Getting Started in Pennsylvania
The Coming to Amerika article ends with the three Larson brothers - Frank, John and William - arriving in New York in 1881 and heading straightaway to Costello, in western Pennsylvania.
This crude map shows the various places the Larson boys worked and raised families. Why did they choose Costello as their first stop?
Let’s find out!
Economic Opportunity in Pennsylvania
Throughout the 19th century, settlers and immigrants were busy pushing farther and farther west and grabbing more and more land, while the new federal government was busy violating treaties, swindling the native population out of land they legitimately owned, and pushing them into smaller and smaller parcels in the most desolate regions of the country. The passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, during the Civil War, accelerated the pace at which newly arrived families claimed land and put down roots. At the same time, there was an intense and lucrative effort to chop down all the virgin old growth forests and make way for the towns, farms, goods and supplies that would be needed in order to accommodate the new families, farmers, business owners and entrepreneurs coming into a given area.
Major deforestation had been going on around the country for several decades by the time the Larson boys got to Costello.
To accommodate the transportation needs of the logging industrialists of the era, the state declared rivers to be public highways, basically allowing unfettered use of the waterways.
Because similar deforestation efforts had been underway in Sweden during this same period, Swedish immigrants were highly valued as having the skills needed to work at the logging camps and tanneries in the U.S. It isn’t clear whether Frank, John or William had any prior experience in logging before they got to the U.S. That said, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that even if they didn’t, the company owners who were recruiting Swedes and needed the labor would have welcomed them without asking too many questions. And I’m quite sure that those three brothers had the pluck and drive to learn quickly, using the “fake it til you make it” approach to on-the-job training. They certainly would have had many ready mentors in their Swedish comrades.
As it happened, in Costello, Pennsylvania, a brand new tannery was just getting ready to open up as they got there in spring of 1881.
The Logging Industry and Costello
Costello is a great case study on the ebb and flow and eventual decline of the lumber industry in the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1880, while the Larson boys were making their way to the ship that would take them across the Atlantic, the relatively new township of Sylvania, which included Costello (then known as North Wharton), had 214 people living in it. We know that some logging was happening because a sawmill had been erected in the area in 1850, but it wasn’t until 1880 that a tannery came to town, and that changed everything.
The Costello tannery, depicted in the photo, was reported as being the largest in the world at that time and accelerated the growing need for hemlock bark. Demand for that tree, whose bark was highly prized for its tannin, was quickly replacing demand for the coveted white pine, which was used more in construction and was pretty much decimated in Pennsylvania by 1880.
This increased demand for tannin was a direct result of the industrial revolution and the transition from single craftsmen making shoes to mass production of leather shoes in factories. The evolution to a manufacturing economy was taking place across industries, and shoe leather was no exception.
In order to serve the production needs of the tannery, the surrounding forests had to be cut down, the bark peeled off the trees and everything hauled down to the massive production facility, which sat along the Sinnemahoning river.
P.H. Costello was a well-known leather manufacturer who brought the success he achieved in Oneida, New York to the forests of western Pennsylvania. In 1878 he had purchased a tannery in Osweyo, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles north of North Wharton (later Costello). However, apparently he saw greater opportunity elsewhere because, after only a year or two, he sold his interest in the Osweyo facility and moved south to set up a brand new operation in a relatively untouched region dominated by lush, virgin hemlock. This pattern of moving operations around was a common tactic throughout the country, but particularly in western Pennsylvania and New York during this period. By 1860 Pennsylvania was considered the greatest lumber producing state in the nation. As the Pennsylvania forests were depleted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, operations were forced to move west and south to other old growth forests of the U.S.
The tanneries depended upon skilled labor for their operation. At its height, the Costello tannery employed over 250 workers, who lived in a camp set up on the premises. These workers operated the elevators that hoisted the hides, the steam engines that ran the boilers, the machines that ran the bark mills and leached out the tannin, and so on. The Costello tannery dried and finished 1,200 sides of leather per day (that’s almost 500,000 animal hides per year), which required 32,000 cords of hemlock bark annually. The yearly output of sole leather (used for shoes) for export and for home markets was 3,000 tons. It is said by some that tanning operations such as the one in Costello contributed to the decline of the bison herds in the west due to the indiscriminate slaughter and mass shipment of the hides to tanneries in the east.
The camp where the Larson brothers were probably housed included a large boarding house structure, repair shop, general store, blacksmith, stable, and farm land. The workers were described in early descriptions of the factory as “skilled workmen” and “excellent citizens.”
Given that there were more employees of the tannery than families actually settled in the area, the logging camp was its own community, isolated from other towns and cities. There generally were no women at these sites unless they worked in the kitchens, although historical accounts and photos show that occasionally women and even children did live at or in close proximity to some of the logging camps.
When John, Frank and William arrived in Costello in the spring of 1881, the finishing touches on construction were just being completed, and they would have probably arrived just when the hiring and training of workers was ramping up. The summer of 1881 saw the very first hides put into the new facility and tanned successfully. The factory was declared operational at that point.
I don’t know for a fact that this is where the brothers worked, but it certainly makes sense. There was also a smaller lumber mill which had been operating since 1850 in the area and it is also possible that they worked felling the timber and moving it to the tannery. If they were employed to work directly in the forests, this would have been more seasonal work.
Winter was typically when the trees were cut because it was easier to slide them down the mountain in snow and ice on sleds drawn by horses.
Spring was typically when bark peelers were hired in great numbers to shave the bark off the trees and prepare it for leaching the tannin needed for treating the leather. Summer would have been down time for the forest workers and tree-cutters (wood hicks, as they were called).
The Costello tannery maintained its operations until approximately 1924. The Larson brothers were long gone by then.
Following the Forests
In 1880 Pennsylvania had the largest concentration of leather tanneries in the world. Tannery owners would often buy large tracts of hemlock forest where they wanted to build their tanneries so that there would be a ready supply of bark. The tannin extracted from the bark of the hemlock was of particularly high quality and used to coat the hides and keep them from decaying. It also helped make the leather softer, more durable and water-resistant. There was clearly much money to be made for those who could produce large quantities of leather to meet the demand of the industrial age factories that were churning out shoes and boots in mass quantities.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, 90-95% of Pennsylvania was covered with old growth forests. By 1895, more than half of the original forest was gone.
In those days, the nature of the logging industry was such that, once the trees were gone in a particular area, the tanneries closed and moved to the next forest, leaving the bare, stripped hillsides and ghost towns behind. The camps with their crude dormitory-like structures were simply dismantled and moved to the next site.
Many of the men found steady work by following the camps from area to area, moving every few years. In this way they crisscrossed the same parts of western Pennsylvania and New York that my sister and I did the week we were there. There were some main roads that were established by all the coming and going from place to place, and these roads are still there, winding their ways through the hills and valleys, up and down along the rivers and waterways. If you look at a map of Pennsylvania you will see the great Allegheny river traversing the area north and south and east and west as it flows through the mountainous region, with other rivers and creeks branching off here and there. Waterways were necessary features of the logging operations because they provided quick transportation of the logs and bark to lumber mills and tanneries at great distances from where they were cut.
The Larson boys would only stay at the camp in Costello for a short time. Frank and John went to Sheffield and stayed for several years, where they probably worked at the tannery there. I’m guessing that was a more stable situation for them because Sheffield was an established community and we know they planned to bring their fiancées over from Sweden and get married. The rough and tumble world of the newly constructed Costello logging camp and its relative isolation was probably no place to start a family. William, on the other hand, was not yet ready to settle down and may have stayed on in the camp after his brothers left. It isn’t certain how long he was there, but we know that his search for home and work took him in a different direction from his brothers.
We will continue William’s story in the next article. Be sure to subscribe to receive an email notice of my next post!
For More History of Lumber Industry
For those of you intrigued by the history of our country as seen from the perspective of the logging industry, there are some additional breadcrumbs you can pursue through the resources listed below. Much of the information described here came from those sources.
Victor L. Beebe. (1934). History of Potter County, Pennsylvania. Potter County Historical Society, Coudersport, PA.
J.H. Beers & Co. and Michael A. Leeson. (1890). History of the Counties of McKean, Elk, Cameron and Potter, Pennsylvania
