These energetic, enterprising Yankee settlers could not fail to know the location of the coal beds before they had been long in the valley. Some of them were probably familiar with the English bituminous coals, which were then being exported in small quantities to America under the name of “sea coal;” and from the fact that our anthracite was known to them as “stone coal” it is probable that there were those among them who knew that the English people had a very hard coal which they could not burn, and to which they had given the name “stone coal.” Specimens of this Wyoming valley stone coal had already been gathered and sent to England for examination. Indeed, there is no doubt that the first anthracite coal ever found by white men in the United States was discovered in this valley. But these Yankee settlers could not make their stone coal burn. Repeated trials met with repeated failures. There was one among them, however, Obadiah Gore, a blacksmith, who would not be discouraged. In 1769 he took a quantity of these coals to the blacksmith’s shop conducted by him and his brother, put them in his forge, and continued his efforts and experiments until finally the black lumps yielded to his persistency, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the blue flames dart from them, and the red color creep over them, and of feeling the intense heat sent out by their combustion. But their ignition and burning were dependent upon the strong air current sent through them by the bellows; without that he could do nothing with them. So this Yankee blacksmith, who was afterwards one of the associate judges of the courts of Luzerne County, became, so far as is known, the first white man to demonstrate practically the value of anthracite coal as a fuel. The success of Gore’s experiments soon became known, other smiths began to recognize the merits of the lately despised stone coal, and it was not long before the forge fires of nearly every smithy in the region were ablaze with anthracite. The fame of the new fuel soon spread beyond the limits of the valley, and if the difficulties of transportation checked its use elsewhere, the knowledge of how to use it in forges and furnaces was not uncommon. The demand for it overcame, at times, even the obstacles in the way of shipment, and it was sent to points at long distances from the mines. In 1776 the proprietary government of Pennsylvania had an armory at Carlisle in that State, in which they were manufacturing firearms to be used by the Continental troops in the war with Great Britain; and the first coal ever sent out from the Wyoming valley was shipped by them to Carlisle during that year and the succeeding years of the war, for use in their armory.