Axe Grinding Stone Discovered

Fun day today: went down to the crick with Bob and Bob, the latter of whom had found a grinding stone in the water while fly fishing.  Given where it was, it is probably from an axe manufactory of the mid- to later nineteenth century.  Took a while to find it, but success as you can see here.

It is about 3ft. in diameter and 4in. thick.  Can't tell what kind of stone just yet as it is moss-covered.  Exciting remnant of a disappeared local industry:

Mann Grindstone coming up out of the stream

Next step is to get it to the Bellefonte Historical Museum as an important part of our local industrial heritage.

Did the public like wind/watermills in the past?

So I was working with a student on the perceptions of windpower in the US, specifically on the differences that have seen wind farms installed fairly widely in California vs. the Nantucket project that hit a wall, and it got me thinking...  

I wonder what people said in this area as new mills went up on Spring Creek, or a new ore washer went in 'down by the mine'.  My first guess is that in the 19th century, such developments were both 'Progress' and also not so nearly 'impactful' (if that is a word, which I am sure it is not) as we perceive them to be today. This is not to suggest that industrial sites do not impact the locales into which they are inserted, but we should be attuned to the perception of impacts (I don't want to see them form my window) vs. the material impacts (My well water is full of methane).

My thinking of this is largely conditioned by Nye on America as Second Creation, as well as Hughes on the Human-Built World (esp. ch. 2), though at the same time, there is a 19th-century legal case where a company that put in an ore-washer agreed ahead of time to pipe fresh water to a farmer's cattle should their wash water taint his stream (it did, they didn't, and the farmer won damages), so clearly the industries knew that they would be impacting the local environment.

My thoughts were initially also captured by this article: "Understanding public responses to offshore wind power" (from  ).  Clearly much more to think about.

When the Teletubbies get a wind farm...

Ore Washers in Centre Co.

Having compiled the 26 ore washer locations from the Second Geological Survey of PA (1884), it is clear there were far more than I had thought:

More to come as the ore washing team analyze this.

More on Jenkins & Lingle

1892 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Jenkins & Lingle

It turns out that Jenkins & Lingle were not best known for their turbine, but rather Jenkins' cushioned steam hammer.  William Jenkins had joined the Bellefonte Machine Shop as a machinist in 1866, and worked his way up through the ranks, so that when the partnerships rearranged in 1875, the shop became a partnership of William P Duncan, Jenkins, and J.H. Lingle, trading under the name W. P. Duncan and Co. When Dunacn retired the firm became Jenkins & Lingle, and Jenkins retired in 1902 [1].  In 1892 the machine shop was along Spring Creek in the heart of town, just downstream from the Bush House hotel.


According to Bellefonte through the Years, Jenkins was known for his hammer and turbine, as well as inventions in the continuous rolling, low-water alarms for steam boilers, a burner for coal oil, and various tools including a rake, hoe, clevis (a connecting link for hoisting), and an "ice creeper".  A quick search of Google Patents shows that Jenkins held at least 15 patents:

Patent no.	Date	Invention
466,790	Mar 10, 1891	Power Hammer
498,473	Mar 24, 1892	Car-Coupling
532,202	Mar 8, 1894	Hydrocarbon-Burner
532,379	Nov 4, 1893	Oil-Burner
578,242	Apr 1, 1896	Method of Making Picks or other Tools
612,001	Oct 16, 1897	Stamping or Punching Press
612,002	Dec. 9, 1897	Tool-Head
613,207	Aug 10, 1898	Tool [mfg. process for hatchets, etc.]
671,381	Dec 8, 1899	Hoe
736,971	Jul 26, 1902	Power-Hammer
740,865	Apr 17, 1903	Clevis
741,671	Dec 26, 1902	Art of Manufacturing Rakes
831,954	Jul 28, 1905	Ice-Creeper
838,417	Sep 19, 1906	Weeder
912,131	Mar 28, 1907	Friction Gearing

(There seems to be some confusion on whether this Jenkins is Jr. or Sr.  A William R. Jenkins Jr. of Williamsport patented a farm gate in 1874 [patent 155,953], though he lived in Williamsport -- could this have been the Bellefonte WRJ's son?)

Jenkins' Bellefonte Turbine

Jenkins Turbine, Patent no. 190,595

So I am reading the Second Pennsylvania Geological Report for Centre Co. from 1884 (as one does...), and in describing the operations of Eagle (Curtain) Furnace north of Milesburg (which they strangely call Pleasant Furnace, but which is now restored and run in the summer by PHMC), it says of it's operations:

The forge has 8 heating fires, using about 90 bushels charcoal to the ton [of iron]. An old wooden undershot water-wheel furnished power for hammer, soon to be replaced by a Jenkins (Bellefonte) turbine wheel.  Product chiefly for boiler plate. [p. 261]

Other than finding it interesting that the furnace had 8 hearths in a hammer mill, which I had never realized (not sure that that part of the ironworks has been restored), but when I read the comment about the turbine that was about to be installed, and my first thought was, "there's a patent turbine from Bellefonte?!?"  Indeed there is!  Read on.

In 1877, William R. Jenkins, Jr. of Bellefonte received a patent for "Improvements in Turbine Water Wheels" (U.S. Patent no. 190,595) wherein he claimed a simple and durable invention of the type that took horizontal (tangential) water flow and channeled it downward along the wheel's perimeter to derive torque.  This style vied for primacy with the type that took water in vertically at the top and channeled it out radially at the bottom to derive torque, though both are types of reaction turbines (I need to look into this distinction some more; the canonical type of reaction turbine for low-head applications is the Francis turbine from 1848, and Jenkins's seems a variation on that idea).

Jenkins' inverted-cone form of the turbine tried to combine light-weight manufacture (hence the empty hollow cone above), water striking the blades perpendicularly in order to deliver the greatest force, and blade shapes that let the water slightly lift the turbine, thereby reducing friction on the lower bearing.  Jenkins claimed that this would derive the maximum power from the water.

A decade after Jenkins patented the turbine, the Eagle Iron Works was interested in installing one, so he clearly had some success with the design.  Since, though, the iron works was only about 6 miles from Bellefonte, that might not be too surprising.  The advertisement below, however, from The Roller Mill, vol. 12 (July 1893), shows that Jenkins saw some success in his venture.

More to come on Jenkins & Lingle shortly...

Nice Letterhead from Bellefonte

click to enlarge

Not much to report in central PA industrial history during these snowy months.  But at the left is a neat bit of letterhead that recently passed through eBay. It appears that Mr. H. Mann (Harvey Mann, 1804-70) bought what looks to be a long ton of coal for $7.35.  No doubt this went to power his axe factories, i.e., Mann's Axe Factory, located just up the Logan Branch of Spring Creek from Bellefonte or possibly his second axe factory up the main branch of Spring Creek, now in the area known as Fisherman's Paradise.  Mann's axes are famous in central PA, and while those from Lewistown fetch a few dozen dollars in antique shops and on eBay, if you can find one stamped 'Bellefonte' or 'Axemann' (the village on Logan Branch today), you have a rare piece indeed.  He closed these factories in 1870 and concentrated his works at Lewistown (later American Axe and Tool, and now part of Collins Axes).

William Shortlidge and Bond Valentine (1834-89; one of the sons of the Valentine iron family) establisehd their fuel company down near the train depot (possibly where the CVS is today?) and became a thriving business.  In the 1874 Bellefonte directory they are said to stock coal, grain, lime, and powder (gunpowder?). On January 12 of the very year of the above invoice, the local Democratic Watchman newspaper reported:

Several months since we noticed the fact that Messrs. Shortlidge & Co. were about establishing a coal yard in this place, and commended them to the patronage of our people. Since then it has become a fixed institution, and is to day one of the greatest conveniences to coal consumers that we could have. Not only do they keep a large supply always on hand, but they keep the best quality, and sell it at the lowest possible figure. They have also, in connection - with their coal yard, and extensive lime manufactory, where the best quality of wood burnt lime can be had at al times. Persons in need of coal or those who contemplate building, should give them a call.

(And one wonders about bias in journalism today!)

Scotia and Tow Hill projects

Miner from JMMC Co.
stock certificate.

  Bob Hazelton and I (with others) are working on the mining areas of Scotia and Tow Hill, just west(ish) of State College.  Both the sites were active in the last decade of the 19th century and shipped thousands of tons of iron ore to the steel mill sin Pittsburgh and Bedford Co.  The main interesting thing about them, from my point of view, is that the main industrial plant at both was an ore washer.  Typically when you think of iron mining, you assume that wither the raw ore is smelted at or near the mines (typical for early 19thC mining), or was just mined and dumped straight into a rail car or great lakes freighter for shipment to the blast furnaces.  But for a great deal of iron ore in the "brown hematite" band of iron on the eastern shoulder of the Appalachians, the ore is embedded in clay and sand to the point that it is worth washing out that material before shipping the relatively high-grade ore to market (even if that market was a furnace 3 miles away).

Scotia was used from at least the 1830s, but its real history begins in the 1880s when Andrew Carnegie purchased the land from Moses Thompson.  Carnegie installed a massive ore washer and a rail system to bring the ore to it.  The history of Scotia is fairly well known (though I haven't yet found the corporate records), but that of Tow Hill is quite opaque.  Tow Hill was started a couple years later, largely by one of Carnegie's men, James Pierpoint [not Pierpont, as he is usually referred to in reports] who 'defected' and brought in a consortium to mine an ore bank a bit further west (but along the same seam).  This is where the story gets confusing.  The Tow Hill tract, also known as the Juniata mines and the Gatesburg mines is connected into the Juniata Mining Co., which is also/later the Juniata Mining and Manufacturing Co. (though I can't figure out what they manufactured), and has ties to the Study family of Tyrone (E.L. Study and his son Charles A. were both corporate officers, and there is some relation to James A. Study, though he may have only done the Schoenberger mines in Huntingdon Co.).  At any rate, the Tow Hill mines are some pretty massive gashes in the sides of Chestnut Ridge and the concern seems to have worked through the 1890s and perhaps into the 1900s.  The railway spur to the 'town' was taken out just before WWI.

Remains of the WWII-era ore washer.

Bob has been working on Scotia and the story of its people for some time, and he has been working on finding the foundations of all the old buildings there (the most prominent remains out there are from WWII when the mines were reactivated by the Defense Plant Corporation, but that's the topic of an entirely different entry yet to come), and he and I have gone out to Tow Hill a couple times this fall to map the remains there.  The walk out to Tow Hill from the nearest parking spot is a beautiful stroll through the woods.  Its not heavily used, but we have passes a few joggers, a couple mountain bikers, a man and his son on the first day of turkey bow season, and one lone walker.  The ore pits have filled with water, so now there is a spot that we call 'the beach' where you can sit and watch the lake in great serenity.  I'll add more about each mining site, respectively, soon.