File:Pottsville Group (Middle Pennsylvanian; Frazeysburg Pit, Muskingum County, Ohio, USA) 13 (28407334868).jpg

The Bowerston Shale Company was founded in the fall of 1929 by Samuel D. Milliken. They have brick manufacturing plants in Bowerston, Ohio and Hanover, Ohio.

The Hanover plant makes bricks using rocks derived from two quarries that I know of - the Hanover Pit and the Frazeysburg Pit. I have visited the latter, with kind permission of the Bowerston company. The Frazeysburg Pit targets shales in the Pottsville Group. The shales are excavated and left in piles in the quarry to weather. Limestones and sandstones are excluded from the shale piles. Shale material is eventually trucked to the Hanover Plant, where it is processed into bricks.

Seen here is the wall of the new/southern quarry of the Frazeyburg Pit in northwestern Muskingum County, Ohio. The outcrop is part of the Pottsville Group, a Pennsylvanian-aged cyclothemic succession containing nonmarine shales, marine shales, siltstones, sandstones, coals, marine limestones, clay, chert ("flint"), and minor ironstone. The lower Pottsville dates to the late Early Pennsylvanian. The upper part dates to the early Middle Pennsylvanian. The Lower-Middle Pennsylvanian boundary is apparently somewhere near the Boggs Member (?).

The light-colored ledge peeking out near the left side of the photo is the Lower Mercer Limestone, a widespread, marine, fossiliferous limestone unit.

Stratigraphy: shales above & below the Lower Mercer Limestone, Pottsville Group, lower Middle Pennsylvanian