798 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
the Tuscarawas Valley Railroad (C. L. & W. R’y), but at present it is 
used with acceptance as a household fuel by the farmers of the 
neighborhood. The coal is mainly under light cover. It holds an 
average thickness of 4 feet. It lies about 100 feet above the Tuscarawas 
Valley, and 448 feet above Lake Erie. There is considerable territory 
adjoining it that is high enough to hold the coal, but no thorough 
explorations have been reported. 
THE DEEP BoRING ON THE WAGNER FARM, NEAR CANAL FULTON. 
It is within a half mile from the Lester mine that the deep drilling 
has recently been made, at the bottom of which it was claimed that 
6 feet of coal were found, at a depth of about 400 feet below the level 
of the Valley. The drilling was made by Messrs. McFadden and 
Campbell, of Canal Fulton, and the find was reported about the middle 
of October. As many of the letters and dispatches were dated at 
Akron, the claim has been connected with this town, and the “deep coal 
of Akron” has acquired a wide-spread notoriety. 
It appears that traditions of a coal-seam, far below the Valley 
level, have been current in the neighborhood for the last 50 years. 
They all go back to the drilling of the deep hole for salt water by a 
former resident of the Valley, now Jong since deceased, named Kroft. 
The date of the drilling was 1823-4, as nearly as it can be fixed. 
There is no one now left in the Valley that claims to have seen the coal, 
and but few that claim to have heard of it at an early day. A letter 
recently received from Mr. Peter Kroft, of Winnemac, Ind., son of the 
man who drilled the hole, is explicit in its denial of any coal being 
found in the boring. Mr. Kroft declares that he remembers all the 
history of the boring. He says that the rock was reached 8 feet below 
the surface, and that it held uninterruptedly for 400 feet, and that no 
coal was found at any point. 
The samples brought up by the present drillers from the hole, being 
bright and lustrous and not soiling water, were pronounced anthracite by 
parties near at hand, and probably in accordance with this view, a 
chemist of the neighborhood found more than 80 per cent. of fixed 
carbon in them. A true analysis, made by the Chemist of the Survey, 
showed less than 50 per cent. of fixed carbon, and made the compo- 
sition agree closely with the so-called albertite of the Ohio black shale, 
to the level at which this product is often found the boring had pene- 
