HISTORY OF THE LACKAWANNA VALLEY

(CONTINUED FROM DOCUMENT #1)

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HISTORY OF SCRANTON.

Nay-aug, or Roaring Brook, linked together by successive rapids and falls for many miles, emerges from the

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water-shedding crest separating the Delaware from the Susquehanna, and forms the noisiest tributary of the Lackawanna, which it enters at Scranton, one mile below the ancient village of Capoose. The woodland along the brook, unbroken on its gorgeous surface save by the achievements of the beaver, whose dams and villages deepened many a curve, had no fixed tenantry but beasts of prey until 1788.

(engraved illustration of Nay-aug Falls)

Across the Lackawanna, the skin-clad savages had vanished from their wigwams with a sigh, leaving their fertile meadows to be tilled by men efficient in industry, yet indifferent to fear, who used the jungle now marked by Scranton, to return the visits of the wolf and the bear coming often to them unannounced. Although the great war-path from the Indian villages on the Delaware to the

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tribes strolling over Wyoming, intelligence of which had been early gained of the wandering bowmen, entered Capoose at the eddy affording moorage for the warrior's canoe, no one looked upon the tamarack swamp, now hid in the interior of Scranton, as suitable for a dwelling-place while the richer lands west of the Lackawanna, more easily cared for, invited occupancy and tillage.

Philip Abbot was the first settler in "Deep Hollow", as this place was designated from 1788 until 1798, when it took the name of Slocum Hollow. While the month of Mary charmed the glen with its foliage and fragrance, Mr. Abbott marked out his clearing. On a ledge of rocks, washed by the brook whose waters it overlooked, near where stands the old Slocum House, rose from the up-rolled logs the first cabin in the Hollow. It was simply a long hut or pen covered with boughs, formed but a single room, occupied in great part by a huge fire-place four or five feet in width and as many in depth, filled in the long evenings of winter with great sticks of wood before a back-log, which furnished both light and warmth to the hardy inmates. Philip was a native of Connecticut, had emigrated to Wyoming Valley with the Yankees before the Revolution, owned property under the Connecticut title, which he transferred to his brother James, both of whom were expelled by the Tories and Indians in 1778.

The settlers in Providence Township in 1788 were limited in numbers, yet their necessities sometimes pressing, found expression in the settlement of Deep Hollow. Corn and rye raised in the valley, had to be carried twenty miles to mill in Wyoming Valley, or half cracked by the pestle and mortar, and eaten almost whole. The wants of the inhabitants, multiplying gradually by the development of the settlement, and other causes wonderfully productive here in the wild woods, suggested to the practical mind of Mr. Abbott the erection of a grist-mill upon the Roaring Brook. Its waters were ample in volume and power; a dam easy of construction along its rocky

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grottoes. The Lackawanna, spanned by no bridge, could generally be forded during the summer months, unless swollen by rains; in winter an ice-bridge favored communication with the farmers living across the stream.

The construction of the mill was marked by strong simplicity. One millstone wrought from the granite of an adjoining ledge, slightly elevated by an iron spindle, revolved upon its nether stone as rudely and firmly adjusted upon a rock. A belt cut from skin, half wrapped on the drum of the water-wheel, passing over the spindle with a twist, formed the running gear of a mill fulfilling the expectations of its projector, and the hopes of those encouraging its erection. The mill building, upheld by saplings firmly placed in the earth, was roofed and sided by slabs hewn from trees and affixed by wooden pins and withes. Nails comprised no part of its construction, nor did the sound of the mallet and chisel take part in the triumph of its completion. No portion of the mill surpassed its bolt in novelty. A large deer-skin, well tanned and stretched upon poles, perforated sieve-like with holes, made partial separation of the flour from the coarser bran. The strong arm of the miller or the customer worked the bolt. An old gentleman, now deceased, informed the writer many years ago, that when he was a mere lad "he often went to Abbot's mill with his father, and that while the corn was being ground the old man and the miller got jolly on whisky punches in the house, while he was compelled to stay in the mill to shake the meal through the bolt." So primitive and unique was the construction of this corn-cracker, without tools or machinery, that it simply broke the kernels of corn into a samp-meal, which made a kind of food very popular in the earlier history of the valley.

The grist-mill, maintaining and even increasing its importance among the yeomanry scattered along the river, needed additional capital and labor to arrange and enlarge its capacity. These requirements came with James Abbott,

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in October of this year, and with Reuben Taylor in the spring of 178, both of whom, with Philip Abbott, became equal partners in the mill. Mr. Taylor built a double log-house on the bank of the brook, below the cabin of Abbott, which was the second dwelling erected in the Hollow. Owing to the want of glass, its high, small windows, like all the cabins of the frontierman, gave place to skins from the forests. Doors, beds, and blankets, and sometimes clothes, were made from the same rich untanned material. The forest trees in the forks of the two streams, yielding to the united assaults of ax and firebrand, opened a strip of land for the reception of wheat and corn, bringing forth its maiden crop in 1789. John Howe and his unmarried brother Seth, animated by the hope that independence would come from a life of honesty and labor, purchased the rights and good-will of the former owners, and moved into the thatched dwelling vacated by Mr. Taylor. On the uplands known throughout the valley as the "Uncle Joe Griffin farm", Mr. Taylor, after rescuing a few acres from the woodlands, disposed of his place for a trifle because of its seeming worthlessness.

The first saw-mill built in Providence Township was planned on Stafford Meadow Brook, half a mile below Scranton, in 1790, by Capt. John Stafford, from whom the stream derived its name.

While the farmers living around Capoose enjoyed the prosperity and rustic comforts they themselves had created, little or no progress toward enlarging the settlement at the Hollow had been made. No building of a public character, neither school nor a meeting-house had yet been fostered within the limits of Capoose, Providence, or the Hollow. The Lackawanna led on its way, unvexed by dam or bridge. In 1796, Joseph Fellows, Sen., a man of great resolution and intelligence, who had just gained a residence on the Hyde Park hill-side, aided by the farmers of Capoose, placed a bridge across the river, with a single span. The plank used upon it was the first

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production of Stafford's mill. It was located on the flats, where the slackened waters are still crossed by the throng.

That part of the certified Township of Providence now occupied by Hyde Park, originally reserved by the Susquehanna Company for religious and school purposes, was settled in 1794, by William Bishop, a Baptist clergyman of some eccentricity of character, whose log-quarters, fixed on the parsonage lot overlooking Capoose, in its rural simplicity stood where now stands Judge Merrifield's dwelling. Most of the land about the central portion of this thrifty village was cleared by the Dolphs. In 1795, Aaron Dolph rolled up his small log-house upon the present site of the Hyde Park hotel; his brother Jonathan then chopped and logged off the Washburn and Knapp farm, while the lands at Fellows Corner were brought to light and culture by Moses Dolph. The earliest house of entertainment or tavern in Hyde Park was opened and kept by Jonathan Dolph. In 1810, Philip Heermans, influenced by the community, which required a public point at which to hold town meetings and enjoy the largest liberty of franchise, turned his house into a tavern, where the spirit of frolic sometimes mingled with the more sober duties of the assemblage. Elections have been held at this place ever since. On the cold soil and bleak hill north of Dunmore, Charles Dolph, another brother, moved into the forest, where he sowed and reaped in due season.

The joint and double advantage of water-power and timber everywhere found along the Roaring Brook from its mouth up to its head-springs amidst the evergreens of the Pocono, could neither be overlooked nor resisted by Ebenezer and Benjamin Slocum, who purchased of the Howes, in July, 1798, the undivided land of Slocum Hollow. The father of the Slocums was Ebenezer Slocum, Sen. He had emigrated to Wyoming Valley previous to the massacre, was shot and scalped by the Indians, near

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Wilkes Barre Fort, in December, 1778, with Isaac Tripp, Sen.

A domestic tragedy, casting a spirit of melancholy over the brook-side cabin, hastened and impelled the transfer of the property. Lydia, the eldest born of John Howes, depressed by some disappointed visions of girlhood, was found dead in her chamber, having hanged herself with a garter attached to her bedpost. The effect of this suicide--the first in the valley--removed every speculating consideration or cavil from a trade which placed the mill and the wild acres around it into the hands of the Slocums.

Benjamin was a single man; he afterward married Miss Phebe La Fronse. Ebenezer married a daughter of Dr. Joseph Davis, one of the most eccentric medical men ever known in the Lackawanna Valley. "He was not", in the language of an octogenarian familiar with his oddities five-and-sixty years ago, "a great metaphysical doctor but a wonderful sargant doctor." Dr. David died in Slocum Hollow in 1830, aged 98 years.

There were now but two houses in the Hollow, and only that number of grist-mills from Nanticoke northward to the State line.

The Slocums, young, strong, and ambitious, infused new elements into the settlement. The named the place Unionville, but the name, having no descriptive interpretation or bearing to the glen, readily gave way to that of Slocum's Hollow, or Slocum Hollow. In 1799, after the mill, necessarily rugged in its interior and external features had been improved, enlarged, and a distillery added thereto, Ebenezer Slocum and his partner, James Duwain, built a saw-mill a little above the grist mill. A smith shop, built from faultless logs, rose from the margin of the creek, and the sound of the anvil, carried afar, blended joyfully with the song of the noisy water. Two or three additional houses, built for the workmen, the saw and the grist mill, one cooper shop, with the smith shop and the distillery, formed the total village of Slocum Hollow

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or Scranton in 1800. Both dams were swept away by the spring freshet of this year, exhausting the courage of Mr. Duwain, who forthwith retired from partnership; Benjamin Slocum taking his place.

The interests of the community suffered but little, as the dams were promptly built by the aid of a bee, which called together every farmer in the township. The grist-mill was patronized far and near. Farmers twenty miles away sometimes sought the mill with their grists, and when the work was pressing on the farm at home, they tarried and toiled while the wife, heroic and devoted, went to mill on horseback, with no equipage grander than the pillion.

The Pittston division of the valley owes no more kind remembrance to Dr. Wm. Hooker Smith for his vigorous efforts to extract iron from its hills, than the Scranton portion of it concedes to the elder Slocum brothers for the erection of the original iron-forge in the Hollow in 1800. Low down on the bank of the brook, beside the waterfall and yet above the flood, grew up the forge and trip-hammer, which, fed with ore gathered from gullies, brought for the molten product in abundance.

The old landmark of Slocum Hollow, cherished with pride by the old settler, is the old "Slocum House", yet standing by the creek, with its stone basement and broad long stoop, as proudly as in days of yore. It is the oldest structure in Scranton, was built in the fall of 1805 by Ebenezer Slocum, well preserved even to its capacious hearth where the fagot blazed and reflected back the light of smiling faces half a century ago, where the jest and the song went around and the old hall rang to the very roof. The second frame house in the Hollow was built by Benjamin Slocum. Facing the brook, with its low porch extending along its entire front, it offered an admirable view of the forge and the sturdy artisans around it. With all these improvements along a narrow strip of clearing, Slocum Hollow was yet comparatively a wilderness.

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Deer, bear, and even panthers were hunted and killed here as late as 1816. Land now occupied by the massive Round House and the Depots of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, were cleared of the fallen tree and sown with wheat in 1816. Six years previous, a chopping had been made where Lackawanna Avenue runs, but the wolves issuing from their fastnesses in the tamarack jungle adjoining, prevented the Slocums from keeping sheep for their much-needed wool.

(Engraved illustration of "The Old Slocum House")

Elisha Hitchcock, a young mill-wright from New Hampshire, made his way into Slocum Hollow in 1809. He repaired the mill, married Ruth the daughter of Benjamin Slocum in 1811, an excellent lady who still survives him. Mr. Hitchcock was an honest man, who never wronged his fellow, and beloved by all for his exemplary qualities; he died a few years since.

A second still was put into operation in 1811. The tranquil succession of abundant harvests throughout Capoose--the absence of an approachable market for the grain, thrashed out by the flail--the frequent calls for whisky coming from Easton, Paupack, Bethany, Montrose,

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and the high banks of Berwick, abating none of its value and inspirations as a commercial agent, served to welcome the accession of the new still as a public benefaction worthy of the unhesitated and active patronage and favor accorded to it by every member of society.

Luzerne County, as now bounded, had but two post-offices in 1810--Wilkes Barre and Kingston. In 1811 four were established, viz: at Pittston, Nescopeck, Abington, and Providence. The Providence office was located in Slocum Hollow, and Benj. Slocum appointed postmaster. The inhabitants of the valley working hard for coarse food and rustic homespun, sometimes had leisure to visit and reflect, but few books or papers to peruse. Scattered through Blakeley or over the mountain, they enjoyed no mail facilities other than those offered by this office, until the establishment of another one in Blakeley in 1824. The Slocum Hollow office was removed to Providence in this year, and John Vaughn appointed postmaster. The same year William Merrifield was commissioned postmaster of a new office established at Hyde Park. The mail was carried once a week on horseback from Easton to Bethany by Zephaniah Knapp, Esq., via Wilkes Barre and Providence; the entire mail matter for the Lackawanna settlements bore no comparison, in quantity, to the amount that very many business firms in the same vicinity are now daily the recipients of.

Frances Slocum, who was taken captive by the Indians in Wyoming Valley, in 1778, and whose subsequent history had been made familiar by Dr. Peck and Miner, was a sister of Ebenezer and Benjamin. When she was caught up in the arms of the savage that had just scalped a lad with the knife he was grinding at the door, a painted warrior rushed into the house of Jonathan Slocum "and took up Ebenezer Slocum, a little boy. The mother stepped up to the savage, and reaching for the child, said: 'He can do you no good; see, he is lame.' With a grim smile, giving up the boy, he took Frances, her daughter, aged

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about five years, gently in his arms, and seizing the younger Kinsley by the hand, hurried away to the mountains." His release from the fickle savage, through the adroitness of his mother, was no more providential than his escape from as horrible a death in 1808. Losing his foothold while clearing the mill-race of drift-wood, he fell, and was carried by the rushing impulse of the current down the stream between the buckets of the water-wheel, before he was rescued by his faithful negro. Mr. Slocum's weight exceeded two-hundred, and yet, through this vise-like space, measuring scant six inches, he was forced with so little injury that he resumed his wonted labor within a week! Of such material, plastic yet withe-like, was made the men who carved and nursed the valley in its infancy.

In the manufacture of iron, no advantage was taken of the coal ramparts by the creek, because no knowledge of its use for this purpose had reached the public mind until 1836. Charcoal, made in the turf-clad pits by the wood-side, everywhere at the furnaces asserted its prerogative as the heating agent. In fact, the timber about Scranton in the earlier part of the century was swept away, more especially to supply the charcoal demand of Slocum's forge, than for any remunerative gain its soil promised to the cultivators of the country.

Iron forges and furnaces having sprung up in various sections of country where Slocum Hollow iron, famous for its superior texture, had been favorably known and used; the dilapidated state of the works in use for six-and-twenty years; the cost of transporting ore over miles of roads sometimes rendered impassable by fallen trees or deepened ruts; all contributed to extinguish the forge-fire. The last iron was made by the Slocums in June, 1826; the last whisky distilled a few months later. Up to this time these primitive iron-works were, in the hands of

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these unobtrusive men, yielding their conquests and diffusing a spirit of enterprise amidst accumulative difficulties, in a valley having no outlet by railroad, no navigable route to the sea other than shallow waters long skimmed by the Indian's canoe.

Ebenezer retired from business in 1828; in 1832, full of years, peaceful, trusting, he went to his grave, as a shock of corn fully ripe cometh in, in its season.

Joseph and Samuel Slocum, full of youthful enthusiasm, began to carry on farming and mill interests with the same spirit of earnestness distinguishing the elder Slocums.

The obliteration of the still and forge abridged the importance and checked the growth of the village. Three roads, or rather two, cut through the woods, too narrow for wagons to pass each other only in places prepared for turn-outs, diverged from the Hollow: one from Allsworth's, at Dunmore, led to Fellows' Corners; while the other crossed the swamp, along what is now Wyoming Avenue, on fallen logs, and found its way by Griffin's Corners to the acknowledged political center of the valley--Razorville village. Upper and Lower Providence, Abington, Blakeley, Greenfield, Scott and Drinker's Beech, offering choice wild lands to all seeking a competency by a life of frugal industry, became the home of men whose hardihood, hospitality, and staunch virtues, carried cultivation and thrift into the borders of the forest, while Slocum Hollow, strangely intermingled with rock and morass, offered little to the husbandman, and nothing to the newcomer.

An effort was made in 1817 to improve the navigation of the Lackawanna, and a company incorporated at the time for this purpose; nothing more was done. In 1819,the late Henry W. Drinker--than whom no man surpassed in readiness to aid the needy pioneer or develop the resources of the country--explored the mountains and valleys from the Susquehanna at Pittston to the Delaware Water Gap, with a view of connecting the two

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points by a railroad to operated over the Lehigh Mountain by hydraulic power achieved from the waters of Tobyhanna and the Lehigh.

While the Slocum Hollow settlement, being on the line of the proposed road, was expected to acquire some increased activity mutually advantageous, the interests of Drinker's Beech, watched carefully by Mr. Drinker, were more especially aimed at by the projectors of the road. A charter was granted in March, 1826; simultaneously a charter was obtained by Wm. Meredith, for a railroad to run up the Lackawanna to the State line from Providence village. Both were projected upon the plan of inclined planes.

The four pioneers obtaining railroad charters in the Lackawanna Valley were Wm. and Maurice Wurts, Henry W. Drinker, and Wm. Meredith. The first two gentlemen banded the mountain's brow with the flat rail; the last, owing to needless antipathies which aroused every impulse of selfishness, and embittered even the calm hour of triumph with its remembrance, were not able to infuse into charters easily obtained, advantage to themselves or to the places they sought to enrich and develop. These men were powerful in the day of the first railroads; polished, opulent, and educated, and had there been united an harmonious action among them, the valley would hardly have been so reluctant in yielding the wherewithal to gladden the firesides of the land. Drinker, averse to a strife fatal to his cherished projects, shared none of the prejudices against the men who had rendered practicable an eastern outlet from the valley.

The North Branch Canal, fed by the idle waters of the Lackawanna, was begun in Pittston in 1828 by the State, and looked to as the great commercial avenue to the sea. The citizens of old Providence Township, restrained by the mountain's wall from all hope of public intercourse with Philadelphia or New York by a continuous railroad, withal too modest to expect a canal at the expense of the

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State, asked the Legislature, having but a negative representation from the valley, to build "the feeder of this canal, or some other improvement up the valley as far as would be thought of service to our citizens and the Commonwealth."

This scheme naturally excited the public mind, because its prosecution under any circumstances would reach out benefits to every husbandman jealous of his own rights, yet taught by invidious men to distrust the power of "incorporated companies." (see footnote)

The coal-clad slopes enjoyed repose. The cesarean drill had not yet fallen into the strong arms of the skillful miner. Up in the Carbondale glen, under the shelter of a ledge of rocks forming the western bank of the Lackawanna, a few hundred tons of surface coal had been mined by the Wurts brothers as an experimental measure. The operations of these weather-beaten, persecuted, yet hopeful men, were not recognized by the inhabitants of the lower townships as of any practical utility to any one but the miners themselves. Wood was abundant, and every hill-side offered fuel to the woodman who chose to gather it without cost. Coal had neither domestic value nor sale at home; no market abroad. A brighter aspect at length struggled its way into the valley, and the solitude of Slocum Hollow was gone.

"About 1836", says Mr. Joseph J. Albright, in a note to the writer, "at the suggestion of Geo. M. Hollenback I made the trip to Slocum Hollow for the purpose of examining the iron ore, coal, &c., with a view of purchasing from Alva Heermans the property (now Scranton) for $10 per acre. I took a box of the iron ore on top of a stage to Northampton County, where I was engaged in the manufacture of iron, and I contend that I shook the first tree, if I failed to gather its fruit. I believe the box of ore thus transported was the means of attracting

(footnote: See "Wilkes Barre Advocate", December 9, 1838.)

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(Engraved portrait of William Henry with signature)

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the attention of Messrs. Henry, Scranton, &c., to this tract. These facts are known and recognized by S. T. Scranton; had I been successful in persuading Dr. Philip Walter and others to join me in its purchase, I might have gathered ample reward."

Drinker's route for a railroad from the Delaware to the Susquehanna, surveyed in 1831 by Maj. Beach, awakened neither interest nor inquiry among the yeomanry having scarcely means to meet the yearly taxes or support families generally large and needy, and yet, strange as it may appear, the initial impulse toward a village at Slocum Hollow came from the friends of this project. William Henry, (see footnote) one of the original commissioners named in the charter, was especially enthusiastic and active in his efforts to build up a town at this point for the purpose of advancing the interests of this unattractive project. His knowledge of the country was too thorough and general

(Footnote: A tradition in the "Henry" family exists, where the Indian character appears in a more amiable light than that exhibited on the Western plains. "My grandfather", writes William Henry in a note to the author, "William Henry, late of Lancaster, Pa., in 1755 was an officer serving under General Washington, at General Braddock's defeat near Fort Pitt; he there saw a well-made, athletic Indian in jeopardy of his life, and by extraordinary effort and means, saved him; in the recognition, names were exchanged, and a friendship established; parting soon after they never met afterward and nothing was known of the Indian until the commencement of the Revolution in 1774, when the rescued man called and made the acquaintance of my father, at Christian Spring, Northampton County as the Chief Killbuck, whose life, he stated, was saved by Maj. Henry, relating all the incidents attending the disastrous battle-field, remarking that while ordinarily he did not expect to live many more years, but that 'Indian never forgets', his own people and family would know how to pay a debt of gratitude.

"In the year 1794 my father and other gentlemen were commissioned by the U.S. Government to locate a quantity of lands donated to the 'Society for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen' in what then was Indian country and a wilderness; fortunately there resided the descendants of Chief Killbuck. The surveying party not knowing this, however, were the grateful recipients of bear's meat, venison, and other game, through the instrumentality of the Chief "White Eye', who subsequently made himself known as the leading successor of the Sachem Killbuck and his gratitude toward the son, whose father saved the life of his chief; about three months were occupied in the woods on the banks of the Muskingum in safety. A fuller detail and historical account, agreeing in every particular with the above, was given by the Indian family, now in Kansas, to Col. Alexander, late the editor of a paper in Pittston, then resident in Kansas; by them a friendly message from them was received in remembrance of their and our fathers; conclusively to show that an 'Indian does not forget.'

"The appellation of 'Henry' is at this day the middle name of every member of the family, to wit:--

Moses Henry Killbuck

Joseph " "

William " "

Josephine " "

Sarah " "

John " "

Rachel " "

"These are well-known persons in the West to the 'Moravian Missionaries.'")

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to be without its stimulating influence, and yet this acquaintance of the mineralogical character of the western terminus of the route only enabled him to give decided expression to views neither adopted nor accepted by his friends.

Messrs. Drinker and Henry, undismayed by the cold, solemn avowal of the inhabitants occupying the valleys of the Delaware and the Susquehanna, that no such road was possible or necessary to their social condition, taking advantage of the speculative wave of 1836, called the friends of the road to Easton at this time to devise a practical plan of action. Repeated exertions in this direction had hitherto yielded a measure of ridicule not calculated to inspire great hopes of success. At this meeting, prolonged for days, Mr. Henry assured the members of the board that if the old furnace of Slocum's at the Hollow could be reanimated and sustained a few years, a village would spring up between the unguarded passes of the Moosic, calling for means of communication with the seaboard less inhospitable and tardy than the loitering stage-coach. This novel plan to achieve success for the road, although urged with ability and candor, met the approval of but a single man. This was Edward Armstrong, a gentleman of great benevolence and courtesy, living on the Hudson. In the acquisition of land in the Lackawanna Valley, or the erection of furnaces and forges upon it, he avowed himself ready to share with Mr. Henry any

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responsibility, profit, or risk. During the spring and summer of 1839, Mr. Henry examined every rod of ground along the river from Pittston to Cobb's Gap to ascertain the most judicious location for the works.

Under the wall of rock, cut in twain by the dash of the Nay-aug, a quarter of a mile above its mouth, favoring by its altitude, the erection and feeding of a stack, a place was well chosen. It was but a few rods above the debris of Slocum's forge, and like that earlier affair enjoyed within a stone's throw every essential material for its construction and working.

After the decease of Mr. Slocum, the forge grounds changing hands repeatedly for a mere nominal consideration, had fallen into possession of William Merrifield, Zeno Albro, and William Ricketson of Hyde Park, and had relapsed into common pasturage. Mr. J. J. Albright was offered 500 acres of the Scranton lands for $5,000 upon a long credit in 1836; for such land that figure was considered too high at the time.

In March, 1840, Messrs. Henry and Armstrong purchased 503 acres for $8,000, or about $16 per acre. The fairest farm in the valley, under-veined with coal, had no opportunity of refusing the same surprising equivalent. Mr. Henry gave a draft at thirty days on Mr. Armstrong, in whom the title was to vest; before its maturity, death came to Mr. Armstrong, almost unawares. He had imbued the enterprise, by his manly co-operation, with no vague friendship or faith, and his death, at this time, was regarded as especially disastrous to the interests of Slocum Hollow. His administrators, looking to nothing but a quick settlement of the estate, requested him to forfeit the contract without question or hesitancy. Thus baffled in a quarter little anticipated, Mr. Henry asked and obtained thirty days' grace upon the non-accepted draft, hoping in the interim to find another shrewd capitalist able to advance the purchase-money and willing to share in the affairs of the contemplated furnace. The late

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lamented Colonel Geo. W. Scranton and Selden T. Scranton, both of New Jersey, interested by the earnest and enthusiastic representations of Mr. Henry regarding the vast and varied resources of the Lackawanna Valley, of which no knowledge had reached them before, proposed to add Mr. Sanford Grant, of Belvidere, to a party, and visit Slocum Hollow.

The journey from Belvidere to the present site of Scranton took one day and a half hard driving, and was well calculated to test the self-reliance and vigor of the inexperienced mountaineer. The Drinker Turnpike, stretching its weary length over Pocono Mountain and morass, enlivened here and there by the arrowy trout-brook or the start of the fawn, brought the party on the 19th of August, 1840, to the half-opened thicket growing over the tract where now Mr. Archbald's residence is seen. Securing their horses under the shade of a tree, the party, amazed at the simple wildness of a country where green acres were looked for in vain, moved down the bank of Roaring Brook to a body of coal whose black edge showed the fury of the stream when sudden rains or thaws raised its waters along the narrow channel. None of the party except Mr. Henry had ever seen a coal-bed before. Assisted by a pick, used and concealed by him weeks before, pieces of coal and iron ore were exhumed for the inspection of the party about to turn the minerals, sparkling amid the shrubs and wild flowers, to some more practical account. The obvious advantages of location, uniting water-power with prospective wealth, were examined for half a day without seeing or being seen by a single person.

The village of Slocum Hollow, in 1840, yielded the palm to the surrounding ones. The Slocum house and its humble barn, three small wooden houses, and one stone dwelling, outliving the days of the forge, stood above its debris; a grist-mill, owned by Barton Mott, a seven-by-nine

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school-house squatting on the ledge, and a clattering saw-mill, made up the village twenty-nine years ago.

The exterior features of the Slocum property were any thing but attractive, yet, after some question and hesitancy, it was purchased at the price already stipulated. Lackawanna valley achieved its thrift and fame from this comparatively trifling purchase of but yesterday, and Scranton dates its incipient inspirations toward acquiring for itself a place and a name from August, 1840.

The company, consisting of Colonel George W. and Selden T. Scranton, Sanford Grant, William Henry, and Philip H. Mattes, organizing under the firm of Scrantons, Grant & Co., began forthwith the construction of a furnace, under the superintendency of Mr. Henry, whose family immediately removed from Stroudsburg to Hyde Park.

None of the older portion of the community can forget the thriftless appearance of the four villages in Providence Township, exhibiting no reluctant spirit of rivalry. Hyde Park contained but a single store, where the post-office found ample quarters in a single pigeon hole; a small Christian meeting-house standing by the road-side, and six or eight scattered dwellings along the single roadway; neither physician, lawyer, nor miner, and but a single minister, without a church of his own, resided within its precincts. Providence, known far and wide by the sobriquet of Razorville, acknowledged as the seat of government for the county, had a dozen houses, two stores and a post-office, a grist-mill and a bridge, an ax factory, three doctors, no minister, and it did a snug business in the way of horse-racing on Sunday, and miscellaneous traffic with the round-about country during the week. Dunmore was the equal of Slocum Hollow in the number of its dilapidated tenements, sheltering as many families. Such were the towns that gave a negative welcome to the innovations of the unknown "Jerseyites", as they were termed, in

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half derision, by people hearing of their search and purchase around Capoose.

New men naturally introduced new names. When the white man first strayed into the valley, no other name than Capoose--an Indian signification of endearment--was heard until the connection of the Slocums with the rough hollow, in 1798, opening land and trade, fixed the appellation of Slocum Hollow. the memorable days of "hard cider" substituted the name of Harrison for that of Slocum Hollow. The Scrantons, not without ambition to popularize a name never dishonored, assented to the exchange of Harrison for Scrantonia. With the growth and triumphs of the iron-works, the brief vowels ia were erased, leaving plain Scranton in possession of the field. This name thus serves to perpetuate the memories of the founders of the town, but would not the aboriginal Capoose or the Indian names for their streams, Nay-aug or Lar-har-har-nar, have been more musical and appropriate?

The first day's work on the Harrison furnace was done September 11, 1840, by Mr. Simeon Ward. During the fall and winter months satisfactory progress attended it. A small wooden building afterward enlarged for "Kresler's Hotel", was erected by W. W. Manness, who is yet in the employ of the company, and jointly occupied as an office, store, and dwelling. It was afterward torn down to make room for the blast-furnace engine-house. As the spring of 1841 opened, tenant-houses went up, and work went forward without cessation or abatement. Mr. Grant became a resident of Harrison, with his family, and for many years, when the tide was low, conducted the management of the store with such urbanity and studied regard for the interests of all, that he acquired consideration and popularity among the yeomanry of the country.

The interests of P. H. Mattes were represented by his son, Charles F. Mattes, who, from the time the furnace was put in successful blast, has been efficiently engaged at the head of one of the more important departments.

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The liberal doctrines of Methodism, itinerated and diffused in the valley as early as 1786, were rarely practiced, and had but a feeble recognition in any way until 1793. "At this time", writes the venerable Rev. Dr. Peck, "William Colbert, a pioneer preacher, visited Capouse, and preached to a few people at Brother Howe's, and lodged at Joseph Waller's. Howe lived in Slocum Hollow, and Waller on the main road in or near what is now Hyde Park. In 1798 Daniel Taylor's, below Hyde Park, was a preaching place. For years subsequently the preaching was at Preserved Taylor's, who lived on the hill-side in Hyde Park, near the old Tripp place. When Mr. Taylor removed, the preaching was taken to Razorville, now Providence, and the preachers were entertained by Elisha Potter, Esq., whose wife was a very exemplary member of the church. Up to this period, preaching was held in private houses." School-houses, moderate in capacity, served for religious purposes until June, 1841, when a subscription was raised for the purpose of building a "meeting-house" at some suitable place within reach of missionaries and laymen. The great bulk of the subscription coming from Harrison Iron Works, governed the location of the church, which was built in 1842, and jointly and harmoniously used as a place of worship by Methodists and Presbyterians until the latter erected a place of their own. The Methodists have enjoyed the pastoral labors of A. H. Schoonmaker, Rev. Dr. Peck, B. W. Goram, G. C. Bancroft, J. V. Newell, J. A. Wood, N. W. Everett, and Byron D. Sturdevant.

The Presbyterians, now representing so much of the intelligence and wealth of the Scranton community, had no definite organization in Scranton until February, 1842. In 1827 missionaries were employed to preach at Slocum Hollow and Razorville twelve times a year, generally in school-houses and barns, and sometimes under the shelter of a friendly tree. Rev. Cyrus Gildersleeve, John Dorrance, and the bold, blunt Thomas P. Hunt, were

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thus employed alternately. The success attending the Methodists in building their church by subscription, animated the fewer Presbyterians to a similar effort in the same direction. The pressure of poverty among the farmers of the valley, combined with the weak condition of this denomination, having but four members at Harrison, influenced the committee appointed in 1844 to select a site for a church, to decide upon Lackawanna, three miles below Harrison, as the place best calculated to favor the majority of the Presbyterians. The church, built in 1846, was owned in common by the members at Lackawanna and Harrison. This latter place was a mere subordinate preaching point, and yet cared for so well by the young gifted Rev. N.G. Parks, that in 1848 the Scranton portion of this organic body, acquiring influence and independence with the development of the village, sought a peaceful separation, and at once asserted its strength by the erection of an imposing church, costing $30,000, capable of seating 800 persons. Since Mr. Park, the Rev. J. D. Mitchell, John F. Baker, and the Rev. M. J. Hickok, have all creditably officiated within its walls. Mr. Hickok, whose purity of mind and blameless life endeared him to all, was hopelessly stricken with paralysis in the fall of 1867, thus leaving the church without an active pastor.

The spiritual wants of the Catholics in Scranton were first looked after by the Rev. P. Pendergrast in 1846. A small room in a private dwelling served for a gathering place until 1848, when a church, 25 by 35, was constructed. The constant accession of numbers rendered a larger place of worship necessary in 1853-4, under the attention of the Rev. Father Moses Whittey. The erection of a Catholic church in Providence and another in Dunmore, drew somewhat from a congregation yet so numerically strong in Scranton, that Father Whittey, well known for his calm deportment yet zealous devotion to the interests of his church, looking to the future want and welfare of

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his flock, began in 1864 to build a cathedral, at an estimated cost of $100,000. The edifice is built in the Grecian style of architecture, 68 by 158 feet, and will seat 2,300 persons. Few individuals in the valley could have turned so powerful an influence to the greater advantage of Scranton than has Father Whittey done in the erection of this edifice.

The first Baptist church here was built under hopeful auspices in 1859; in 1863, the Rev. Isaac Bevan, acting in concert with those fostering the project, increased his claim to public gratitude by the erection of a brick sanctuary, 50 by 80, at a cost of $40,000. The church numbers about 200 communicants.

St. Luke's Episcopal Church dates back only to 1852. Within the next eighteen months, a frame church and parsonage were finished and completed at a cost of about $4,000. St. Luke's is now so comparatively wealthy and popular in Scranton, that a new stone church is being erected for a Parish, at a cost of $150,000. This ecclesiastical body, eschewing politics and religious ultraism, has, under the ministerial administration of Rev. John Long, W. C. Robinson, and the Rev. A. A. Marple, the indefatigable, gentlemanly pastor, grown into public favor in an especial manner since its original existence here.

The German Presbyterian Church of Scranton was dedicated in 1859; the Evangelical Lutheran Zion Church, organized in 1860, purchased the First Welsh Baptist Church of Scranton in 1863.

The Liberal Christian Society have a respectable organization without enjoying a place of worship of their own.

The German Catholics, looked after by their worthy pastor, Rev. P. Nagel, built them a neat edifice in 1866, at a cost of $11,000.

The above-named churches, enumerating only those embraced within the old village proper of Scranton, are named in the order of their development.

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The fact is indeed creditable to the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company, that a great portion of the land occupied by these respective places of worship, was generously donated by them for this specific object.

In the Slocum furnace of 1800, nothing but charcoal was used for smelting purposes. Experiments, attended with failure and sometimes with derision, were made in Pennsylvania between 1837-9, toward the substitution of anthracite coal as a melting menstruum in the manufacture of iron, for the more expensive and perishable charcoal. The Iron Works upon the Lehigh inaugurated the change; the Danville artisans were the next to enlarge the province of stone coal. This long-delayed triumph of coal, wonderful in the grandeur of its results everywhere, governed the design of the new furnace at Harrison. It was contemplated from the first to use the ball ore found adjacent to one of the veins of coal running through the whole coal region; a brief trial proved it too expensive to mine. Upon the southeastern slope of the Moosic, about three miles from Harrison, a large body of iron ore was discovered in the spring of 1841, which with the intervening acres of land was purchased, and a railroad stretched from the mine to the furnace.

The erection of miners' houses, the increased cost of the iron-works awaiting blast, the unforeseen yet unavoidable outlay for lands and railroad unprovided for in the original estimate, exhausted the capital, and left from the very outset an embarrassing debt. Under such auspices, little calculated to encourage the enterprise, came Col. George W. Scranton into Scranton, as a resident, in the fall of 1841. A man of ardent faith, affable and persuasive address, full of honor and probity, whom no difficulties could discourage, no honors cause him to forget the good of the poor man, he was eminently fitted to aid Mr. Henry in the superintendence and experimental inauguration of the iron-works.

The first effort to start the furnace, owing to various

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causes incident to a new, wet, defective stack, appalled the projectors with failure. Wood, charcoal, and even salt and brimstone, employed as auxiliaries to intensify the heat, brought no fulfillment of hopes or prospect of victory. A second effort led to the same result. The furnace was altered. The hot-air ovens were multiplied and enlarged, the machinery changed, and the practical knowledge and services of Mr. John F. Davis secured. On the 18th of January, 1842, the furnace was blown in, amid mutual applause and congratulation. About two and a quarter tons of pig-iron per day was made the first month.

The early trials and failures at the furnace, occupying three months of constant struggle, awakened an interest among the better class of people of the valley and elsewhere, honorable alike to their intelligence and humanity. Many, willing to check any and every advancement toward general prosperity, boldly pronounced "the thing a Jersey humbug!" as they prayed and predicted it would be. Even such skepticism, when the molten stream of iron issued from the furnace into bars, exciting astonishment and pride, vanished into silence; the people acquiesced in the good feeling of the proprietors, whose recompense thus far had been only hope deferred.

In the spring of 1843, additional fire-ovens, with other improvements, were added to augment its capacity, which thus far had yielded iron superior in quality, but deficient in quantity. Iron, when manufactured, found no market to any extent short of the distant sea-board, reached only by two roundabout routes, viz.: the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and the North Branch and Tide Water Canal, to Havre-de-Grace. In either case, the iron must be transported upon heavy wagons from Harrison, fifteen miles to Carbondale, then the terminus of the railroad leading to Honesdale, or to Port Barnum on the Susquehanna.

The first year's product was shipped by the latter route to New York and Boston, at a time when great commercial

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embarrassment pervaded the country, and threatened the annihilation of manufacturing interests in every section. Since the commencement of the forge, September 20, 1840, iron had fallen in value over forty per cent. Its demand and price continued to decline. More than this, Lackawanna Valley iron had neither name nor character in either of theses places to carry itself into public estimation. Thus were men whose fortunes were pledged to foster and sustain a great development, greeted in advance by restrictions especially baleful and adverse to their success. Meantime, financial obstacles in Harrison increased. The credit system was popular in the valley. It attenuated its dubious length as an equalizing medium among the inhabitants unwilling to accord it to the company.

The darkest period in the history of the partnership was seen in 1842-3. In a remunerating sense, the iron speculation had proved a failure, and left the treasury worse than empty. Without character, money, or credit, its affairs began to look hopeless. Their notes given to individuals in lieu of money, were daily offered to farmers at forty per cent. discount in the uncurrent tender of Pennsylvania currency. Every petty claim of indebtedness was urged and pressed before the justices of the township with an earnestness really annoying.

It was at this time that the existence of the company was preserved and prolonged by a timely loan made them by Joseph H. and E. C. Scranton, (see footnote) then of Augusta, Georgia.

The persons once expecting but a negative advantage themselves, expressed regret at their expected arrest and destruction; others looked calmly and coldly on the severe, unabated energy with which the Scrantons, forgetting every other consideration, fought for their bare integrity and financial preservation. Their failure at this especial time would have been of double signification and

(Footnote: Killed by the cars, Dec., 29, 1866, at Norwalk, Ct.)

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injury, while the young, giant valley, far up among the hills, would have resumed the natural simplicity of its former character.

As the company faltered under the pressure of distrust, and danger menacing it from every side, Col. Scranton never exhibited the elastic and buoyant disposition ever characterizing the man, with such admirable advantage as now. He proposed to enhance the value of their iron 25 per cent., by converting it into nails and bars, by the aid of a Rolling Mill and Nail Factory, to be built on the brook below Nay-aug Falls. To accomplish this great project, Selden T. Scranton was sent to New York to negotiate for funds, if possible. This he successfully did. He thus obtained $20,000. The Rolling Mill and Nail Factory begun in 1843, was completed in 1844. The erection of these works with New York capital has indirectly led to an investment in coal lands in the Lackawanna basin, from the same quarter, of some one hundred and fifty millions.

The plan of the village of Harrison, laid out on a diminutive scale in 1841, by Captain Stott, a superior draughtsman of Carbondale, gave such brisk signs of life that the neighboring villages of Hyde Park, Providence, and Dunmore, feared that its continued growth might, at some future period, equal or possibly surpass their own!

It yet had no post-office. Hyde Park and Providence, a mile or two away, afforded the nearest mail facilities. Dr. Throop, then residing in the latter village, a warm, influential friend of the Scrantons and the improvements they were striving to inaugurate, attempted to get one established at this point. The Department at Washington, influenced by the known fact that a post-office had been suspended here a few years previous for the want of support, naturally gave the matter an unfavorable consideration.

Nor had the village a single minister, lawyer, or physician, within its boundaries. Dr. Gideon Underwood,

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now of Pittston, began professional life in Harrison in 1845; he abandoned the place after a few months, for the reason that it was "too small to support a doctor." The late Dr. Robinson was his only competitor in the township of Providence, where no less than fifty physicians manage to keep soul and body together, and yet the entire practice failed to sustain a gentleman every way worthy of trust. Dr. Pier opened an office in the village in 1848; Dr. John B. Sherrerd in 1849. Drs. Throop and Sherrerd started the first drug-store in the town, which, after the death of Dr. Sherrerd, the next year, passed into the hands of L. S. & E. C. Fuller, two gentlemen who have, through a long series of years, obtained a comparative competency by their diligence and attention to business.

In the spring of 1844, Selden T. Scranton, who, like all the Scrantons already mentioned, originally came from East Guilford, now Madison, New Haven County, Conn., removed from Oxford Furnace, New Jersey, settled in Harrison, exchanging positions with his brother, George. He was one of the men who shared in the acquisition of the Roaring Brook lands, four years previous to this, and who, by no idle stroke of fortune, succeeded in connecting his name with its remotest future. Gaining some knowledge of the mineral resources of the valley of the Lackawanna from his father-in-law, William Henry, he readily joined in the hazard of their successful development; and, by the happy exercise of a talent adapted admirably to win friendship or insure success, he contributed to sow the seeds, of which the fruits were to appear in less than a lifetime. Selden was uniform in his advocacy of all pertaining to the welfare of the valley, and yet so honorable and consistent were his efforts in this direction, that it can be said of him, as of few men, he never made an enemy or lost a friend. The celebrated Oxford Furnace is now managed and principally owned by him.

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(Engraved portrait of S. T. Scranton with signature)

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Under a new direction of mechanical industry, instituted at the Lackawanna Iron Works by its founders, the final struggle, which was life or death in a commercial sense to the inhabitants of the township of Providence, began to give way for actual remuneration. The Trail was first manufactured in the United States in 1845. Railroads, everywhere shod with the thin, flat rail, called for the Trail, the first of which was made in Harrison for the New York and Erie Railroad in 1847. This pioneer road through southern New York was then in operation no farther than Goshen. English iron, costing the Erie Company $80 per ton, had thus far been laid.

The presence of every variety of material cheaply attained, led the Scrantons to believe that as good, if not superior, Trail could be furnished by them, especially upon the Delaware and Susquehanna divisions, at a lower figure than the English iron-masters across the water had hitherto afforded.

Joseph H. Scranton, a man whose active mind for nearly a quarter of a century has been employed in guiding the iron enterprise which this company have developed, purchased the interests of Mr. Grant in 1846. Mr. Platt, who subsequently became a partner, filled the position vacated by Mr. Grant, and through the successive changes of firms, the expansion and enlargement of business, he has held the same satisfactory and creditable relation to the place he has filled so long.

The year of 1846 was auspicious in the history of Harrison. Col. Scranton returned, and aided by Joseph and Selden, negotiated a contract with the Erie Railroad Company for 12,000 tons of iron-rail, to weigh 58 pounds to the yard; to be made and delivered at the mouth of the Lackawaxen, in Pike County, during the years of 1847-8. This arrangement was mutually advantageous to both parties. It was of vital significance to that great road, now stretching its fibers from the lake to the sea. At the opening of the northern division of the Delaware,

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Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, Mr. Loder, then President of the Erie Company, stated in a public speech that nothing but the prompt fulfillment of this contract averted bankruptcy to the road, by enabling them within the specified time to open it to Binghamton. To the Scranton Company it evoked life-long results. The men whose common interests and joint sacrifices and struggles had bound them together in the unity of brotherhood, felt the invigorating and fervid influence of this great sale of iron, which gave to the valley a prospect and prominence it never had enjoyed before.

Mills and machinery of a corresponding character, with the wherewithal to erect them, were thus necessitated by compliance of the contract.

Several gentlemen, wealthy and warm friends of the Erie road, promptly came forward, and on the simple obligations of the Scrantons alone, with no security, but faith in their integrity, loaned them $100,000 to construct the requisite iron-works. Extraordinary activity was now displayed in Harrison, in every department of business, the active management of which passed into the hands of Joseph H. Scranton, who came here to reside in 1847.

Up until now the means of transportation to market of the now largely increased annual product of iron, remained as difficult as at the commencement, with the exception of the extension of the Delaware and Hudson Canal company's railroad from Carbondale to Archbald, which reduced the hauling by teams to nine miles; the iron ore was carted three miles and a half from the mines; the limestone and extra pig-iron needed by the mill, purchased at Danville, drawn from the canal at Pittston, and the railroad iron, now the principal product of the works, was drawn to Archbald upon heavy wagons, requiring the use of over four hundred horses and mules. Even this large force, gathered from the farmers of Blakeley, Providence, and Lackawanna, sometimes at the expense

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(Engraved portrait of Joseph H. Scranton with signature)

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of agricultural interests, was able to move the first rail iron only with provoking tardiness.

Two large blast-furnaces were now in the course of construction, as well as a railroad to the ore mines on the mountain. This road was so graded that the empty cars could be drawn to the mines by mules, and when loaded with ore, return to the furnace by gravity power alone, over five miles and a half of this circuitous road.

On the south side of roaring Brook, some three hundred houses had been built for the workmen; upon the other, now the business part of Scranton, but a single dwelling, aside from the few owned and occupied by the company, stood. This had been erected by Dr. Throop for his brother. With the constant influx of new-comers, the doctor, who was recognized pre-eminently throughout the country as the doctor, removed from Providence to Harrison in 1847. On the old mill road leading from Slocum Hollow to Razorville, amidst the tranquil woodlands, he built his modest cottage. He lived here many years, with his family, with no house in sight of his own, surrounded by the low murmuring pines, where, after the professional drives of the day, he enjoyed the cheerful fireside and smoked his pipe in quiet, with no sound to disturb him, save the grate bo-loonk-blonk of the denizens of the adjacent swamp, tuning up their minstrelsy at each successive nightfall. The cottage, remodified and absorbed into business quarters, is yet seen in sound condition, near the Presbyterian church.

The Lackawanna Iron Company, organized under the general partnership law, consisted of George W. Scranton, Selden T. Scranton, Joseph H. Scranton, and J. C. Platt as the general partners, and several New York gentlemen as special ones. Edward C. Lynde and Edward P. Kingsbury, two gentlemen eminently qualified for any station, fill the respective positions of secretary and assistant treasurer.

To carry through the programme of manufacturing and

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delivering to the New York and Erie Railroad Company this quantity of iron, with the limited capital at command, required extraordinary exertion and energy. Extra work, additional machinery, and various expensive materials, augmented the necessity of more money and labor. Large iron contrivances which were essential to the works were drawn, by the jaded horse or stubborn mule, sixty or seventy miles over the rough, hilly roads for which upper Pennsylvania was formerly distinguished. Teams consisting of eight mules were used for this service with such vexatious experience, that willing and reliable drivers were rarely found or retained. When such were apparently secured, the company found it necessary to contract with the keepers of the small taverns along the road from Stroudsburg to the Hollow, to furnish meals for their drivers and feed for their teams, and forward bills each month to the office for payment. It was especially provided that no liquor should, under any condition or circumstance, be furnished the drivers. Yet bills properly attested for "sixteen glasses of leming ayde (lemonade), at six-pence a glass, and one pint of whisky", came from places where a lemon had never been heard of before or since.

The business of the company, so comprehensive in its character, so beneficial in its influence, made many a valley fireside exult with hopes and smiles. To witness a town spring from a pasture lot with such rapidity into a maze of founderies, furnaces, manufacturing works, and dwellings full of bright expectations, caused astonishment and pride among the inhabitants, unused to such rapid advancement. The rise in real estate along the Lackawanna Valley, as well as Wyoming, since the organization of this company, was at least one hundred per cent., while the relations of the Scrantons with the public were harmonious, and characterized throughout by general good feeling. It is true, there were then as there are yet, and ever will be, a class of croakers who gathered

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(Engraved portrait of Benj. H. Throop with signature)

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in bar-room groups and gravely predicted that "the Scrantons must fail."

On the western side of the Lackawanna a line of four-horse stages ran up from Wilkes Barre to Carbondale, connecting at each place with a similar line via Milford and Morristown to New York, and via Easton to Philadelphia, and furnished the only mode of conveyance to or from the Lackawanna, and brought New York daily papers to Providence and Hyde Park in the forenoon of the third day after their publication.

The mills were completed; as they molded the hills into iron fiber awaiting no longer a market, the Lackawanna Iron Works stepped into the front ranks and established their character beyond cavil or peradventure. The first fifteen hundred tons of railroad iron was delivered at the mouth of the Lackawaxen. Here it was taken by canal to Port Jervis, and laid on the road between that place and Otisville. After that portion of the Erie road was opened to the public, the company, delayed by injunctions urged on by the cupidity of Philadelphians and the New York Central interests, in crossing the river into Pennsylvania at the Glass House rocks, finding their utter inability to open the road to Binghamton by the time specified without the delivery of the balance of the iron at different points along the route by the Scranton Company, arranged such terms of delivery, in pursuance of which the Scranton Company carted by teams some seven thousand tons of rail, which they delivered at Narrowsburgh, Cochecton, Equinunk, Stockport, Summit, and Lanesboro, an average distance of about fifty miles, thus enabling the company to lay the track almost simultaneously at all points along the Delaware division as fast as the grading was ready, and open the road for one hundred and thirty miles four days ahead of the appointed time. The difficulty of carting so large an amount of iron within so brief a period, can be inferred only by those

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familiar with the ruggedness of the mountain roads intervening.

A post-office, named Scrantonia, was established in Harrison in 1848, and John W. Moore appointed post-master. The name of Harrison was dropped for that of Scrantonia. The same year the old names of Capoose and Slocum Hollow were disowned and forgotten by newcomers; the accidental and transient ones, Lackawanna Iron Works, Harrison, Scrantonia, were folded up laid away forever for the briefer name of Scranton.

The rapid expansion and concentration of business at this point, as well as the absence of all necessary communications with the sea-board and the lakes, rendered an outlet east or west most apparent and desirable. The project of connecting the valley by railroad with the New York and Erie road, in a northerly direction, was frequently discussed by the general partners; in fact, it was the sanguine expectations of a line of public improvement being extended both north and south at no distant day, that went far toward deciding the original proprietors in locating here.

With a view of bringing the subject of railroad facilities, and connections with the valley generally, before the minds of capitalists in a manner both advantageous and effective, Col. George W. Scranton was detailed from the active engagement of the affairs of the Iron Company in the summer of 1848.

Valuable coal lands had been secured as a reliable basis of such an enterprise; large delegations of New York and New England gentlemen were persuaded from time to time to visit the valley and examine the vast mineral resources apparent along its border, and witness the dark croppings of coal, the fertile farms and luxurious intervale, the abundant water-power for mills or manufacturing purposes, the splendid sites and the fine timber; all of which, the moment a railroad outlet appeared, would be trebled in value. By many, the valley was

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considered too wild and remote, or too difficult of access, even for an exploring tour. Such never left the parental roof, and it was left for bolder hearts and stouter arms to plant and reap the harvest. An extra stage-coach, with its five miles an hour speed, now and then brought into the valley delegation after delegation from the East, which were hailed with friendly solicitude by the inhabitants. Often and always was the inquiry heard of that firm friend of the public interest, Sam Tripp, "When the Yorkers were coming?" All eyes, for a time, were directed toward the local movements of the Yorkers, and the hope of every honest citizen then as well as now was, that long life and prosperity would be the fortune of all who came.

Until 1847 no car had rolled nor had a single rail reached the remote Lackawanna, with the exception of those upon the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's railroad from Carbondale to Honesdale. This road was a gravity one, worked by stationary steam-engines and horse-power, over the Moosic Mountain, and was built in 1826-8.

Drinker's route for a railroad from Pittston to Delaware Water Gap, surveyed in 1824, to develop which Scranton was originally planned, and ultimately reversed in relation and purpose, had yet no living functions given its indefinite existence. The line was run with a view of inclined planes operated by water, and perhaps a canal over the more level portion of the way.

Wurts Brothers, Meredith, and Drinker blazed the trees along the forest for their gravity roads through many a lonely nook shaded by woods; but the honor of conceiving and completing a locomotive road from Great Bend to the Delaware River, belongs to the late Col. George W. Scranton--the firm, fast friend of every industrial interest in the valley. Mountainous as were the general features of the intermediate country, formidable as appeared the idea of grading ranges offering stubborn resistance to such

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invasions of the engineer, he advanced and urged forward his scheme until he was able to see and share its substantial achievements and advantages. Under the immediate direction of Col. Scranton, a preliminary survey was made of the proposed route, which was found to be quite as feasible as his own personal observations had let him to expect, and, as the idle charter of Leggett's Gap Railroad would answer every practical purpose, after slight modifications, it was purchased.

The public mind, understanding only the rough topography of the country, without a single village of a thousand inhabitants, was instructed into the benefits to flow from the construction of this rail highway to the upper border of the State. The subscription books were opened at Kresler's hotel, in Scranton, in 1847, by the commissioners, and the whole capital stock promptly subscribed, and ten per cent. paid in. While these flattering movements argued well for the common welfare of the valley, and country adjacent, men of means were so shy of the enterprise, that it was the work of two long years of ceaseless labor amidst every possible discouragement, before any real capital could be calculated upon The road was commenced in 1850, and pushed forward in the same spirit of earnest enthusiasm with which it was conceived. To overcome the objection that it would not pay as an investment, and reach and make a more northern market (for the first loads of coal taken hence, were given away in order to introduce the black stuff into general use), the Ithaca and Owego Railroad, one of the oldest roads in the country, was purchased by the Iron Company in 1849. This, like all railroads in the United States at this time, was laid with the flat or strap rail--a rail possessing neither strength nor safety, as one end of it sometimes becoming bent would dart up with lightning-like rapidity into the passing train, marking its progress with appalling slaughter.

A new company being now organized, called the Cayuga

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and Susquehanna Railroad Company, for the purpose of building this road, Colonel Scranton was chosen President, who at once repaired to Ithaca and discharged the duties of the position with acknowledged prudence and success.

To carry out the original plan contemplated by the colonel, of connecting the iron-works with New York City by a locomotive road, a survey was made eastward in 1851-2, and the next year the present line, running parallel and sometimes embracing the Drinker route, adopted.

Thus far Scranton had but a single hotel. Mr. Kresler, popular as a landlord, could not in his abridged quarters meet the demands of the throng turning into the village. A large brick hotel, such as only courageous men could have planned in such a place, was erected in 1852, by the Iron Company, to which was applied the strange misnomer of Wyoming House. Mr. J. C. Burgess became the purchaser, and is the present owner. The next public house emerging from the forest, from which it derived its name--Forest House--was fitted up and kept by Joseph Godfrey, Esq. The St. Charles, Kock's, and the Lackawanna Valley House, appropriate in name, and a dozen others less familiar to the wayfarer, have anticipated the demand of the moving world until, to-day, Scranton can boast of the beauty, comfort, and healthfulness of its hotels, rarely equaled, and surpassed nowhere within the State.

The Iron Company reorganized in 1853, under a special charter, with a capital of $800,000 and Selden T. Scranton, now of Oxford Furnace, N.J., elected President, and Joseph H. Scranton, the present Manager and President, Superintendent.

After the Lackawanna and Western Railroad was consolidated with the Delaware and Cobb's Gap charter, under the name of the "Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Company", work was commenced

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vigorously on the southern division of this road. One the 21st of January, 1856, the first locomotive and train of cars passed over the Delaware.

Rapid as has been the sympathetic growth of half a dozen villages from Pittston to Carbondale, theirs has been a snail's pace compared to the sturdier growth of Scranton. In July, 1840 five small brown tenements composed the town of Slocum Hollow, where now the young city of Scranton, perpetuating the name of its founders as long as the Lackawanna shall flow by the dwellings of civilized man, enumerates a population, constantly increasing, of five-and-forty thousand.

The stranger who visits Scranton may not find as much wildness and sublimity around it as when, from the Pocono Range, his eye first catches a glimpse of the truly bold outlines of the Delaware Water Gap, he will, nevertheless, as he walks along the walls of Roaring Brook, and gazes on the massive piles of furnace stacks, pouring out, day after day, ponds of rude or finished iron, from the ponderous bar to the delicate bolt, and sees the smooth, yet resistless motion of the largest stationary engine on the American Continent, feel proud and pleased with the sights of industry and thrift everywhere around him.

To get and appreciate a bird's-eye view of the town and valley, let the tourist ascend the high bluff near the Baptist Church in Hyde Park, overlooking the city, where the charming panorama that unrolls itself before him, will compensate in the highest degree for the trouble of the visit. He will then look down into a region interesting for its scenery, its strata of coal, its beds of iron ore, and its Indian history. The first impression is one favorable toward this portion of the valley, as there appears on every side evidence of animation and thrift.

Yonder the noisy water (Roaring Brook) takes a white leap from one of the loveliest and loneliest nooks carved from the mountain, before it splashes on the busy wheel of the manufacturer, and after being used three or four

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times in its passage through the city, mingles with the waters of the Lackawanna below. The huge, round, slate-roofed locomotive depot, filled with engines, at first strikes the eye, and reminds him of the Roman Coliseum; while the landscape, sprinkled with brown-colored depots, car-shops, and Vulcan-shops on every side; the chaste, imposing churches, the long white line of public and private architecture contrasting finely with the deep green of the surround trees, tastily left for shade; the trains of coal cars, serpentine and dark, emerging from the "Diamond Mines"; or skimming along the iron veins, down a grade of seventy feet to the mile, from the productive coal works at the "Notch", some two miles distant, on their passage to New York; the locomotives of the Lehigh and Susquehanna, the Lackawanna and Bloomsburg, of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western, of the Delaware and Hudson Railroads, rushing into Scranton like some fleet devils, carrying on their back the whole moving world whether they will or not; the villages of Hyde Park, Providence, Dunmore, and Green Ride, arrayed in thrifty garb, far up and down the valley; the Lee-har-hanna, with its modest throat and richer shade drawn like a belt of silver along the picture; the neat farm-houses, here and there nestling in some lovely meadow, or half hid among the blossoms of orchards, with the background of the unshorn mountain, swelling upward from Wyoming or the Lackawanna region, all make up a sight as beautiful as the Jewish ruler of old once witnessed from old Mount Nebo. Nor is this all. As he looks into the bosom of "Capouse Meadow", his eye wanders over coal lands which, fifteen years before the completion of a railroad outlet north from the valley, could have been purchased for fifteen dollars per acre, and which now are worth $800 and $1000; and building-lots, which then no respectable man was willing to accept as a gratuity, now readily bring from one to five thousand dollars each.

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The growth of Scranton has been marked by uniform decades.

In 1826, the Drinker Railroad wrought consternation among the pines of this secluded glen; in 1836 the same measure, combined with the North Branch Canal and new county schemes, again awakened hopes partially fulfilled. In 1846 sales of iron made by the Scranton Company, enabled them to defy threatened bankruptcy; in 1856, the first locomotive engine rolled from Scranton, just formed into a borough, to the Delaware River; in 1866, incorporated into a city; and in 1876, all the townships in northern and central Luzerne will probably take their places in the new county of Lackawanna, with the county seat at Scranton. In 1866, Scranton, Hyde Park, and Providence, were fashioned by the legislature of Pennsylvania into a city composed of twelve wards, with all the municipal rights and regulations necessary for its existence. E. S. M. Hill, Esq., was elected mayor.

The newspaper interests of Scranton, now so prominent a feature, had no place or foothold until fifteen years ago.

During the year 1845, a newspaper called the County Mirror was started in Providence (now the 1st and 2d Wards, Scranton), by the late Franklin B. Woodward. Harrison at this time had made so humble pretensions that but a single advertisement from the village found its way into this lively paper. In 1852, the Lackawanna Herald, a paper of more partisan bitterness than real ability, was issued in Scranton by Charles E. Lathrop. Three years later the Spirit of the Valley was published by Thomas J. Alleger and J. B. Adams for one year, when the two were consolidated under the name of the Herald of the Union, purchased and edited by the late Ezra B. Chase,--a gentleman of superior literary attainments. Declining health induced him soon after to sell out to Dr. A. Davis and J. B. Adams. In the spring of 1859, Dr. Davis purchased the interest of Mr. Adams,

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transferring it to Dr. Silas M. Wheeler, and the paper was managed by these medical gentlemen with a degree of originality and spiciness rarely seen in a country newspaper. Dr. Davis at that time moved into Scranton, building the first house erected on Franklin Avenue, and now occupied by Dr. G. W. Masser. This paper finally subsided into the Scranton Register, owned and edited by Mayor E. S. M. Hill, until the summer of 1868.

Theodore Smith established the Scranton Republican in 1856, conducting it in a highly creditable manner for two years, when F. A. McCartney became the proprietor. After being owned by Thos. J. Alleger, and conducted fairly and honorably, it passed into the hands of F. A. Crandall, then again into those of F.A. Crandall & Co., the present energetic and spirited owners. The Scranton City Journal came forth from the hands of Messrs. Benedicts in 1867, and from the acknowledged industry and qualifications of these gentlemen, the new paper can hardly fail to thrive.

The Scranton Wochenblatt, a German paper, was started, with a large circulation, January 1865, by E. A. Ludwig. It is now edited and published by F. Wagner, and presents a neat appearance. The Democrat--a bold original, ultra-democratic paper--edited by J. B. Adams, has already secured the favorable consideration and good opinion of the people of the country.

The above named are and were all weekly publications.

One or two dailies and tri-weeklies have been born and buried within that period; some of them, especially the Morning Herald, a daily published in 1866 by J. B. Adams, evidenced considerable merit. None of them however, exhibited the substantial prosperity shown by the Scranton Daily Register, edited by E. S. M. Hill, Esq., and managed in its local department by J. B. Adams with a bluntness and severity of thought, which, however creditable it might have been to his abilities as a writer, offended the erring rather than corrected the errors of the

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day. Messrs. Carl and Burtch, purchased the paper in 1868, converted it into an evening issue, and by its telegraphic features and the vigor of its young editors, without abating any of its democratic tendencies, it has already gained a place in the public heart.

In spite of the failures in every inland town and city in Pennsylvania to sustain a daily paper, with full telegraphic news, Messrs. Scranton and Crandall essayed forth the Scranton Daily Republican in November, 1867, as an experimental measure.

Its prosperity and success, at first jeopardized by a disastrous fire, is now fully assured in public opinion, and all concede to these gentlemen the credit of first offering to the people a daily country paper, with telegraphic news simultaneously enjoyed by the New York Associated Press. Its local department, managed by Mr. Chase, and its general editorials, somewhat ultra and positive in their character, bear evidence of vigorous thought.

Scranton abounds in industrial enterprises, which its remarkable growth have prompted and fostered.

FINCH & CO.'S SCRANTON CITY FOUNDERY AND MACHINE WORKS, situated on the Hyde Park side of the Lackawanna, was established, in 1856, by Mr. A. P. Finch. This establishment, representing high engineering attainment, is largely engaged in the manufacture of portable and stationary engines, mining machinery, circular saw-mills, turbine water-wheels, iron fronts, &c., &c.

MACLAREN'S BRASS FOUNDERY, deriving its name from its founder and owner, John Maclaren, is located in Scranton, near the depot of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad. Its establishment in 1866, to supply the demands of a wide section hitherto seeking New York or Philadelphia for the infinite variety of brass work needed in the interest of commerce, gave proof of sound judgment and a correct appreciation of the increasing wants of the Valley of the Lackawanna. This is one of the

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(Engraved illustration of Scranton in 1860.)

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most extensive brass founderies in the State, and while its success adds to the wealth and vigor of Scranton, the public are not indifferent to its general welfare.

THE CAPOUSE WORKS of Pulaski Carter, of Providence, known far and wide by the superior character of the edge tools issuing from them, as well as by the self-made man instituting on the low bank of the Lackawanna this pioneer mechanical enterprise; THE SASH AND BLIND MANUFACTORY of Messrs. Hand & Costen, of Providence; the PROVIDENCE STOVE MANUFACTORY of Henry O. Silkman; the SCRANTON STOVE AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY, of Scranton, and the various individual and associated operations and improvements within the city limits, establishes the reputation of Scranton as a manufacturing rather than a mining city.

The sketch of the history of Scranton can hardly be appropriately closed without a glance at the great iron works now in blast here, capable of smelting about seventy thousand tons of ore a year. The sizes of these blast furnaces may be inferred from the diameter of the boshes, which are 18, 18, 19, and 20 feet, with a height of fifty feet. Into these furnaces air is forced by four lever-beam engines of vast power. The steam cylinders are fifty-four inches in diameter, with ten feet stroke. The wind is forced by this apparatus into the furnaces, under an average pressure of eight pounds to the square inch. The huge fly-wheels which regulate the movements of this enormous apparatus weigh forty thousand pounds. In order to be prepared for any possible exigency, and have increased blowing power, the Iron Company have built appropriate apartments, and set up still another pair of engines upon the very ground where formerly stood, under one roof, the first office, store and dwelling of Messrs. Scranton and Grant, in Harrison, subsequently known as "Kresler's Hotel".

This pair of engines have cylinders 59 inches in diameter,

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and blowing cylinders 90 inches. Each engine has two-fly-wheels, 28 feet in diameter, weighing seventy-five thousand pounds. By this power they are able to force air into the furnaces under a pressure of eight or nine pounds to the square inch, a great advantage, as it is found by experiments that in order for a furnace to yield the greatest product, it must not only have a certain amount of air, but that the air, to be most advantageous, must be introduced under heavy pressure, and at many places simultaneously, when it is more equally diffused through the stack. The aggregate productive capacity of the Scranton furnaces is about sixty thousand tons per annum.

A walk of five minutes brings one to the rolling-mills, which also stand on the north side of the Roaring Brook. Midway between the furnace and the mills, down the bank of the brook to the right, is seen a railroad track leading into a mine directly under our feet, into which a few blackened coal cars, drawn by mules, disappear in midnight. This vein of coal, at this point, which is used in all the iron works now, is the very one first seen by the exploring party, in 1840, led by Mr. Henry, and which, in connection with the adjacent iron deposits, decided the Scrantons and Mr. Grant to purchase this property for sixteen dollars an acre. Entering the rolling-mill, one is surprised to see the magnitude and the precision of the whole arrangement. The principal product of the mills is T railroad bars, of which about 40,000 tons a year are finished. A great quantity of railroad spikes and chairs are made, besides some three thousand tons of merchantable iron.

About 200,000 tons of coal are mined annually by the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company, and consumed at their works.

Some general idea can be formed of the imposing character of the iron-works by the fact that over two hundred thousand tons of anthracite coal per year are consumed by

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them alone, while they furnish employment to an effective army of two thousand men!

The amount of capital already expended by the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Company, in their railroad and coal property, including the Cayuga and Susquehanna Railroad, and the Warren Railroad, in New Jersey, is, at this time, over fifteen million dollars, and a large amount will yet be required to complete the double track and properly equip the road.

The influence of the opening of this great eastern and western outlet upon a valley so long shut out from the great world by mountain barriers, make as plain as noon-day, facts of yesterday and to-day. It is visible in every hamlet, felt in every cottage by the wayside, and is written in vivifying lines everywhere along the Lackawanna; while the vast revolution it has effected in monetary affairs, finds expression in the grand aggregate of prosperity seen throughout every county in Pennsylvania and New Jersey through which the road passes. Much of this prosperity is due to Hon. John Brisbin, President of the road for the last ten years, and who has managed its affairs with singular sagacity and skill.

What Scranton lacks in antiquity, is compensated for in the design of the original village; in its fine streets, laid out with great regularity, and illuminated with gas--in its ample water works, supplying the purest water from the upper Nay-aug--in its street railroads, which traverse every portion of the city--in its free schools, surpassed by none in the State; in its churches, representing so great a diversity of religious sentiment, in the magnificence or the modesty of their structures, that "none need fall among thorns or thieves"; in its doctors of medicine, sheltered by broad Latin diplomas, which all the dictionaries in the Vatican would not enable them to read, skilled in the wherewithal to heal the sick and invigorate the feeble; in its clever lawyers, blustering when opposed, and every ready to mystify and perplex the simplest matter

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for a fee; in its doctors of divinity who, learned in biblical affairs, are ever ready

"By apostolic blows and knocks

To show their doctrine orthodox;"

in fact, by the general intelligence and thrift of its inhabitants everywhere observed within its borders. Wyoming Valley, worthy of the fame it has acquired the world over, boasts of its gray obelisk with an honest pride,--of its shire town, filled with elegance, wealth, and intelligence, deriving much of its celebrity from being the residence of some of the finest lawyers in the State, with its streets shaded by long lines of stately elms; and yet it lacks the marvelous and irresistible business impulse which makes up the enchantment of Scranton City. Located in the very midst of unbounded mineral wealth, it will naturally exact tribute from the surrounding country by the aid of the numerous railroads entering within its limits, until the villages that begirt it now will expand and commingle and involuntarily become merged into one of the greatest cities of the State.

THE DICKSON MANUFACTURING COMPANY

The first stationary steam-engine used in the valley of the Lackawanna, between Carbondale and Wilkes Barre where now no less than five hundred daily vindicate the name of Stephenson, was put up in the rolling-mill in Scranton in 1847.

The valley, at this time, had just become an object of desire and competition, which led to its more energetic development. One of the results of that development which has aspired to make Scranton the great commercial manufacturing emporium, is visible in the existence and operations of the Dickson Manufacturing Company, which was organized in 1856.

This company, with a capital of $500,000, absorbing the "Cliff Works" and "Planing Mill" adjoining it in

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Scranton, and the large foundery and machine-shops of Messrs. Lanning and Marshall at Wilkes Barre, gives steady employment to nearly a thousand men.

Not only is its business immense in volume, but so diversified in its general character, that the huge, stationary engine that throbs its lay upon the Moosic, or the locomotive plowing the plain below--the mining machinery, and every mechanical contrivance that can be wrought from iron or wood by the skill of the artisan engaged in the works of this company, all promise a measure of future prominence and remuneration, creditable alike to mechanical genius, and its happy concentration and encouragement by Thomas Dickson, the President of this young, opulent association.

The following is a list of physicians who have, at one time or another, lived and practiced their profession within the area now embraced by the chartered limits of Scranton City:--

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Names Where settled When Settled When Left Died Remarks
 
Dr. Joseph Davis Slocum Hollow 1800 1830 Dr. Davis originally settled near Spring Brook.
Dr. Orlo Hamlin Providence 1813 1815
Dr. Silas B. Robinson  " 1823  1860
Dr. Daniel Seavers  " 1834 1837
Dr. Hiram Blois  " 1839 1840
Dr. Joseph Osgood  " 1839 1841
Dr. Benjamin H. Throop  " 1840  Now resides in Scranton.
Dr. William H. Pier Hyde Park 1845  Now resides in Scranton.
Dr. Gideon Underwood Harrison 1845 1845  Pittston.
Dr. Nehemiah Hanford Providence 1846 1846  1847
Dr. Horace Hollister  " 1846
Dr. William E. Rogers Scranton 1849 1858
Dr. Henry Roberts Providence 1850
Dr. Julian N. Wilson Dunmore 1850 1853
Dr. John B. Sherrerd Scranton 1851 1853
Dr. George W. Masser Scranton 1852  Surgeon in Army Potomac.
Dr. Bennet A. Bouton Providence 1852  Removed to Scranton, 1867. Pres. Med. Society.
Dr. Johnathan Leverett Scranton 1853 1854
Dr. John P. Kluge  " 1853 1853
Dr. George B. Seamons Dunmore 1853 1865  Removed to Scranton, 1868.
Dr. Augustus Davis Scranton 1854  Hyde Park, Surgeon in Army.
Dr. Lucius French Hyde Park 1854 1859
Dr. George B. Boyd Scranton 1854
Dr. William E. Allen Hyde Park 1855  Asst. ex-Surgeon, 1865, Prov. Marsh., office Ralph A. Squires Scranton 1855 [Scranton] 
Dr. S. Burton Sterdevant Providence 1856  Surgeon to the 84th Pa Reg. during the war.
Dr. Asa H. Brundage Scranton 1856 1858  Candor, N.Y.
Dr. Albert M. Capwell Dunmore 1856 1860  Resides at Factoryville, Pa.
Dr. F. Bodeman Scranton 
Dr. William Frothingham  " 1857 1861  New York.
Dr. John W. Gibbs Hyde Park 1857 
Dr. Isaac Cohen Scranton 1857 1858  Jewish Rabbi, Scranton.
Dr. N. F. Marsh  " 1857 1860  1867
Dr. Charles Marr  " 1857 1865  Asst. ex-Surgeon, 1864-5, in Scranton.
Dr. Erastus W. Wells  " 1858 1859
Dr. William Green  " 1859 1862
Dr. E. B. Evens Hyde Park 1859
Dr. W. H. Heath  " 1859
Dr. Thomas Stewart Scranton 1860
Dr. J. M. Fox  " 1860 1865
Dr. Horrace Ladd  " 1860
Dr. F. Wagner  " 1861 1867  Wilkes Barre.
Dr. Wm. Gelhaar  " 1861 1867
Dr. P. H. Moody  " 1862 1867  Ex-Surg. dur'g the war, at Scranton.
Dr. Willoughby W. Gibbs Providence 1865  Coroner, Luzerne County.
Dr. Peter Winters Dunmore 1865
Dr. S. P. Reed  " 1865 1868  Scranton.
Dr. John W. Robathan Hyde Park 1865
Dr. N. Y. Leet Scranton 1866  Surgeon during the war, 76th Reg. Pa. Vols.
Dr. A. W. Burns  " 1866
Dr. Harper B. Lackey Providence 1867
Dr. J. B. Benton Scranton 1867
Dr. C. H. Fisher  " 1867
Dr. L. F. Everhart  " 1867  Surgeon 8th and 16th Pa. Cavalry.
Dr. N. B. Roberts Hyde Park 1867
Dr. ---McGinlie Scranton 1867
Dr. William Barnes  " 1867
Dr. William Haggerty  " 1867
Dr. J. Williams  Providence 1868

HOMEOPATHISTS

 
Names Located Arrived Left
 
Dr. A. P. Gardner Scranton 1854 1859
Dr. ------ Reynolds  " 1855 1855
Dr. A. P. Hunt  " 1858 1862
D. C. A. Stevens  " 1862
Dr. A. E. Burr  " 1865 1868
Dr. J. S. Walter  " 1868
Drs. Clark & Ricardo  " 1868
Dr. Sidney A. Campbell  " 1868

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The superior or relative status of Providence and Scranton as business villages, five-and-twenty years ago, is plainly apparent in the enumerated list of medical and legal gentlemen, who, to advance their fortunes or achieve reputation, chose the former place for a residence, because of its real as well as its expected importance.

Lawyers who have for a longer or shorter period lived and practiced law within the city limits of Scranton:--

 
Names Original Location When Admitted Remarks
 
Lewis Jones, Jr. Carbondale August 5, 1834 Now of Scranton.
Charles H. Silkman Providence January 1, 1839  "
Peter Byrne Carbondale August 3, 1846  "
J. Marion Alexander Providence August 4, 1846 Kansas.
Elliot S. M. Hill  " April 5, 1847 First May'r of Scranton.
David R. Randall  " November 4, 1847  Late District Att'y Luzerne Co.
Daniel Rankins  " August 7, 1850 Clerk of the Court.
Washington G. Ward Hyde Pardk November 10, 1851
Samuel Sherrard Scranton April 4, 1853
Edward Merrifield Hyde Park August 6, 1855
George Sanderson Scranton Sept. 14, 1857 Founder of Green Ridge.
*Ezra B. Chase  " April 7, 1857 
Edward N. Willard  " Nov. 17, 1857  Register in the Dist. Court of the U.S.,for the Western District of Pa.
George D. Hangawout  " January 18, 1858
Wm. H. Pratt  " January 4, 1859
David C. Harrington  "