About 400 million years ago, the area that would become Telford was undergoing huge geological change, including the layering of sediment in an ancient Appalachian Sea. About 50 million years ago, the ancestor of the first whale was a small land mammal. Among its future relatives would be the cow, the camel and the hippopotamus.
And 115 years ago, those two factors — oceans and whales — improbably became linked when Morris A. Clymer was having a well drilled on his land in Telford. The story of the “Telford whale” is no tall tale, but rather ties the town to an industry that would flourish through much of the 20th century.
Clymer, as the Souderton Independent reported in April 1907, had hired Mr. Schrawder of North Wales to drill an artesian well on his property. The drill was about 75 feet into the ground when the workmen felt a “queer thud” and things seemed not to work properly. But the drilling continued. The following Monday, they saw an unusual substance in the mud being drawn from the hole. It was neither silver nor gold. The assumption was that it must be the flesh of a whale or some other beast since it was a “little red and the rest white, fatty and oily, and in a good state of preservation.” The theory was that this “whale” had become trapped thousands of years ago as land was still forming in the area between the Allegheny Mountains and the Atlantic slope.
Samples [see photo] were taken by Clymer to a professor in Philadelphia. Postmaster Wampole also sent a sample to the state zoologist. On first review, there was agreement that it seemed to be the preserved flesh of some animal.
Credit: https://www.asbestos.com. Chrysotile, also known as white asbestos, is often found as a vein within rock. If this is what was found in the Clymer well, one can see why the workers might think they had drilled into the flesh of a fish.
Needless to say, the discovery of an ancient animal under the town “aroused the citizens of Telford and vicinity” who were flocking to the scene to investigate. And everyone who saw the substance said they had never seen anything like it.
A few weeks later, Mr. Clymer told the newspaper that he had not yet received reports identifying the peculiar substance drawn from the well. Professor H.A. Surface, the state zoologist, gave his opinion that the substance was a mineral, likely asbestos. But as mineralogy was not his specialty, he had sent the sample on to State College.
No further updates were reported in the newspaper, but it seems likely that the substance was asbestos, a naturally occurring mineral whose flexible fibers are resistant to heat, electricity and corrosion. It was once extensively mined in North America, and southeastern Pennsylvania has two natural occurrences as well as several areas where it was mined.
Humans have been using the fibers for their heat-resistance for thousands of years. The embalmed bodies of Egyptian pharaohs were wrapped in asbestos cloth. Around 456 B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of the asbestos shrouds that prevented the ashes of the cremated from being mixed with those of the fire itself. And the Romans were said to use cloth woven with asbestos fibers as napkins and tablecloths that were cleaned by throwing them into a fire. They would come out of the flames clean and whiter than before. But the heyday of asbestos was the late 19th and 20th centuries, the first commercial mines opening in Canada after a deposit was discovered in Quebec in 1876. By the early 1900s, while men worked in the mines, children and women were preparing, carding and spinning the raw fibers. Asbestos quickly found its way into brake linings for the new horseless carriages. It was used in cement sheets, gaskets and pipes as well as fireproof roofing material made by H.W. Johns Manufacturing Company in lower Manhattan.
Locally, Dr. Richard Mattison had advertised in the Souderton Independent in 1905 the sale of preferred stock in his Asbestos Shingle, Slate & Sheathing Company in Ambler for $100 per share. Mattison, who once had sold patent medicines, discovered he could make pipe insulation by mixing magnesium carbonate with asbestos. He went on to make a fortune with a variety of Ambler Asbestos branded products, and Ambler became one of the first asbestos factory towns in the country.
The Souderton Independent shared the excitement, reporting that Mattison had provided a sample of the new Asbestos Century Shingle. It would be on exhibit in its office where it might be viewed by “contractors, builders and others interested.” The newspaper wrote that “the new shingle will revolutionize
architecture, so far as roofing material is concerned, seems highly probable.”
While that prediction was true, asbestos had already been linked to health issues. The ancient Greeks and Romans had identified a “sickness of the lungs” in slaves who mined the mineral or wove asbestos into cloth. As early as 1908, U.S. insurance companies increased premiums for workers employed in the asbestos industry. And in 1918, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing abnormally high risk of early death among asbestos workers.
The tiny fibers and dust released in the mining and production of asbestos products are breathed in where, over time, they damage the lining of the lungs and chest wall. One result can be mesothelioma, a type of cancer. Decades of lawsuits have recovered billions of dollars for those whose illness was linked to asbestos exposure. In the 1970s, laws were passed in the U.S. limiting the use of, and exposure to, asbestos. A complete ban, approved in 1989, was overturned two years later by the courts. The last mine in this country closed in 2002. But it was only in April 2022 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule to finally ban the use of asbestos. At the time, the only ongoing use in the U.S. is that of chrysotile asbestos — found in products such brake linings and gaskets. It’s also used to manufacture chlorine bleach and sodium hydroxide, known as caustic soda.
Mr. Clymer’s well was one whale of a headache. At one point, the rope attached to the drill tore at the depth of 150 feet, and it was a considerable struggle to find the drill and remove it. And once the substance was found, he faced the possibility that it would prove “damaging” to the water, and the well would have to be abandoned. But given the history of asbestos, Telford could consider itself fortunate that this was as close as it got to the story of that mineral.
Sources consulted, for your information:
1 https://www.cccarto.com/asbestos/pa/#10/40.2082/-75.5022
2 https://www.asbestos.com/asbestos/history/
3 https://www.asbestos.com/asbestos/ambler/
4 https://www.mesotheliomahelp.org/asbestos/history/
5 https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos_.html#banned
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