Philip Ginter, Summit Hill, Carbon County

For today's adventure, we'll head back to Carbon County - haven't been there in a while - and read about a man whose name is spelled two ways. I first talked about Philip Ginter, or Ginder, in my post about the Carbon County marker, and at the time I promised I'd tell you more about him later. Well, it's later.

The marker is one of several historic
items in Ludlow Park; it faces West
Ludlow Street near the Market
Street intersection, next to the
school bell time capsule.

There's been some disagreement over whether his name was Ginder or Ginter, so to avoid any conflict, I'm just going to call him Philip. The poor man seems to get treated as something of a footnote in a lot of the records. The majority of what I've found about him comes from two main sources. The earlier source is Fred Brenckman's History of Carbon County, which I've linked in the 'Sources and Further Reading' section. It doesn't give Philip himself a lot of attention, but does talk about him in a biographical sketch of his grandson, also named Philip. The later source is a 1938 book called Minstrels of the Mine Patch; this formed much of the basis for the Robert Orenstein article I've linked, which focuses entirely on the first Philip. Between those two sources, plus a few bits I gleaned through Ancestry.com, here's what I know about him.

Philip was born in Germany, by all accounts; according to some family trees on Ancestry, his date of birth was April 15, 1719. He traveled to Holland as a young man and boarded a ship bound for the not-yet-United States, where he was processed through the Port of Philadelphia in 1746. I don't know the name of his wife, although Brenckman's History says that she was a daughter of Philip Daubenspeck, who served under General Washington in the American Revolution; they had two sons, Jacob and Philip. They lived, it is said, in "a rough cabin in the forest," where Philip Sr. mostly supported his small family by hunting.

Everyone seems to agree that this is exactly what he was doing on that fateful day in 1791. He was on what was then known as Sharp Mountain, today called Summit Hill. The weather was turning bad, he was having no luck in the hunt, and he decided to head home. As he started in that direction, he more or less tripped on a black rock, and this reminded him that there were rumors of the mountain containing coal. He gathered up some of the pieces of the black rock and, the following day, went down to Fort Allen to meet with Col. Jacob Weiss. Fort Allen was situated in what is known today as Weissport, named for this gentleman from Philadelphia. The Colonel, being an astute sort, took an immediate interest in the discovery and brought the rock down to Philadelphia, where a few of his business associates confirmed that yes, this was coal and yes, they could definitely get rich from it, if Philip would be willing to tell the Colonel where he found it.

Formal documentation of Philip Ginter's
application for 400 acres in Penn Township,
courtesy of PHMC records via Ancestry.com

Philip didn't want money for the information. I can kind of see why; from his point of view, this was just a rock he had kicked on his way down the mountain and he probably felt a bit silly about getting paid to trip on a rock. That's how I would have felt. Instead, he proposed that the Colonel acquire some land for him in the Mahoning Valley, where he could settle his family and live a bit more securely. The Colonel found this to be a very agreeable proposition and made the arrangements. This part of the story is confirmed by the PHMC's own records of land warrants and applications. On May 24, 1792, "Philip Ginter" requested "to take up four hundred acres of land adjoining his other land, to include land adjoining a survey of three or four hundred acres... on the south side of Matchunk [sic] Mountain in Penn Township in the county of Northampton". The exact location of this land isn't known for sure, but it's speculated to be somewhere near the western border of modern Carbon County.

The tale ends happily and prosperously for the Colonel and his contemporaries. Philip's discovery led to the industrialization of Carbon County (and its eventual name), and the founding of the Lehigh Coal Mine Co., later followed by Lehigh Coal & Navigation. Fortunes were made, including that of Asa Packer, as a direct result of a luckless hunter kicking a rock.

The tale does not end so happily for Philip. He settled on the tract of land he was promised, and built a mill, and very likely intended to live there for the rest of his life. But a few years after his coal discovery, someone else came along - we don't seem to have any record of who this was - with documentation of an earlier survey. The land was not Philip's, and in fact never had been Philip's, because it already belonged to this other person. "The heartbroken Ginder was forced to leave," George Korson wrote in Minstrels of the Mine Patch. "Where he moved no one knows to this day." Fortunately, that part of the story is (probably) not true. Judging by those family trees I mentioned, Philip relocated to Somerset County, where he died in 1808. I don't know what happened to his son Philip, but his son Jacob became the father of eleven children, one of them being the grandson Philip who received a biographical sketch in Brenckman's History.

Monument to Philip at the west end of
Ludlow Park, Summit Hill, near the actual
site of his discovery

Carbon County, however, has never forgotten the man who almost literally stumbled onto the industrial revolution. Summit Hill built the Ginter School on top of a large clay deposit not far from the site of his discovery. The school burned down a few decades ago, but across the street from where it stood are Ginter Stadium and Ginter Recreational Park. In 1941, to mark the 150th anniversary of the coal discovery, Summit Hill erected a beautiful stone monument to Philip (with the 'D' spelling of his last name) at one end of Ludlow Park. The PHMC marker (with the 'T' spelling) stands at the opposite end of the park, so Philip is honored no matter which way you travel - and no matter which way you spell his name.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Official website of the borough of Summit Hill

Orenstein, Robert H. "Philip Ginder: A Coal Pioneer." The Allentown Morning Call, March 12, 1987.

Brenckman, Fred, Official Commonwealth Historian. History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania. J. Nungesser, Harrisburg, PA, 1912. E-reprint courtesy of Archive.org.

Rabenold-Finsel, Rebecca M. Postcard History: Carbon County. Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

Mantz, Lee. Images of America: Summit Hill. Arcadia Publishing, 2009.

Philip Ginter at the Historical Marker Database

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.