Ledger Post # 10-A

Blacksmith Shop and older Bridge

1947 color transparency by A. W. Grumbine

The above picture is similar to the black and white photo I used in Ledger Post # 6-A. The Swatara Furnace Blacksmith Shop was located on the opposite side of Fishing Creek from the furnace. The shop, ( # 1 in the red rectangle), was built in the area between the creek and the present day road, ( # 3, red semi-circle), that leads from the Cabin to the West end of The Big House. I first heard about the Blacksmith Shop back in the summer of 1946 or 1947; My Mother, Ruth (Williams) Grumbine and my Grandmother, Georgia, (Britton) Williams were getting ready to cook our evening meal, it happened that they were two or three eggs short of what the recipe called for, we usually bought our eggs by the dozen from Austin Stager and his wife who lived in the Western most house up in Outwood, Austin and his wife had a large chicken house and sold eggs to many of the area residents, so, it looked like I was going to have to walk the mile to Outwood for eggs, however, Stell Stager, (Sister-in-law of Austin Stager)  our neighbor who lived with her family in the home directly behind the furnace stack was down at the Big House helping to do some housework for my Grandmother, Stell said she could spare several eggs so that we wouldn't have to go to Outwood before supper. Stell and I then headed for her home, we went on the road that led from The Big House to the cabin, as soon as we got into the wooded section of the  the road Stell told me there used to be a big Blacksmith Shop between the road and the creek, well, me being a very young teenager at the time was not interested in blacksmith shops, forges or furnaces, I guess I just said " huh huh" or something like that, end of conservation; at that time in my life my main interests were baseball, basketball and riding my bicycle to Outwood to visit my friends. When Stell and I got to the Cabin we "jumped the rocks" to cross the creek and go up the path to the Stager home. The reason I remember this incident so clearly is because Mrs Stager gave me a lecture on getting the eggs safely back to my Grandmother and Mother, Stell said, "Don't jump the rocks with these eggs, take them back by the road and over the wooden bridge and up into the yard, if you break them you will have to go to Outwood for eggs as I don't have any more to spare".

The second time I was told about the location of the Blacksmith Shop was in August of 1990, my Dad and I made an appointment with Lloyd Stager, (One of Bob and Stell Stagers Sons) for a tour of the Swatara Furnace/Forge area to get information on what he knew about where things, buildings etc were; the Stager home itself had been torn down by the Lebanon Water Company in the late 1970's or early 80's. We met Lloyd at the Furnace stack, he showed us many things in the area (too many to go into now), one of the first things he mentioned was the Blacksmith Shop, he pointed across the creek and said, "The Blacksmith Shop was in those woods, about a hundred feet South of the cabin".

This is getting a little long now, I better get to # 2, the red line at the right of the picture; there was a bridge here at one time, a road led from the present day road circle at the rear of the Big House, over the bridge, then came out about fifty feet South of the furnace stack; the foundations for this bridge were still visible during the 1940's and 1950's; I think several hurricanes  and the creek dredging did away with the foundations altogether.

Ledger Post # 10

Surnames

Top of Page 5, 28 April, 1830 

Something other than Eckert and Guilford purchasing building materials and foodstuffs has finally happened at the furnace site; the second most important operation other than the furnace itself is now up and running, this is the "Blacksmith Shop", the entry is at the top of page 5, 28 April 1830. Edward & Wm Fare, Dn To Smith Shop for 1 New Pick  $1.50. (the $1.50 is not shown on the above scan, also the "$" sign was used for the first time in the ledger). Go back to my Post # 7, 8 Nov, 1830; this was for excavation work done by the Fare's - It looks like the scribbling of their first names on that post were "E & Wm.", This comes out as Edward & Wm. on the 28 April scan. I'm pretty sure now these were the contractors E&G hired to do the heavy digging work.

Now, back to the Blacksmith Shop, at this period in time no industrial project back in the middle of nowhere could survive without a Blacksmith. The Blacksmith, (maybe more than one) and his helpers made tools, shoes for horses, mules and oxen, tires for wooden wheeled wagons and carts, door hinges, cooking utensils, - this list could go on for pages. 

Drop down now to the second section at the top: Sundries Dn to cash, Buildings, looks like pd for Pickhandles $2.00. John Meas, pd him, .16.

I'm beginning to believe "Dn" might mean "Drawn", unless somebody haws a better explanation.

Third section down - House Charge, whoever is doing the bookkeeping is starting something that is plain nasty. at this time a Mr. Wonder is starting to supply E& G with meat. I went to the Pine Grove Twp Census for 1830, Page 103, and found only one Wonder listed, his first name was Peter. Mr Wonder supplies the Furnace site with meat for month after month. The nasty part comes in when the bookkeeper enters the name "Dumb Wonder" every time a purchase of meat is made; I guess our bookkeeper just didn't like Mr Wonder. 

Other new surnames at the top of page 5   

Jacob Hipple

Michael Uhler,  for cash $10.00

Dave Kelker, for cash $5.00

Fred R Harp, for cash $5.00

Jacob Simpson, for cash .50

More on the Blacksmith Shop in the next post

Ledger Post # 9

Surnames

Bottom of Page 3, 10 & 17 April, 1830

Surnames from the above scan

John Zimmerman supplied 16 1/2 Bus corn at .37 1/2 per bushel; this came under  Team Charges.

George Reed received money for something.

Bottom 3rd of Page 3, 17 April, under "Sundries"

Mich Roland, pd him, $100.00, Cash

Jon Meas, pd him, $7.00, Cash

Eleandria Crawford, pd him, $2.75, Cash

Sam Trump, pd him, $20.00, Cash

Some interesting names above, notice the last name, we now have a Mr. Trump on on our surname list, I can't find anything to say what the last four were paid for, we probably need some sort of an Investigation  Committee to sort this out. Also the spelling on three of the above is questionable; I put down "Roland", maybe it's "Noland", then there is the first name of Crawford, who knows what that might be. Then there is "Jon Meas", I checked the 1830, Pine Grove Township Federal Census, there is a John Mease and Johathan Mease on Page 103; "Meas" turns up many times in the ledger' I think the proper spelling is "Mease".

Ledger Post # 8

Surnames

Top of Page 3, 10 April, 1830

I am going to start from the beginning of the ledger and list surnames as they appear on the pages, I won't keep repeating the same surnames over and over in the typed out names below; some of the names show up two or  three times on the same page, if there is something I feel is significant connected with a name I will list it again; I won't be able to scan full pages at all, it's too time consuming, the scan in this post is only about 1/4 of the full page. I'm going to include at least one scan from each page with each post. I am also starting to use dollar "$" and cents "." keys in my posts, they didn't use these in the ledger book, there are two columns at the far right of each page which I haven't included in most of the scans, if I tried to include the full width of the page in the scan the scan picture would be too small to be correctly viewed 

Surnames on about half of Page 3

Paid Martin Felty $50.00

Paid John Bohr $5.21

To Benj Bonewitz for 19 Bus potatoes c .30  $5.70

To Paul Barr for 1 Bbl No 2 Mackerel  $7.25

To Henry Bohr for 5 lbs  butter c .11 .55

George Reed, pd him $10.76

I don't know whose spelling is worse, mine or their's. Miss Greenawalt, my English Teacher at the Pine grove High School would not be happy with either of us.

LEDGER POST # 7

Furnace Area Construction Work

Some Doctor Work

Scan-Page 42, Nov 8, 1830

There is a lot of good information in the above scan, there are three sections to the scan, the most important being the top and bottom ones. The total charges for the top section was $676.32, this was really big money for that time period. It looks like the people who did this work were a E & W Fare, (The name might be "Fehr" instead of Fare) back in those days people doing the writing sometimes didn't bother to ask how a name was spelled, they wrote it down the way it sounded to them, I'll have to look it up in the Census when I have time. I am going to write down some of the lines from the top part of the scan because they might be hard to read even when you enlarge the scan.

"For Excavating Head Race" $190.26. The last time I visited the head race site it was still in pretty good shape.

"Wheel Pit", $65.34. This is the water wheel pit, it's also still in good shape.

"Tail Race, $19.60". I'm not sure what the "Tail Race" is; when I have time I will contact the NPS people at The Hopewell Furnace to get an answer; I think the Tail Race might have been the section that ran from the water wheel pit and into the creek.

"Foundation for Furnace, $23.94".

" Foundation Coal House, $25.92". Coal House means Charcoal House, the Charcoal House was located on the Furnace Bank. Back in the late 1980's Lloyd Stager showed me the exact location of the Coal House, if you dig down a little bit through the dirt you will find some charcoal.

"Cellar Drain, $34.56". Have no idea what that was.

"Embankment, $168.60". This refers to the Furnace Bank, this is the flat area directly behind the top of the Furnace Stack, this is where the charcoal, limestone and ore were stored, a bridge from the bank to the top of the furnace stack enabled the work crew to dump charcoal, limestone and iron ore into the furnace. The excavators had to dig away a good portion of the mountain side to set up the Furnace Bank.

"Loop Rock, $12.80, and Solid Rock, $15.30". I have no idea what these mean.

"Digging holes for Coal House, $1.50". See Foundation Coal House above.

"Grubbing, $35.00". ???

"88 1/2 Days work in Qarry, $83.50". Stone Quarry ???, maybe this was where they got the stones for the Furnace Stack.

Lets jump down now to the third line in the bottom section of the scan.

"To G. N. Eckert,  Medical Attendance, $3.00 ".

As most of you know by now George Eckert was a Medical Doctor, I can't imagine Eckert charging one of his workers for medical services, perhaps this was for some local non furnace worker that needed medical attention.

That's it for this post.

Ledger Post # 6-A

Fishing/Mill Creek

Creek Photographs

I wanted to include the photos below with my last post but did not have them prepared at the time. Mill Creek does not now look anything like it did before the 1946/48 City of Lebanon Water Supply Dam was built. Most people born after 1950 have no idea what this beautiful trout stream used to look like. I think there is some law on the books that says a water supply company can't completely cut all of the water off from a stream and let it dry up below the dam breast. I guess the same amount of water still comes down the creek below the second 1990's dam as did when the 1946/48 dam was built. The pictures below are only a fraction of the photos that are available of the creek. 

Local boys enjoying the Mill Creek swimming hole just below "The Big House", middle 1936 photo by A.W. Grumbine

 

1947 Photo by A.W. Grumbine. This Winter view looking down the creek.  The red circle, # 1 is where the same three rocks that are shown in the photo below set. The mid 1940's Lebanon Water Supply Dam was under construction at this time, however, the water was not restricted when this photo was taken. You can barely see "The Big House" through the trees, red # 2.

1930's Photo, looking up the creek, by A.W. Grumbine. The flat rock with the two rocks leaning on it, (red circle, # 1) are directly in line between  The log cabin and the Swatara Furnace stack; # 2, is the grass area just up from the cabin.

A 1920's Box camera photo from the W.T. Williams collection. The water is a little higher than normal in this photo

A few words now about the swimming hole dam, picture at the top. From my Uncle Bill Williams's 1932 diary, May 28th: "Up at 7:30, Built Dam, 31 in party, Water 6 ft, a great success, ate in Dell". 

George Boyer supplied all of the materials for the dam, log to be laid across the creek, lumber to be cut and nailed to the log, etc. The dam project was the idea of Philo Castle Dix; Mr Dix was the State of Pennsylvania's WMCA Secretary; his office and home were in Harrisburg, however, he also rented the smaller stone house (part of the original Swatara Furnace Plantations structures) from 1928 until 1947; Mr Dix and his family spent most of their summers, weekends and vacation time at the stone house on the road to Outwood.

The reason for building the dam was this: every Summer Mr Dix organized camping trips for YMCA boys, also Boy Scouts, form Eastern PA; these boys camped in an area between the Highbridge and the Swatara Furnace stack, the problem was that there was no area deep enough to swim in.

The dam builders were, some of the local kids, including my Uncles Bill and Lloyd Williams, the Stager boys and a group of WMCA boys who were camping at the time.

We will get back to the Furnace ledger book for the next post.

Ledger Post # 6

Another Pre 1830 Ledger Entry

Also Fishing/Mill Creek

1829 entry added to the bottom of page 212 of the Feb 8th 1832  ledger page

In the above scan we have two entries from 1829, one is dated Apr. 1st, 1829 and the other Apr. 15th, 1829; the most important one is the one dated Apr. 1st; in the fine print, just to the right of the keyboard symbol,  " { " we have "Apr. 1st 1829. "For house at Fishing Creek ". You will have to tap the scan to enlarge it for best viewing. Back in the 1800's the creek was called "Fishing Creek', now days it is called "Mill Creek". I don't know when the name was changed from Fishing Creek to Mill Creek; someone could find out the approximate date by looking at various copies of the printed topographical maps printed by the Federal Government.

The above scan shows that Geo. Eckert had a crew working back at the future Swatara Furnace site before the Union Canal was up and running. Two of our friends from the 1830 Ledger Book are there and working, Paul Brand and Wm. Graeff. Geo. Bonewits was paid 60 dollars for carpenter work, a Stein was paid 5 dollars for hauling and it looks like an Angel Bonewits was paid 38.92 for something.

We now have more questions than answers, where on Fishing Creek was the house, there is no mention of masonry  work, only carpentry work, "The Big House", (Ironmaster's Mansion) was mostly all stone. I have a feeling they first built a wooden house, maybe at the site of the future "Big House", a wooden house would go up much faster than a stone house. Perhaps there will be some answers as I get further into the ledger.