At the time of his death, no one had lived in
Lehighton longer than Lewis Graver.
He came here as a boy, with his brother Andrew and
his father Heinrich, to timber the Moravian lands at the south end of town when
he was twelve. The two brothers would
live out their lives here.
A long way from his Weissport farm and canal roots: Henry Graver rests on an early jaunt to Palm Beach, Florida in 1917. |
Lewis Graver’s 1892 obituary referred to his
parents, Henry and Elizabeth, as “farm people.” They were also known as hide tanners. The family’s first homestead “almost opposite” of the first
boatyard to be established along the Lehigh Canal in Weissport. It went on to say that this original boatyard
got it start with Lewis and Andrew Graver.
The beginning: The Recluse of Gnaden Hutten/Lewis Graver lands
~Graver Post 1: Alvenia and Adaline Graver Millinary~Graver Post 3: Graver's Bathing Casino
~Graver Post 4: Henry Graver's Diminished DreamAs with any research of this kind, there are a few anachronism in the records of Lewis’ life: His 1892 obituary versus information written by noted local historian Ralph Kreamer in 1993 as well as contradictory information from the 1905 "Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of the Lehigh Valley" by Jordan, Green and Ettinger.
Kreamer maintains that Lewis started the Lehighton brickworks in 1834 when he was just twenty. However, according to his obituary, Lewis was still working on the canal until 1841. The 1905 biography states he was born in 1811 while his tombstone maintains that it was 1813.
1834 was the year of a major flood that caused severe damage to the canal. The canal was out of commission long enough to cause Lewis to seek other work. From that point forward the obituary contends that Lewis devoted himself to farming. The 1905 biography notes that Lewis sold off his interest in the boat yard to his brother Andrew at about the time he bought the approximately 200 acres that would become "Graverville."
Brick making seems to be one of a few of Lewis's pursuits at this time. The facts do bear
scrutiny that the Graver brick manufactory was the oldest in the county. He was also known to have established a milk route to Mauch Chunk and other markets.
One other brick yard operated for a time in the
borough. W. S. Koch started one also
using Mahoning Creek clay at the present day site of Blue Ridge Pressure
Castings. It was later purchased by Ira
Seidle and Dallas Bowman. It ceased
operations in 1920.
It was soon after the flood that Lewis Graver
married his wife, the Leah Lauchnor.
They wed on January 3, 1842 when he was twenty-eight and she was
twenty-one.
They had a large family of five girls and six boys:
Martin, Elizabeth Seiler, twins Adaline Wehr and Alvenia Lentz-Westlake-Weiss
(see previous post), Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin, Henry, Lafayette, Edward, Emma
Thomas, and Annie Graver. (More on them appear
under the footnotes below.)
It was Henry, the middle son, who took over the
family enterprise of brick making and would convert this industry into the ice
industry, which eventually led to their swimming, real estate, and skating
enterprises.
There are a number of sources that give the sum of the Graver lands was said to be 175-acres. Of course, these sources could all be citing from the same source. It encompassed all of what came to be known
as the hamlet of “Graverville.” One
early account from the Lewis days referred to this estate as “The Pines.”
Here is Henry Graver (right) with his mother over his shoulder. The others are presumed to be siblings taken at "The Pines," the Lewis and Leah Graver homestead, in South Lehighton. |
Slate was said to be quarried there as well. A June 1877 article said Graver’s men removed
“seven to eight feet of top rock” to expose some “A-1, Vermont quality slate of
uniform thickness.” The remaining piece
reads more like a paid ad by stating that customers should “invest in the
company’s stock without delay.”
At far left is the current American Legion Post #314 and the original Lewis Graver homestead. The double brick home at right was built by Graver in 1889. |
The earliest reference of the Graver Brick business
devolving from Lewis to Henry can be found in a June 1882 article describing it
as “H. A. Graver’s” brick yard. Lewis
would have been sixty-nine years old. The 1905 biography tells of Lewis's retirement after eighteen years in the business in 1881. The biography later contradicts itself stating that Henry took over the brickworks in 1884.
Certainly as Lewis gave more and
more of the work to Henry, settling more into retired life, he most likely was there to provide
a constant voice of both promise and woe to Henry as he advanced his business
pursuits.
In the beginning, Lewis and his family were
hardworking farmers over the ancillary brick works. But the ensuing years were good to the
industrious Henry. And yet still, as
farm work revolves around the cycles of the seasons, so too did the operation
of the brick works.
From August 18, 1888 "Carbon Advocate," a Lehighton newspaper. |
Judge D. W. Neeley visited here for the month of
November in 1881. Henry and his
brother-in-law, Charles W. Lentz, received Neeley as their guest from
Colorado.
At the time, C. W. Lentz was serving as Carbon’s
coroner with several murder investigations under his belt. In time he became a popular sheriff of the
county, doing so directly after returning home from his expedition with Judge
Neeley back to his hometown of Poncha Springs.
This trip points to two things: Henry’s early and apparent
wanderlust as well as speaking of him as a businessman who had accumulated
enough to avail himself such a trip.
Graver and Lentz traveled with Neeley and expected
to stay until spring as long as “all went well.” Lentz was newly married and left two young
children back home with Henry’s sister Alvenia, a milliner in town. (Click here for post of Alvenia and her twin sister Adaline.)
Henry remained a bachelor until his thirtieth year,
marrying Catherine “Cate” Hoats of Washington Township, Lehigh County on
September 30, 1887. He represented the first ward on the Lehighton Board of Education and was also known to be a member of the Knights of Malta.
Newly weds in front of their newly built home at 105 East Penn St. The Henry and Cate Graver home remains today, it's detailed woodwork intact. |
Brick season started as the earth began with winter's thaw in March or April. According
to an article from October 4, 1890, early October was the month operations
closed out for the year.
One of the first mentions of Lewis Graver bricks going
into a Lehighton building was reported in the Carbon Advocate in August of
1879. It stated that “J. A. Hom’s new
hotel building is progressing finely…bricks being furnished by Lewis Graver of
South Lehighton.” (See footnotes below
on more of the fire that consumed Hom’s first hotel.)
The Henry Graver home as it appears today at 105 East Penn Street, it's charming woodwork still in tact. |
J. T. Nusbaum built his clothing store, known as
“The Original Spot Cash Store” on First Street, with Graver brick in 1888. Other notable buildings built with Graver
bricks were: The old “Carbon House” which stood at the corner of First and North
Streets, First Ward elementary school built in 1896, the Baer Silk Mill in 1898,
as well as Third Ward built in 1902.
Bricks were also used for many homes throughout
Lehighton. The “Carbon Advocate”
reported that Lewis built a “two and a half brick home opposite the old
homestead” in June 1889. Henry Graver
later built his own home of at 105 East Penn Street in the spring of 1891.
The brickyard employed about seven men in the late
1890s and early 1900s. Another article
of 1889 mentions that Henry Graver had enough orders to keep the men “humping
all summer long.”
This clay was drawn from the banks of the Mahoning
Creek at the same location where the “Graver’s Bathing Casino” would be built in 1925 (see future post). This is the current location of “Snyder Tire” today.
The Gravers were known for their horse corral. Horses were kept there into at least the
1950s. The Lehigh Coal and Hardware
Company of town trusted the Graver’s to take care of its “valuable sick horse”
at the “meadows of Graver’s brick yard” in August of 1891.
According to an article by local historian Ralph
Kreamer, “two horses rotated a long plank in a wide circle” to power the mill. This action crushed the clay into a malleable
and pack-able material suited for filling the brick molds.
The excess clay was scraped off, and being too
pliable to be handled, the bricks were dumped onto the ground to dry over night. The bricks made here were both the “pressed”
and “common” types.
Rain was known to come at this most critical
juncture. In June 1882 heavy storms
ruined 10,000 Graver bricks. In May 1885
storms wrecked 30,000 waiting to be fired in the kiln.
After one day on the ground, these bricks were
placed in an unheated drying shed for one week.
These drying sheds were still on the property into the 1960s, used by the
Graver ice plant as garages and storage sheds.
The kilns were fired for seven days according to
Kreamer. Workers were careful to keep
the temperature steady or else the brick might crack. Bricks farthest from the fire often times
lacked uniformity of size. The ovens
were at first fired with wood and later anthracite coal.
The bricks took another seven days before they were
cool enough to handle. Thus multiple
kilns were necessary.
Certainly the Gravers kept close ties to their
farming roots. Just two years before his
death, the paper reported Lewis had grown a strawberry “that measured seven
inches in circumference” (June 22, 1889).
Henry Graver had built a wooden truck body on top of an old jalopy truck
chassis. On the side he had painted
“Gnaden Hutten Fruit Farm.”
The Allentown Democrat reported in January 1914 that
“Henry Graver is loading a car with apples and potatoes to be shipped to some
part of New Jersey.” It is unclear
whether the car mentioned was Henry’s truck or whether it was a rail car. Remnants of the orchard are still visible in
the 1959 aerial photo accompanying this article.
Always innovating business ventures this April 1893 news clip shows the beginning for what would become "Graverville." |
On January 3rd, 1892, the Graver family
honored their parents for their Golden Wedding Anniversary. Gifts from their children included: a silver
tea service from Miss Alvenia Graver, a silver fruit dish and cake stand from
Mrs. Lewis (Adaline) Wehr, a china dinner set from Mrs. T. D. (Emma) Thomas, a
plush rocker from Henry and a chest from Ed Graver.
The article stated, despite Lewis being seventy-nine
and Leah being seventy-two, that both were “still enjoying excellent
health.” But just three weeks after such
a hearty celebration, Lehighton lost its oldest of the pioneer residents.
The Carbon Advocate of January 30th gave
a detailed account of Lewis Graver’s life.
It also stated that his demise was the result of a “short illness with
acute pneumonia.” He had thirteen
grandchildren and the paper suggested the following epitaph: “…well done thou good and faithful servant.”
Leah survived her husband another sixteen years. Her death came “suddenly and unexpectedly”
though she was near ninety years of age.
Leah’s February 1908 obituary referred to Henry as
“the retired brick manufacturer.” Other
sources say it closed in 1910.
Certainly some of these dates could be
approximations. However it was clear
that by 1910, crushed shale bricks began to replace the irregular, more prone to
cracking, clay bricks made by Graver. And
so the Graver yard is said to have drawn to a close.
However, the industrious Henry Graver had other
plans: to manufacture ice.
On November
5, 1909, it was reported that Henry was building a “large icehouse on his
property.” Just two weeks later, it was
reported that he was building a second one as well as an “ice dam, which
covered two acres.” Henry gave “proprietor”
of an “ice house” as his occupation in the 1910 Census.
In 1911, it was reported that the Graver Ice Company
filled the Stegmaier Beer Cold Storage on the Lehighton flats with ten inch
ice. A February 1912 report said
Graver’s Ice House was filled with 45,000 tons of ice.
This 1959 aerial shot once again shows the pool partially drained and the skating rink. The newly built Route 443 bisects the ice dam. |
At first the ice was simply harvested from the dams,
an offshoot of the Mahoning Creek.
However the next generation of Graver’s would build a year round
production facility (future post).
A large, gas powered, circular saw was used to cut
the ice into 30” x 48” pieces in the 1920s.
A channel was cut up the middle to float the ice toward the storage
house. The blocks were conveyed thirty-feet
up to the top of the icehouse where successive layers were separated with
sawdust to keep the blocks from melting and re-freezing together.
The ice was sold in increments of twenty-five pounds
up to one hundred and sold in increments of five, ten, twenty and fifty cents
respectively.
One of the early deliverymen for Graver’s other than Stanley and Ralph Graver was Bill Rex of Lehighton who lived in one of Graver’s bungalows on the side of the mountain.
One of the early deliverymen for Graver’s other than Stanley and Ralph Graver was Bill Rex of Lehighton who lived in one of Graver’s bungalows on the side of the mountain.
Though long out of use, the remnants of the far end
of this ice dam can still be seen today.
Down the bank from “Pizza Hut” at the base of the Mahoning Mountain is a
stagnant pool of water that was the far extreme of this dam.
The near end started at the rear of today’s Snyder
Tire and is now under a substantial pile of fill. Route 443 was part of the eventual demise of
this dam as it bisected these two areas in the late 1950s.
The business was built up sufficiently enough that
by 1920, Henry was retired. Son Stanley
was living with his parents and listed his job as “ice peddler.” Henry listed “none” for his. This business must have been profitable
enough for Graver to begin to feed his passion for travel.
In February 1917, a Palm Beach Florida paper related
the following information:
“A vehicle which attracted much attention in Palm
Beach and vicinity was a house-auto which had toured from Lehighton, Pa. It is a chain driven type, capable of a speed
of about fifteen miles an hour. It is
really a comfortable room, 6’x12’ in dimensions, in which are three beds for
the occupants, a complete set of cooking paraphernalia, and ‘all the comforts
of home.’”
“The car is the property of H. A. Graver, known in
Lehighton and vicinity as the man who proved that peaches could be raised on
the mountainside of his locality. With
him as guests were Frank Schwartz and D. J. Kistler.” (Kistler owned the livery in downtown Lehighton as well as the Exchange Hotel - click here for a post of those and other Lehighton businesses.)
It also mentioned that the “tourists” had complained
that they had to pay an additional ten dollar license fee even though the one
they had did not expire until the next Thursday. However they did have a compliment for the
Florida roads, stating that they “on the whole in excellent condition.”
This looks to be Bertha Graver, daughter of Henry and Cate with an unidentified male sight-seeing in the cotton fields of the south during the height of the share-cropping days. |
The article concludes with other Lehightonians
living at least part of the year in Florida: Pierce F. Rehirg (click here for the murder mystery surrounding his death), George A. Esch, Thomas Graham,
George Hartung, Jacob Kistler, Frank Schwartz, Rev. H. L. Straup, George
Johnson, and F. P. Semmel besides others permanently located.
The earliest photos show this “house-auto” next to
what look to be a ramshackle home, an area of which had a framed up, walled in
patio area with palms used as sheathing.
Sometime between 1917 and Henry’s death in 1926,
Henry and wife Cate would spend most if
not all their winters in Florida in perhaps a more permanent home.
Henry and Cate had three children: Ralph Henry
Graver (born 1892), Stanley (born 1894) and a daughter Bertha (born 1898). In at least one photo, it looks like Ralph in
his life guard suit with his sister Bertha, Henry and his oldest son Reuben at
about seven years of age in Palm Beach.
It appears that the wooden body of the jalopy
mentioned in the 1917 article gets renovated at some point before 1926. In later pictures, the wooden frame looks to
have been altered and there is a lower entry step. The tongue and groove slats on the outside
look newer, of a darker stain, and the “Gnaden Hutten Fruit Farm” is gone.
Here we see Ralph Graver with his sister Bertha along with Henry seated at a more permanent winter home in Florida. The youngster could be Ralph's oldest son Reuben. |
It is unknown for sure whether Henry drove the 1,200
miles to Florida at fifteen miles per hour on what had to be mostly dirt roads
in a truck with hard tires and without shock absorbing mechanics.
However there are two interesting pictures of
his remodeled jalopy: One on a barge crossing a bay or a swamp and another on a
flatbed of an “Auto Transfer” train, both of which are of the newer version.
Regardless of how he arrived there, the auto-house
was featured in many pictures, pictures that give a glimpse of their lives in
Palm Beach. It looked like a life of ease,
of surf and fishing, but with some adventure and a business discovery.
The Palm Beach Post article of 1917 also mentions
that the Henry Graver “party visited Gus’ Baths, and motored south to
Miami.” This innocuous and incidental
stop would prove pivotal to the future of Graver family business.
Here is a picture of the Gus Bath House from Palm Beach. The Gravers would pattern much of their pool enterprise uponGus's design, right down to the wooden boardwalkand surrounding change houses. |
Peter “Gus” Jordahn was born in Denmark in 1881,
nine years older than Henry. He and his
wife honeymooned in Palm Beach where he eventually relocated. He built his first bath house in 1914, and
shortly thereafter built Gus’ Bath House at the east end of Worth Avenue. It was the first bathing pools in Palm Beach
to be open year round. The pool had a
wooden boardwalk around it.
"Gus" Jordahn of Palm Beach Florida. Picture appears courtesy of Palm Beach County Historical Society. |
“Gus” was known to dive off the pier into the ocean
and swim with the sea turtles. He also
had several saltwater pools where he would house sea turtles from time to time.
There is one picture from the Graver family photo
collection showing a manatee, referred to as a “sea cow,” being scrubbed down
inside a drained pool from the “Kennedy Sea Aquarium.”
It is puzzling that Henry’s oldest son Ralph is
absent from both the Lehighton and Palm Beach, Florida census records in
1920. It is possible that he was living
in Palm Beach as it is known that Ralph was employed as a life guard at Gus
Jordahn’s Bathing Casino in Palm Beach, Florida.
Thus Henry had one more business venture lurking in
his brain. He was inspired by Jordahn’s Casino
in function and design. The business
model also intrigued him.
Henry, with his sons, set out to build not one but
two of the largest pools in Pennsylvania at the site of the former brickworks.
Henry placed this new venture in the hands of his
two sons. Ralph would take charge of
Lehighton while Stanley lived the summer months in Lebanon. The pools were the largest in the state and
were wildly hailed in the local papers both here and in Lebanon County.
This also led to the building of a larger skating
rink larger than any currently around Carbon today. And, subsequently, this directly led the
“Graver Brothers” in the real estate industry that would carry them into the
1970s.
Henry would live to see the first but not the
latter. He passed away in his West Palm
Beach winter home, his wife Cate and daughter Bertha at his side when his end
came. He was sixty-nine but led a full
life.
Cate passed at the age of
sixty-three in 1931.
Bertha, who never
married, followed in 1933. She was
thirty-five.
Please stay tuned for Post three on Ralph and
Stanley Graver soon. Happy Holidays
everyone!
Footnotes -
Lewis
and Leah Graver’s Children:
Their oldest son Martin moved to Packerton and
worked on the railroad, Elizabeth Seiler married and moved to the Lehigh
Valley, Adaline and Alvenia took on a millinery shop with Alvenia eventually
moving to Emporia, Vrigina and back to later run a boarding house on Bridge
Street. Son Lafayette farmed the Owl
Creek area of Franklin Township, the current home of Graver’s Orchards, which
is run by Lafayette’s great grandson Richard Graver.
T. Jefferson Graver was prone to epilepsy and lived
with his mother until the day he died of an attack and drown in the family
outhouse in August of 1902 at the age of forty-seven. At the time of his death the only siblings
alive were Henry and Edward, and Emma, Elizabeth and Alvenia.
Henry
and Catherine Graver’s Children:
On his 1917 draft card, Stanley stated his
occupation as “farmer.” He first married Verna Nansteel in October of
1912. They were divorced by 1918. In
1920, Stanley was living at home with his new wife, the former Sadie
Dreher. It appears that by 1930 they
were separated, Sadie living alone in a boarding house and working as a cook in
Manhattan while Stanley was living in Lebanon, owner of “Turkish Baths” and
living with his widowed “maid,” Pauline Cole.
The fact that he was married three times in addition
to a few anecdotes of Stanley attests to the nature of Stanley’s temperament. He was fond of the horse kept on the Graver
pasture and he was known to take one as far as Lake Harmony where he would
allegedly entertain himself with spirits until his horse would either runoff or
he would otherwise lose track of it to the point where family members would be
called in the next day to help find it.
He was also known to be quick to fire workers at the ice plant without
much cause, requiring his brother Ralph to re-hire the worker before he ever
left the grounds.
A February 1930 advertisement for “Dr. White’s
Lon-ge Hai-la Cough Medicine mentions Ralph working for Gus. The ad builds Graver’s credibility by
mentioning he and his brother manage the Lehighton and Lebanon Bathing Casinos,
as well as “large ice houses, and refers to Ralph as “one of the best swimmers
in the country and a former life guard at Palm Beach.”
There was also a similar ad that appeared In
November of 1926 for “Dr. White’s Lung Healer,” available from First National
Laboratories of Lehighton.
The Jonas Hom Hotel Fired and the Mansion House
Hotel:
Hom's wooden hotel was first converted from a barn by M. H. Barol in 1868 at the intersection of First and Ochre Streets. Jonas Hom took over the wooden hotel after Barol and on May 23, 1879 it was ruined in a fire. The “Lehigh and Schuylkill
Railroad” depot ran behind it and it was alleged the fire started by a spark
landing on the roof from a passing train.
Others said it started from within.
This hotel was later renamed “The Mansion House” and was run by Jonas
Hom’s son C. A. Hom after Jonas’s death of consumption at the age of
fifty-eight in 1882. At some point in the 1880s, it was said to have been run by A. P. Claus (born 1842), a son-in-law to Jonas. Claus was married to Sarina Hom (born 1849) who was the eldest of the Hom children. Jonas's son Columbus H.
Hom ran it until he too died of tuberculosis in 1893. His brother Zacharias H. C. Hom ran it until
retiring around 1906. The Carbon
Advocate apologized for not running the story in the next day’s edition due to
the fact that the staff was assisting Hom remove valuables and helping to
extinguish the blaze.
In 1906 it was run by Kistler and in 1912 it was purchased by the Central Jersey Railroad. The Central planned to demolish it and build a station there. However, those plans never materialized and it functioned as a hotel until February 13, 1928. (Many thanks to Lamont "Mike" Ebbert for his research.)
In 1906 it was run by Kistler and in 1912 it was purchased by the Central Jersey Railroad. The Central planned to demolish it and build a station there. However, those plans never materialized and it functioned as a hotel until February 13, 1928. (Many thanks to Lamont "Mike" Ebbert for his research.)
Great story. Can't wait for the rest. I love history but this hit home. I am a decendant of Lafayette graver. Richard, the current owner of gravers orchard is my great uncle, my grandmother's brother. My grandmother is Dorothy graver strohl. She has 5 children and I am then oldest of her 13 grandchildren. We now have 9 great grandchildren with 2 more coming in 2015. She grew up on that farm in a house another of her brothers currently lives in down the road. Owl creek. We visit all summer and fall. We are out of palmerton which is where she has lived throughout my grandparents 60 year marriage. Wonderful history. Thanks for your research and I can't wait to print all of this for her to read.
ReplyDeleteI glad you got something out of it...I spoke briefly one night with Richard and I hope to add a few things from him if I can...Isn't it wonderful to think about the impact our ancestors had on who were are today? I'm sure you and your family have made them proud...take care and God bless in the New Year...
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