Carbon County Fuels Industrial Revolution, Lehighton Students Learn

It always starts with a problem.

How do we engage our youth?
How do we ply them from the techno gizmos and introduce them to the outside, to engage that exploring spirit?

Perhaps the answer lies within the man who seemed to have a great combination of imagination, energy, and focus.
His name was Josiah White and he was born in Mt. Holly New Jersey in 1781.

He grew up on a farm and explored the surrounding waterways.  One can only imagine what dreams he dreamed.  But he explored, he imagined, he innovated.  The result, some have said, that it became his hand that rocked the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

Josiah dreamed of riches, enough to retire by age 30, to live the will of his maker and retire to the quiet life of his farm.  He had those riches by the time he was 28, he owned a wire-mill in Philadelphia and fortunately for us, he continued on. 

The War of 1812 taught this Quaker, that one shouldn't rely on a foreign fuel supply.  The British blockade and embargo hampered our industrial output.  And soon, Josiah was planning and surveying Pennsylvania's first railroad, the second oldest in the country.  By 1818, he set out to do what two other groups had failed to do: bring the rich hard, blue burning anthracite down from the veins of Summit Hill and Lansford.

(See: switchbackgravityrr.org/)

The Switchback Railroad was also our first rollercoaster, reaching speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour.  It was innovative.  It was brought to us by an engaged mind. 

And today, the youth of our county have seen with their own eyes what started with one man's imagination.  Students from Lehighton Area Middle School, recently walked to the top of Front Hill, Jim Thorpe and entered the Switchback trail.  They saw where the train station rested atop the long embanked walkway.  They imagined the clickity-clack of the cars ambling down the 9-miles from Mt Jefferson and later heard the actual engine house bell ring.  They explored and hopefully ignited a life long quest for thinking, for innovating in their own lives.

They arrived at the Mauch Chunk Museum and Cultural Center (See: http://mauchchunkmuseum.com/ ) and were thrilled to see in miniature, the entire Switchback, including it's engine houses and some real artifacts.  Mike Nonnemacher made the journey come to life: how the barney cars pushed, how it was America's second leading tourist attraction (behind Niagara Falls), how it fell to disrepair in the Depression, sold for scrap, and "came back as bullets" when it was bought by the Japanese in 1937.

How do we engage our youth? It all starts with a problem. Do we have the energy and focus to overcome it? Hike the trail. Engage them. Perhaps what started so long ago may help spur a youth's future innovation.  Perhaps new entrepreneurs are now ready to pick up Josiah's mantle. 

Over 50 students and parents of 5th Graders at Lehighton Area Middle School have set out on four tours of the trail, immersing themselves in our partially forgotten history.  Three more evening tours are scheduled. 

The Mauch Chunk Historical Society also sponsors history tours of Jim Thorpe as well.  These local-historian led tours meet at the NJC RR Station every Saturday and Sunday at 11 AM, 1 PM, & 3 PM.  Donations are $10 per adult & $5 per child under 10.  Bill Allison is in charge of the tours and you may contact him at 610-457-0370.  If you would like to know when I am scheduled to give these tours, you can contact me at rabenold@ptd.net or C. 610-428-6651. 

Nature's Symmetry - Along the Old Lehigh Canal

Rip off the labels, and enjoy Nature's symmetry.  Anytime.

Here we are, at Lock #7 again.  "Lock" as in a man-made chamber along a body of water that raised and lowered boats from one level to the next.  It is how man overcame the elevation change along the 700 feet of relief from Mauch Chunk to Easton, Pennsylvania.  Most locks were around 15-20 feet in height, and were built so two boats could fit in one lock at a time.  Unlike the Delaware Canal, the destination of the boats on the Lehigh Canal, which could only accomodate one boat at a time.  Josiah White, ever the ingenious innovator, created a new type of door for the upper side of each lock.  The boat moving downstream with its load of coal only needed to nudge the door down, like an upside down doggy door to enter the lock.

The picture above though is about symmetry.  And how the eye embraces the symmetry, and indulges in the muted, blurred tones as if it were a sticky oil-base on canvas.  There is no trick to the photo, except what we accept as up is actually down, and what is down, is up.

This is Lock #4, about 1 1/2 miles north of Lock #7.  The dry masonry only held up for 190 years.  You can traverse this lock, as many along the canal and check out the Locktender house ruins, and here at #4, enjoy a rest and a view from atop the 20 feet observation deck.

How Marauding Indians Built the Pretzel Industry by Ronald Rabenold

Most local Pennsylvanians know a good pretzel. And many here on the Eastern end of the state have made the trip to Litiz, Lancaster County to the oldest pretzel bakery in the nation (world?).

Once there you can still hand twist your own pretzel and have it baked in the original bake oven built by Er Bauet Von Peterkreiter in 1784.

Along the long chain of my whimsical meandering historical readings, I found one newspaper source from the 1970s that claimed Julius Sturgis, who began commercially baking pretzels in 1861, was the great grandson of Joseph Sturgis.

Who was Joseph Sturgis you ask? He was the 17-year-old youth who was the first to jump from the burning roof of the Meeting House during the Gnadenhutten Massacre here in Lehighton on November 24, 1755. (This incident was incited by General Braddock’s defeat from the French at Fort Duquesne in July of 1755.)

The original burial site is beyond between the barn and the tree.

According to the Lehighton Centennial book of 1966, “He leaped to the burning roof and thence to the ground, his hair singed and his cheek bleeding where a rifle ball had grazed it. He escaped, and lived to tell the horrible story for many years later.”

 Many of us around here enjoy a good pretzel. When traveling outside the area, it doesn’t take long to realize the wealth of pretzels we enjoy here. Visiting my brother in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was struck that they only had “Rold Gold” pretzels from Frito Lay.

We have many local companies that make a quality product: Unique Splits and Martins are my top two favorites. There’s also Faller’s, Snyders of Hanover, Utz, Sturgis, Bachman’s and more.  Had Joseph died in those flames, what would have been the impact to the Pennsylvania pretzel industry?

It brings us to the modern day Litiz, Pennsylvania, to the Tom Sturgis Pretzel factory.  It is also interesting to note that the original sturdy Sturgis Bakery was built with heavy wooden doors with iron strap hinges and with cellar windows built with gun slats to wardoff Indian attacks.  I connect in my mind the harrowing experience of a young lad and the accompanying hypervigilance that came in his older age.

Left - The original Sturgis pretzel oven still in use today.
Above, Right - The original Sturgis pretzel bakery from 1861.

Greed and Zealousy - The Recluse of Gnaden Hutten

Greed and Zealousy by Ronald Rabenold

A small patch of land was the center of it. A society was formed on it and out of it, a recluse found her life in it and her death away from it. James Fenimore Cooper came to the Moravian Library to study it. The profiteers then captured it, to set their monuments to the sky upon it.
The spiritually connected Leni-Lenape, lived here first, followed by the Iroquois who claimed tribute from it. Thomas Penn in turn, coveted and squeezed it, creating the “Walking Purchase” to steal it. His hoax of a deed in 1737, called for a ‘walk for a day and a half’ to measure the land, that he said the Leni-Lenape leaders agreed to cede many years before.
The greed turned the walk into a run, with Edward Marshall’s hike ironically ending just north of Jim Thorpe’s present-day grave. The character in Cooper’s novel “Deerslayer,” who seeks asylum from Native retribution in a tomb-like stone home in the middle of a lake, is based on Marshall’s life.
Thus this land was already tainted when Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf led his Moravians here in 1746 to cleanse the ‘dirty souls’ he sought. Eight years of peaceful missionary zeal, ended with Native retribution, eleven Moravians dying amid flames they hoped to eternally avoid.

This is a copy of the lithograph
Frederica Misca was said
to have been selling.  She is pictured
in the foreground, with the church she
envisioned and the smoldering
wreckage of Zinzendorf's
settlement.  High above, all concerned
in Heaven look on favorably of
her pursuit.

That was just the sort of martyrdom to inspire the pioneer woman, some say recluse, Lady Frederica Misca to seek her solace, some say her con, on this ground in 1830. She subscribed $500 from the Moravians to build a church, and another $500 selling lithographs that depicted her above the burning ruins of the massacre site, then disappeared, some say murdered and robbed near Harrisburg, some say she lived to enjoy the fruits of deceit elsewhere.
But she did make provisions.  Her efforts weren't in vain.  A deal was struck for the land.  It was deeded to the “Society of the United Brethren for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen,” then to a Mr. George Douglas, who deeded it to the First Presbyterian Church of Mauch Chunk, helping to build that congregation's first church as well as a later one in Lehighton.  In 1872 these “Gnadenhutten Lands,” the old “Moravian Cemetery” became the property of the “Lehighton Cemetery” next door, which was formerly the first site of the Lehighton Fair Grounds, a horse track for the laying of bets.
The first Board of Directors of the Lehighton Cemetery was composed of men of means and self-made wealth. Among them, General Charles Albright served here after his Civil War campaigns but before his war against the Molly Maguires. Thomas Kemerer was President, Frederick Brinkman served as Treasurer, and A.S. Christine was secretary.  And among this mounmental field they created,   among the high obelisks, sets there today, pointing high, the finger of the Lady of Eternal Peace herself. She stands alone, above board member and the disciplined meat-packer, Joseph Obert’s grave, pointing with hope, for final redemption.

Excerpt: "the gray Papp" by Ronald Rabenold

She spoke, in fine articulacy as did the sinograph on the side of her neck
That said, “see the cloud’s expectant rain,” along with the gray in her name,
Did not do justice to the optimism she spoke.
Her story walked along a straight wooded road, of no intersection, of no interaction,
The folk seemingly frozen in time, the further one walked alone or together, the further the travel
Found more and more expectant people who increasingly greeted with suspicious warmth,
It unexpectedly revealed the sameness and repeated patterns of her own stuck world,
Showing the perpetuity of lessons said and not mingled with,
Though such thought was betrayed by her articulate story.
She conveyed hope, a longing for the protections of her own home, a little insurance, perhaps her own phone....

...Her mother did not understand the rules of working, under the table, she was as expectant in her flatness
As her father, who could only drive bicycle, hoped for the flat road ahead, one always filled with holes,
But he failed to make that connection and could not acknowledge it, like how the expectant joy from a child,
Is sapped and slowly leaked, even before the child arrives, the gray guilt taking years to overcome,
The clarity arrives much too late. This short conversation, one I didn’t expect, allowed me to understand the
meaning in sallowness, though without knowing the calligraphy, the understanding and the expectancy
Of it rolled down the basin sides, letting it swirl, then finding the drain.

Moravians: First Carbon Settlement 1746

Today I hope to give a quick overview of the first settlement of Carbon County. Though I could go on and on here today, (ask any 5th grader at Lehighton Middle school for my propensity to do just that) the rest of this fascinating story will be touched upon in the future.
Most people are familiar with the notion of how many of our ancestors, the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England, the Quakers of Philadelphia with William Penn and Roman Catholics with Lord Baltimore, came to escape the persecution of church-states back in Europe.

(Photo: Earliest known sketch of the settlement by a man named Garrison c. 1749, discovered at Zinzendorf's Herrnhut estate.)
Same can be said of the Moravians. Though not persecuted by the Lutherans, they separated themselves from the other protestant faiths of Germany. They were an industrious, family-based faith that went forth as missionaries. Many sought sanctuary on the estate of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf of Saxony and in time, were drawn to the New World to spread their message.
Count Zinzendorf and his followers first started a settlement in Georgia in 1735 and by 1741, more in Pennsylvania. They established the settlement of Nazareth and later Bethlehem along the course of the Lehigh River, so named becuase of their arrival there on Christmas Eve. The Moravians were also musically talented, a legacy that lasts to this day as evidenced in the Bach Choir, Music Fest and Martin Guitar.
Zinzendorf left no grass grow beneath his feet and out into the back country he explored in search of Native souls to save, establishing friendly relations with those he met. One night settling down after dark, he awoke to find himself surrounded by rattlesnakes, and was able to arise unscathed. Zinzendorf used this anecdote as proof of the providence of God’s work he was carrying out.
Eventually, he found himself halfway between the Lehigh Gap (modern day boundary of Lehigh and Carbon County) and Mauch Chunk Gorge (modern day center and county seat of Carbon County) and what is today modern day Lehighton. This would become the new mission, an outpost of love and peace to accept heathens to the Christian faith. The name they chose: ‘Gnadenhutten’ meaning ‘tents of grace’ or ‘huts of mercy.’
The settlement began, in 1746, at the confluence of the Mahoning Creek and the Lehigh River, reaching up the hillside to what is today Bridge Street from Fourth to Seventh Streets.

(Photo: 1907 view of South Fourth St, nothing in view here remained from the original settlement.)

The Moravians and Natives are said to have worked side by side, clearing the tangled brush that still grows there today. After their permanent dwellings were established, work began on common buildings such as a meeting house, a grist mill, and as necessity began to warrant, a tiny graveyard to the rear.
The Moravians knew the success of the settlement and their outreach depended on their own self-sufficiency and diligent work. But they were not immune to the problems of many settlements, namely the spread of the deadly Small Pox that was particularly virulent to the Native population. This would be a harbinger of things to come.
(Photo: Burial site from the Massacre as it looks today.)

The Walking Purchase, a swindle by Thomas Penn in 1737, was another dark cloud that loomed over Gnadenhutten, a storm that took nearly twenty years to unleash itself in the Gnadenhutten Massacre of November 24th, 1754. This within the larger storm of the French and Indian War which brought Ben Franklin to the area to build forts for settler protection. All these and other interesting sidebars will be saved for future posts.
I hope I have entertained and informed you today. Enjoy.