SUMMER 2023 | 17 doing and the history. When someone comes to you with that level of excitement, you can’t help but also be excited and want to help.” Connar’s original 20-page report is now more than 170 pages with updates as new discoveries are made. Connar has pored over theses written by Lehigh students in the 1800s, engineering surveys of the Friedensville mines and other sources in Lehigh University Libraries Special Collections. Much of Lehigh’s trove of documents was obtained as a result of the Stabler gift. “Mining is a very dangerous business,” says Ilhan Citak, archives and Special Collections librarian. “They needed to record things constantly.” One important reference was a journal article published in 2001 by the National Canal Museum. It was the product of a state-mandated cultural resource study done to support Stabler’s property developments. Connar also connected with Damian Nance, a professor of geology emeritus at Ohio University and an expert on Cornish engines, after discovering a 2013 paper he wrote. Nance has since written three comprehensive guides to the engine houses of Cornwall, documenting the history of what has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, much the same as Stonehenge or the Acropolis. In the tiny county of Cornwall, castle-like engine pumping houses are common sights, identified with the area in the same way windmills are with the Netherlands. The President Pumping Engine House looks exactly like those structures in Cornwall. The Cornish built other engine houses in Pennsylvania and the United States, but none remain. Friedensville Zinc Mining What Connar has learned—and what he shares with anyone who will listen—is this story. Zinc deposits were first discovered in Friedensville in the mid1840s when farmer Jacob Ueberroth sought help in identifying strange rocks in his fields that did not burn normally in his limestone kilns. A local mineralogist, William Theodore Roepper, determined the strange rocks included zinc-rich ore. A few years later, Philadelphia chemist Samuel Wetherill developed a patented process to produce zinc oxide directly from zinc-rich ore. Wetherill led the creation of the first industrial-scale zinc extraction and processing enterprises in the United States. Wetherill built his plant in South Bethlehem to create zinc oxide out of the ores, which was used for paint. Metallic zinc production for galvanizing iron and for brass products such as buttons and gun cartridges was added later. The zinc ore was carried by mule trains and carts over South Mountain to the plant. The enterprise became known as the Lehigh Zinc Company, which prospered under the guidance of another famous Philadelphia entrepreneur, Joseph Wharton. The zinc ore in Friedensville was very pure. The company had contracts with European governments that were starting to develop their militaries and having problems with brass gun cartridges that would overheat and stick, so the guns would not fire properly. In the Upper Saucon area, there were five mines, the largest of which was the Ueberroth mine. Mining began there in 1853. But after a decade of surface mining, they needed to go deeper and encountered massive groundwater challenges. The mines were described as the wettest in North America. John West, an engineer from Cornwall, was retained to determine what type of steam engine could be used to pump out the water. The Cornish were experts in mining, engine design and steam. West determined they had to go big. The President Pumping Engine was designed and manufactured along the Philadelphia waterfront. A marvel of the industrial revolution, it contained 675 tons of iron Mark Connar ’84 MBA, left, has made it his retired life’s work to have the President Pumping Engine House restored. At far left, Jerry Lennon, a Lehigh civil engineering professor emeritus; Connar; and Erin Kintzer, Lehigh’s director of Real Estate Services.
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