The Case of Lancaster County

By Darwin H. Stapleton CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

THE DIFFUSION OF ANTHRACITE IRON TECHNOLOGY: THE CASE OF LANCASTER COUNTY

IN RECENT years the diffusion of technical innovations has been a focus of attention not only for developmental economists, but historians as well. This is a case study of the diffusion of anthracite iron technology to Lancaster County, a case illuminated by un- usually detailed documentation of the form and operation of an early anthracite iron furnace.' In 1840 Lancaster County had a charcoal iron industry based upon local iron ore and limestone, and charcoal made from the regular harvesting of wooded areas. Large stone furnaces with water- powered bellows combined these ingredients to make pig iron, and a large portion of the pigs was made into wrought iron at charcoal fueled forges.2 The United States manufacturing census of 1840 reported that eleven furnaces in Lancaster County made 8,532 tons of pig iron per annum, and fourteen forges produced 2,235 tons of bar iron.' With that output, Lancaster County was

1. For example: Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., Early Stationary Steam Engines in America: A Study in the Migration of a Technology (Washington, 1969); Robert E. Carlson, "British Railroads and Engineers and the Beginnings of American Railroad Develop- ment," Business History Review, 34 (Summer 1960): 137-149; Carlo M. Cippola, "The Diffusion of Innovations in Early Modern Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and Histoy, 14 (January 1972): 46-52; Nathan Rosenberg, "Factors Affecting the Diffusion of Technology," Explorations in Economic Histoy, 10 (Fall 1972): 3-33; Rondo Cameron, "The Diffusion of Technology as a Problem in Economic History," Economic Geography, 51 (1975): 217-230; and the entire March 1974 issue of the Journal of Economic Histoy. 2. On the nature of the charcoal iron industry, see: Arthur Cecil Bining, Penn- sylvania Iron Manufacture in the Eighteenth Century (Harrisburg, 1938). 3. Manufacturing census of 1840, part II, volume 9 (manuscript), National Archives, Washington, D.C. For difficulties regarding the accuracy of the early manufacturing census, see: Meyer H. Fishbein, "The Census of Manufactures, 1810-1890," National Archives Accessions, 57 (June 1963): 1-20.

147 148 DARWIN H. STAPLETON one of the major iron manufacturing regions of Pennsylvania; and the Commonwealth was the greatest center of the iron industry in the United States. Virtually all American iron was made with charcoal, yielding a high-priced metal, but with qualities desirable for the manufacture of agricultural implements and household articles.4 The growing demand for railroad iron and building materials was not as well satisfied. However, a major change in the American iron industry was imminent, a change from organic (charcoal) to mineral (coal) fuel.5 Early in the eighteenth century British iron furnaces began to use coked bituminous coal instead of charcoal, and a century later it was their standard fuel. Coked coal made iron with different qualities than charcoal iron, but through experience it was adapted to almost all of the same purposes. It was consistently cheaper than charcoal iron. Americans knew of this development, but not until canals penetrated the anthracite coal regions of northeastern Pennsylvania were there sufficient supplies of coal at low cost to tempt the ironmasters to try mineral fuel. Uniformly, prior to 1840, such attempts were failures. Anthracite coal was so dense that it was not susceptible to the standard bituminous coking procedure whereby controlled burning drove off impurities and left porous, nearly-pure carbon. Because anthracite had a much higher natural carbon content than bituminous coal, many suspected it was a "natural coke," but no American could get it to burn productively in an iron furnace.' The solution to the problem came from across the Atlantic in south Wales. There, in a district containing good iron ore, was also a seam of coal with strong anthracite characteristics. The owner of the Yniscedwyn Iron Works, George Crane, imported fuel from other areas because the local coal did not make suitable

4. Peter Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth Centuy America (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 35-44. 5. Much of the following material relating to the history and development of the anthracite iron process is derived from: Darwin H. Stapleton, "The Transfer of Technology to the United States in the Nineteenth Century," (Ph. D. diss., University of Delaware, 1975), chapter 4, "David Thomas and the Anthracite Iron Revolution in the United States." An excellent review of the importance of anthracite in the nineteenth century can be found in Alfred Chandler, Jr., "Anthra- cite Coal and the Beginnings of the 'Industrial Revolution' in the United States," Business Histoy Review, 46 (Summer 1972): 141-181. 6. W. Ross Yates, "Discovery of the Process for Making Anthracite Iron," Pennsyl- vania Magazine of Histoy and Biography, 98 (April 1974): 208, 210-212, 219, 220. ANTHRACITE IRON TECHNOLOGY 149 coke. But with his manager, David Thomas, he erected an experi- mental furnace for anthracite coal in 1826. They had no success until they used James Neilson's patented hot blast oven, a device for heating the air blown into the furnace, and early in 1837 Crane and Thomas made good anthracite iron. The heated air promoted the combustion of the dense anthracite, so that it was sufficiently consumed in the furnace, leaving few impurities in the iron. A Philadelphia railroad engineer then in Wales notified the managers of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (operators of the Lehigh Canal in northeastern Pennsylvania) of the success of the experiment. One of the managers, Erskine Hazard, went to Wales and persuaded David Thomas to come to the United States to establish the new process here. Several of the Lehigh managers formed a new company, named the Lehigh Crane Iron Company in honor of George Crane, to finance Thomas' efforts. With a minimum of difficulty Thomas put the first furnace into production in the summer of 1840 along the Lehigh Canal at Catasauqua, Penn- sylvania. With Thomas as manager, the Lehigh Crane Iron Com- pany (LCIC) built four more successful furnaces in the next decade, and remained a center of innovation in anthracite iron technology. Putting an anthracite iron furnace into blast was no easy matter for the inexperienced, since both the design of the furnace and its operation were substantially different from charcoal furnaces.' But some help was available for those who wanted to try. The managers of the Lehigh Crane Iron Company opened their opera- tions to inspection, probably because they also had a financial interest in promoting the consumption of anthracite, the Lehigh Canal's primary article of transport. Thomas, one of his sons, and at least two other unrelated Welshmen were also available for technical advice in the early days. Possibly other iron workers gained experience in the early anthracite furnaces and took their skills to new locations as well. Even with a good start there still could be alterations because of later problems or desire for the installation of successful innovations. David Thomas, in particular, made a number of im- provements which others were anxious to emulate. In 1846 Thomas installed a steam engine to blow the blast for the third LCIC furnace at a time when few American furnaces of any sort used steam power. He further innovated by heating the boiler with the exhaust from

7. W. David Lewis, "The Early History of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," Pennsylvania Magazine of Histoy and Biography, 96 (October 1972): 443. 150 DARWIN H. STAPLETON the furnace's stack. This was known as the use of "waste heat." Such developments resulted in a lively interest in anthracite iron furnaces, and there were frequent press notices of their innovations.' The operation of anthracite iron furnaces on the Lehigh Canal had not gone unnoticed in Lancaster County, and by the latter 1840s the anthracite iron revolution was underway there, as well as in other parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The fundamental determinant of the location of the furnaces, other than access to ore and limestone, was good transportation linking them to the anthracite coal regions. Lancaster County had an excellent connection via the Eastern Division of the Pennsylvania Canal, and later via various railroads. The water route continued to be the most important, however, as it always brought coal at the lowest cost. Anthracite came to the Eastern Division canal from the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area, descending the North Branch and Susquehanna divisions of the Pennsylvania Canal, and from the Pine Grove area of Schuylkill County via the Union Canal. According to the annual reports of the Pennsylvania Canal Commissioners, anthracite coal shipments in- creased tremendously during the first decade of anthracite iron manufacture in Lancaster County. The Shawnee Furnace in Columbia made the first anthracite iron in Lancaster County in 1844 or 1845, and in the following decade ten more anthracite furnaces were erected. All were along the Eastern Division canal and in the Columbia-Marietta vicinity, except the Safe Harbor Furnace which was part of a rolling mill complex.9 These furnaces so altered the pig iron market, presumably by lowering the price of pig iron, that the county's charcoal iron furnaces, which had colonial origins,1 " reported a production of only 4,665 tons for the 1850 census (55% of 1840 production),1 1

8. See, for example, the American RailroadJournal of the 1840s. 9. H. L. Haldeman, "The Chikies Furnace," Lancaster Couny Historical Society Papers and Addresses, 1 (1896-1897): 14-15; J. P. Lesley, The Iron Manufacturer's Guide (New York, 1859), pp. 13-15, 238. There are some maps and views of the furnace in Gerald Smeltzer's Canals Along the Lower Susquehanna (York, Pa., 1963), pp. 72, 78, 80, 81. 10. Bining, Pennsylvania Iron Manufacture, p. 188. 11. Manufacturing census of 1850, microfilm T-956, National Archives, Washington, D.C. For a thorough discussion of the impact of mineral fuel competition on the charcoal iron industry, see Richard H. Schallenberg and David A. Ault, "Raw ANTHRACITE IRON TECHNOLOGY 151

TONS OF COAL RECORDED AT WEIGH STATIONS OF THE EASTERN DIVISION OF THE PENNSYLVANIA CANAL, 1844-1854 Portsmouth Year (Middletown) Harrisburg 1844 11,720 3,838 1845 6,283 993 1846 25,949 586 1847 22,690 881 1848 18,524 421 1849 No Record 13,452 1850 2,850 30,452 1851 450 60,158 1852 No Record No Record 1853 17,804 59,969 1854 4,108 86,357 SOURCE: Annual Reports of the Pennsylvania Canal Commissioners and apparently went out of business by 1856.12 Meanwhile anthracite iron production reached 18,600 tons in 1850, and an estimated 45,823 tons in 1856.1 At that point Lancaster County produced about ten percent of the anthracite iron in the United States. 1 In addition to this remarkable growth, Lancaster County is significant in the history of the rise of the anthracite iron process because there is unique documentation of the design and structure of one of the furnaces. Ironmasters as a lot were hard-working and skilled, but not given to committing their knowledge to paper. However, one of the owners of the Chikiswalungo Furnace, built in 1846 at the mouth of the Chikies Creek near Marietta, was Samuel Stehman Haldeman, a publishing scientist. He was one of four sons of Henry Haldeman, a man of wealth in the Marietta area.

Materials Supply and Technological Change in the American Charcoal Iron Industry," Technology and Culture, 18 (July 1977): 436-466. However, Shallenberg and Ault's contention that eastern Pennsylvania charcoal iron furnaces failed because they were not near adequate ore fields (p. 464) seems inapplicable to Lancaster County. Local ores supplied the Chikiswalungo Furnace until the late nineteenth century. Haldeman, "Chikies Furnace," pp. 15, 17, 18. 12. None are reported in Lesley, Iron Manufacturer's Guide. 13. Manufacturing census of 1850; Leslie, Iron Manufacturer's Guide, pp. 13-15. 14. Based on an estimate of 396,00 tons of American anthracite iron in 1856: Temin, Iron and Steel, p. 266. 152 DARWIN H. STAPLETON S. S. Haldeman (1812-1880) was educated at Dickinson College from 1828 to 1830, and subsequently had a professional career which included a position on the Pennsylvania Geological Survey, and professorships at the Franklin Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, and Delaware College (Newark, Delaware). In his early years he wrote extensively in the natural sciences, but later entered a new discipline and became a renowned philologist. When he married in the 1830s he established his home at Chikies, near Marietta, and apparently maintained his residence there for many years." In 1846 Haldeman received from his father one-third owner- ship in the new Chikiswalungo anthracite furnace, two other brothers also receiving thirds. Haldeman must have become deeply involved in the furnace's operation since a friend wrote to him and commented, "I was glad to hear from you ... I was afraid that your furnace had swallowed you up."'6 His biographers suggest that Haldeman's interest was scientific, not managerial, and the best evidence of his involvement is two articles he published in the American Journal of Science (Silliman's Journal) in 1848. " The Journal was one of America's leading scientific publications at the time. Haldeman's first contribution was extracted from a letter to one of the Journal's editors, apparently James Dwight Dana."0 It briefly listed several facts about the furnace: height-thirty-two feet; greatest interior diameter (bosh)-eight feet; hot blast de- livered by a forty horsepower steam engine. He noted that the engine boiler was then heated by a coal fire in the normal fashion, but preparations were underway to raise steam on the furnace's "waste

15. Charles Henry Hart, "Memoir of Samuel Stehman Haldeman," Penn Monthly (August 1881), pp. 1-26; George H. Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson (New York, 1968), P. 209; D. G. Brinton, "Memoir of S. S. Haldeman," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 19 (1880-1881): 279-285; Haldeman, "Chikies Furnace," p. 17. 16. Frazer to S. S. Haldeman, 31 January 1846, S. S. Haldeman Correspondence, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pa. 17. Hart, "Memoir," p. 6; Brinton, "Memoir," p. 281. 18. S. S. Haldeman, "Chikiswalungo Iron Furnace, near Columbia, Pa.," American Journal of Science, second series, 5 (March 1848): 296; Haldeman to John Frazer, 20 March 1848, John F. Frazer Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadel- phia, Pa.; Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson, p. 205. ANTHRACITE IRON TECHNOLOGY 153 heat," as David Thomas began doing in 1846. 9 Haldeman indi- cated the success of the furnace by stating that although it was built to produce forty tons of pig iron a week, in one period of six days it made seventy-two tons. This he attributed to "the constant attention and the theoretical knowledge of my brother and partner, Dr. E[dwin] Haldeman."'m Given the difficulties of putting an anthracite furnace in operation, however, it seems likely that the Haldemans also had the help of skilled workers familiar with the LCIC innovations. Haldeman's second article appeared four months later, and, having seven pages with four illustrations, was much more infor- mative.21 After reviewing the history of attempts to make iron with anthracite, and the reasons for eventual success, he turned to a description of the Chikiswalungo furnace. First he outlined the function of the three air-blast pipes ("twiers," or tweyers) around the bottom opening of the furnace (the "hearth"). Three sources of air were necessary because the bellows worked irregularly and could not provide a constant air pressure through just one opening. Also, a pipe occasionally got blocked by accumulated slag, and, although it could be cleared by opening valve "V" and pushing a rod through opening k, with only one twier combustion would stop and the furnace contents would congeal. Removal of the mass was a laborious and costly matter. " Haldeman also noted that the twiers were made of two layers of wrought iron, so that water could circulate between and cool them, preventing their deterioration. When the furnace was put "in blast," it was charged with coal, ore and limestone poured in the top of the furnace, a fire was ignited at the base, and the air blast begun. During combustion the liquid iron slowly ran down and accumulated in the hearth, and some impurities reacted chemically with the limestone to form a

19. Haldeman got advice from his friend John Frazer concerning the heat con- ductivity of the cast iron pipes he intended to use in the waste heat apparatus. Haldeman to John Frazer, 20 March 1848, Frazer Papers; Frazer to S. S. Haldeman, 25 March 1848, Haldeman Correspondence. 20. Haldeman, "Chikiswalungo Iron Furance," p. 296. 21. S. S. Haldeman, "On the Construction of Blast Furnaces for the Smelting of Iron with Anthracite," American Journal of Science, second series, 6 (July 1848): 74 80. 22. Ibid., p. 74n. 23. For an example of such an occurrence, see Lewis, "Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," p. 443. Fig. 1.

slag which floated on top of the iron. Several times a day the heavy iron plates above the cinder run c were raised and the slag allowed to flow out, while every twelve hours the damstone d and dust plate i were removed to tap the iron. Although Haldeman did not indicate how it was done, the iron was probably directed into rectangular sand molds on the furnace floor and allowed to cool. These "pigs" were the furnace's commercial product.'4 The structure of Chikiswalungo Furnace is of particular interest. Haldeman noted that the interior of the furnace had a steeper slope from the hearth to the bosh (b) than charcoal furnaces. Such

24. Bining, Pennsylvania Iron Manufacture, p. 80. ANTHRACITE IRON TECHNOLOGY 155 Fig. 2.

Explanation of Figs. 1, 2. A, twier arches. e, tapping place. k, twier key. q, square of the hearth. B, bosh. f, flues for boilers. 1, lining. r, space for loam. I, greatest diameter. g, passage. rn, temp. SI sows. c, cinder run. Hh, hearth. n, sconsh'n. t, twiers. d, dam-stone & plate. i, dust-plate. p, blast-pipe. v, valve in blast-pipe. From the American Journal of Science and Arts, I (July 1848): 76-77. Courtesy Eleutherian Mills Historical Libray. 156 DARWIN H. STAPLETON steepness was a characteristic of all the Lehigh Crane Company's furnaces. 5 Near the top of the furnace there were three openings in the wall to draw off some of the hot exhaust. Each flue led to a separate boiler of the steam engine and was then diverted to the hot blast oven. Haldeman described the oven as arched over with brick, and strongly bound externally with iron, the heat being sufficient to destroy supports passing through it. It is sufficiently large to contain a small forest of upright flattened pipes about ten feet high, with an internal cavity of about four by seven or eight inches, the thickness of the metal being about an inch. These are maintained at red heat, the blast through them preventing their destruction.2 6 Such a system to use the "waste heat" of the furnace exhaust for raising steam and heating the blast was rapidly becoming common in anthracite furnaces. 7 With the consideration of waste heat Haldeman's article ended, and, although he suggested that he might later describe the "opera- tions and general results of smelting iron with anthracite," ' no further work on Chikiswalungo Furnace appeared.'} There is, however, certain information of interest which was published two years later by a convention of ironmasters who had met in Philadelphia in December, 1849 to consider tariff legisla- tion. To support their contention that the American iron industry had a great capital investment, yet was currently suffering seriously from the reduced tariff of 1846, they published an extensive census of iron furnaces in Pennsylvania.' They found fifty-two anthracite iron furnaces in the Common- wealth, nine in Lancaster County. Average annual product of the thirty-nine furnaces in blast in 1849 was almost 2,800 tons.

25. Samuel Thomas, "Reminiscences of the Early Anthracite-Iron Industry," Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, 29 (1899): 909, 917, 923. For a diagram of a charcoal furnace, see Bining, Pennsylvania Iron Manufacture, 78. 26. Haldeman, "On the Construction of Blast Furnaces," p. 80. This type of hot blast apparatus was one of two used at the time. Frederick Overman, The Manufacture of Iron in All its Various Branches (Philadelphia, 1850), p. 429. 27. Overman, The Manufacture of Iron, p. 182. 28. Haldeman, "On the Construction of Blast Furnaces," p. 80. 29. Haldeman did edit the second edition of R. C. Taylor's Statistics of Coal (Philadelphia, 1855), and republished his second American Journal of Science article ("On the Construction of Blast Furnaces") as an appendix. 30. Originally published as Documents Relating to the Manufacture of Iron (Philadelphia, 1850), it was republished serially in the American Railroad Journal for July and August 1850. ANTHRACITE IRON TECHNOLOGY 157

Chikiswalungo produced 1,500 tons. This may be accounted for by its small size (32 feet high and 8 feet at the bosh). While sixteen furnaces were about the same size, most were at least two feet wider and many were several feet higher. Two new furnaces at the Lehigh Crane Iron Company to be completed in 1850 were the largest, being 40 feet high with a 17 foot bosh."3 The Chikiswalungo Furnace's conservative dimensions were reflected in its small output of iron.3 2 Nonetheless, it was similar to many early anthracite furnaces in size, and in its use of steam power and waste heat was an early participator in important innovations.' The Haldeman family continued to operate the furnace through- out the nineteenth century. From 1846 to the depression of 1893 it was never out of blast for more than six months. But over those years there was a general shift in the iron industry from anthracite to bituminous fuel, and a corresponding move of the centers of the industry across the Appalachians. After the 1870s anthracite furnaces were gradually taken out of production, and the last anthracite iron was made in the first years of the twentieth century. In 1899 Chikiswalungo Furnace was sold, and shortly thereafter its fires were banked for the last time. It may have been the last Lancaster County anthracite furnace operating.3 4 In the nineteenth century Lancaster County was a major partici- pant in the revolution in the American iron industry caused by the introduction of anthracite coal as a fuel. Of particular historical significance is the detailed documentation of the Chikiswalungo Furnace as it was constructed, showing that the innovations of the industry's pioneer, the Lehigh Crane Iron Company, diffused readily to another center of the industry.

31. American RailroadJournal, 23 (27 July 1850): 467. 32. While Haldeman was proud of a 78-ton .week in 1847, one of the Lehigh Crane Iron Company furnaces produced 112 tons in a week, and David Thomas thought 130 tons was possible. American RailroadJournal,20 (I May 1847): 277. In regard to size, however, note that in 1848 one anthracite ironmaster stated: "The proper height of anthracite furnaces does not appear to be yet settled, and a good deal of diversity of opinion prevails on the subject. Furnaces vary in height from 30 up to 50 feet." William Firmstone, "Glendon Iron Works. Easton, Pa.," American Railroad Journal, 21 (10 June 1848): 370. 33. Temin, Iron and Steel, pp. 97-98. 34. Ibid., pp. 267, 269; Haldeman, "Chikies Furnace," pp. 15, 17; Bertha Sue Gramm, "The Ironmasters of Marietta and Vicinity During the Period 1848-1878," Papers of the Lancaster County Historical Society, 52 (1948): 157.