Scranton exists today because of, and quite possibly in spite of, William Henry.
In persuading George and Selden Scranton to embrace his vision for an iron-making business in tiny Slocum Hollow in 1840, Mr. Henry trumpeted the abundance of the necessary raw materials — iron ore, limestone and anthracite coal — in the surrounding valleys and mountains.
He miscalculated badly on two of the three counts: Yes, anthracite abounded, but the iron ore and limestone were limited and of poor quality.
The Scranton brothers and their investors, including cousin Joseph Scranton, overcame those obstacles to establish an iron foundry and rolling mill that would transform the backwater village that now bears their family’s name into one of the most important industrial centers of 19th century America.
However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
In the beginning
The development of what would become Scranton started in the late 18th century when pioneers from Connecticut arrived and started clearing the largely untraced wilderness surrounding the present-day city for homesteads and farms.
The earliest recorded white settler was Philip Abbott, who in 1786 built a log house on Gully Creek, now Roaring Brook, near the present location of Radisson at Lackawanna Station hotel.
He and his brother, James, constructed a sawmill and gristmill and later were joined in the business by Reuben Taylor. In 1790, they sold out to another arrival from Connecticut, John Howe.
The Abbotts dubbed their settlement Dark Hollow, a name that would persist until another set of brothers, Ebenezer and Benjamin Slocum, arrived in 1797. The Slocums bought the existing mills and by the early 1800s had branched out into other ventures, including an iron forge and a whiskey distillery.
The brothers renamed the community Unionville, but it never caught on among the locals, who preferred Slocum Hollow, which became the official name in 1816.
Slocum Hollow was one of four scattered villages in Providence Twp., along with Hyde Park, Razorville and Bucktown. The latter two would later be known as Providence and Dunmore, respectively.
The area still retained a decidedly backwoods character. As one historian later would note of the era, “The people were plain in their dress, uncouth in their habits and speech, and from necessity, frugal in their living.”
Scrantons arrive
Perhaps inspired by the albeit short-lived success of the Slocum brothers’ forge, which closed in 1822, Mr. Henry invited his his son-in-law, Selden Scranton; Selden’s brother, George, and a third entrepreneur, Sanford Grant, to visit the area in August 1840, with an eye on building a blast furnace.
Slocum Hollow at the time consisted of five dwellings, a school, a cooper shop, a sawmill and a gristmill, all connected by rude winding roads. The population could be counted in dozens.
Mr. Henry proved to be a convincing salesman, and the group exercised an option to buy 503 acres, including most of present-day Lackawanna Avenue, for $8,000.
Working with $20,000 in capital, Scranton, Grant & Co. set the first pick into the ground at the site of the proposed furnaces along Roaring Brook on Sept. 15, 1840.
By the time it became clear the local iron ore and limestone were insufficient to support the venture, the Scrantons and their partners were in too deep to turn back. The costs associated with transporting the materials from elsewhere left the company in dire financial straits, and the Scrantons were repeatedly forced to scrape for new capital.
Mr. Henry, who managed the company, left in 1842, a year after the village was renamed Harrison in honor of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president. Mr. Grant also bowed out, and his stake in the company eventually ended up with Joseph Platt, brother-in-law of Joseph Scranton.
After a nail factory intended to shore up the iron-making enterprise failed miserably, the Scrantons made a last-gasp gamble.
Improbable success
In 1846, the New York and Erie Railroad faced potential ruin. The railroad had accepted a $3 million loan from the state of New York to build a line between Port Jervis and Binghamton with the condition the loan would be forgiven only if the line was completed by the end of 1848.
However, the railroad needed rails, and manufacturers in England, which had a tight grip on the global rail market, could not guarantee their delivery.
In desperation, New York and Erie executives turned to the equally desperate Scrantons, who eagerly offered to produce the rails. In late 1846, the railroad awarded a contract to the newly reorganized Scrantons & Platt to produce 12,000 tons of T-rails, advancing the company $90,000 to help build a rolling mill.
T-rails had never before been mass-produced in North America, and wagons had to be used to haul the finished product across miles of wilderness to New York, where the track was to be laid. It seemed an impossible challenge, but the Scrantons pulled it off with four days to spare, fulfilling their contract on Dec. 27, 1848.
With that, an out-of-the-way, largely inaccessible town of about 2,000 souls improbably emerged as the nation’s iron-making capital.
First railroad
As they sought to capitalize on their success, the Scrantons recognized the need for a better way to transport both their products and the valley’s anthracite coal, which was becoming an important home-heating source, to outside markets.
In 1850, Scrantons & Platt purchased a charter originally issued in 1832 for the Leggett’s Gap Railroad, which would connect with the New York and Erie at Great Bend to the north. A second line, the Delaware and Cobb’s Gap, would run southeast to the Delaware River.
Leggett’s Gap opened for service in 1851, followed later by Delaware and Cobb’s Gap. The lines were combined in 1853, to form the nucleus of the storied Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, with George Scranton as its president. His brother, Selden, became president of the iron works, which was incorporated the same year as the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Co.
In the meantime, the U.S. Postal Department approved in 1850 the establishment of a new post office for the expanding town under the name Scrantonia. The department shortened it the next year to Scranton.
Boomtown
The success of the iron works, the construction of the railroad and the surging demand for anthracite turned Scranton into a boomtown. Between 1850 and 1854, the population nearly doubled to 4,241. It would more than double again by the 1860 census, which counted 9,223 people.
Immigrants streamed into the town, drawn by the availability of jobs. So did investors and entrepreneurs, who were attracted by the prospect for new business opportunities.
Scrantons & Platt financed the construction of the first luxury hotel, the Wyoming House, in 1851. Scranton’s first bank opened in 1856.
The physical growth hewed to a configuration devised by Joel Amsden, a civil engineer the foresightful George Scranton hired in 1850 to survey the land and lay out streets.
Mr. Amsden devised a grid pattern spreading out from two broad, central thoroughfares: Lackawanna and Wyoming. At Selden Scranton’s suggestion, he named the avenues for presidents. Mr. Amsden recommended naming the cross-streets for trees, although the task of assigning the names fell to Mr. Platt.
Birth of city
By the mid-1850s, the businessmen who controlled Scranton had revived a movement to carve a new county out of the northern half of Luzerne County. And just as they had when the idea originally was floated 20 years earlier, politicians in Wilkes-Barre quickly quashed the proposal.
With the formation of a new county at least temporarily off the table, civic leaders needed another avenue for securing a measure of autonomy and effective governance for their rapidly growing community.
Providence had incorporated as an independent borough in 1849, followed by Hyde Park in 1852 and Scranton in 1856, and the creation of a city that would consolidate the three seemed the most logical path.
Over the objections of the neighboring boroughs, and Providence in particular, Scranton officials went to Harrisburg with a plan to establish a new city that would sprawl across 19.6 square miles along both sides of the Lackawanna River. The state Legislature obliged by passing a bill granting a special charter to Scranton.
The date was April 23, 1866.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Contact the writer:
dsingleton@timesshamrock.com