Brandywine Summit Kaolin and Feldspar Co. Quarry
Location: Nottingham County Park, West Nottingham. See Chris Hoess’ article on the Brandywine Summit Company.
A quarry of the Brandywine Summit Kaolin and Feldspar Company, one half mile north of the Sparvetta quarry, is 200 feet long, 70 to 80 feet wide, and 90 to 100 feet deep, the greatest length being in a direction N 10° W.
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The equipment consists of a derrick, steam hoisting engine, steam pump, and steam drills. From fifteen to eighteen men are employed. It is probable that the vein extends both to the north and to the south beyond the present exposures, and the excavations can also with safety be carried out to greater depths. A part of the output is sold to the Sparvetta Mining Company and hauled to their mill for grinding. The remained is hauled 1.5 miles to Sylmar station and shipped to the mill of the Brandywine Summit Kaolin and Feldspar Company, near Brandywine Summit (southwest of the routes 1 and 202 junction, Delaware county). (Bastin, 1910)
... This quarry which is now abandoned, and is reported as exhausted. ... This quarry was entirely filled with water and no inspection was possible. (Watts, 1916)
Newspaper Clippings
Daily Local News
2nd December 1921
That “mystery hole” away down in the Barrens of West Nottingham, is still causing much guess work, and many rumors, and visitors still go daily to look at the place. It is said new tactics are to be applied, and by next Sunday the depth of the spar hole will be laid open to the public gaze. The hole is 300 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 122 feet deep, and to get a good grip on any object beneath the water, that nearly half fills the quarry, and hoist it to the surface, will require some figuring as to how to do this trick without much expense. Alexander Wilson, who has access to a big pump that will lift the water 30 feet, has consented to use it, and a force of men will open the drift from a point at the ground level to the water’s edge. Here the pump will be installed, and a big traction engine will be used as power. Before the pump is installed a heavy raft will be built, so that the water’s surface can be commanded as well. All this means expense, but the citizens of West Nottingham are desirous of knowing whether or not an automobile is really a stolen one, and whether or not a human body is in the hole, as well.
Daily Local News
5th and 7th December 1921
A Port Deposit, Md., special of Dec. 4 says: After three week’s spasmodic efforts the trained riggers from the Perryville reservation succeeded in solving the mystery of the abandoned quarry near Sylmar, on the Mason and Dixon line. Three weeks ago three boys heard the chug of an automobile, then a heavy body hit the water, 40 feet below. Since then, local residents with inefficient equipment, have made valiant efforts to solve the mystery. William Patterson, of the Perryville plant, was sent to Sylmar with a force of riggers, Friday, and prepared for today’s work. Before noon he had brought to the surface an Essex car carrying New Jersey license tag no. 95840. The car was in good shape, and was taken into Nottingham Pa., on its own tires. In the car was an overcoat containing an advertising pencil of an Atlantic City firm.
The next catch was a radiator of a Hudson car, with no identification marks. Then there was brought to the top the cushion and back of a front seat of a Cadillac. Under the seat was one half of a New Jersey driver’s identification card, giving the owner’s name and the three final numerals of his number.
The catches of the day proved that this hole, measuring 150 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 75 feet deep, has been the receiving station for cars whose service was no longer desired. With more than 34 feet of water and precipitate banks, it was ideal for the purpose.
The driver of the cars must have been a good one. The work of savaging whatever else may be secreted beneath the waters will go on under the Perryville outfit, until every piece has been placed in the hands of the Pennsylvania authorities. The work is extremely difficult and hazardous. Every recovered article must be lifted clear of the solid rock side 50 feet, and swung onto the bank. To aid in this work the local people have worked hard, installing a centrifugal pump. They dug through the rocks until the water level was reached, and then placed their pump, the engine and boiler being installed upon the bank above. The pump broke early but was repaired. The stormy weather proved no detriment to the curious. At least one half of the watchers were women.
Daily Local News
12th December 1921
On Saturday, County Detective William Mullen and District Attorney W. Butler Windle motored to West Chester township to get personal observation of the mysterious quarry hole, and further details of this automobile mystery.
As has been stated, they found that an automobile in apparently good condition when it was dumped into the deep water, had been raised and taken out on dry land. It was evidently a perfectly good machine when it was run down the slope of the bank into the water. A radiator of another car was also raised and lifted out of the water.
It is stated that the water was considerably lowered by a pumping engine brought to the quarry by the U.S. Health Camp authorities, at Perryville Md. The hole is probably 100 feet deep, and was filled with water, and about one half the water was pumped out when the engine broke down, and pumping had to cease for a time.
It is said the District Attorney does not feel it is up to the county to assume the expense of pumping the water out and recovering automobiles, but rather that it is the province of the insurance companies, which have probably paid insurance on automobiles dumped in this remote quarry hole. There are still parts, if not whole motor cars, in the bottom of the quarry hole, is believed by many, as the water will have to be taken out, as it is filling up from springs in the quarry.
The riggers from the U. S. Camp had considerable work to raise the car taken out. A raft was made, and on this the men floated about and worked, as the water was lowered. Grappling irons were used, and the car was taken out with much difficulty. Some citizens feel that there may be some dead persons also at the bottom of the deep hole, as it is thought there were persons in the machine recovered. The wheel tracks indicated that the motor car ran over the bank, and must have been occupied, as there were no footprints seen. A boy declares that he heard cries, which caused the discovery to be made. The car is said to have had a New Jersey license plate, of 1921, and if the car had been run in purposefully this probably would have been removed. It is also thought the lights were on, by the indications. There was an overcoat tin the rear seat, and the owner will be sought, as there was a name in the coat. It is claimed that the owner never made application for insurance. The recovered car was locked up by Constable Harry Hall, of Sylmar, awaiting further developments. It was said also that a dead horse was still floating about in the water. It has been there for some time.
The mystery has caused hundreds of persons to visit the quarries, and many theories are advanced. The work of investigation will continue this week, and may develop some more curious features, but just what the county authorities have to do with it is not yet formally settled. There is no reason to believe that nay foul play, so far as life and death of persons are concerned, has been committed.
Daily Local News
7th February 1929
The “Mystery Hole” on the place of Harry Rodewalt, near Sylmar, in which several skeletons of automobiles were found last summer after eighty feet of water had been pumped from its depths in an attempt to work a vein of feldspar and also to dispel rumors of human bodies in the pool, has been abandoned as a mine for the mineral, many carloads of good material were taken out of the workings, but the vein failed and the feldspar became too much mixed with iron to be of value.
The company which took over the workings from which Rodewalt had taken large quantities of feldspar before abandoning them, is now seeking other veins of material about the large farm and is prospecting various promising locations in the hope of discovering a promising lead to work later. It is believed the feldspar is there in paying quantities if the main vein can be located. That taken out in recent years was of fine quality. Large quantities of serpentine stone have also been quarried on the property and shipped as building material to different places.
Daily Local News
10th January 1968
Mystery Hole hides Secrets of the Past
By George Brice (of the Local News Staff)
Had a Wilmington produce merchant never disappeared and had a pair of car tracks leading to the water’s edge never been discovered by a searching party in 1926, an old feldspar mine may not have been tagged as the Mystery Hole.
As it is, Nottingham Park’s often talked about but rarely explored Mystery Hole is still a mystery hole. And that’s the way Dr. Thomas E. Gillingham of Oxford, a member of the Chester County Park and Recreation Board; Mrs. Orpha P. McLaughlin, the board’s executive secretary, and Chester County Commissioners prefer it.
It’s Dangerous
“We never played it up too much, simply because it not only is dangerous, but it has been known to be used as a depository for anything stolen,” Mrs. McLaughlin said.
Mrs. McLaughlin described the Mystery Hole as a “big pit with water, measuring around 600 feet around its perimeter. A cliff-like precipice drops 20 feet to the water’s surface.”
Barbed wire fencing was placed around the Mystery Hole primarily to protect the county’s public who might be tempted to swim, fish or go boating while visiting the 651-acre Nottingham Park, the first Chester County-owned recreational park, which was dedicated in September of 1963.
Nottingham Park is nestled in the rolling, pine-covered hills known to local residents as “The Barrens.” In West Nottingham Township, four miles south of Oxford.
Abandoned Quarry
A huge, man-made pit gouged out of the rocky earth, this “off limits” Mystery Hole is an abandoned, water-filled quarry that was once part of a thriving feldspar quarrying industry. There are several other mine holes within the park area These too have been fenced off to insure safety of the visiting public, along with the Mystery Hole, the deepest of them all.
There are conflicting reports about the Mystery Hole’s depth. Dr. Gillingham, a consulting mining engineer as well as a park board member, taped it to 40 feet along the edge. According to Mrs. McLaughlin, “scuba divers reportedly taped it down to 90 feet so far, but they quit for it got too cold.
No Diving Allowed
“We allow no scuba diving except under state police supervision, and at state police request,” she added.
Horace F. McPherson, park superintendent recalled, that back in July or August 1966, a 1962 car, which turned out to be stolen, had been hauled out of about 35 feet of water, under the auspices of the state police.
“The car had gone right through the barbed wire fence,” McPherson said.
Never More So
The Mystery Hole was never as mysterious, however, as it was way back on Oct. 13, 1926.
“I recall it very vividly,” Dr. Gillingham said. “They excused us Scouts from school with the explanation that state police were looking for a body and that we were to help in the search. The police lined us up saying, ‘we have reason to believe this man’s body is somewhere in the area between Oxford and the Mason-Dixon line.’
“I remember the story about this man, whose name I can’t recall, who was supposedly murdered and his body hidden in the area. We searched, but never found his body. We did discover auto tracks leading to the edge of the quarry, and police speculated the man might have been placed in the car, and the car dumped into the water-filled hole. It was the practice then to dump cars into old quarries in order to collect insurance. They did pump out the hole later, but all the police found were some junked cars, all empty, plus the partly decayed carcass of a horse, and skeletons of smaller animals.
Got Its Name
“The incident gave rise to the name, Mystery Hole,” Dr. Gillingham explained.
It turned out the “missing man” – identified first as W. W. Bennett, in one newspaper, as W. C., then Wilmer C. and later Winter C. Bennett In others, has come to Coatesville on about Oct. 6 to allegedly “collect a bill of $67 from Thomas Oates” who has previously lived in Lower Oxford Township, but never returned to his family in Wilmington.
Oct. 13 was described as “dreary, with the woods and underbrush soaked with heavy mist.” On that day 300 scouts from Oxford, West Grove, Avondale, Kennett Square, Parkesburg, Coatesville, South Coatesville, Unionville, Cochranville, and West Chester, scoured the woodlands from Coatesville south to the Mason-Dixon line.
Dr. Gillingham was among a contingent of 60 scouts from Oxford, led by Scoutmasters Ross Miller and F. L. Maule, who searched the Oxford area.
“The supposition is that Bennett is dead and may have met with foul play,” one news account claimed.
But Bennett was not found.
“Boys found bloody clothing, freshly made mounds that look like graves, piles of earth that gave rise to the belief a burial made been made and other things,” said a newspaper.
Found Dog
Two women from East Coatesville, who joined the search, “dug up a freshly made grave only to find the remains of a dog buried on the eastern edge of the city by Constable Harry Parmer,” said another.
The McManus Quarry hole in West Caln and the “deep pond” at Nottingham, where two cars were found submerged the year before, were dragged.
Still no Bennett.
As far as is known, Bennett was never found, despite the optimism of a Phoenixville detective named George Campbell, retained by the Wilmington produce merchant’s family to continue the search.
Quarrying Center
There are other facets concerning the Nottingham Park which did not fade into an unsolved mystery. The Mystery Hole was once the center of Chester County’s thriving feldspar quarrying industry, Dr. Gillingham said.
Feldspar, in the variety called albite, is a white substance (sodium aluminum silicate), which when ground, is used in manufacturing fine pottery.
Feldspar was quarried in the area from before the Civil War until about 1930. Most of the feldspar in America today is mined in the mountains of North Carolina.
Historical documents and geological maps note the quarries were part of the serpentine belt, marked by greenish-gray rock and scrub pines, which extends northeastward from Cecil and Harford Counties, MD., across southeastern Lancaster County and through West and East Nottingham and Elk Townships in southern Chester County. It crops out also near Unionville and south of West Chester.
This serpentine belt provided, in addition to feldspar, a large portion of the chromite demand of the world before 1865 and a substantial part of it until about 1880. Chromite ore production not only satisfied the limited domestic demand of the 19th century, but was exported to Europe in large quantities.
Chromite ore used in the manufacture of chemical compounds, pigments and dyes before the metallurgical and refractory uses were developed. The same ore was also used in alloying steel after the Civil War.
Looking for Salts
In the 1820s Isaac Tyson on Baltimore sent men to the serpentine district in the Chester County “Barrens” to look for Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), but they ran into chrome or chromite, which was then in demand for pigments.
One of the most productive chrome lodes was the Wood Mine, just over the West Nottingham Township line in Lancaster County. It reached a depth of 800 feet. Others were the Scott-Engine-Kirk mines, in the present park property. Placed chromite was abundant in the bed of Black Run in West Nottingham.
Discovery of large chromite deposits in southern Africa and Rhodesia brought an abrupt end to underground chrome mining in Maryland and Pennsylvania along with reported exhaustion of domestic ore, particularly in California.
The Wood Mine was the last open held open as a reserve against possible failure of shipments from California, but it closed too after 1882. Intermittent production of placer chromite continued in the Barrens until about 1900. An attempt to renew placer mining during World War I never materialized, Dr. Gillingham said.
“Chester County has a notable mining heritage,” Dr. Gillingham said. In addition to chromite and feldspar mines, there were the Wheatley lead-zinc mines near Phoenixville; the iron mines along the French Creek and in Warwick Township in northern Chester County, which provided iron ore for guns and cannons during the American Revolution; corundum mines near Unionville; Brinton’s Quarry were serpentine rock was mined, and Kaolin clay mines at Kaolin [?].
Many Varieties
“Over 150 varieties of minerals have been found in Chester County,” said the mining engineer who spent many hours as a boy collecting rocks in the Nottingham Park area.
A casual observer would never know that Nottingham Park, with its hiking trails, abundance of wildlife and wild flowers and unusual rock formations, was once a center of a booming mining industry that has been replaced by the laughter of children at play on swings and see-saws, in sand pits and on the baseball diamond and badminton court.
And who ever would suspect they once had to drag the black depths and then pump out the Mystery Hole hoping to find the body of a missing man named Bennett?
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