History Possibly Lost.

[Craig4]

I’m picturing that onion hanging on your belt.

Well, it was the style at the time.

 

[Craig4]

There is no such thing as Pates Crossing, it was Pates Stagecoach Station, a Tavern, an Inn, a Mill, a Barn, and an outhouse.
The outhouse was located where the old mine shaft is today, because when Eliss Lyons found out Pates Station was on his 1000 acre Revolutionary
land Grant, not on the Land owned By William Pate, Eliss Lyons took over Pates Station, and set his Slaves to cleaning out the out house, and struck Cannel Coal.
That's How the Victoria Coal Mines Started, at the Out house Lincoln ��Ed in. They Made the first Coal oil in Kentucky there.

Someone would have to be a real prick to make a person dig a mine shaft where an outhouse used to be.

 

[8enotto]

A lot of times an outhouse only got cleaned if it had a lined cistern like in a city setting.
Those out on rural land they just dug a new pit and dragged the outhouse over it. The dirt removed topped the old pit. Pates Station doesn't seem the metropolis that lacked space to just move it over six feet.

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

Also, please show evidence of Buckingham Palace specifically, or even the UK generally, importing coal or coal products from the USA during the Victorian era, because I can find no evidence of this being a thing (admittedly, I've not spent very long researching this, but as I said, i've found nothing that supports this claim). Britain was, as far as I can tell from an hour or so's googling, a net exporter of coal and coal derivatives at that time.

They never Imported the Coal, they Imported the Coal oil, the Fire was caused by the wise Idea of demonstrating how flammable the Fuel was to Queen Victoria's Friends and Fellow investors inside Buckingham Palace.
The fumes built up and ignited apparently they didn't realize the Fumes from the oil could spontaneously ignite.

https://history.ky.gov/markers/first-coal-oil

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

A lot of times an outhouse only got cleaned if it had a lined cistern like in a city setting.
Those out on rural land they just dug a new pit and dragged the outhouse over it. The dirt removed topped the old pit. Pates Station doesn't seem the metropolis that lacked space to just move it over six feet.

The Outhouse was Fancy and heated, it had a Chimney what would have been hard to drag, the stones from the Cimney were reused, in mine buildings at the time. Before Coal oil they burned the Coal in metal baskets for lighting, or in fireplaces. It burned with a white Light, you could read by with little smoke.

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

Also, please show evidence of Buckingham Palace specifically, or even the UK generally, importing coal or coal products from the USA during the Victorian era, because I can find no evidence of this being a thing (admittedly, I've not spent very long researching this, but as I said, i've found nothing that supports this claim). Britain was, as far as I can tell from an hour or so's googling, a net exporter of coal and coal derivatives at that time.

Here is something else that Might interest you.

https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/x...up/search/[tcp4.com]can+i+do+seo+on+my+own292

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

Someone would have to be a real prick to make a person dig a mine shaft where an outhouse used to be.

They did much worse to Slaves in the Mines that's one of the Reasons my Great Grandfather was so against Slavory. He was a pro Union Abolitionist.

 

[junkshop]

They never Imported the Coal, they Imported the Coal oil, the Fire was caused by the wise Idea of demonstrating how flammable the Fuel was to Queen Victoria's Friends and Fellow investors inside Buckingham Palace.
The fumes built up and ignited apparently they didn't realize the Fumes from the oil could spontaneously ignite.

https://history.ky.gov/markers/first-coal-oil

Nothing in that link about a fire in Buckingham Palace, or a demonstration "to Queen Victoria's Friends and Fellow investors inside Buckingham Palace".

Here is something else that Might interest you.

https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/x...up/search/[tcp4.com]can+i+do+seo+on+my+own292

From your link:

...with regard to the cost of tranportation of coal to England, would remark, that I have never known a shipment from this country...

Also this one amused me:

...having lost all the books and memoranda connected with my agency of the 'Breckinridge Coal Company', I am unable to furnish you with particulars...

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Can you provide more information about this incident? I have been unable to find any reference to this.

This^ I can't find any reference to a fire at Buck House, or even to it using coal oil as opposed to solid fuel (coal and wood) and gas. It should be noted that Britain at the time had it's own, very significant mining industry (that dates back into pre history)

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

This^ I can't find any reference to a fire at Buck House, or even to it using coal oil as opposed to solid fuel (coal and wood) and gas. It should be noted that Britain at the time had it's own, very significant mining industry (that dates back into pre history)

Yet they didn't have Oil for lighting as they were running out of Coal, and Coal oil was a Canadian Invention, with the First Commercial plant, at Cloverport in Breckenridge County Kentucky with Queen Victoria as an Investor.

"Discovered by Canadian physician Abraham Gesner in the late 1840s, kerosene was initially manufactured from coal tar and shale oils. However, following the drilling of the first oil well in Pennsylvania by E.L. Drake in 1859, petroleum quickly became the major source of kerosene."
Some people still call Kerosene Lamps Coal oil lamps.
By the late 1860s Oil replaced Coal as the largest supply of Kerosene as the price of Kerosene dropped. The oil though from Cannel Coal was Cleaner and Burned whiter than the oil from Petroleum. The Rich people who could afford it still preferred the Coal oil for that reason.

 

[erwinl]

Yet they didn't have Oil for lighting as they were running out of Coal, and Coal oil was a Canadian Invention, with the First Commercial plant, at Cloverport in Breckenridge County Kentucky with Queen Victoria as an Investor.

Could you at least provide the date of that Buckingham Palace fire?
like P.J. Denver, I can’t seem to find it either.
Seeing as you know how it started, the information about the date must also be in your possession.

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

Could you at least provide the date of that Buckingham Palace fire?
like P.J. Denver, I can’t seem to find it either.
Seeing as you know how it started, the information about the date must also be in your possession.

It's been years since I talked to the Late Lee A Dew, it was in the sometime between 1833 when the mines opened with money from Queen Victoria, and 1850, they started producing Coal oil after 1840, the first large scale plant though didn't start until the 1850s.

Before the oil was refined people would burn lumps of the coal in brass baskets for lighting like candles it produced little smoke, and a bright white light simular to a Kerosene Lamp.
They would actually grade the Coal into grades for light or fire place fuel, the sulfur showed up as fools gold so it was easy to see.
They had a rendered oil product in the early 1800s that was made by boiling the coal in water, it was mostly used as a purgitive, medical Tonic but some people discovered it would burn in Whale oil Lamps.
Yes people actually drank watered down Kerosene.

 

[erwinl]

It's been years since I talked to the Late Lee A Dew, it was in the sometime between 1833 when the mines opened with money from Queen Victoria, and 1850, they started producing Coal oil after 1840, the first large scale plant though didn't start until the 1850s.

Before the oil was refined people would burn lumps of the coal in brass baskets for lighting like candles it produced little smoke, and a bright white light simular to a Kerosene Lamp.
They would actually grade the Coal into grades for light or fire place fuel, the sulfur showed up as fools gold so it was easy to see.
They had a rendered oil product in the early 1800s that was made by boiling the coal in water, it was mostly used as a purgitive, medical Tonic but some people discovered it would burn in Whale oil Lamps.
Yes people actually drank watered down Kerosene.

For all the details you gave us about the cause of that fire, this is extremely vague.
One should think an incident like that would be more widely known.


I’ve looked at the wikipedia of coal oil, and apparently it was known since the second half of the 18’th century that it could produce oil that would burn.
Unfortunately it burned so dirty that it was only used outside, leaving the clean burning whale oil for indoors use.
It was only after 1850 that a clean burning variant was produced that could compete with whale oil. Only that was discovered and patented in Scotland.
So I think that if any of that oil was used, it would be Scottish coal oil.


Unless more real details can be given, I think that Lea Dew was just ********ting a story to you.

 

[theprestige]

Unless more real details can be given, I think that Lea Dew was just ********ting a story to you.

A Kentuckian inventing a self-aggrandizing narrative? I don't buy it.

 

[8enotto]

The early 1800"s were fairly well documented with contracts and newspapers.
Is this all oral tradition or is there something in an archive or museum to back it up?
I would think the British crown investing in a coal mine in the former colonies would be quite notable.
Especially when England has lots of high grade coal at home that they had already been exploiting for decades.

CC, it's a cool story but it fails on the surface. I think the old timers you talked to may not be totally accurate on details. It would have been about 150 years between the event and the man telling you being born. You didn't question that?

 

[junkshop]

Yet they didn't have Oil for lighting as they were running out of Coal...

Britain was running out of coal during Victoria's reign? That's utter crap:

...In 1913, UK coal production peaked at 292 million metric tons. By 1920 the coal industry employed some 1.2 million people, which was approximately 1-in-20 of the UK's work force.
Production has dropped massively since it's golden age, falling to just one million metric tons in 2022...

Source

...the First Commercial plant, at Cloverport in Breckenridge County Kentucky with Queen Victoria as an Investor...

The source you linked to claims the Prince of Wales (Edward VII) as an investor, not his mum. Though this is unlikely, as he was nine years old in 1850.

It's been years since I talked to the Late Lee A Dew, it was in the sometime between 1833 when the mines opened with money from Queen Victoria, and 1850...

Victoria came to the throne in 1837. In 1833 she was 14 years old.


Either your memory is seriously inaccurate, or the late Lee A Dew was full of ****.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Yet they didn't have Oil for lighting as they were running out of Coal, and Coal oil was a Canadian Invention, with the First Commercial plant, at Cloverport in Breckenridge County Kentucky with Queen Victoria as an Investor.

"Discovered by Canadian physician Abraham Gesner in the late 1840s, kerosene was initially manufactured from coal tar and shale oils. However, following the drilling of the first oil well in Pennsylvania by E.L. Drake in 1859, petroleum quickly became the major source of kerosene."
Some people still call Kerosene Lamps Coal oil lamps.
By the late 1860s Oil replaced Coal as the largest supply of Kerosene as the price of Kerosene dropped. The oil though from Cannel Coal was Cleaner and Burned whiter than the oil from Petroleum. The Rich people who could afford it still preferred the Coal oil for that reason.

The UK never ran out of coal. There are still four mines in operation now although we closed most of our remaining pits at the end of the 20th Century. In the early 1970s the industry was still so important miner's union was able to bring down a government (although when that party had it's revenge when they regained power).

In the UK at this time gas light was the norm, and was certainly used at Buckingham Palace, I do however concede that the Wikipedia article for Cloverport does say that it's coal oil.was used there, however it neither mentions a fire, nor provides any citations for this (and neither the fire nor the use of US produced coal oil are mentioned in the article on Buckingham Palace. The mines in Cloverport were named in honour of the Queen, but then so were a lot of things during her reign. It's not impossible that American fuel oil was used at Buck House, but if so there should be an actual historical document to prove it.And there should also be evidence of the fire you claim it started.

ETA: Junkshop did it first & better

 

[P.J. Denyer]

It's been years since I talked to the Late Lee A Dew, it was in the sometime between 1833 when the mines opened with money from Queen Victoria, and 1850, they started producing Coal oil after 1840, the first large scale plant though didn't start until the 1850s.

Before the oil was refined people would burn lumps of the coal in brass baskets for lighting like candles it produced little smoke, and a bright white light simular to a Kerosene Lamp. They would actually grade the Coal into grades for light or fire place fuel, the sulfur showed up as fools gold so it was easy to see.
They had a rendered oil product in the early 1800s that was made by boiling the coal in water, it was mostly used as a purgitive, medical Tonic but some people discovered it would burn in Whale oil Lamps.
Yes people actually drank watered down Kerosene.

Citation for this please. The Victorians had gas lighting, oil lamps and candles, I've never heard of coal in a brass basket, it certainly wouldn't burn white and coal was notoriously smokey (and a particularly unpleasant smoke hence the development of ranges to cook on as unlike wood smoke coal smoke ruined the food it came into contact with.)

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

For all the details you gave us about the cause of that fire, this is extremely vague.
One should think an incident like that would be more widely known.


I’ve looked at the wikipedia of coal oil, and apparently it was known since the second half of the 18’th century that it could produce oil that would burn.
Unfortunately it burned so dirty that it was only used outside, leaving the clean burning whale oil for indoors use.
It was only after 1850 that a clean burning variant was produced that could compete with whale oil. Only that was discovered and patented in Scotland.
So I think that if any of that oil was used, it would be Scottish coal oil.


Unless more real details can be given, I think that Lea Dew was just ********ting a story to you.

Actually the discover of Kerosene was a Canadian, and he did use it for street lighting as well as home lighting. The Scottish oil was from bog coal not pure Cannel Coal, and only Cannel coal produced the clean oil.

You are correct most Coal didn't burn Clean Cannel Coal was the exception.

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

Britain was running out of coal during Victoria's reign? That's utter crap:


Source




The source you linked to claims the Prince of Wales (Edward VII) as an investor, not his mum. Though this is unlikely, as he was nine years old in 1850.





Victoria came to the throne in 1837. In 1833 she was 14 years old.


Either your memory is seriously inaccurate, or the late Lee A Dew was full of ****.

Sorry I ment to say they were running out of whale oil.