Ledger Post # 5

Strange Ledger Entry

1828 information listed on page 210 of the 1832 ledger

I called the above scan a strange ledger entry because it appears on page 210, Feb 4th, 1832 in the ledger, the information concerns payments for work done in 1828. So, what's going on? I don't have any idea. This is three to four years after the work was done, I can't imagine anyone waiting this long to be paid. Perhaps Eckert and Guilford weren't using ledger or account books at that time and just put their figures down on individual sheets of paper, then decided to write them down in the big book at the above time. This does show that George Eckert was in the area and working before the Pine Grove branch of the Union Canal was completed. George N. Eckert moved to Pine Grove in 1826 to practice medicine and look after his Father Peter's coal mining interests in the area, maybe Guilford was not even involved at this time. 

Some of the above scan is hard to figure out, the figures on a couple of lines are right on the money though. Sam Bowman was paid 63.28 for sinking a 113 foot shaft at .56 a foot, he was also boarded for 27 days at .25 a day for a total of 6.75; he also put away 9 quarts of whiskey, sinking shafts is thirsty work; near the bottom of the scan a D. Greenawalt is mentioned in connection with 2 shovels.

I'm beginning to think the above entry might be connected with Eckert's Father's mining business and has nothing to do with the Swatara Furnace.

At a later date I will post a scan from 1829 

Correction-Union Canal

Also New Scan From The Ledger

I have a correction to make on my March first post. One of my followers pointed out that the Pine Grove branch of the canal connected to the main canal at the Water Works (a little West of Lebanon) and not at Middletown as I had written in my post; my follower was 100% correct. (I went to Google). Anyone reading my posts should feel free to advise me on mistakes they feel I have made, also comment on what I have written. From now on I will keep both my feet and hands out of the Union Canal and it's lore; I have not really done any research on the canal. I will continue to post scans and ledger information, along with comments 

concerning boating information from the Furnace ledger.

 Ledger entry Aug 1, 1831

In the above scan we have "Sundries" and "Boating" information. I have figured out what some of the old script means, the "P" with what looks like "c" following it means paid, in the upper entry Geo N. Eckert paid John Mortimer,(p him) .50 for Son (or Sou), just below that the Widow Fisher,(p her) was paid 10 in the dollar section to get a wedding suit, 10 dollars was big money back then. The money total works out though, at the far right of the ledger, (not shown in the above scan) the total for the two charges was 10.50. At the bottom of the scan, 93 and 90 we have Boating charges, Henry Meas "Cooper", was paid a total of 3 dollars for use of Boat Hornet Boating ??? (2 Days) 2_ _ which came to the 3.00 in the far right charge section. It looks like Meas was paid 1 dollar for wood?

The name "Meas" turns up quite a few times in the ledger. I wonder if this name is really Meese or something similar which sounds the same as Meas. When time permits I will check the 1830 and 1840 Census for the Township and see what I can come up with.

Swatara Furnace History

Mountiantop View of the Furnace,  Big house,

and other buildings

The above picture was given to the Williams and Grumbine families by Miss Margaret A. Boyer, she said she didn't know who took the picture, but it had been in her family as long as she could remember, she did not know when it was taken or by what photographer. This is a section that I cropped out of the original picture, this would have been taken from the top of the mountain by a professional photographer, probably with a 8 X 10 or 5 X 7 glass plate camera, it was not taken with with an amateur box camera. To identify the structures I added the red circles and numbers via Photoshop.

1. Swatara Furnace

2. The Stager Family Home

3. "The Big House" (Ironmaster's Mansion)

4. The Furnace Company Store

5. The Carriage Barn

I will again speculate a little. I believe the picture might have been taken to use as a selling advertisement when the Eckert family put the property up for sale in the 1880's, or perhaps taken at the request of Mahlon H. Boyer after he purchased the property.

Mr Boyer bought the property form the Eckert family on December 3rd 1889. The purchase date along with much more information is on page number 487, Deed Book number 306 at the Schuylkill County, PA Court House in Pottsville, PA

Double Click on the above picture and any-other

Post picture to enlarge the viewing of said picture

This is it for this Post, we will get back to the Ledger book in the next post

 Ledgerpost #3 and Canal Boat Information
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Boating entry for Feb 3rd, 1832

When I first posted I neglected to mention why work on the Swatara Furnace Iron Plantation was not started earlier in the 19th Century, I also forgot that some readers of my posts are probably not familiar with the early history of Pine Grove Township. Before 1830 there was no way to get iron ore and large amounts of limestone into that area, also no way to ship out products from the furnace; this all changed in 1830 when the Union Canal branch from Pine Grove to Middletown was completed, the Pine Grove branch at Middletown connected with the West to East branch of the canal which headed to Reading.

We will now take a closer look at the above scan of the ledger book that is dated Feb 3rd, 1832.

In the upper left we have "Sundries" to Simeon Guilford, the line below is "Boating", this is the account the charges were made to, the canal boats name was the "Independence", There are a few words in the entry that I can't figure out.

Toll on Independence from Port Mifflin to P Grove - 63,
with coal back to Port Mifflin - 42

Independence from Port Mifflin to Lebanon 1 ton castings, Capt had Rails ??? Toll - 7 1/12

Independence from Lebanon to Goor Mill

Carried forward  2,, 25 1/2

The above figures don't add up, maybe some viewer of this post might have more experience in 200 year handwriting, if so please let me know. I will be posting more on canal data in the future, there are names of canal boats, names of their Captains, what they hauled and where they came from, and where they went to. 

Double click on the above scan to enlarge it.

To view previous posts go to the upper far right of the Blog and click on archive dates.  

Ledger Book Post # 2

Page 3, April 10, 1830

Above is a scan of a small section of page three of the ledger, some of the text is hard to figure out, also the dollar and cents amounts don't seem to add up all the time at the end of each entry. The first entry comes out right though, Martin Felty was paid 50.00 and John Bohr 5.21 for a total of 55.21, this one adds up the way it should. The second entry is for Geo. Eckert, he received 5.21, which was for Bohr in the first entry. It's hard to figure the 3rd entry out. The bottom entry is not much better either, except, for the last line, Henry Bohr was paid .55 for 5 pounds of butter, the .55 was at the far right side of the ledger and does not show up in the above scan; I did not try and scan the full width of the page, this leaves off the total charges for some of the entry's, scanning the full width of the page would have made the above scan too small to easily read.

From here on I am only going scan sections of the Ledger Book that have notable information in them; I will type out the names of people the first time their names appear in the book, also what their names are associated with, example: selling things to the furnace company, working for the company or buying things from the company store when it is up and running. The names, Paul Brand and Wm. Graeff appear once or twice on almost every page at the beginning of the book, I think they are in charge of what we now call "Buildings and Grounds, no more of those two for the time being. Maybe at the end of three or four months I will note that Mr Martin Felty sold "X" amount of lumber to the company for "X" dollars, or Mr Henry Bohr sold "X" pounds of butter to the company during the last four months. 

Bloggers note: I had mentioned before that I had attended the Outwood Country School and Pine Grove High School on two different occasions; while in 4th grade Carl Bohr was in 6th grade there, Carl was a kind of an "In Charge" guy, he always made sure us little guys got our turn at bat during the noon time baseball games, I think Carl's nickname was :Monkey". I returned to The Outwood School in 1946 to finish out my 6th grade, one of my classmates was Clark Bohr, Molly Bohr was also there, she was a year or two behind  me, Molly rode the school bus with me later when we moved on to school in Pine Grove. I think the Bohrs were probably descendants of the 1830's families, don't know for sure though, This is a question  for a genealogist.

Thats it for this post, more will follow.

Swatara Furnace History

Ledger Book post # 1

This is the 1830 Swatara Furnace Ledger

It's time now to start adding surnames to our furnace story, many of the names that will follow are common in Pine Grove Township now, just as they were back in 1830. As I said in my introduction I attended both the Outwood Country School and Pine Grove High School, family names of some of my classmates will be turning up in a post a little further down the road.

This is the top of the first page of the 1830 ledger book

As you can see the text has not faded in any way, I did have to use Photoshop to improve the contrast a little, as the image from my hand-scanner needed a little help.

I had mentioned before many of the names in the ledger are what one might call names common in Pine Grove Township, they were in 1830, are now and will probably continue to be.however, the first two names in the book are not what I would call "Household" names in this part of Schuylkill County; the names are Paul Brand and Wm. Graeff, these two names keep turning up in page after page. There are several accounting categories listed in this part of the ledger that also keep repeating themselves, "Buildings and House Charges", Brand and Graeff seem to always  be connected to the buildings and house charges categories. I had wondered for quite awhile where the builders of the furnace, dam, raceways and all of the support structures lived while the "The Iron Plantation" was being constructed, this was really the boondocks back in 1830; the nearest hotel was probably in Port Mifflin (Now Suedberg), if there was a hotel at the canal port, was it big enough, or reasonable enough to house the construction crew?  What I did next was go to the U.S. Federal Census for Pine Grove Township for 1830, typed in "Brand", my answer popped up right away on page 103, Head of Families - Paul Brand, 1 Male between 5 & 10, 16 Males between 20 & 30, 1 Male between 30 & 40, 2 Females between 5 & !0, 1 Female between 20 & 30, 1 Female between 30 & 40, 1 Female between 40 & 50. There are 23 people living under one roof, 16 of them males, this is not a three room cottage, it's either a hotel, boarding house or bunkhouse; I'm going to speculate a little, I'm going to say this is some sort of a bunkhouse Eckert and Guilford built at the furnace site for the first batch of workers, furnace engineers, surveyors, water dam builders and some labor's who had worked on furnace projects before. I checked  the 1820 Census and did not find Mr Brand listed in the Township; I have not had time yet to research Mr. Graeff.

Next on page 1, Dated Mar. 13, 1830. Buildings - Martin Felty for 1098 feet Pine c.12, 11.23. 

Other odds and ends from page 1. 
Mar 3, 1830, Wm. Graeff, Buildings,  12.15
Mar 3, 1830, Wm. Graeff, House Charge - 2 beds, c 45 - .90
                                            Buildings, 4/4 Augers, 2 files - .70
Mar 10, 1830, To Paul Barr - Buildings, 12.15
Mar 10, 1830   House Charge, J Keesey   3.30
Mar 12, 1830, Paul Brand,  Buildings, 5 gal Whiskey - 1.25, 2 shovels - 1.25 - total of 2.50. also to Paul Brand, same date under House Charge, 3 gal Molasses - 2.95. It looks like molasses cost three times as much as whiskey .

Note: So far the dollar sign ($) has not been used,

everything just numbers and decimal points, and (c) for cents.

Bloggers Note: One of my best friends at the Outwood and Pine Grove High Schools was Herbert Felty; Herbert was one grade behind me, I was in high school a year before he caught up with me at PG HS. On one occasion we rode our bicycles to school in Pine Grove and then back home to the Outwood area, about a six mile trip one way, we both had heavy frame, balloon tire bikes with no gears, one trip was enough. I visited Herbert and his wife several times before he passed away on April 9, 2014. Herbert told me several years ago that his ancestors had owned a good deal of acreage in the Outwood area back in the 1800's, the Martin Felty listed above might have been one of them. 

Furnace Pictures 

This is about what the furnace looks like now, a late 1980's photo by your blogger.

A Williams family box camera snapshot from the 1920's,
The Stager family home is on the "Furnace Bank"

at the upper left, much more on the three generations
of the Stager's who lived here later on.

 For those who are not familiar with furnace terminology the "Furnace Bank" is a level piece of ground behind, and  roughly the same height as the top of the furnace. In this picture the furnace seems to be as tall as the top of the house, this is because of the angle that this picture was taken from; if you walk up the hill today you will see the top of the furnace and the ground level of the furnace bank are almost the same. When the Swatara Furnace was in operation a bridge went from the furnace bank to the top of the furnace, this was where workers crossed to dump loads of charcoal, limestone and ore into the top of the furnace.

It's about time to get this post on the way, I hope to have some Ledger Book information on my next post.