USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania : from its first beginnings to the present time, including chapters of newly-discovered early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume IV > Part 34
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Owing to the limited area of the city and the compactness of building within these limits, the new venture, like its predecessors, early became a financial success and was pointed to in various parts of the country as one of the few sys- tems where steam for heating purposes could be successfully carried in especially constructed piping beneath the surface of streets of a municipality.
It is not surprising that the eyes of capitalists were soon turned in the direction of Wilkes-Barré with a purpose in view of amalgamating all of these public utilities into one corporation and under one directing liead.
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The merger of the two Gas Companies proved the forerunner of what was to follow. Shortly after this preliminary consolidation was effected in 1898 the same local financial interests which had acquired a controlling interest in the Gas company of Luzerne County, began purchasing what securities were available of the Electric Light Company, intending to remove a new and more dangerous competitor from serious encroachment in the lighting field.
So successful was the strategy of these purchases that a few years later it became known that a majority interest in the light company had changed hands and that a movement was on foot looking to the formation of a holdings corporation in which would be vested the entire control of franchises in the community pertaining to its supply of both gas and electricity.
The organization of the Wilkes-Barre Gas and Electric Company did not follow immediately In fact its charter bore date of December 15, 1904, and, in order to secure adequate capital for purposes of consolidation, as well as to carry into effect various matters of enlargement and improvement, outside capital was given opportunity to seek investment in the undertaking. This came forward readily, the entire capital stock of $1,500,000 being quickly sub- scribed and bonds to an amount of $3,000,000 finding a ready market as their proceeds were needed for improvements.
Five years later, capitalists throughout the country found it profitable to carry the amalgamation of community public utilities to a point of assembling under one management light, heat, power and heating corporations, including in many cases local transportation companies in the merger. The consolidation of such interests of one community were linked up in a huge holdings company with those of other communities. Often the project carried with it the central- ization of power generation for the whole in one favorably situated locality. The term "super power" system has come into use more recently as typifying such centralization of production.
In Wilkes-Barré, and perhaps fortunately for all concerned, the community transportation problem has been kept separate and apart from other utilities in point of financing and management as will later be mentioned.
On April 16, 1910, it was announced that the Susquehanna Railway, Light and Power company had not only purchased a majority control of the original gas, electric and steam heating properties whose histories have been previously traced, but had absorbed similar operating companies in suburban communities.
The concerns consolidated were the Wilkes-Barre Gas & Electric Co., the Wilkes-Barre Steam Heat Co., the Anthracite Light, Heat & Power Co., which was organized to furnish light in Hanover Township, and the Standard Electric Co., which supplied light in Parsons, Miner's Mills and Plains Township, including Plainsville, Hudson and Midvale.
In order to embrace within its title the manifold objects of its creation, as well as permit a further issue of securities, the names of all the original com- panies disappeared, and the local organization became known inerely as the Wilkes-Barré Company, which name it still employs.
The first officers and directors of the combination were the following: President William H. Conyngham of Wilkes-Barré; vice president, George Bullock of New York; treasurer, J. N. Thompson of Wilkes-Barré; secretary
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and assistant treasurer, A. L. Minor of New York; assistant secretary, Henry Morgan of New York; manager, E. A. Wakeman.
The directors were William H. Conyngham, J. O. Thompson, Gen. C. Bow Dougherty, C. W. Laycock and Philip S. Rice of Wilkes-Barré; George Bullock, Henry Morgan and S. J. Dill of New York City; J. S. Jenks, Jr., R. E. Griscom and Howard S. Graham of Philadelphia.
The year 1912 brought about still another change in ownership of Wilkes- Barré's utility merger when the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company sue- ceeded to all the holdings of its predecessor within the state of Pennsylvania. With E. A. Wakeman in charge of the local constituent company of this corpor- ation, it has continued in business until the time of this writing (1925).
While the various ramifications of its original public utilities have been carried down to present times, it is now necessary to again revert to the period of their original incorporation in order that the thread of this Chapter may be resumed and the sequence of events recorded.
Activities as to the formation of local utilities corporations were, as might be surmised, reflected in other phases of community life. Coal operators laid aside many differences of opinion and of policy and organized the Operators Association in the early fifties, meeting twice a month at Steele's Hotel to compose their differences and attempt to stabilize their markets. This was the first organ- ized body of either owners or miners to receive mention in the local prints. There were those who, in 1852, felt that instead of its hitherto weekly publica- tions, Northeastern Pennsylvania was ripe for a daily newspaper, whose columns might carry to readers late information of the world particularly in relation to coal, as it filtered through by telegraph. E. B. Collins and Halsey Brower made the initial experiment in this direction, naming their small publication the Daily Telegraph.
It survived only a few months, owing to a lack of sufficient capital; then perished, unhonored and unsung. In 1869, another attempt was made to es- tablish a daily. In that year Messers Hibbs and Linn issued a daily edition of their weekly, the Luzerne Union under the title of the Daily Union. This, like its predecessor, was doomed to failure. It might be remarked, although not pertaining to the period of this Chapter, that it remained for William P. Miner, in rebuilding and equipping the plant of the Record of the Times after the West Market Street fire of 1867, to install the first steam driven press the community had seen. This led him into the daily field and since 1870, his publication, now the Wilkes-Barre Record, has enjoyed a continuous and successful existence as a daily publication.
Search through the files of publications and reference to Borough minutes give the historian but few "leads" in the direction of general events in the decade before the Civil War. Public finances, then, as now, a matter of concern, afford an interesting reflection in that the Borough's statement, published May 7, 1851, carries an item of $1,189.32 as the municipality's total indebtedness and notes the fact that "of a total rental of the market house of $75.00, the sum of $2,125 has been collected, the balance lost." In 1856, as a prelude to Spring elections, the "ins" replied to criticisms of the "outs" through the Record of the Times of January 23rd as follows:
"The Community feel a great anxiety to know the state of the Borough accounts. So far as we can gather, they are these: In orders there are out, about twenty-three to twenty-five hundred dollars; in bonds about twenty-five hundred more, making the debt of the Boro. some
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five thousand dollars. In 1851 the debt was near eleven thousand dollars, so that within a few years, six thousand of it has been liquidated. This will account for the great amount of taxes paid in. From 1849 the accounts have been kept clear and plain so that the books show the affairs from that time, as clear as the merchant's ledger shows his accounts. The present Town Council are endeavoring to get and keep matters straight. The orders that are now out are principally in the hands of those who hold large amounts of them. If the Council are paying the current expenses, and applying near a thousand dollars a year towards wiping out the debt, this looks like a proper management of the Boro' affairs. All will be glad to hear that such is the case."
The year 1855 brought some concern to Wilkes-Barré on account of the noticeable loss of sections of the River Commnon aggregating nearly an acre in extent. The five years preceding this time had been singularly free from floods, hence severe river currents did not enter into the discussion. As successive subsidences occurred above and below the piers of the Market Street bridge, and as these piers themselves had given much trouble owing to insecure found- ations, a general alarm was felt on the score of quicksands which writers pointed out might underlay the wide plain upon which the Borough stood and whose weakening effect on the clay strata above might cause the washing away of the whole plain under certain abnormal conditions of high water. Indeed, there were those alarmists who opposed raising the road over the Kingston flats on the ground that the work when completed, would act as a dyke, throwing a stiff cross current against the Wilkes-Barré bank, thus completing the work of de- struction. Town Clerk E. B. Harvey met the situation in a practical manner. From the west bank he secured a quantity of brush and rocks. The brush being distributed along the affected shore and weighted down by means of a stratum of stones, it was found that the improvised abattis prevented much further incursion of current until the bank could be rip-rapped at a much later time.
To the stranger who has published his reflections on Wilkes-Barré from time to time, this History has been indebted for cross section views of the com- munity and once again we draw upon his observations for a side light on life as he found it in pre-war years. An unnamed contributor to the North American and U. S. Gazette of Philadelphia thus summarizes his views in the issue of that publication dated January 9, 1856:
"Wilkes-Barre, Dec. 23, 1855.
"If a low temperature indicates salubrity, Wilkes-Barre must be eminently healthful in the winter, for, as a shivering individual said to me, one of these sharp mornings, as we were looking at the thermometer-'The mercury don't seem to stop the weather much in these parts.' But the air is invigorating, the sky clear, the river blue and placid, not yet locked by ice, abundant fires in ample grates glow hospitably, venison prevails, and general good cheer, good health, and good temper indicate fine natural advantages and material prosperity.
"The political life of Wilkes-Barre is very active, and is felt in the State. A number of distinguished men belong to the valley, whose influence is manifest in many directions. Able lawyers abound here, and their social antidote, clergymen, are devoted and efficient. Tobacco seems to be an institution, if one may judge by the ardent patronage which it receives from old and young. More the pity that the manly vigor incident to so fine a climate should be impaired by so bad a habit.
"I hear, 'by the hearing of the ear,' that excellent society is found in the place; that, socially, the people do not forget their Puritan lineage; nor are they unmindful of their history and tra- ditions, but that they vindicate the one by intelligence, and commemorate the other by hospi- tality; but ' prospecting' for coal through mountain streams and wild ravines, down perpendicular shafts hundreds of feet towards Pluto, or literally, by Mr. Gray's tunnell, into the dubious abodes of subterannean workers are, perhaps, not the conditions most favorable to participation in ele- gant social life. One experiences attitudes, makes sudden explorations into places not polite, followed by inconvenient discoveries, and, by and by returns with the marks of the contest, an insatiate appetite and a healthful weariness not suited to the drawing room.
"At the hotel the greatest diversity may be found, men of every calibre and condition- people who have lands to sell, and people who wish to buy lands, and people who have neither and do neither, but who are ubiquitous and accommodating. These later gentlemen deserve notice. To supply you with any piece of land in the valley Wyoming is their heritage! Every man's
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tract is at their disposal. They have maps and charts, and diagrams, and contracts, and 'miner's' reports, and a list of 'projected improvements' for each tract, all of which cannot fail to convince you that the value of each lot is in due proportion to their anticipated brokerage!
"Here do congregate capitalists from the great cities-the shrewd New Yorker and the cautious Philadelphian, looking for investments, safer and better than sharing at 114 per month and here they may be found; here, also, come citizens without capital, but in search of it, and hither are coming disappointed operators from less favored regions. to renew their fortunes by more remunerative labor on deeper and surer veins-and here they may do it. And here are com- ing gentlemen with 'claims upon coal,' the Supreme Court having decided that the surface is 'one estate,' the minerals another, and the conveyance of one does not imply the alienation of the other. Formerly it was supposed if a man bought land, his title went down to the other side, and upward to the limit of vision; but we are wiser now, and one must look to the 'hidden things' as well as to the visible. Here also, come the 'old settlers' to submit their patrimony to the scrutiny of strangers, consoling themselves for the loss of the paternal acres by the convenient reflection that 'things are not as they used to be.'
"A melancholy feeling possessed me, in view of this transition, and I resolved that, should any portion become the lot of my inheritance, it should not be divested of its historic associations, but in the security of the present should be remembered the dangers of the past, and the hum of industry should become but a musical substitute for the clash of arms. So reflecting and re- volving, I left the hotel, to gather and chronicle the doings of our citizens in the valley."
However placidly life was described in that year, the growing anthracite business was plunged into a position of unemployment of both capital and labor by one of those recurrent periods of hard times which swept the entire country in 1857. Like most of its predecessors, this wave of business disorder followed hard upon a distrust of the national currency system and an unsettlement of public confidence. It proved the first widespread local complaint of lack of employment that the present writer can discover and emphasized to a marked degree, the dependence the community was beginning to feel upon what was even then its major industry. In spite of business depression, the general morals of the community seem to have been on a highly satisfactory plane. On March 18, 1857, editorial mention of the situation ran along this line:
"From January 25 to February 16, our police were idle. The terrors of the law as admin- istered by Chief (E. B.) Harvey and his aids, seem to have worked wonders in the way of improve- ment in our Borough."
Recovery from the general business depression is evidenced by numerous news items of 1858, and in June of that year the Borough council was requested by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association to assist in securing funds from nation wide sources in order to take over the home and grounds of the Washington estate. The council in turn appointed Gen. William S. Ross", chairman; E. B. Harvey, secretary, and Nathaniel Rutter, solicitor of a local association which purposed to help in the undertaking. As was the case in connection with the erection of the Wyoming Monument, a narrative on which appears in the fol- lowing Chapter, the association composed exclusively of men made but little headway in the task. In March, 1859, Mrs. M. L. Bowman of Wilkes-Barré was appointed "Lady Manager of Luzerne County of the Ladies Mount Vernon Association" and through her efforts the sum of one hundred sixty dollars, secured in small subscriptions and forwarded in May, composed the contribution of the community to perpetuate the national shrine along the Potomac which is now internationally revered.
An agitation as to the improvement of streets of the Borough, especially relating to the unkempt condition of the Public Square and its approaches,
*The following biography of Gen. William Sterling Ross, from the pen of Col. H. B. Wright, was read before the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society at its meeting August 3, 1868:
WILLIAM STERLING ROSS was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on the 11th day of August, 1802. He died on the 11th day of July, 1868, lacking just one month of being sixty-six years of age. His birth and death occurred in the same room; the southwest part of the Ross mansion-erected of oak materials, frame and clapboards, by Timothy Pickering. in the year 1787. He came into the world at an eventful and interesting period in the history of the Wyoming valley. The bitter and vindictive conflict between the Pennsylvania and Connecticut claimants, in which his father had borne
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so conspicuous a part, had culminated; peace had succeeded the desperate strife which at times was marked with blood. The supreme jurisdiction of Pennsylvania was established upon a firm basis, and the Connecticut settler yielded his resistance upon the confirmation of his title by the State, and general quiet prevailed throughout the Wyoming valley for the first time during the third of a century.
The settlers upon the broad banks of the Susquehanna, for thirty years previous to this, had known but few com- forts. The Revolution had done its work in the depopulation of more than half its fighting men; everywhere were visible its blackened and charred monuments. The inroads, before and long after the colonial war, of the savages compelled the hardy pioneer to place sentinels around the field while he was engaged in planting and gathering his crops, and to recline upon his trusty rifle at night. He must be ready at all hours to answer the alarm of battle; to these add the troubles growing out of the angry conflicts among the Pennsyl- vania and Connecticut people, and it inade almost a constant scene of dis- cord and war. It was indeed the mili- tary, if not the chivalrous age of Wyo- ming. The tradition of these exciting events, heightened by the narration of them by the men who had passed through them, made a deep impres- sion upon the young.
The father of the subject of this biographical notice, General William Ross, had participated in many of these scenes. Born in New London. Connecticut, in 1761, he emigrated with his father to the valley about 1775. Of too tender an age to carry a musket at "the massacre," he joined the retreating fugitives after that dis- astrous day, to return again to re- newed scenes of anarchy and discord. With the surrender of the sword of Cornwallis peace succeeded the Revolutionary strife, but not in Wyo- mning. The Indian border feud, and the question whether Pennsylvania or Connecticut should rule, still agitated the valley of Wyoming. Timothy Pickering, a New England man by birth, clothed with official power by the State, and invested with all the county offices, was sent here to pacify and heal up the local strife. It only aggravated the Connecticut settlers; they invaded his home, took him a prisoner by night and carried him away captive. He was rescued by General, then Captain, William Ross, at the head of a force of State militia, who received a serious wound in the struggle. He was rewarded by the State Executive Committee, who also presented him with a sword, upon the scabbard of which is the following in- scription:
"CAPT. WM. Ross :- The S. E. Council present this mark of their approbation acquired by your firm- ness in support of the laws of the Commonwealth on the 4th of July, 1788.
"C. BIDDLE, Secretary."
The mission of Mr. Pickering having ended, he was called into THE HON. WILLIAM STERLING ROSS Washington's cabinet, and on the 9th of January, 1796, for the consideration of £2,600-Pennsylvania currency-he conveyed his real estate in this place and vicinity to William Ross.
Stirring scenes were these truly which preceded the birth of the subject of our notice. As the son of a man of wealth he inherited privileges which but a few at that early period in the valley possessed. Having passed the pre- paratory schools, he entered and was graduated at the College of New Jersey. His inclination, however, did not lead to a learned profession. The pursuit of agriculture was his theme. In this he took great pride, and in it he excelled. He was a practical farmer-no man better understood its detail and theory-and no man produced better crops. And this was his chief occupation during a long and prosperous life, an occupation suited to his mind, and one which con- duced to his happiness and enjoyment.
At an early period of his life he conceived a fancy for military affairs. It was natural that this could be; the son of a military officer, born and educated at a time when the stirring events of a long continued, eventful and success- ful war were the household words of a united, happy people. He entered into the subject with a will, passed through all the official grades, from that of captain of volunteers to that of brigadier. For a period of thirty years General Ross was the acknowledged head of the volunteer system of this county. In this employment and the pursuit of mili- tary knowledge he took an especial delight, and his word in military affairs was ever regarded as authority. At his drills he always wore the sword which the executive council of Pennsylvania had presented to his father as a reward of merit. And there are few of the men in this county who were interested in military matters during the last forty years that have not often seen and (those of them now living) would not recognize this sword as an old and honorable acquaintance.
General Ross possessed a sound and discriminating mind; evinced fully in the discharge of the numerous and responsible positions with which he was intrusted by the public. And whether on the judicial bench, in the legislative hall or in the council chamber, he exhibited ever the same strong common sense view of the varied subjects which the particular place presented. His long continuance as director in the various municipal, charitable and business corpor- ations of the town showed that the public appreciated the man, and had great confidence in his ability, judgment and integrity. He was commissioned associate judge of the courts of the county in 1830, as the successor of Hon. Jesse Fell, which he retained until 1839-the time of the adoption of the amended constitution of the State. The duties of this office were discharged with much credit to himself, and the entire approbation of the bar and community at large. For a long succession of years he was a member of the borough council, and generally its presiding officer. Quite as long he was a director and general manager of the Easton and Wilkes-Barre Turnpike Company, down to 1840 the only great thoroughfare leading to the seaboard from the Susquehanna east. He was for many years a director in the Wyoming Bank, and at the time of his death the president; he was also the president of the Wyoming Insurance Company at his decease, and was also a director in the following corporations. The Wilkes-Barre Water Company, the Wilkes-Barre Bridge Company, the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, and the Home for Friendless
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strikes the casual reader of local publications of 1860 as the most important local question then before the public. But that the community possessed a prosperous appearance, even in its lack of surfaced highways, must have been apparent, at least to a newsgatherer of Scranton, forced to attend court in the then recently completed new court house on the Square. Just how much of honest criticism was mixed with a growing sense of rivalry between the centers of trade of the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valleys may be left to the reader of the following which appeared in the Scranton Republican of June 20, 1860:
"One thing is certain. The curse of Wilkesbarre is wealth. In the heart of a valley un- surpassed for its fertility as well as its beauty, with boundless resources of coal and facilities for manufacture not excelled by any inland town of the State, it might and ought to have been, an extensive city-the grand business center of Northern Pennsylvania. But its shortcomings are owing to the want of energy and public spirit belonging to extensive wealth. One large-minded, go-ahead, public spirited man is a perpetual stimulus and encouragement to his neighborhood, ever calling upon them to emulate his example, while one narrow, penny grinding capitalist is a social upais, scattering meanness, illiberality, timidity and torper into every channel of in- dustry."
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