USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > Bethlehem > A history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741-1892, with some account of its founders and their early activity in America > Part 69
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
the thought and action that would produce the desirable changes. DeSchweinitz now became Administrator of the estates in his place, in addition to his duties as Head Pastor and for a while also Prin- cipal of the Seminary for Young Ladies. His position was difficult and his labors were arduous.
February 18, 1823, the decision of the U. E. C. on the land ques- tion that had been appealed was received. While strongly urging that controversy now cease, they took the responsibility of setting aside the adopted report of the financial committee of the General Synod, which had inclined towards Cunow's position, with which they did not agree. They also called for the formulation and adop- tion of new articles of agreement on the basis of 1771, between the Administrator and Bethlehem, to meet the situation and provide against any future controversy of the kind. On April 8, 1823, the Bethlehem Congregation elected Charles David Bishop, John Frederick Rauch, Jacob Rice, Owen Rice, David Peter Schneller and the Warden, John Frederick Stadiger, a committee to negotiate with de Schweinitz, the Administrator, to this end. After protracted deliberations, such new articles, receiving the sanction of the Pro- vincial Board-for they involved relations also to the Sustentation Diacony-were adopted by the voting membership at Bethlehem, March 2, 1824. A new agreement between the Proprietor and the Bethlehem Congregation was also drawn by de Schweinitz. It embodied an explicit declaration that the title he held to the land was a trust for the Bethlehem Congregation. These discussions, of course, had nothing to do with any questions about the soundness and validity in law of the title held by the Proprietor. No questions on this point ever arose. The Proprietor at this time was yet Bishop Jacob Van Vleck who, in 1822, seven years after his consecration to the episcopacy, had removed from Salem to Bethlehem and retired.
He finally signed this agreement and thus the main question was settled in a way that prevented a recurrence of such a situation as that which Cunow, under power of attorney from him, had produced. There was general gratification at the result of these efforts and the temper of the people was consequently such that the settlement of other troublesome questions became easier. A gradual straightening out of things that were awry ensued and an era of better feeling set in. It was with considerable satisfaction therefore that the new Admin- istrator left in March, 1825, for Europe, to attend the next General Synod and complete that part of the business which had to do with the General Wardens of the Unity. He returned to Bethlehem on
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November 30, to resume his labors. With the end of this episode a distinct period in the progress of things closed. Although the so- called exclusive system continued a number of years longer, there was a very different state of affairs at Bethlehem from that which existed prior to 1814, and the "close regime" was no longer possible.
CHAPTER XVII.
TRANSITION FROM CHURCH-VILLAGE TO BOROUGH. 1826-1845.
The solution of vexed questions, the new agreements and the revised regulations which brought controversy to an end and intro- duced a season of more cheerful activity, did not result in a fixed condition. It was merely the beginning of a more natural and orderly transition from the exclusive church-village organization to that of a town like others. Such a transition had been not only pre- pared for, but rendered inevitable by the occurrences of the preced- ing years. External influences also began to affect the situation more decidedly than before, and to produce new internal problems in addition to those which had previously appeared, making it plain to some far-sighted men that further reconstructions would have to proceed in the direction which had been taken until there remained nothing more that was unique in the system of the place and incon- gruous with its surroundings and connections. The transition was very gradual and extended over two decades. The events which marked its progress were mainly grouped about three principal epochs that produced forward movements with pauses of a few years intervening. Two of these were chiefly industrial and financial, one was educational. The most conspicuous of the former kind was at hand when the period embraced in this chapter opened.
What has been called the modern carboniferous age had dawned in the Lehigh Valley. No allusion has yet been made in these pages to the discovery and early attempts to make use of the vast treas- ures, now so familiar, that were buried in the great hills from which the Lehigh flows down. It has been reserved for the time when the revolutionizing activities which grew out of that discovery began to affect Bethlehem. The record of the advent of anthracite coal from the upper Lehigh into the world of industries, and into the body of nature's ministries to human comfort, is such an oft-written and familiar chapter in the history of the region that much space need
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BETHLEHEM FROM THE WEST, 1832 FROM BODMER'S PAINTING
1826-1845. 641
not be given to it here. A grave in the old cemetery at Bethlehem furnished a resting-place to the remains of one of the pioneers in the effort to make the public believe that those "black stones which became black diamonds," found by Philip Ginter, but known before that to be there underground, could be burned and were valuable. It was in 1792, when Bethlehem was fifty years old and the Assembly of Pennsylvania authorized John Schropp, the Warden of the place, to build the first bridge across the Lehigh, that Charles Cist-Halle graduate in medicine, former Russian army surgeon, then Phila- delphia printer and some time a Moravian-joined with Col. Jacob Weiss, of New Gnadenhuetten-later Fort Allen and finally Weiss- port-also of previous Moravian connection, who took the first specimens of the black mineral, found two years before by Ginter, to Philadelphia; Michael Hillegass-merchant, musician and United States Treasurer during the Revolution-and several others in mak- ing the first purchase of coal-land in the region of that discovery and in forming the original Lehigh Coal Company. Schropp and others who urged that the building of the bridge take precedence of other improvements agitated, were interested in those projects up in the hills, as they were in the building of roads and the develop- ment of inland navigation. The bridge was significant of their anticipations in the line of material advance, and doubtless they, like Cist, Weiss and Hillegass, dreamed dreams about the black stones far up the Lehigh; for it was only six years after Weiss took the first of them to Philadelphia that they were experimented with at the forge of William Henry, above Nazareth, one of the Moravians associated with the enterprise of 1792.
It appears that among the twenty-six men who, in 1793, subscribed to the stock of that primitive company-fifty shares of $400, the tract of coal-land taken up being 1,000 acres-seven were Moravians holding twenty of the shares. Three of these taking four shares- Schropp and two others-were Bethlehem men. Two, with a share each, lived at Nazareth. It was in 1805, the year in which Warden Schropp died, that Cist also suddenly died of apoplexy, after a tour up in the wild country, looking after those incipient interests, and in December his body was laid to rest in the old cemetery at Beth- lehem, where his daughters lived and, like their mother in Philadel- phia, were Moravians. Hillegass had died the previous year and Weiss, whose son became prominently connected with the mining of anthracite after men had ceased to declare in their haste that it
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
was worthless, was the only one of those leading three who lived to see their faith vindicated. The next year after Cist's death the first of the oft-described "arks"-floating coal-bins that looked a little like the coal cars of later years-was poled down the Lehigh past Bethlehem with a load of the "stone coal" which the persistent be- lievers in it begged men at Philadelphia to try. Discouragement fol- lowed, but in 1813 the effort was hopefully revived, and on August 3, a more imposing ark with twenty-four tons passed under the Beth- lehem bridge on its way down stream to the sea-board. In 1815 it was being sold at Bethlehem by C. G. Paulus, acting as agent to introduce it. That was the beginning of coal-yards at Bethlehem. Then in 1819, when those enterprising men, Erskine Hazard, Josiah White, George F. A. Hauto, and their associates of the Lehigh Navigation Company, leased the land of that first coal mining com- pany, and vigorous operations were commenced, with Hauto on the ground superintending them and even experimenting with a "steam wagon" as a substitute for oxen to draw the product from the mines -precursor of the locomotives that would, after the lapse of some more years, daily bring thousands of tons thundering down the valley-men at Bethlehem who were able and willing to look about them and out into the future, were stirred by the thought of what it might all mean for their town, by and by.
No wonder that the trammels in which Administrator Cunow was then yet trying to keep them, with their land held stubbornly in his clutch, were becoming intolerable, as the fever of enterprise rose with each new report of progress in those efforts up the river. The next year (1820), when the Navigation Company of 1798 and the Coal Company of 1792 were combined as the Lehigh Navigation and Coal Company-finally called the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Com- pany and so incorporated in 1822-the results appeared in a whole fleet of arks passing Bethlehem with hundreds of tons of the valu- able fuel which men were now learning how to burn; and then they became a familiar sight. They were significant, in that transition time, of a transition also in the associations of the beautiful Lehigh at Bethlehem from the sentimental to the utilitarian. The canal- building period had also opened in the country to enlarge the visions of men who were interested in business. The Schuylkill canal was completed in 1825, followed, soon after, by the opening of the Union canal and the great Erie canal, while the grand scheme of transpor- tation from Philadelphia to Pittsburg by means of the long Penn- sylvania canal was being rapidly pushed forward with a result, in
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1831, of two hundred and ninety-two miles of canal and a hundred and twenty-six miles of railroad. The Lehigh Valley was at the front in this kind of enterprise. With the opening of the anthracite collieries of the upper Lehigh, nine miles of railroad, for the steam wagon at the mines, and the first miles of slack-water navigation were put into operation at Mauch Chunk before the end of 1826. Then followed naturally the rapid extension of the canal all the way to Easton, to supersede the less satisfactory river navigation.
In the summer of 1827, a sensation was created at quiet Bethlehem by preparations for work at the canal. Excavations in the vicinity were commenced in August. On June 2, 1829, the water was first turned into the section that passes the town and on June 10, the first two boats loaded with coal passed down from Mauch Chunk. Very soon a packet boat carrying passengers was running. The name of the first seems to have been the "Swan." The diary of Bethlehem mentions the arrival of a military company from Philadelphia, on June 24, 1829, with the statement that they proceeded to Easton on the canal-boat. The first effect at Bethlehem was local encroachment and necessary changes where the cut was made. It is to be regretted that the meagre references do not present a fuller picture of altera- tions in the topography. One building that had to be removed was the laundry of the Young Ladies' Seminary. The new one was finished early in September, just before the large force of diggers invaded the locality. Havoc was also wrought with the fertile acres between the Monocacy and the Lehigh which had been under tillage as the "boarding-school fields." It was then decided by the authori- ties to abandon raising grain on that section of school land. Another change made necessary was in the location of a business site. Owen Rice, who in 1822 had built the grist-mill up the Monocacy, which for many years has been a paint-mill, had a ware-house for grain, flour and feed combined with a cooper shop, near the river. It was rendered useless for him by the building of the canal, and was, after that time, occupied for other purposes. In the summer of 1829, he purchased, to use instead of it, for the sum of $1,000, the abandoned brewery property of the former Brethren's House Diacony, the building in which, in the spring of 1838, Copeland Boyd established a paper-mill-its site being the first ground within the limits of Bethlehem deeded away in fee simple, as a necessity to the owner in negotiating for water-power from the canal-and which, after this industry ceased, served as a barrel factory for the Pennsylvania and Lehigh Zinc
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Company and, at last, as a foundry-facing mill, until it was consumed by fire, March 15, 1885. It occupied the site of the present Diamond Roller Mill on the south canal bank at the Main Street bridge. The course of the Monocacy was also artificially altered somewhat, to facilitate the construction of the aqueduct, and some changes were required at the saw-mill. Bridges, of course, had to be built across the canal; one at the Main Street entrance to the town from the river bridge, and a foot-bridge leading over to the saw-mill from the miller's house, ensconced at the foot of the bluff just east of the present New Street bridge, overlooking the old-time boat-yard-a comfortable and pleasant abode, as later improved, until the con- struction of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad made life a burden to the occupants. Not only the grain fields of the lowland, where once the Friedenshuetten of the exiled Indian converts from persecuting New York stood, but many a fine tree and familiar path, with embowered nooks here and there, had to be sacrificed at the foot of Bethlehem's hill; and the pitiless ravages of industry upon the picturesque, which have never ceased along the course of the Lehigh River, had fairly set in. The canal itself added some pretty landscape features, after it became old, which partly compensated for those which it destroyed, but at first the new ditch must have been a sight far from attractive, in beholding which the thought of increased business and all that imagination could picture as desir- able, following in the wake of this, had to be kept constantly in mind to reconcile many a Bethlehemite to the innovation.
Now and then an incident in connection with the construction of the canal is mentioned in the records of Bethlehem, several of them of a pathetic nature. Thus, on January 8, 1828, one of the workmen who approached a fuse which he supposed had gone out, was sud- denly blown into the air by the blast and hurled into the river. During August and September of that year, when the weather was excessively warm, the vast quantity of up-turned earth produced an epidemic of fever. A foreman on the canal, a certain Alvin Newton from Connecticut, died on August 7; his wife followed him on Sep- tember 14, and their infant daughter on September 28. They were all interred in the row along the Market street border of the Beth- lehem Cemetery. There is a comment in the diary on the general good behavior of the workmen, and gratification is expressed that no disturbance was occasioned by the large number of them who attended the Christmas services. The record at the close of 1829 reveals also some of the fears and fancies of the people, in the remark
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that no harm had come from stagnant water in the canal because the water was kept in motion, and that there had been no diminution in the river when the canal was filled.
Sundry buildings were soon erected along the canal, and in 1830 the cluster received the name South Bethlehem. This name was applied to that portion of the present West Bethlehem which lies between the Monocacy and the Lehigh from the western end of Vineyard Street, where Lehigh Avenue-formerly Canal Street,- runs into it, to the saw-mill eastward.
Industries were soon undertaken, such as the sale of lumber and coal by Timothy Weiss, and the beginning of more extensive oper- ations in that line was made by Henry G. Guetter, joined later by others. They laid the foundations of the well-known business with which subsequently the names Borhek, Knauss and Miksch became associated. Some even predicted that there the business center would be in future years. The most conspicuous building that arose was Bethlehem's third hotel, the Anchor Hotel, first kept by Captain Henry Woehler, mentioned in the previous chapter-afterwards for a while the "South Bethlehem House"-the later widely-known Fetter House, replaced a few years ago by the present commodious building with the old name retained. There the old soldier who fought at Waterloo and, amid the more peaceful pursuits of his later life, be- came the first Captain of the Bethlehem Guards who faced no foes, unless possibly the shades of those non-combatant fathers who had shunned the drill-ground on battalion day, even when there was no war, and paid their fines, had the honor of entertaining for some weeks a foreign guest of rank, Maximilian Prince of Wied, traveling as Herr von Brennberg. Pleased with the place, its surroundings and its people, he tarried long and added materially to his collection of American Naturalien. He also made sketches of scenes in the vicinity. Like earlier famous travelers he wrote about Bethlehem in his published narative.1
He describes the river, the hills and the flora of the neighborhood much in the style of Dr. Schoepf, quoted in a previous chapter, and comments on the attractive features of Bethlehem as well as on its material prospects at that time. Referring to people he met, he says
I Maximilian Prince of Wied-Travels in North America, translated from the German by H. Evans Lloyd, London, 1843. The picture of Calypso Island, on which he passed many hours-typical of the primitive beauty of Bethlehem's surroundings-given in this volume, is a reproduction of the sketch made by John Bodmar, the artist, who accompanied him.
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"I became acquainted with the Directors of this colony, Mr. Von Schweinitz, well-known in the literary world as a distinguished bot- anist; Mr. Anders, the Bishop and the Rev. Mr. Seidel. All these gentlemen received me in a very friendly manner, and Mr. Seidel, in particular, showed me much kindness. Dr. Saynisch lives in the same house with me and I derived great benefit from his knowledge of the country." Referring to his excursions in the neighborhood in search of specimens he says: "The Rev. Mr. Seidel, who had a good library and a taste for the study of nature, had the kindness to provide us with the necessary literary assistance. We lived here very agreeably in the society of well-informed men and fellow-country- men, and our residence at the extremity of the place, close to the woods and fields, afforded us the most favorable opportunity for our researches and labors; and our landlord, Mr. Woehler, from West- phalia, did everything in his power to assist us in our occupations."
The broadening horizon, perceptible at Bethlehem at the period introduced in this chapter, was not merely in the realm of material business. It appears also in the growing spirit of American citizen- ship supplanting the idea of being "a peculiar people," self-centered and ruled in thought and practice only from within, which was foster- ed by the regime of the preceding several decades. The authorities of the village no longer deprecated, as unsuitable and tried to sup- press such things as patriotic demonstrations, but encouraged and led off in them, in so far as they were of a character consistent with good order and Christian decorum. They no longer merely mourned over Fourth of July ebullitions, as evidences of degeneracy, but, by a more liberal and rational course, they held unseemly excesses in check more successfully than had previously been done by the vain attempt at stern repression. They even tolerated shooting. On July 4, 1826, an elaborate celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was ushered in by a salute of fifty guns, in accord- ance with a resolution of the Congregation Council. At the jubilee services the church was elaborately decorated, a feature being fifty large boquets of flowers artistically placed. The best music of that highly musical period was rendered. The Rev. C. F. Seidel preached in German in the forenoon, the Rev. L. D. deSchweinitz delivered an English oration in the afternoon and a special celebration, mainly of a musical character, took place at the Young Ladies' Seminary in the evening. On that memorable day, the second and third Presi- dents of the United States, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both signers of the Declaration of Independence, departed this life, and
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on August 6, memorial services were held at Bethlehem, in accord- ance with the proclamation of the President of that time, John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams. Solemn chorals, as at the death of a member of the Church, were played by the trombonists at six o'clock. After the bell had been tolled half an hour, a German service with preaching by Seidel was held at half past ten. A similar service took place in English at three o'clock, when de Schweinitz preached, and in the evening there was a rendition of Mozart's requiem mass. It was in that same summer of 1826, that a very handsome piece of embroidery, executed by pupils of the Young Ladies' Seminary, after being exhibited at the closing exercises on July 28, was sent to Mrs. Adams, wife of the President, who received it with pleasure and courteously acknowledged it.
On July 4, 1829, the interests of an organization which for some years commanded wide attention and was regarded as of great im- portance by many throughout the country, but is now almost for- gotten, were first presented at Bethlehem, where it met a cordial response and where, for a number of years, collections in aid of its objects were annually taken on the Fourth of July, or the nearest convenient day, in accordance with the appeal and suggestion of its officers to the Christian public. This was the American Coloniza- tion Society, sometimes called also the African Colonization Society, which came into existence in December, 1816, with its headquarters at the National Capital and with men like Bushrod Washington, Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke, General Jackson and others of eminence among its early officers and promoters. Numerous state auxiliaries were formed later. Its purpose was to solve the negro problem in the United States by deportation and colonization on the west coast of Africa, where the first colony, Monrovia, in Liberia, was founded in 1820; and by means of such colonies to promote philanthropy in efforts to break the slave trade and to spread civilization and religion in that region. In 1837, the State Society of Pennsylvania, which had established a colony at Bassa Cove, opened correspondence with the Moravian authorities in reference to securing reliable Christian negroes from the mis- sions of the Church in the West Indies as assistant missionaries, teachers and industrial leaders at those African stations on the dark coast where, a hundred years before, the Moravian Church had made a first attempt through the agency of a converted native to found missions. Strangely enough, the extreme abolitionists and the slave-traders joined from opposite ends in combating this
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scheme, which was eventually abandoned as not practicable, so far as its purpose in connection with the racial and social problem was concerned which the United States, by fostering the institution of slavery, had imposed upon itself and with which the Nation is yet struggling. The interest manifested at Bethlehem in the experi- ment, so long as it was persevered in, caused the Fourth of July collection for the support of this object, with occasional addresses in its interest, to be continued as a feature of the annual routine. The suggestive associations of this enterprise were quickened by such occasions as the celebration, in 1832, of the centennial anniver- sary of the beginning of Moravian missions among the negro slaves of the West Indies, which visibly increased the waning missionary zeal ·at Bethlehem, as did also the celebration of the fiftieth anni- versary of the Society for Propagating the Gospel. An interesting tangible evidence appeared several years later.
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