. Historical sketches of Plymouth, Luzerne Co., the pioneer, if such hadbeen the case, it would not have escaped my knowl-edge. They were, too, men of correct business hab-its, and enjoyed the confidence and respect of thepeople of the town. It is certainly worthy of record, that among soconsiderable a number of men engaged for so long aperiod of time, that there should hare been no fail-ures, and that sobriety and temperance should havebeen a characteristic of every one of them, and eachsuccessful. It may be a very difficult task to find aparallel. The business character, enterprise a
. Historical sketches of Plymouth, Luzerne Co., the pioneer, if such hadbeen the case, it would not have escaped my knowl-edge. They were, too, men of correct business hab-its, and enjoyed the confidence and respect of thepeople of the town. It is certainly worthy of record, that among soconsiderable a number of men engaged for so long aperiod of time, that there should hare been no fail-ures, and that sobriety and temperance should havebeen a characteristic of every one of them, and eachsuccessful. It may be a very difficult task to find aparallel. The business character, enterprise and uprightconduct, therefore, of the merchants of Plymouth ofearlier days, furnish a good model for the imitation oftheir successors; and if he who writes the history ofthe merchants of Plymouth at the end of the nextfifty years, will be able to truthfully state what is hererecorded of the fifty and more years past, it will notmerely be to him an agreeable duty, but will illustratethe fact that moral precept and good examples havehad their SABIUEL DAVENPORT. CHAPTEK XV. COAL TRADE, AND COAL MEN. IN the fall of the year of 1807, Abijah Smith pur-chased an ark of John P. Arndt, a merchant ofWilkes-Barre, which had been used for the transpor-tation of plaster, for the price of $ This arkhe floated to Plymouth, and loaded with some fiftytons of anthracite coal, and late in the same season helanded it safely at Columbia, Lancaster county. Pa. This was probably the first cargo of anthracitecoal that was ever ofiered for sale in this or any othercountry. The trade of 1807 was fifty tons; that of1870, in round numbers, sixteen millions! It maybe fairly estimated that the sale of 1880 will reachtwenty-five millions. Abijah Smith therefore, of Plymouth, was thepioneer in the coal business. Anthracite coal hadbeen used before 1807, in this valley and elsewhere,in small quantities in furnaces, with an air blast; butthe trafiic in coal as an article of general use, wascomm
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