From its start in 1795, Lycoming County has been rich in history. Lycoming County is the largest county in area in the Commonwealth. It originally contained more than 12,000 square miles, one third of the entire state. Through gifts of territory to new counties, Lycoming County has been reduced to 1,220 square miles. To its north Lycoming is bounded by Tioga and Bradford counties; to the east Sullivan and Columbia; to the west Clinton and Potter; and to the south Montour, Northumberland, and Union Counties. The region is drained by the West Branch of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries.
The first inhabitants of the area were the Native Americans. They were attracted here by the plentiful fish and game. The forests and streams were ideally situated for their way of life. The Native American way of life consisted of finding food, and creating clothing, and shelter necessary for existence. The same factors that made this area attractive for Native Americans contributed directly to its settlement by white settlers. Valuable and plentiful supply of game and fish attracted the first white traders to visit the area and their reports attracted the first white settlers. Once the natural wealth of the region was discovered, the growth of the county was rapid.
The first business in the region was a grist mill. The mill was erected in 1772 by John Alward on the bank of Muncy Creek. While the mill was crudely constructed, it was the first mill west of Muncy Hills. It served an important purpose in this section of the county. People came with their "grist" from miles around and going to the mill was a big event in the lives of early settlers. From 1772 on the growth of industry was rapid.
Railroads in Lycoming County
In 1836 Williamsporters actively sought a variety of railroad connection. The most important link was a line to the Great Lakes. In November of 1836, Williamsport held a railroad convention. At the convention Williamsporters urged the building of a rail-line from Philadelphia to Sunbury to Williamsport and then to Erie. The first charter for a railroad to be built in this region was granted on March 31, 1837 to the Jersey Shore and Willardsburg Railroad, which later became the Pine Creek Railroad. In April of 1837 Governor Joseph Ritner signed a charter for the Sunbury and Erie, but the construction was delayed by the demise of the Bank of the United States, a main source of the funds for the line. The Panic of 1837 further delayed the construction until 1852. The line from Williamsport to Sunbury was completed in 1855 and the line all the way to Erie was completed in 1874. The line was leased to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1861, for 999 years with the Philadelphia and Erie finishing the work.
During the development of the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, Robert Ralston and some of his friends for Philadelphia developed iron mines and a blast furnace just north of Williamsport and built a railroad line from Ralston to Williamsport. The railroad line was built to move pig iron from Ralston to the canal. The line was poorly constructed and mules had to pull freight along the tracks because the locomotives were too heavy for the tracks. The line failed financially and sold at auction for $6,000. The railroad then became the Williamsport and Elmira line. The track was extended to Elmira. At Elmira, all Williamsport traffic was linked to the important points on Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
The charter for the Catawissa Railroad Company granted the company the rights to extend their road to points beyond. The charter gave the road 2 years to complete the work. The railline was built from Catawissa to Milton in 1870, and the line from Milton to Williamsport was completed in October of 1871 just, 15 days before the charter was over. The line was ready for rolling stock at Pine Street, at Williamsport. In November of 1872 the road was leased for 999 years to the Philadelphia and Reading Company.
Breweries & Beer
In the late 1800s most communities in the U.S. had small breweries. In that time before artificial ice-making and rapid transport, perishable goods had to be made close to home. Towns in this area having breweries include Lock Haven, Jersey Shore, Bloomsburg, Danville, Renovo, Dushore, and Sunbury. Williamsport had two breweries that began in the late 1800s and continued production into the 20th century. They were the Koch's Brewery and Flock's Brewery. In 1886 they produced more than 10,000 barrels of beer that were consumed in and around Lycoming County.
In 1865, Henry Jacob Flock bought the City Brewery at 601 Franklin Street(begun by Jacob Hoffman in 1854), and operated it until his death in 1884. Flock was a native of Prussia, Germany, who came to this country in 1853, and worked as a stonemason before entering the brewing business. His widow and succeeding generations of Flocks ran the brewery until 1943 when they sold it to a group of businessmen. In 1951 Lycoming College bought the brewery and razed it for a parking lot. The brewery occupied a 2 1/2 acre plot and included the main brewery building, a bottling plant, a garage, machine shop, and three residential buildings, one of which was the Flock home. The brewery was run by steam and the entire plant was fueled by coal. Lighting for many years came from lard oil.
August Koch came to Williamsport in 1850 from Germany where he had been a designer and builder of breweries and flour mills. He bought land in South Williamsport and built a brewery on Main Street near Mountain Avenue. In 1868 his sons, August Jr. and Edmund G. took over the business forming a partnership under the name A. Koch and Brother. Ed V. Koch joined the firm later and continued the brewery business until the early 1920s when prohibition caused it to close.
Ice Harvesting
In the late 1800s and early 1900s ice harvesting was a big business in the United States. At this time, before artificial ice making and electric refrigeration, people cut ice from rivers, lakes, and ponds and stored it in ice. ounty until the 1920s. The industry provided ice for homes, creameries, hospitals, general stores, hotels, and mortuaries. The ice was stored in ice houses that would provide the city with ice year round. The ice would be delivered by horse drawn wagon to homes daily.
Ice was harvested from the river and other bodies, after the second freeze, when the ice was 12 or 15 inches thick. Choosing the coldest day, the men would carry saws, axes, pike poles, and other equipment onto the ice. They began the process by scraping the snow from the top of the ice. Then using a horse drawn plow or a scorer, they scored the ice halfway through in parallel lines. After scoring they chopped holes in the ice through which they lowered long single handled saws. They cut the blocks free and other workers used pike poles to guide floating blocks of ice along the channels. Workers then used ice tongs to pick up the blocks and load them on horse drawn wagons, or if the ice house was near, on conveyor belts leading to it.
Williamsport was served by two ice houses, the Bower Ice house and the Sholder Ice House. The Bower Ice House was located just west of the Hepburn Street Dam on the south side and the Sholder Ice House stood behind what is now McDonald's Restaurant in South Williamsport. Sholder harvested ice from a nearby reservoir where Mountain Beach was located. Apartment buildings now occupy the site. Both were built like typical ice houses of the time. They were double walled with saw dust between the walls and on the ice for year round keeping.
Iron Industry
When iron ore was found in northern Lycoming County near Lycoming Creek, the New York Iron and Coal Company of Elmira began to make pig iron there. Mr. Aston of that company built a furnace on Frozen Run near Ralston in 1831. He established the town of Astonville for the miners and workers at the furnace. The business wasn't successful because the quality of the locally mined ore was poor and contained too much clay to produce good quality pig iron. However, the furnace continued to operate, changing hands a number of times. The furnace was closed down after the flood of 1865 put out the fire and caused the iron to cool in the stack. This is called a "chill," and it ended the town of Astonville too. Another attempt to produce iron was made at Carterville a short distance above Ralston. Carter built a furnace there, but he died before it opened. Twenty years later another attempt to produce iron at this furnace failed and Carterville, like Astonville, became a ghost town. Today remains of both furnaces stand.
Although Iron Smelting was a bust in Lycoming County, the foundry business proved successful and became one of the leading industries. The first foundry was opened by John B. Hall in 1832. The foundry made the first coal stoves to be sold in the region. The foundry also made some of the ornamental fence surrounding the courthouse yard, castings for the railroads and canal lock wickets, and the first gang-gate of saws used in Pennsylvania, made for the "Big Water Mill," in Williamsport. The Hall Foundry did a large business throughout the 1800s making iron parts for the sawmills locally. It was located on the north side of 4th street between Pine and Market Streets.
Morrison Patent Wire Rope Company, Ltd. was started in 1886 by Henry Martin Morrison and a group of local businessmen. Morrison chose Williamsport because of its location between the anthracite coal fields in eastern Pennsylvania and the bituminous coal fields of western Pennsylvania, as well as being a lumber center. The business did quite well and in 1888 changed its name to Williamsport Wire Rope Company. The Williamsport Wire Rope Company grew steadily until the Great Depression of the 1930s when the company went bankrupt. In 1937, Bethlehem Steel Corporation bought the company at public sale and changed its name to Bethlehem Steel Wire Rope. Bethlehem Steelontinued to make quality wire rope.
Madame Demorest established the Demorest Company in New York in 1845 as a metal fabrication company. She sold it in 1883 to a partnership who operated it as the Demorest Fashion and Sewing Machine Company. The company kept its offices in New York City. They then built a factory in Williamsport in 1889 at the present site of Avco-Lycoming. The factory produced sewing machines at the rate of 60 per day, priced from $19.50 to $55.00. By 1891 an employee named S.H. Ellis invented a bicycle that the plant manufactured and dubbed the "New York Bicycle." By this time the firm became the Demorest Manufacturing Company and, with a work force of 47 employees, produced opera chairs as well as sewing machines and bicycles. The company sold the bikes for$85, $100, $125, and originally weighed 63 pounds, but was reduced to 28 pounds. The company eventually made a 19.5 pound racing model. In 1900, the general production of sewing machines slowed and the plant became a general foundry and machine shop operating under the name of Lycoming Foundry and Machine Co. The company manufactured duplicating machines, cup vending machines, typewriters, gas irons, platen printing presses, and button sewing attachment.
By 1909 the company began to seek business in the auto industry. The company made its first deliveries of gasoline engines to the Velie Motor Vehicles Co. In 1911 the company began making engines for the Herreshoff Motor Car Company. The company grew and employed 275 skilled mechanics in 1913. The company became the exclusive manufacturer of the Mead Rotary Valve Engines. In 1924, the company manufactured the first straight eight engine for the Auburn Automobile Co. The Cord was the most successful front wheel drive car ever manufactured in the U.S. with a high winding Lycoming V-8 engine and unusual body styling. 1927 brought about a change for the Lycoming Foundry and Machine Co., when it was purchased by the Auburn Automobile Co. and became the exclusive manufacturer of engines for the company. Engineers also began development of a low-cost radial aircraft engine dubbed the "iron horse." The low cost concept didn't result in a good engine and a more conventional design was the adopted and put Lycoming into the aircraft engine. Another new engine was developed in 1928. It was a nine-cylinder radial engine called the R-680. The engine became very popular and eventually 25,000 were made. Thousands of R-680s were used in military trainers through World War II.
In 1929, work was started on additions to the Lycoming plant. The plant would now manufacture eight and twelve cylinder auto engines as well as the R-680. A second building was also built. It was a hanger at the Williamsport airport. The hanger was capable of housing the largest trimotor planes in the U.S. Lycoming set another first in 1933, when the company manufactured the worlds first mechanical, controllable pitch propeller. The development led to the formation of the American Propeller Co., a division of Avco. Lycoming developed the most popular of its engines in 1938, it was a four-cylinder, 55 horsepower, horizontally opposed aircraft engine. It was most commonly found in theycoming has designed and built more then 50,000 engines.
Lumbering
The 1850s was a period of great growth in Williamsport. At this time the potential was realized for using the trees as a source of income. The population of the town more than tripled, jumping from 1615 people to 5664, by 1860. Construction of thirteen saw mills along both the north and south shores of the river in 1851. Nine more mills added in three years from 1852 to 1854. A dam was constructed for the Big Water Mill, the largest mill at the time, and was also used to power a grist mill at the foot of Hepburn Street. A ditch was also dug adjacent to the river for a third of a mile. Three mills were built on the channel. They were the last of the water powered mills built. In 1854, Joseph Sampson built two mills on the river and sold land on the river to Peter Herdic and William Bronson. They immediately built a mill on the site. The mill was known as the Bronson Mill for many years, it later became known as the Beaver mill, but it was destroyed by the 1889 flood. Williamsport was not a lumber city from the start. In the beginning of the 1860s it was a lumber town. If you worked in manufacturing you probably worked with wood. There were eighteen saw mills, three or four planing mills, two factories that turned wood into doors, sashes, and blinds, and two furniture companies. All the non-woodworking companies in the region probably existed because of the needs of other factories. These factories included West branch iron Works, Moltz's steam engines, Johnson and Smith's Foundry and Machine Shop and two saw manufactures.
Lumber Camp
Williamsport saw mills operated only a few months out of the year. When the mills weren't in operation the workers were layed off. During their layoff the men went into the woods to work. Some worked for the jobbers cutting trees, cutting felled timber to proper length, and skidding logs to the creek. Others participated in the spring log drives. When the logs reached the boom, the boom company's crew sorted and moved the logs into the proper log ponds. Log drives, however, were run when enough water was in the creeks and the splash dams had filled with water. The drives were run by men who specialized in them. These men knew the amount of water needed for varying numbers of logs to navigate the streams and creeks and finally the Susquehanna. Men on the drives would travel the creeks in arks that were constructed for one drive only then dismantled.
Jobbers would go into the woods and do the actual harvesting. Jobbers got a contract for a specific piece of forest which they were to cut. The work included cutting the trees. They then cut the logs into ten or sixteen feet long sections. After that they would peel the bark off the logs. The jobber would then deliver the logs to within 100 feet of the creek, in the early years, or the railroad, in the later years. The bark would also be loaded and taken to tanneries. The jobber would be contracted each year. A jobbers first task was to build a camp. Then he would start in on his work. When the contract was completed the jobber would dismantle the camp and float it to Williamsport. Jobbers were also known as woodhicks. A teamster was also an important part of the lumber camp. The teamsters were in charge of two horses assigned to him by the jobber. He got up when the cook did and went down to prepare the horses when breakfast was being cooked. He got the horses ready by harnessing and feeding them. During the work day the teamster drove the horses and had two helpers who hitched the logs on or helped load a sleigh when they brought in chemical wood orinter the slide would be iced to make it easier to use. The slide would lead to the creek were the logs would be floated to the river.
The idea for a boom started in 1836 when Leighton visited the area. He was a lumberman from Maine. He realized the potential for the river upstream from Williamsport and the forested watershed. At the time Williamsport was to small, isolated, and there was no money to build mills the size needed for the river conditions. The river was to flat for water-powered mills, which meant that steam powered mills would need to be built. Steam power was still not that advanced, especially for places 100 miles from no-where like Williamsport. The nearest industrial area was Pottsville. Not much had happened for a decade and in 1846, a few people thought it was time for a boom. On march 26, 1846 the Susquehanna Boom Company was chartered by the state legislature.
The boom was formed by several early lumbermen. It was never a cooperative of Williamsport's mills. It was a monopoly, which every saw mill had to use. Because it was a separate company, anyone could float logs in the boom. If the person didn't pay for the boomage, the logs would become property of the boom company. But for the boom to be successful, people had to use it. The owners turned to other matters and the boom went on the back burner for about two years. Not until 1848 did any work get started, and building of the cribs and the rest of the boom was completed in 1851. In 1849 the company organized their own constitution and bylaws. Early mills weren't built with log ponds and they handled log rafts. The log boom worked in the same way except the rafts were built near the boom and tied up there until ready for use. Rafts were then moved through the canal to reach mills not on the river. Log ponds were later built off the canal. The Boom became very successful when more mills were built and the boom acquired the all the other local booms. In 1869 two new booms were constructed for the growing number of saw mills. The log boom was finally completed in 1873. It was actually composed of 7 separate booms and more than 400 cribs, and took up nine and a half miles of the river. The boom took up more than 1000 feet of the rivers width. The south side section was where logs were sorted and rafts were built. The tug boat then took the rafts to the mills. After a flood and a lawsuit the boom removed all cribs and the original boom was shut down in 1913.
Saw Mills
While the saw mills had humble beginnings in a decade more then 30 mills had been built. The Larger mills such as the Dodge Mill and the Bowman and Company Mill could produce at least 100,000 feet of lumber in a single day. There were 5 separate districts in which the mills were located. Two were on the south bank of the river and three in Williamsport. The total production of the mills is still impressive. In 1862, the first year records were combine, 196,953 logs were processed and 37,854,621 board feet of lumber were produced. Over the next twenty years, the number never dropped below the 1862 production numbers. Between 1862 and 1891 31,606,557 logs were processed and cut into 5,545,298,406 board feet of lumber were produced.
Life was harsh laboring in the mills. The people worked from 6am to 6pm for 6 days a week. The average pay was a $1.50 per day. The work was difficult and dangerous. Broken saws and flying pieces of lumber were common hazards. The different mill districts were ravaged by fire many times. Entire mills were lost in these fires. In 1872, the mill worker finally had it with the poor working conditions and went on strike. This became known as the Sawdust War. The main demand was a reduction to the 10 hour workday without a pay-cut. With the exception of Herdic the rest of the mill owners rejected the demands. They had the governor send 400 militiamen and crush the strike. By 1900, the lack of lumber was becoming to great and mills production was coming to a standstill. Many mills were forced to shut down. Production was down so much that the total lumber production in the state was one-tenth of what it was 10 years before. In 1906, only one mill was still using the boom. In anticipation of the end of the lumber era, the boom was even cut up. The final log to be cut, was cut on December 17, 1919.
As you can see Lycoming county has had a rich industrial history. From the first mill in 1772, Lycoming County has grown into an industrial town. Lycoming County continues to have a big hand in industry. Avco Lycoming is still producing aircraft engines. Williamsport Wire Rope is also still producing the same product the have been since their start. Alcan Cable is a more recent company that is following in the traditions of past businesses. Lonza Chemical Corporation is also helping to bring modern technology to the county and ensure its development for the future. Lycoming County well move into the future as an industrial town and continue its rich history.
