Look Back: Stone coal first burned for domestic use in 1808

This coming Thursday marks 213 years when Jesse Fell is credited with successfully burning stone coal without a forced draft inside his tavern that once stood at South Washington and East Northampton streets in Wilkes-Barre.

Fell’s discovery on Feb. 11, 1808, would change the greater Wyoming Valley from an agricultural area to an industrial superpower.

Coal mines and collieries would consume the landscape, canals were built to transport coal on barges through the Wyoming Valley to points north and south on the Susquehanna River, which were eventually replaced by railroads that zigzagged through the region.

It took several decades but Europeans would immigrate to the Wyoming Valley for work in the many coal mines, setting up ethnic towns along the way while building beautiful churches, many of which still stand today.

Fell didn’t discover coal as old newspaper stories highlighted Native Americans would burn coal in the 1740s and 1750s. When Yankee settlers from Connecticut arrived in the Wyoming Valley, they found coal along the banks of the Susquehanna River and sent several pales back to Connecticut.

“In 1768, a survey of a tract of land at Wyoming, somewhere between Kingston and Plymouth is marked ‘stone coal,’” the Wilkes-Barre Record reported April 15, 1891.

Blacksmiths used coal with a forced draft in forges to mend metal into kitchen ware, knives, saws, axes and weapons.

But it was Fell on a cold Feb. 11, 1808, night when he discovered a domestic use for coal for fuel instead of wood being used to heat homes.

The Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, today known as the Luzerne County Historical Society, held annual events in the 1800s through the 1990s celebrating Fell’s discovery.

A letter Fell wrote to his cousin, Jonathan Fell, dated Dec. 1, 1826, was published in the Wilkes-Barre Record on Feb. 13, 1907.

“In the year 1778, I used it in nailery (making nails) and found it to be profitable in that business. But it was the opinion of those that worked with it in their furnaces, that it would not do for fuel, because when a small parcel was left on their fires and had not blown, it would go out,” Fell wrote.

Fell wrote in the letter he procured an iron grate, 10 inches in depth and 10 inches in height, and placed it in his common room fireplace.

“On first lighting it, I found it to burn excellently well. This was the first successful attempt to burn our stone coal in a grate so far as my knowledge extends. On its being put in operation, my neighbors flocked to see the novelty but many would not believe the fact until convinced by ocular demonstration. This brought the stone coal into popular notice,” Fell wrote.

Other accounts reported Fell believed he failed at his experiment and went to sleep. Upon waking up, he discovered the coal was burning and producing heat.

The original Old Fell House was built with a central chimney and logs in 1787, known at the time as the Sign of the Buck Inn. The building acted as a stage coach stop on the Easton Turnpike.

Additions made of brick were added expanding the building.

During its history, the Old Fell House was the oldest licensed hotel in the county, became a licensed tavern in 1806, served as the county’s first courthouse, and was the location of the first organized Masonic Lodge gathering, and the founding of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society in February 1858.

In 1905, the Old Fell House was demolished but the chimney used in Fell’s experiment was left in tact and was incorporated into the New Old Fell House, according to the Evening News on April 12, 1926.

The New Old Fell House was torn down to make way for a parking lot in 1986.

A historical marker was erected at the site honoring Fell in February 1997.

Fell was a Revolutionary War veteran, WilkesBarre Borough’s first burgess (mayor), a political leader and judge. He died in 1830 and is buried in Hollenback Cemetery.