Notice of Peter Hasenclever, an Early Iron-Manufac- 

 turer. By Henry A. Homes, LL.D. 



[Read before tlie Institute, April 7, 1874.] 



The name of Peter Hasenclever is worthy of notice on 

 account of his expensive enterprises in this state, previous 

 to the revolution, in the manufacture of iron and to obtain 

 products of the soil for exportation ; and because it is his 

 name which is perpetuated to this day in the Hasenclever 

 mountains in Herkimer county, in the title of the Hasen- 

 clever land patents, and in the Hasenclever iron mine in 

 Rockland county. 



Peter Hasenclever, sometimes called Baron Hasenclever, 

 was a German, born at Remscheid in the Rhenish pro- 

 vinces, in 1716, who had been a partner in a mercantile 

 house at Cadiz, in Spain. On account of the climate, which 

 was unfavorable to his wife's health, he went to London 

 in the year 1763, where she had been living since the year 

 1757. There he formed a partnership under the firm name 

 of Hasenclever, Seton & Crofts, with a joint capital of 

 £21,000. He soon induced a respectable company of 

 persons — Major General Greeme, Commodore Forest, 

 George Jackson, secretary of admiralty, and others — to 

 agree to spend from <£10,000 to £40,000 in the production of 

 pig iron, hemp, pot and pearl ashes in North America. 



The agreement was made in January, 1764, and by 

 June of that year he himself reached New York, and by 

 November there arrived at the same port, hundreds of 

 Germans — miners, farmers and mechanics, with their 

 families — whom his agents had engaged in Germany. As 

 at this time his land and his mines had not been bought or 

 selected, no candid judgment can hesitate to regard him as 



