OF LANCASTER COUNTY. 493 



"Several good mines have been opened witliin a few years in the neigliborhood of 

 Quarryville and New Providence, and large qnantities of ore are taken out, Init its 

 quality being cold short, the ore requires to be mixed with other ores of a diflerent 

 character to produce good iron. 



"At Conowingo an excellent quality of ore has been worked for a number of years, 

 but the mine is not svifficiently developed to judge of its extent. 



"The 13 anthracite furnaces in the county in operation at the present time, use not 

 less than 180,000 tons of ore per annum to produce 71,000 tons of pig iron; of this 

 quantity about 50,000 tons of ore are mined in the county, and of the balance of 

 130,000 tons, the most is taken from York county; some from Cornwall, in Lebanon 

 county, and some from Perry and Cumberland counties. It may be estimated that 

 about 30,000 tons of ore are taken from Lancaster county to Phcenixville, Danville and 

 other places, thus making the production of this county about 80,000 tons of ore per 

 annum, which, multified by -|4 per ton as the average value at the mines, would repre- 

 sent 1320,000 worth of mineral per annum. 



"The value of 71,000 tons of pig metal produced in this county at the present time, 

 is not less than $2, 500, 000 per annum ; and of railroad and merchant" s bar-iron ^1 , 000.000. 

 Nine-tenths of the cost of pig iron is for actual labor, the value of the raw material 

 being very small, and of the 2| million dollars' worth of iron produced, $2,250,000 

 goes to the laborer, it requiring 18 days' work to produce 1 ton of pig metal, thus 

 showing that what creates so much labor must be of vast advantage to the farmer and 

 storekeeper — the iron business." 



PAPER MILLS. ^ 



Of the early history of Paper-making in Lancaster county, we have very little definite 

 information. Fifty years ago, the late Mr. John Triewitz, of this city, had a paper 

 mill at Ephrata. At that time he was manufacturing "pasteboard" by the old ami 

 tedious hand-process. He also manufactured print paper, and in later years suppl ied Mr. 

 Baer with paper for the Volksfreund. Of course, the paper was all made by the old 

 fashioned hand-process. The mill was subsequently converted into a saw-mill. 



About thirty years ago B. B. Eshleman was engage'd in the manufacture of hand- 

 made paper, at what was for many years known as Eshleman' s I\Iill, on the West 

 Branch of the Octoraro, in Bart township. We are unable to fix the exact date of 

 the enterprise. The manufacture, however, was carried on only in a small way, and 

 was not a financial success. 



In December 1854, Jno. R. Bitner, C. A. Bitner, Baltzer Lipp, Wm. C Beecher, and 

 Samuel Beecher, purchased the old "Fulling Mill," on the Conestoga, at Eden, from 

 D. G. Swartz, and commenced remodeling it for a paper mill. They procured a new 

 cylinder paper machine from Nelson Gavitt, of Philadelphia, and had their rag engmes 

 constructed at the mill. In the fall of 1855, they commenced operat.on.s Mr. Lipp 

 being Superintendent. The mill was calculated for a production of loOO lbs per day 

 but it was soon found that the power was inadequate for such a result On the dlst 

 of March 1856, one half of the interest of the Messrs. Bitners was sold to Dv J. I . 

 Kurtz, and shortly after the concern passed into the hands ot Kurtz & Lipp, he Bi - 

 ners and Beechers withdrawing. In 1859 the enterprise failed, and in 1860, the mill 

 was purchased by Emanuel Shober, who ran it very successfully for six or seven yea > 

 his being the first pecuniary success in paper-making i.i this county. He snppbed the 

 deficiency in water-power with a steam engine and thus doubled the I^'f ;-t';;'% ^"^- 

 ing most of this time George Ehrhart was foreman of the mill, and John A. Shober 



business manager. , . . , 



In 1866 Emanuel Shober purchased the excellent water-power and S -^ ^nd sa v 

 mill on the Conestoga, at Slackwater, and at once made preparations to con^ert it 

 1 Contributed by J. M. W. Geist, Esq. 



