.
One of the most wonderful of all these productions of nature, is petroleum; and as the Cleveland shale is unquestionably the source from which the petroleum at Grafton is obtained, we will consider it in connection with these rocks. We shall speak of it only in general terms, but for a detailed account of the oil wells at Grafton, we refer the reader to the history of that township in this volume.
The early settlers of Grafton found along the creeks in that township sinkholes or pits, in which oil collected. In many places the soil was saturated with asphaltic tar, produced by the evaporation of this oil. These pits bear every evidence of having been made for the purpose of collecting the oil, by the ancient people who inhabited the country long before the white man trod the soil. Whether it was the old Mound-Builders, or the rod man of a later period, we of course cannot tell; but probably the former, as the whites have no knowledge of the. Indians coming to these oil pits, after they came into possession. What use this ancient people made of this oil is of course all conjecture; but the most rational theory is, that they used it for its medicinal qualities. This also seems to have been the first use made of it by the whites.
HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO - 29
These oil springs, as they were called, extended from Grafton into Liverpool, five miles east. And here, as early as 1843, Harris Warner sunk a well in one of these springs down to the rock, from which he collected the oil and sold it as "rock oil," for the cure of burns, sprains, rheumatism, etc., for which it Required quite a reputation.
In 1861, the oil excitement ran high, and wells were drilled in Grafton. The Jones well, about a mile north of the center, was sunk to a depth of six hundred feet, but drew its oil from a depth of one hundred feet below the surface. The Rising well was sunk one hundred and fifty feet, but drew its oil from a point eighty-five feet below the surface. From these and other experiments, it was soon learned that it was useless to go below the base of the sand rock. The oil from these wells is a thick, heavy oil,. of a specific gravity of 22̊ to 28̊ (Baum.): too heavy to 'profitably distill for illuminating purposes—the only use then made of petroleum. Since that time, it has been discovered that this heavy oil is an excellent lubricator, and consequently more valuable than the lighter oils.
The rock in which this oil is found is the "Ohio sandstone," which here varies very much in thickness, and consequently makes the production of oil more uncertain. In one place, it was found to be only one foot in thickness, and a few rods away one hundred feet thick. Now, we have before stated that this sand-rock is nearly pure silex, or quartz: it is therefore very evident that it cannot produce the oil-no, not one drop in a thousand tons. Then it may be asked, if it is found here, where does it come from, and how does it get into these rocks? And why don't we find it everywhere in the sand-rocks, as well as here? We will try to answer these questions satisfactorily by 1nvestigating these rocks at Grafton.
Now then, commencing at the turf, we go through a few feet of drift-clay into the Cuyahoga shale, hard argillaceous, of a bluish-gray color, and fine in texture. Its composition precludes the idea of its being an oil-producing rock. Then we go down some forty or fifty feet to the sand-rock; this we know does not produce it, although we find it here. And now, we remember that oil always works up, not down; and as we find it here, we must still go lower for its origin. So we go down again some eighty or one hundred feet to the next shale below the sand-rock; this is called" Bedford shale." A few feet of this is red, and then the color is light and dark gray. This is not what we are looking for; so down we go sixty or seventy feet more, and we strike a hard, black, bituminous shale called the "Cleveland shale." Alt! this, we think, must be it: bituminous it is, in every sense of the word. We will now take some of this shale to Prof. Wormely, at Columbus, and have him analyze it by distillation, and what is the report? Ten to fifteen gallons of oil to every ton of shale. We have now found where this oil comes from; and now we want to know what produces it. Prof. Wormely tells us, and our eyes can plainly see that these rocks (we call all the members of the series rocks) are literally filled with sea-weeds, and other fatty vegetable matter, so we conclude that it is a vegetable production, and not of animal origin.
The conditions under which oil is found are alike in all parts of the world: whether in Ohio, Pennsylvania, China, or elsewhere. It must be an open, porous sand-rock, which can absorb and retain the oil; or broken up into crevices, as reservoirs for its accumulation, and a hard impervious shale resting immediately upon the rock to prevent its escape. These are the only conditions under which oil is found in quantity.
At Grafton we find that internal disturbances from far below the surface have opened seams in the rocks, from below the Cleveland shale up to the sand-rock, which permitted the oil to escape above; and as the sand-rock was harder and more compact than the other rocks, the shock was correspondingly greater, , thus rending them into fissures, into which the oil flowed for ages by the process of slow distillation. The impervious Cuyahoga shale resting directly upon this rock, acts like the cover to a pot to hold the oil in these fissures and prevent its escape. Here it has remained for untold ages, until man's inventive genius has probed the earth and brought this wonderful treasure forth. The Cleveland shale is the lowest member in the Waverly group, which belongs to the carboniferous age.
ERIE SHALE.
We might almost pass the Erie rocks, without mention, so unimportant are they in our county. They have no fossils, and hold no minerals or other matter that can contribute materially to the wealth of the county. I only find the Erie a few feet thick on the Vermillion near its mouth. A thin outcrop appears about a mile or so east, on the lake shore, and from this we find no more of it until we reach Avon point, where it forms the rocky cliffs of the shore. Here it has an exposure of twenty-six feet; and four miles east, of sixty feet, and continues to form the shore-line to Dunkirk.
In New York and Pennsylvania the Erie shale reaches a thickness of more than two thousand feet, so that we here in Lorain county are on the extreme western edge of the basin of that old Erie sea, which in New York State was more than two thousand feet deep when this deposit was formed.
This shale may readily be distinguished by its color, which is a dull blue or greenish gray. There are thin bands of lenticular iron ore running through it, which were used in an early day for smelting both at Vermillion and Black river, but since the Lake Superior and other iron mines have been made accessible, this kind of ore has been abandoned for the reason that it could not be obtained in any quantity, as it could only be gathered along the shore as it washed out from the cliff by the action of the waves;
30 - HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
and also the expense and difficulty of smelting. I have been told by those who have worked this kind of iron-stone that it produced about forty per cent. of iron. The Erie belongs to the Devonian and is the uppermost member in this group.
HURON SHALE.
We now come to the last or lowest rock that is exposed on the surface in the county. Like the Cleveland, it is a black bituminous shale filled with carbonaceous matter. The oil, of which it is the origin and of which it contains from ten to fifteen gallons to the ton of shale, is of a lighter grade than that obtained from the Cleveland shale. It is supposed to be the source from which is obtained all the oil of Pennsylvania. This rock underlies all of Ohio, has its outcrop in Kentucky, Tennessee and some of the western States. Its thickness here is about three hundred feet, but in the eastern part of the State it is nearly twice as thick. Aside from the petroleum production the most interesting feature of the Huron is its gigantic fossil fishes, for which see chapter on "Fossils."
Not only is the Huron the source of petroleum, but it is the origin of the carburetted hydrogen gas which escapes from the ground at numerous points all through the county. Almost every township has more or less of these "gas-springs." All along the lake shore, in still weather, this gas may be seen bubbling up, and in some places the flow is so copious that they never freeze over in winter. Often have I touched a lighted match to the escaping gas as I have been sailing along, to see it flash. In some parts of the county these gas-springs have been utilized for. lighting and heating purposes, and it seems to me the time is not far distant when this gas will be used to a considerable extent.
I have now given as full a description of these rocks and their economic values as it is possible to give in one short chapter in a work like this. I have given their relative position to each other, as laid down in the books. That this will be changed and very much modified hereafter I have do doubt, but at present we leave them here.
I hardly think it necessary, or that the reader will wish me to go on and tell about the Hamilton group, that lies next below the Huron, and the coniferous group, which is next, and the Oriskany which is the lowest member of the Devonian age. None of these rocks come to the surface in Lorain county, but are found as surface rocks in adjoining counties.