Amber Listserv / inquiry on source in Illinois?

[Andrea Paysinger]

I find this rather odd.  My grandfather owned coal mines, in the  
1920s and 30s, in southern Illinois and Kentucky, near Rosiclaire and  
south and west of there toward Golconda.  The substrate of the  
Shawnee Hills region is part of the Pennsylvanian age, early  
Carboniferous 325 to 300 million years ago, and is soft coal,  
(bituminous) often sandwiched between layers or capped with  
limestone.  He also owned "spar" mines (fluroite) in the same area.
My grandfather and two of his brothers who were involved with the  
management of the mines, had thousands of samples from each of the  
mines, including "splits" that held the outline of vegetation such as  
reeds, fern leaves, and while there were trees, this was essentially  
a very hot swampy area where soft-bodied plants grew rapidly and sunk  
into the water and were preserved instead of rotting.  I don't think  
the type of trees that produced the resin that turned into amber  
would have flourished in the region.
I know my grandfather was familiar with amber because he had  
travelled in the Baltic before WWI and had purchased quite a lot of  
amber that he took home to England and had made into jewelry for his  
mother and his first wife.  (He emigrated to America in 1919)
The miners who worked in the mines would get a cash bonus for finding  
anything unusual.
I am pretty sure that if amber was there, it would have been found  
during the period the mines were actively worked by humans.  Much  
later, long after my family's involvement, the areas were strip- 
mined, a practice that my grandfather considered criminal.
He also had hundreds, if not thousands of samples of fluroite in  
various colors, including a large piece known as "the blueberry pie"  
because of the layers of colors from opaque white to clear to deep  
purple-blue, and was donated to some museum when I was still a child.
My cousins and I played in piles of the stuff, searching for "jewels"  
and "silver" because one could find flecks of lead and iron pyrite in  
the spar.  The lead would be bright and shiny when the rocks were  
first split, then dull to the typical color within a few days.  It  
has been 60 years since that time, but some things one never forgets.

Andie


On Dec 19, 2006, at 11:21 AM, ADAM SPIEGEL wrote:

> Tammy (and all),
>
> If you recall, a while back someone was selling what they called  
> amber on eBay, supposedly from the area of former coal mines in  
> Illinois, the Mazon Creek area.  I dont know if anything ever came  
> from that, but the Mazon Creek biota has been extensively studied,  
> and I dont think amber has ever been found there.  Those deposits  
> are from the Carboniferous Period.
>
> Anyway, where exactly in southern Illinois was this supposedly found?
>
> Adam Spiegel
>
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