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Reviews
| Mine Hill in Franklin and Sterling Hill in Ogdensburg, Sussex County, New Jersey: Mining History, 1765–1900, 7 vol. By Peter J. Dunn. Alexandria, Va.: Pete J. Dunn, 2002–2004. 1,200+ pp., maps, illus., notes, refs., appens., index. $15/vol., $75/set pb. Available from Sterling Hill Mining Museum and Franklin Mineral Museum.
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This group of seven book-length documents represents a monumental research effort by a dedicated researcher and a skilled writer. The users of these volumes are in great debt to Peter Dunn for his examination of tens of thousands of pages of 18th- and 19th-century documents and his distillation of the information down into a mere 1,026 pages of text, including extensive lists of people and companies with an additional 75 pages of detailed index. The cover of each volume states "Final Report: Part One," indicating the author intends to publish additional work on this subject. With the introductory statements and the table of contents in each volume, the total page count is 1,228. Potential readers should not be intimidated; a few of these pages are blanks!
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1
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The title suggests this work is a mining history, but on the whole it is actually a mineral-rights leasing, mortgage, and litigation history. The author does provide information on mining, mineral beneficiation, and thermal processing of ore as given in sworn testimony, statements, documents, and decrees made by people who were active in these professions. It is a credit to Dunn that he tracked down so much obscure legal documentation in three different states. The documents result from 12 major court battles that led to important decisions, 10 cases that reached no decision, and a total of 50 court decisions in all. In Dunn's own words, the task of reading these documents was at times "mind-numbing." He uses contemporaneous illustrations in the form of maps, portraits, photographs, stock certificates, product labels, and lithographs from both Harper's New Monthly Magazine and Scientific American to break up the tedium of legal battles and to keep the reader's interest.
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2
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The author uses different font and typesetting conventions, so the reader can readily identify and differentiate testimony, quotes from contemporaneous sources, copied notices, newspaper accounts, and original text. He injects opinion and humorous observations on the historical record by describing documents as "boiler-plate" (p. 531), or "... particularly windy, truly excessive, and obsequious and fawning tribute ..."(p. 327) or "... crushingly boring detail." (p. 707). These peeks into Dunn's personality were enjoyable.
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3
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The author warns the reader that there is some repetition, but he finds it necessary because much in the record is confusing. For instance, the two major ore bodies were exceptionally rich zinc deposits, separated by only 3 miles; both have a fishhook shape in plan view and similar mineralogy, and both were exploited by many of the same individuals and companies. The southern one is known as the Sterling Hill Mine, while the northern one was known as the Franklin Mine but was on a tract of land called the Mine Hill Farm. The repetition, although sometimes needed, can be tedious to the reader.
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4
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At the outset Dunn clearly states that his objective is to put together a document useful to future researchers, and he stays faithful to it. He provides location and box numbers on significant archival records in a number of institutions. Book and page numbers are routinely given for courthouse documents. When there is confusion in the historical record on naming conventions, spelling, or a scribe's mistakes, Dunn explains and corrects the text.
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5
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The first 90 pages cover the colonial and early period of iron mining and forges in the area. The remainder of the documents deals in some way with two world-class zinc deposits—the Franklin and Sterling Hill mines. These rich deposits were unique in the world, very large, and hosted more than 300 mineral species, many fluorescent under ultraviolet light. They are famous with mineral enthusiasts worldwide. Dunn chronicles the consolidation of both surface and mineral rights by Samuel Fowler and the subsequent severing and fractionation of these rights by later owners. The author shows how unscrupulous owners used their ownership rights as tools for the intentional deception of investors, businesses, and lessees.
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6
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The shenanigans started early, soon after Fowler's sale of the Franklin deposit in 1836. Under a subheading of "The rise of the scoundrels," the author states, "These men were very interested in the manipulation and exploitation of the deeding of properties and mineral rights, legal weaknesses or ambiguities in mortgages, mining leases and licenses, mining stocks, corporations legitimate and otherwise, the legal system, and ambiguities in the definitions of terms" (p. 142). The mineral rights were not consolidated again until 1897, with the settling of a lawsuit and the formation of the modern New Jersey Zinc Company.
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7
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For a person interested in industrial archaeology, Dunn's story presents many industrial sidelights. He briefly discusses the charcoal industry on pages 87 through 89. He also discusses early company housing, stores, and community organization (pp. 142–44) and returns to the same subjects at the end of the 19th century (pp. 914–30). Figure 33–12 (pp. 922, 923) appears to be ideal for planning an IA tour of Franklin, New Jersey.
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8
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Dunn discusses the development of the American process for zinc oxide production on pages 210 through 227, complete with description and plans of the New Jersey Zinc Company's plant in Newark, New Jersey. He similarly describes the Passaic Zinc Company's Jersey City plant on pages 295 to 309. He illustrates the Passaic Zinc Company section with both vintage photographs and drawings from an 1894 Scientific American Supplement. He provides similar treatments of the Lehigh Zinc and Iron Works in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the Palmerton, Pennsylvania, facilities of New Jersey Zinc.
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Dunn reviews the development of the Wetherill Furnace for zinc oxide production in conjunction with the New Jersey Zinc Company's Newark plant. The inventor, Samuel Wetherill (1821–1890), came from a family involved in lead paint manufacture. A quote attributed to Wetherill (pp. 247–48) was particularly interesting, providing a firsthand description of lead poisoning symptoms in industrial workers and the rotation of job assignment as a result of the toxic effects.
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10
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A transportation historian will recognize an omission on page 504 where the author suggests that Morris Canal traffic took ore to the Mercer Zinc Works by traveling down the Delaware River from Phillipsburg to Trenton. The actual route would cross the Delaware to the Delaware Canal in Easton, Pennsylvania, travel to New Hope, Pennsylvania, and then cross the Delaware again to Lambertville, New Jersey. From Lambertville the Delaware and Raritan Canal provides access to Trenton. Nonetheless the trip is still "... downstream and economically efficient" (p. 504), but the canals do not have the rapids nor hidden rocks.
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11
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Because the title suggested it was a mining history, this set of books needed a glossary of both mining and process terminology. For instance, more than once it was necessary to clarify for the reader the difference between a slope of the vein and a stope developed within the mine. These terms are used in 19th-century quotes, and they are not interchangeable. Likewise, an explanation of the word stoll in the testimony (p. 806) was needed. From the description given, it appears to be referring to a timber-bracing member known today as a stull. Likewise, the iron furnace term salamander is not defined until page 228 (in a piece of 19th-century correspondence), more than 120 pages after the term is first used. The derivation of the metallurgical term from medieval alchemy is never explained.
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12
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The study contains a long discourse on the Trotter Tunnel (pp. 532–79), a mine heading developed at Sterling Hill. From the descriptions in the text, it seemed certain that this underground heading was actually an adit (meaning it had only one portal). This technical nuance of nomenclature seems to be verified in a Decree of the Chancellor on page 567, but the author never clarified this point. Later this underground heading is labeled "adit" on Figure 6–5 (p. 99), but the reader is not directed to it from the pertinent text.
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The photographs provided many opportunities to expound on the techniques used at the mines. However, the captions provided for most of the mining photos had limited explanation of the technical details and equipment which they documented. A photo on page 578 was numbered on the original print, but the caption makes no mention of the numbers or their meaning. The photos are rich with primary information that was not exploited.
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14
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It was difficult to use many of the maps provided. The limitations of old drawings and maps are something that is understandable, but there was a need to compare the historical and redrawn maps to a modern U.S. Geological Survey Topographic map for spatial reference. The reader is given very little help in deciphering true north and the scale on a large number of the drawings. In a similar fashion, the tables of land and mineral ownership were not instructive enough. A graphical technique to illustrate these overlapping parallel time series events would have been a great aid for a very confusing subject (see pp. 79–103 in Edward R. Tufte, Visual Explanations, Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press, 1997, 158 pp.).
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15
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| This self-published history has a lot to like, but, unfortunately, it suffers a bit from the lack of an editor. Volume 1 needs an errata sheet, so readers can make the recommended marginal notations to new information found in Addenda A of Volume 7. All seven blue covers list the author's name and under it his professional affiliation: Department of Mineral Sciences, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20560. This identification could cause some readers to erroneously interpret Dunn's work as an official publication. Finally, the author takes two unnecessary personal jabs at the local mineral collecting community in objectionable statements (pp. 328, 608). It was especially surprising that an educated, scientific writer chose to sully an otherwise excellent contribution to the history of an important mining district. In summary, this seven-volume set is a significant historical contribution but just a few ill-conceived sentences and editorial shortcomings diminished the enjoyment of reading. |
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