Cambria County Pioneers, 1910, by James L. Swank, Cambria County, PA - Revelations of an Old Ledger Copyright 2004. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cambria/ ________________________________________________ CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS HON. CYRUS L. PERSHING A Collection of Brief Biographical and other Sketches Relating to the Early History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania. by JAMES M. SWANK PHILADELPHIA: No. 261 SOUTH FOURTH STREET, 1910. REVELATIONS OF AN OLD LEDGER. 23 REVELATIONS OF AN OLD LEDGER. From the Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Association for June 1, 1896. JOHNSTOWN has had three periods of transportation development - the first embracing the flatboat era from about 1800 to 1830; the second beginning with the completion of the Pennsylvania Canal to Johnstown in 1830 and extending to the completion of the Pennsylvania Railroad to Pittsburgh in 1852; and the third beginning with the completion of the Pennsylvania Railroad and extending to the present time. The iron industry of Johnstown has also had three periods of development - the first embracing Cambria forge at Johnstown and Shade furnace, Shade forge, and Mary Ann forge in Somerset county near Johnstown, all of which were built between 1808 and 1820; the second, a ten-year period, embracing Cambria, Ben's Creek, Mill Creek, Mount Vernon, and Somerset furnaces, built from 1842 to 1846 - Mount Vernon in Johnstown and the other furnaces only a few miles away; and the third beginning with the organization of the Cambria Iron Company in 1852 and coming down to the present time. Johnstown owes its start as an industrial and commercial centre to the fact that its location at the head of flat-boat navigation on the Conemaugh furnished an outlet for the iron of the Juniata valley at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There was more water in the Conemaugh and its tributaries in those years than there is now. Johnstown was an iron town before Pittsburgh had made a pound of iron. The following details deal exclusively with the period of flatboat transportation and with the first period of the iron industry of Johnstown. For the facts that we shall present we are in part indebted to an old ledger which has recently come into our possession and which escaped the destruction of the Johns- 24 CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS. town flood in 1889. The ledger contains accounts of sales made and of credits entered by Isaac Proctor, a merchant of Johnstown in the early years of the nineteenth century, and a record of other business transactions by Mr. Proctor. His store was located on Main street, immediately opposite the site of the First Presbyterian church. Isaac Proctor was a native of Bedford county, Pennsylvania. He settled at Johnstown, "at the forks of the Conemaugh," when it was a mere hamlet of log houses, soon after 1800, in which year the town was "laid out" by Joseph Johns, a Swiss Mennonite, into streets and alleys, building lots, public squares, and other reservations. But the name that was then officially given to the new town was Conemaugh and not Johnstown, the latter name being substituted for the former in 1834. We have before us a letter dated at Conemaugh on April 27, 1832. Settlements had been made at Johnstown before 1800 by German and Swiss farmers. For a number of years after 1800 the town was almost entirely inhabited by people of German and Swiss origin. Isaac Proctor was not only a country merchant but he was also the owner of a warehouse on the north bank of Stony creek, below Franklin street, in Johnstown, which was maintained for the express purpose of receiving and storing bar iron from the forges of the Juniata valley, which bar iron was hauled to Johnstown over the Frankstown Road and thence shipped in flatboats to Pittsburgh by way of the Conemaugh, Kiskiminitas, and Allegheny rivers. There were other warehouses near that of Isaac Proctor which were maintained for precisely the same purpose. The flatboats were built at Johnstown or at points farther up the Stony creek and as far south as the mouth of Ben's creek, three miles away. A large business was done far into the nineteenth century in the shipment of Juniata iron by flatboats from Johnstown. At first and for many years these shipments embraced only bar iron, but subsequently and down to the opening of the Pennsylvania Canal to Johnstown late in 1830 they embraced also blooms and pig iron, all made with charcoal. As the navigation of the streams mentioned was as yet wholly unimproved ship- REVELATIONS OF AN OLD LEDGER. 25 ments could only be made during high water, and even then experienced pilots were needed to prevent the boats from going to pieces on the rocks and riffles in which the Conemaugh river particularly abounded. Occasionally a boat was wrecked. In one disaster at Richards' Falls two lives were lost. Much of the hauling over the Frankstown Road was done on sleds in the winter, and February and March, when the spring break-up took place, were favorite months for sending the flatboats to Pittsburgh, one hundred miles away. The boats were sold at Pittsburgh and the crews walked home. Keel boats were also used on the Conemaugh and Kiskiminitas rivers, but they were used chiefly in the salt trade, the Conemaugh salt works beginning about forty miles west of Johnstown. The first salt works on the Conemaugh date from about 1814. In A. J. Hite's Hand Book of Johnstown, printed in 1856, it is stated that the first keel boat built at Johnstown was built by Isaac Proctor in 1816. Keel boats, which passed from the Conemaugh and Kiskiminitas into the Allegheny, brought return cargoes from Pittsburgh. The merchandise accounts in Mr. Proctor's ledger are chiefly for the years 1808 and 1809, occasional entries coming down as late as 1810, 1811, and 1812. The warehouse accounts are for the years 1816, 1817, and 1818. As is usual in ledger accounts the prices of merchandise are not often given. It is, however, very remarkable that all the merchandise accounts are kept in pounds, shillings, and pence. The pound character (£) is used. Dollars and cents are no-where mentioned, although our Federal coinage was authorized in 1792 and silver dollars were coined as early as 1794. The dollar mark ($) does not appear in any of the merchandise accounts. That business should have been transacted in British or colonial currency in an interior town in Pennsylvania as late as 1812 is a discovery for which we were not prepared. We can not understand why the British system of computing values was continued in that interior town so long, nor is any light thrown upon the value of a pound in dollars and cents at Johnstown in 1812, or upon the forms of currency that were used when payments were made in "cash." John Holliday closed his account 26 CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS. with Mr. Proctor in June, 1811, when he is credited with a payment of £32 16s. 4d. in "cash;" in January, 1811, Patrick Dempsey closed his account by giving his note for £6 10s. 3d.; in 1812 William Fulford closed his account by giving his note for £2 6s. 1d.; and in the same year John Grosenickle closed his account by giving his note for £1 1s. 2d. In 1808 John Grosenickle is credited with £1 11s. 9d. for hauling a load of maple sugar to Bedford. There are other entries in the same denominations. Another revelation of this old ledger is just as remarkable as the use of pounds, shillings, and pence until 1812. The warehouse accounts of bar iron received and shipped in 1816, 1817, and 1818 are kept in tons, hundredweights, quarters, and pounds, the ton representing 2,240 pounds, the hundredweight 112 pounds, and the quarter 28 pounds. The teamsters who hauled bar iron over the Frankstown Road are credited in tons, hundredweights, quarters, and pounds, and shipments to Pittsburgh are entered in the same terms. In ordinary commercial transactions neither iron nor any other commodity has been weighed by hundredweights and quarters forming fractions of a gross ton at any time within our recollection, the usage being to weigh only by tons and pounds, and it is really very surprising that the English custom should have prevailed at Johnstown at so late a day as we have mentioned. Charges for storage in 1816, 1817, and 1818 appear, however, to have been paid in dollars and cents, as we find several charges in 1818 in these denominations. We have also found within the leaves of the ledger a bill against Isaac Proctor which reads as follows: "Juniata Forge, 16th December, 1818. Mr. Isaac Proctor Bot of Peter Shoenberger 2 qrs. 1 lb. Bar Iron, @ $0.08 - $4.56." Juniata forge was located at Petersburg, in Huntingdon county, and it was built about 1804. In 1814 or 1815 it passed into the hands of Dr. Peter Shoenberger. The numerous entries in Mr. Proctor's ledger make clear the fact that large quantities of bar iron were shipped at Johnstown by flatboats in 1816, 1817, and 1818. He did a large warehousing business and other owners of warehouses were probably active competitors. The aggregate tonnage REVELATIONS OF AN OLD LEDGER. 27 shipped by Mr. Proctor, which was chiefly on account of Dr. Shoenberger, amounted to several hundred tons annually. Some of Mr. Proctor's shipments amounted to 16 and 19 tons. Some of these shipments were made "in my own boat," which was doubtless a keel boat. Pittsburgh antiquarians may be interested in learning that the consignees of bar iron at Pittsburgh in those days were Richard Bowen & Co., Robert Alexander, Allen & Grant, Charles McGee, J. Whiting, Robinson, McNickel & Wilds, Irwin & George, and Thomas Jackson. The chief interest of this old ledger consists in its revelation of the fact that large quantities of Juniata bar iron were shipped to Pittsburgh from Johnstown as early as 1816. Earlier shipments were made by water from Johnstown to the same destination, probably as early as 1800, but the ledger of Isaac Proctor shows conclusively that these shipments had attained large proportions in 1816, 1817, and 1818, in which years bar iron had not yet been made at Pittsburgh. Next in importance among the facts disclosed by Mr. Proctor's ledger is the survival at Johnstown down to 1812 of the British system of computing values, and the survival down to 1818 of the now long disused hundred-weights and quarters. From other sources than the old ledger we add some other facts which show the prominence of Johnstown as an iron centre early in the nineteenth century. John Holliday built a forge at Johnstown, on the right bank of the Stony creek, about 1809, for the manufacture of bar iron from Juniata blooms and pig iron, but we find no mention in Mr. Proctor's ledger of any shipments from this forge. The dam of this forge was washed away about 1811, and subsequently the forge was removed to the north bank of the Conemaugh, in the Millville addition to Johnstown, where it was operated down to about 1822, Rahm & Bean, of Pittsburgh, being the lessees at this time. In 1817 Thomas Burrell, the proprietor at that time, offered wood-cutters "fifty cents per cord for chopping two thousand cords of wood at Cambria forge, Johnstown." The forge would appear to have been in operation from 1809 to 1822. In 1807 or 1808 Shade furnace was built on Shade 28 CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS. creek, in Somerset county, about fifteen miles southeast of Johnstown, and in 1820 Shade forge was built near the furnace. As early as 1820 bar iron was shipped to Pittsburgh from Shade forge. Much of the iron from this forge was hauled to Johnstown and thence shipped to Pittsburgh, but some of it was shipped in flatboats directly from the forge. Pig iron was also hauled to Johnstown from Shade furnace for shipment to Pittsburgh. But there was another early forge, which was still nearer to Johnstown, on the Stony creek, about half a mile below the mouth of Shade creek, known as Mary Ann forge, which shipped bar iron to Pittsburgh at a still earlier day, and perhaps as early as 1811. Richard Geary, the father of Governor John W. Geary, was the manager of the forge for about one year, and was supercargo of a load of bar iron which was shipped from the forge down the Stony creek, the Conemaugh, and other streams to Pittsburgh. Garret Ream lived at the mouth of Ben's creek and built boats which were loaded at Johnstown, but he also shipped iron direct from Ben's creek, and it is probable that some of this iron came from Mary Ann forge, Shade furnace, and Shade forge. About 200 pounds of nails, valued at $30, were made at Johnstown by one establishment in the census year 1810. About this time an enterprise was established at Johnstown by Robert Pierson, by whom nails were cut from strips of so-called "nail iron" with a machine worked by a treadle, but without heads, which were added by hand in a vise. The "nail iron" was obtained at the small rolling mills in Huntingdon county and hauled in wagons or sleds to Johnstown over the Frankstown Road.