288 THE IRON ORE DISTRICT OF EAST TEXAS. 



CLAYS. 



The lignitic clay shales, gray hardpan clay, and blue marly clay are ifi 

 sufficient quantity for the manufacture of bricks, tiles, and coarse pottery. 

 Several brick yards have been established, and merchantable brick have been 

 made and used in Rusk and New Birmingham. At Miller & Fuqua's brick 

 yard is made a brownish gray pressed brick called "iron brick" for facing. 

 They will make the brick needed for buildings and foundation of the new 

 Star and Crescent furnace. This yard began January 1, 1890, and uses red 

 surface clay; also gray sandy soil clay. The product during the past year 

 was two million bricks. The plant consists of four pug mills, one Thaison 

 brick press, having a daily capacity of fifteen thousand, and one Raymond 

 hand press. 



MINERAL PAINT. 



Yellow Ochre. — In the iron series, underlying the buff crumbly iron ore, 

 is an extensive drift deposit of altered greensand of marly consistence, in 

 which the green protoxide of iron has become yellow from oxidation to the 

 hydrated peroxide of iron. A purer yellow is often found as nuclei or centres 

 of the iron geode ore. 



Brown Ochre. — In many localities the wavy laminated and buff crumbly 

 ores are of dark brown color. These ores, when ground and sifted, will give 

 a yellowish brown pigment. 



Red Ochre. — This is sometimes found as inclusions in iron geodes and in 

 septum iron ore. In some localities, where the siliceous ores, such as the iron 

 pebble conglomerate and iron sandstone, have been exposed to the action of 

 forest fires, the brown hydrated oxide of iron has been partly altered to the 

 anhydrous red oxide of iron (hematite). This material, if ground and sifted, 

 will give a red pigment. Some of the red clays owe their color to this source. 



LIGNITE. 



In a little branch tributary to Bean : s Creek, three miles north by west of 

 the town of Rusk, E. M. Priest's tract, in the John M. Furgison headright, 

 was seen an outcrop of lignite underlying a twelve-inch stratum of lignitic 

 clay shale. Overlying the clay shale is six feet of soil drift, including small 

 nodules and fragments derived from the iron series which caps the ridges. 

 Along the same branch are tumbled bowlders of iron conglomerate, or breccia, 

 consisting of cemented angular fragments of iron sandstone and aluminous 

 iron ore, with a few small rounded iron pebbles from the older disintegrated 

 iron pebble conglomerate. 



