Chapter 12, Section 7
Madison
Geological.
The general geological feature of this township, as given to the writer by
W. G. Platt, are: Only Lower Productive rocks make the uplands. The lower part
of the deep valleys, which skirt the township, are composed of conglomerate
and subconglomerate rocks. The Upper Freeport coal is represented only in a
few knobs in the eastern and western portions of the township, and has there
barely enough rock on top of it to protect it from percolating waters. The
Lower Kittanning Coal is the bed chiefly mined, and is from three to four feet
thick. The remaining beds of the series are represented where the land is high
enough to include them, but, so far as investigated, they are devoid of
importance. The Lower Kittanning Coal has been quite extensively developed, it
being the bed worked on the property of the Mahoning Coal Company. The
ferriferous limestone underlies all the center of the township, and far above
water level. The buhrstone ore accompanies it, and hence the supply of
Stewardson Furnace is chiefly derived. The Pottsville conglomerate is above
water level throughout the whole length of valleys of the Allegheny, Mahoning
and Red Bank in this township, and is nearly three hundred feet above water
level at the mouth of Mahoning.Structure.
An anticlinal divides the township nearly in halves in a northeast and
northwest direction. It crosses the river just above the mouth of Mahoning,
and the Red Bank above Lawsonham. It has sharp dips on its southeastern flank.
The eastern and western portions of the township are in the synclinal.Prof. Lesley, in his Geological Report on the present Red Bank Furnace
property, says, respecting the chief supply of ore for this furnace: The
ore-bed is a layer of brown hematite mixed with blue carbonate, out of which
the hematite seems to have been made by decomposition. The less blue
carbonate, the more brown hematite, and the softer and better the ore, is the
accepted rule. The ore-bed is very irregular, sometimes running down to six
inches, and sometimes up to five feet. It will probably average two feet along
its whole outcrop. It is mined along the hillsides at about the same level on
the south side of Red Bank and down the river. * * * It covers the ferriferous
or great fossiliferous limestone, a bed of fifteen feet thick, filling
depressions of all sizes in its upper surface, and penetrating its top layer,
so as to render it a superior flux, yielding a large percentage of its own.
Above the ore-bed is a mass of shales many feet thick, more or less silicious,
and more or less charged with blue carbonate of iron. This ore-bed is
remarkable for its extent of area, covering Armstrong, Venango, Clarion,
Jefferson, and Butler counties, and it has been, in fact, the principle
reliance of the fifty furnaces in Northwestern Pennsylvania, and the forty-odd
furnaces of Southern Ohio and Eastern Kentucky. Its out crop is usually very
soft, easily mined by stripping, and afterward by gangways, driven partly in
the limestone and partly in the ore. * * *There must be over two miles of ore outcrop on the 538-acre lot south of
Red Bank � Nicholson tract No. 1151 � and allowing only two feet of an
average thickness, and forty feet of stripping floor before commencing the
drift, we have one hundred thousand tons of soft brown hematite in sight. The
quantities lying back of the outcrop are too large to need estimation. * * *
The Kittanning, or “middle” coalbed south of Red Bank, is only about
twenty inches thick, and, if it underlies two hundred acres, contains about
five hundred thousand tons.Levels referred to tide, or heights above ocean in feet and tenths of a
foot: north abutment of Mahoning bridge, lower corner outside, 862.2; upper
inside corner, 829.6; opposite Rimerton Station, 836.7; north abutment, lower
inside corner, 831.5; south bridge seat, lower inside corner, 836.6; south
abutment, lower outside corner, 850.4; south abutment Red Bank bridge, lower
end, 849.6; Red Bank junction, 850.8; Fiddler�s run, 915; Lawsonham, 919;
Buck Lick run, 939; Rock run, 966; Leatherwood, 1027.Source: Page(s) 259-285, History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania by
Robert Walker Smith, Esq. Chicago: Waterman, Watkins & Co., 1883.
Transcribed December 1998 by Jeffrey Bish for the Armstrong County Smith
Project.
Contributed by Jeffrey Bish for use by the Armstrong County Genealogy Project
(http://www.pa-roots.com/armstrong/)Armstrong County Genealogy Project Notice:
These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format, for any
presentation, without prior written permission.
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