Happy October!
I'm still working on the Carbon County marker book - I expect to be finished before too much longer. So it takes up a lot of my mental energy because I'm honestly quite excited for it. (To quote from the recently released trailer for the back half of the Wicked movie, "I'm obsessulated.")
That being the case, here's another preview for my faithful blog readers, revisiting an earlier post. As with the previous post I've done of this sort, this is not the entire chapter, just a truncated version. I have to save some of the good stuff so people will buy the book, after all!
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| 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 Philip’s last name was Ginder or Ginter. This isn’t exactly unusual for the time period, when there were no fixed standards for the spelling of names - especially since a lot of colonial settlers either couldn’t read English or couldn’t read at all. There are actually several spelling variations for this particular last name, including Ginther, Gunther, and even Kinder. The main figure of this chapter usually has his name given in print as Ginter, as it is on the historical marker, but I’ve read that some of his descendants are rather insistent about the Ginder spelling. So just to avoid any confusion or conflict, I’m going to simply call him Philip.
It’s known that he was a real person, so that puts him a step or so above a lot of other American folk heroes. All accounts point to his having been born in Germany, with some assigning him a birthdate of April 15, 1719. Immigrant passenger documentation indicates that he arrived in New York on the ship Neptune in 1746, then came to Pennsylvania. At least one historian wrote that his wife was named Magdalena and that her father had been Philip Daubenspeck, who served under George Washington during the Revolution. They are confirmed to have had just two sons, Philip Jr. and Jacob.
When he moved to what is now Carbon County, Philip built his family what he himself described as a “rough cabin” in the woods, though in truth it was probably a bit nicer than he made it sound. He had been trained as a carpenter, so he knew what he was doing, and was highly regarded by his neighbors, who elected him a trustee of Mahoning Valley’s Zion Church. He also owned a fair bit of property, which he farmed. His primary occupation was not as a hunter, as is so often believed, but as a millwright. According to at least one source, he had a great knowledge of stones and which ones were best for grinding wheat into flour. By his own account, he supplemented the household income with his rifle, bringing down whatever game he could find. Some of the meat would feed his wife and sons, and everything else from bear skins to deer antlers would be taken to stores, where he could trade them for whatever the family happened to need. Frontier life wasn’t easy on anyone, but they were doing all right.
No one seems to know when in 1791 Philip made his unexpected discovery, and even the version I found based on Philip’s own recollection doesn’t mention so much as the month in which it happened. He and his dog were out doing their usual search for game, but they apparently didn’t find so much as a squirrel. Worse, a storm was rolling in, so he was eager to get back to the cabin before the rain began, but he wasn’t happy about going home empty-handed. He ended up not going home empty-handed, but not the way he expected.
Exactly how he made his discovery is a little unclear. If Philip’s own version is to be believed, the truth is somewhere in the middle of those first two possibilities. He said that while coming back from hunting, he kind of accidentally kicked the rock, dislodging a piece of it, and it landed where he could see it more clearly. In the fading daylight, he observed that it was black in color, kind of shiny, and definitely not the kind of rock he would use to grind wheat into flour.
As he picked up the stone to examine it, he suddenly remembered that people had spoken of “stone coal” being found in the mountains. The Native Americans had been using this coal for thousands of years, but not as a fuel; they found the timber of Penn’s Woods to be more than sufficient for that purpose, and a lot easier to get. But the rumor among the white settlers was that these black diamonds made for an excellent fuel source, providing light and heat and burning longer than either wood or charcoal. (They called the black rock “stone coal” to differentiate it from charcoal, which is made from wood.) Hoping he was correct, Philip picked up a few samples of the black rock to take home with him, and he and the dog set off for the cabin where Magdalena and the boys were waiting.
Every version of the story agrees with the next part, which is that Philip took several pieces of the black diamond to Fort Allen. Exactly why Philip thought that Colonel Jacob Weiss was the person to consult about his discovery is kind of a mystery. Not a single one of the accounts of the incident that I’ve read gives a reason for it. But he was wealthy, well-connected, and well-educated, and that might be enough of an explanation. He was interested in coal, too, and so when Philip brought him a number of specimens from the mountain, he sensed opportunity. Weiss offered to take the coal to his native Philadelphia and show it to some of his associates there, who could better determine how valuable it might be. Philip agreed.
The Colonel and his associates examined the samples in great detail, consulting with some Philadelphia scientists to be sure of what they had. It was most certainly coal, but more than that, it was anthracite coal. Bituminous coal had long been discovered in the western part of the state, but anthracite was better for fuel, as it burned cleaner and created less soot and ash. Bituminous coal, on the other hand, was more useful for creating coke, which was a necessary component for manufacturing iron and, later, steel. Weiss returned home to offer to pay Philip to show him the location, which was in what today is the community of Summit Hill.
Philip didn't want money for the information. Instead, he proposed that the Colonel help him to acquire a tract of 308 acres in the Mahoning Valley, where he could settle his family. The Colonel found this to be a very agreeable suggestion and made the arrangements, though not with any particular swiftness. This part of the story is confirmed by the PHMC’s own records of land warrants and applications. The exact location of this land isn’t known for sure, but clues suggest it was somewhere near the western border of modern Carbon County, possibly in or close to what today is known as West Penn Township.
The Colonel took charge of buying 770 acres of land on the mountain, including the spot which Philip showed him. Together with a few other interested men, he formed the Lehigh Coal Mine Company in 1792. The firm was the first of its kind in America. This didn’t go quite as swimmingly as they may have expected, though not for lack of trying. At that point, there wasn’t a great market for coal, so selling it then wasn’t as profitable as it would be in the future. Depending on where someone lived, it was actually cheaper to import coal from Great Britain than to buy it from Carbon County. A lack of capital and poor transportation between the remote mines and the rest of civilization also didn't help.
The company more or less limped along until the War of 1812, since the war meant that imports and coastal shipments weren't happening. Those who actually did buy coal were forced to buy it locally, and that kept the company alive for a while longer. A few years later, in 1818, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard began their own mining ventures in the vicinity. They were doing well enough that they were able to lease property from the Lehigh Coal Mine Company; the lease was for twenty years, and cost the exorbitant sum of one ear of corn per year. It must be nice to be able to pay bills with vegetables. They eventually bought out and dissolved the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, and all of its property was transferred to the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. But the LCMC gentlemen did very well for themselves in the bargain.
But what happened to Philip? Good question. The common folklore has it that a few years after he received the land grant from the Pennsylvania government, Philip’s claim was overturned by the arrival of an unnamed stranger, who produced documentation showing that he already owned the land. The heartbroken old man then left and no one knows what happened to him.
That’s not how it really went down, though. It took six years for his application for the land patent to actually be processed and for him to receive the fruits of his discovery. By the time he finally owned it, Philip was frankly too old to do very much with it. He lived there for a little over a year, then sold it to Adam Miller, who resided in Lynn Township, Northampton County, in exchange for 150 pounds in gold and silver, plus continued access to the stream if he needed water for his mill.
How did history get so many details wrong? Well, word of mouth is partly to blame; Philip's story was a popular one at taverns. There were also a number of newspaper accounts containing various errors, including not being able to even get the poor man's name right and instead identifying him as Jacob or Isaac. But the fault mostly lies with a man named Dr. Thomas James. In 1804, he and a friend took a trip up to the Mauch Chunk mining area to learn more about the discovery of coal on the mountain. They actually met Philip, spending a night in his home, and he personally escorted them to the mine on Mauch Chunk Mountain. While they were with him, he regaled them with the story of how he came to live in the vicinity and how he happened upon the coal deposit.
Here’s the thing. As George Korson explains in his book Black Rock: Mining Folklore of the Pennsylvania Dutch, Dr. James didn’t bother to write down what he learned from Philip until 1826, more than twenty years after he first heard the story. So a lot of the details were either misremembered or else invented to fill in the gaps of what the good doctor himself called his “imperfect recollection.” In particular, Dr. James is the one whose writings convinced so many people that Philip was just a poor hunter who was desperate to feed his struggling family. Korson's theory, which I think makes a lot of sense, is that Philip had talked about the struggles he experienced when he first moved north from Philadelphia, and Dr. James remembered it wrong. By the time of the coal discovery, Philip was in a much better place financially; but the mental picture of a luckless hunter happening upon black diamonds on a remote mountaintop is simply a lot more interesting.
Since Philip had almost certainly died by the time Dr. James published his version of the story, he wasn't available to contradict it. Subsequent historians used the James document as part of their own research, so the errors got repeated as facts. Dr. James's account was shared with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, who published it in their Memoirs; it afterward appeared in multiple other publications, including The Register of Pennsylvania, the Pottsville Miners’ Journal, and even the German language newspaper Stimme des Volks (Voice of the People). Being reproduced in so many reputable papers and, later, books, it was bound to be accepted as factual.
Having combed the records of Ancestry.com, the closest I’ve come to learning Philip’s fate is a handful of family trees, all of which claim that he died in 1808 in Somerset County, in southwestern Pennsylvania. It’s possible, but since not a single one of these trees has any kind of documentation to prove that’s where he spent his final days, I’m not sure I believe it. Assuming the 1719 birth year to be at least close to correct, Philip would have been almost ninety years old in 1808! It’s hard to imagine that he would have relocated so far at that age, especially with so many family members still in the Carbon County area.
It’s not clear what became of Philip Jr., either; I can find no record that I can confirm to be of him, and he may have died relatively young. Or perhaps he’s the one who died in Somerset County in 1808. We do know, however, that Jacob had eleven children, one of whom was named Philip in honor of his grandfather and uncle. This Philip was a prominent citizen of Carbon County, involved with the Central Railroad of New Jersey. There are many Ginters and Ginders still in Carbon County and its neighbors today, most if not all of whom can probably trace their ancestry back to the original Philip.
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.
Korson, George. Black Rock: Mining Folklore of the Pennsylvania Dutch. The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1960.
Korson, George. Minstrels of the Mine Patch: Songs and Stories of the Anthracite Industry. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938.
Mantz, Lee. Images of America: Summit Hill. Arcadia Publishing, 2009.
Philip Ginter at the Historical Marker Database
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.
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