Biography: History of Fulton County, 1884, Fulton Co., PA, John Pott Contributed and transcribed by Judy Banja jbanja@msn.com The html table of contents for this history including the illustrations may be found at http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/fulton/1picts/1884history/watermantoc.htm USGENWEB ARCHIVES (tm) NOTICE All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information are included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. ___________________________________________________________ HISTORY of BEDFORD, SOMERSET and FULTON COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA. With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of some of its PIONEERS AND PROMINENT MEN. Chicago: Waterman, Watkins & Co., 1884 CHAPTER LXXXVI. AYR AND TOD. BIOGRAPHICAL JOHN POTT. [647] On the records of Philadelphia for the year 1734, is found the following: "At the court house in Philadelphia, September 12, 1734, present, the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor, the Mayor of the city, and others of the Magistracy - eighty nine Palatines, who with their families, making in all two hundred and sixty-one persons, were imported here in the ship Saint Andrew, John Stedman, Master, from Rotterdam, but last from Plymouth, as by clearance from thence, this day took and subscribed the effect of the government oaths, and also the declaration prescribed by the order of Council of the 21st September, 1729." Among those who "took and subscribed," etc., are the names of Wilhelm Pott and Degenhart Pott. Wilhelm brought with him a family, consisting of a wife and two sons, mere boys, named Johon Wilhelm and Johannes. They came from Germany. Of Degenhart nothing is known. Wilhelm, who is the original of the American line of this name, settled at Germantown soon after his arrival. At some time, date not known, the family moved up the Schuylkill to what, in 1752, became Berks county. Here, on December 28, 1755, Johannes married Miss Maria Hoch. On December 16, 1759, was born to this union a son, named John, who, in due time, date unknown, married Miss Maria Lesher. Of this marriage came John Pott, the subject of this sketch, who was born in Berks county, March 16, 1787, and the eldest of the family, there being five other sons, in the order of their ages, as follows: Benjamin, James, Abraham, William and Jacob, all of whom are dead. In the year 1804 the elder John Pott purchased a large tract of land on the Schuylkill in the northerly end of, then, Berks, but which [648] in 1811, was erected into Schuylkill county, where, a few years before, had been erected a small furnace. To this place the elder Pott sent his son John to superintend his operations for the time being, he giving the work his casual personal supervision, but did not remove his family to his new place until 1810. The furnace was at once torn down and in its stead a forge was erected, and in 1807 he built a new furnace (Greenwood). It was while digging the foundation for this furnace that a vein of anthracite coal was uncovered, which the elder Pott tested in his blacksmith's forge with complete success. The existence of this "said to be coal," or "Black stone," in this section, was previously known and some unsuccessful attempts to utilize it had been made. The idea was abandoned and it was left for John Pott, the elder, to demonstrate its inflammability and value as fuel. In 1810, while digging the foundation for a mill, near his furnace, another vein of coal, nine feet thick, was uncovered. Its worth had already been established, both in the smith's forge and in open grate. It now began to attract attention, and "openings" were made at other points, but it was far from market and without transporting facilities other than wagons. In 1812 Col. George Shoemaker transported nine wagon loads to Philadelphia, about one hundred miles, to introduce it. The idea of coal was scouted - he was pronounced an imposter, and the stuff to be nothing but "black stone." He was glad to be permitted to unload most of his stuff, to be used for making road, but succeeded in having one load tested at a rolling-mill, which, after much tribulation, proved a complete success, which gradually removed all doubt as to its burning qualities.* Foreseeing the results that must follow these discoveries and demonstrations, the elder John Pott, in 1816, laid out the town of Pottsville, which became, and has ever since been, the great central depot of the Schuylkill coal region. But it was not until 1822 that the coal trade began to fairly expand and with it began the growth of the town. In 1825 the Schuylkill canal was opened to Port Carbon, and in that year the trade reached six thousand and five hundred tons, which has since grown to millions of tons annually from this region alone. Prior to the building of the canal, except the tenements necessary for the hands at Pott's ironworks, there were but few houses erected in the town, but with that era the flame of speculation ran high in town lots and coal lands, and its parallel has probably never occurred in Pennsylvania, except in the oil regions, in recent years. In these scenes, from the settlement in the wilderness, through the furor and excitement of the early development of the Schuylkill coal region and the building of the town, the subject of this sketch was an active participant. He was married September 16, 1812, to Miss Susannah Strauch, who died April 12, 1822, leaving two sons, Charles and William. William died in early manhood. Charles, recently deceased, leaves one son, bearing his own name, residing in Indianapolis, Indiana. April 11, 1824, John Pott married Miss Magdalena Bittle. The elder John Pott died in 1827. During the succeeding year his son John removed to the west branch of the Schuylkill, four miles from Pottsville, and there established the Manheim Ironworks, where now is situated the flourishing town of Cressona. There also he built a flouring-mill. He operated these ironworks, furnace and forge, until some time in 1837, when he suspended work on account of the great depression in the iron trade as well as all other American industries, by reason of the disastrous effect of the "compromise" tariff of 1833, by which the duties on foreign products annual receded, until practical free trade was established; the American markets flooded with the cheap pauper- labor products of Europe; American enterprise and well-paid labor crushed, and the panic of 1837 was precipitated. But it was while operating the Manhein furnace that John Pott worked out successfully a problem that had been the subject of anxious thought and experiment by ironmakers for some years, and which wrought a revolution in ironmaking. The effort to use anthracite coal in furnaces to smelt iron ore had been made at different times, without success, by different persons, yet experimenting continued. During 1836, John Pott, with his Manheim furnace, set about a series of experiments and succeeded in demonstrating the practicability of anthracite for that _______ * In 1812 a number of gentlemen associated and applied to the legislature for a law for the improvement of the river Schuylkill, citing the coal as a justification. The senator then representing Schuylkill county in the legislature, in the face of the fact that during the past five years John Pott, Col. Shoemaker and others had successfully used the "black stone" as fuel, asserted that there was "no coal there"; that there was "a kind of black stone" that was "called coal," but that "it wouldn't burn." [649] purpose, so far as that could be ascertained in a furnace built for charcoal. He saw the necessity for a difference in the interior construction of the furnace. He remodeled the interior and tried again. The result was entirely satisfactory. He worked up the anthracite he had on hand, then used up what stock of charcoal he yet had, and, for the reason before recited, suspended business for the time being. He firmly believed that a revulsion of sentiment, produced by the distress with which the country was then afflicted, would bring a change as soon as the people could be heard. Confident in this, he, in due time, satisfied with his experiments and success as above related, commenced work during 1840 to enlarge the capacity of his furnace and to make such improvements as his experience taught him were required, preparatory to putting his works in operation again. This work had well progressed; a large stock of anthracite coal and iron ore had been delivered on the furnace bank, and all looked promising, when the great ice freshet, in the spring of 1841, utterly destroyed both furnace and forge. He did not rebuild again. Other parties were experimenting with anthracite at the same time, and also achieved success, but John Pott always asserted that he reached a successful solution before any of the others, and the reason he did not produce anthracite iron in commercial quantity, at that time, is for the cause above stated, but that he produced it in commercial quality and in quantity sufficient to make it a triumph. Others claim this for other parties, but for John Pott can be claimed at least a divided honor for giving this great industry to the country, and that Manheim furnace was the place where the success was achieved. Thus was the elder John Pott the first in the Schuylkill coal region to successfully establish the combustibility of anthracite coal, and his son, John Pott, was the first to successfully use it in a blast furnace to smelt iron ore, while Abraham Pott, another son, built, in 1826, a short railroad from Black valley to the Schuylkill river, which, in point of date, takes precedence of the well-known railroad from Summit Hill to the Lehigh river, at Mauch Chunk, which was built in 1827, and is usually reputed to be the first ever built in this state, or even in the United States. He also erected, in 1829, the first steam engine ever used in Schuylkill county. In itself this is not much; but with this he was the first to successfully use anthracite to generate steam for an engine. This had been unsuccessfully tried by others; the grates in use would burn out in a single day. He then devised a form, made a pattern and had a grate cast that proved successful, and the grate bars now in use are essentially the same as those invented by Abraham Pott. All these things were quietly accomplished; no patents applied for, but the benefits thereof given to the public. In 1843, John Pott sold his Manheim furnace property, and in the following spring he removed to Bedford (now Fulton) county, where he had purchased the Hanover Ironworks property, and where he arrived with his family on April 19, 1844. Encouraged by the stimulus given to, and the improvement in, the iron and other industries by the protective tariff of 1842, he at once went to work to repair damages done to these works by a great freshet in 1843, and to build a new furnace, which was speedily completely and put in operation the same year and successfully operated for a brief period. But on the principle, "Anything to win," the free-traders impudently assumed the role of protection to American industry in Pennsylvania, and by the fraudulent and deceptive campaign slogan, "Polk is a better tariff-man than Henry Clay," the free-traders triumphed in the presidential election of 1844, and as soon as possible after attaining to power, they repealed the protective tariff of 1842, and, as a consequence, the American iron and other industries were again in a large measure either wholly paralyzed or badly crippled. Mr. Pott vainly struggled against the tide. He had unlimited quantities of the richest iron ores, convenient to the furnace, and abundance of fuel near by, but found that he, like many others, could not compete with the British pauper- labor product, under free trade, and so, in 1847, he made the last blast in Hanover Ironworks, of which nothing now remains but the naked, dismantled furnace stack, shown in illustration. In 1846 he built a flouring-mill on the site of one of the forges, and the remainder of his life was devoted to milling and farming. He died November 26, 1856, leaving a widow and seven children, by this second marriage, [650] surviving him. The widow died November 23, 1876.* The seven children - two sons and five daughters - are yet living, viz.: Maria, James, Rebecca, Melinda, Catharine, Jacob and Eliza B. The two children by his first marriage are dead, as previously noted. Through one of the daughters, Melinda, of this family, intermarried with Charles T. Logan (since deceased, and the widow re-married with Frederick Van Lew), the American-born generations of Wilhelm Pott's descendants have reached the sixth in the genealogy of great-great-great-great-grandchildren, bearing the names of Logan and Langwith, residing in Iowa. Maria, intermarried with Rev. D. G. Klein, resides in Bedford county, Pennsylvania, and Eliza B., married to M. P. Crosby, resides in Franklin county, Pennsylvania; while the other four, two sons and two daughters, continue on the old homestead. ~~~*~~~