History of Spelter, an American Asturian Community
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 12:53 pm
The current community of Spelter, West Virginia, had several names prior to becoming Spelter around 1928. Previous names were Meadowbrook and later Ziesing. The land that included the zinc factory and town site was land-grant property assigned to individuals by the then Commonwealth of Virginia. Earlier farmers were from the Smith family (Wesley, John and F. M.) as taken from early maps for the Coal and Clark Magisterial Districts of Harrison County. Spelter is surrounded by two rivers, the West Fork and Simpson Creek.
The following story about Spelter and the coming of the zinc industry to West Virginia is taken from the book, "History of Harrison County", as written by Dorothy Upton Davis in 1970.
Powder
Fairmont (DuPont) Powder Company
"The first chemical plant in the middle Appalachian area(52) was established by the DuPont Company on land leased from the Monongah Company and the Fairmont Coal Company seven miles north of Clarksburg at Meadowbrook in 1899. The DuPont Company built a mill to manufacture black powder and five large homes for their employees on a site known as "Powder Hill" (Spelter). (Note: the homes are still being lived in today). The mill operated for two years before a disastrous explosion in 1901 closed it down.
The land where the plant had stood was sold to the DuPont Company on February 9, 1910, which sold the entire property to the Grasselli Chemical Company on April 7, 1910. Six buildings built by the Fairmont Powder Company were in use in 1969: four residences; the Matthiessen and Hegeler Zinc Company Yard Office building; and a structure used by the zinc company as a garage for trucks.(53)
Zinc
Grasselli Chemical Company
Grasselli (Anmoore) Plant
At the turn of the century (20th Century) the Grasselli Chemical Company of Cleveland (Ohio) roasted zinc ore, which was 30 percent sulphur, in order to produce sulphuric acid. An employee of the firm, Richard Ziesing, who has been called one of the fathers of present-day middle Appalachian chemical industry, (54) urged the firm to branch out into a new industry--the smelting of zinc.
Lynn S. Hornor and Edward Davis bought 453 acres (the Ash and Smith farms) east of Clarksburg in August 1903. Guided by Thomas G. Brady, industrial promoter, the men named the site "Steelton" and gave 68.08 acres to the Grasselli Chemical Company. The B.&O. Railroad Company built two miles of track to the area where future industries would locate.(55) Mr. Ziesing came to Clarksburg to establish the zinc plant east of Clarksburg in the area which would later be named "Anmoore." Although his official residence was Cleveland, Ziesing lived for many months of each year from 1903 until 1927 at the Waldo Hotel (Clarksburg). In 1913 "next to the largest spelter plant in the country is the Grasselli Chemical Company at Clarksburg; the largest is at Collinsville, Oklahoma, where gas is even cheaper." (56) The Grasselli Company owned and operated a natural gas field that extended over Wolf Summit, Lost Creek, Lumberport, Grasselli (Anmoore), Glen Falls, and Meadowbrook and operated a gas compressor station at Wolf Summit to supply fuel for the Grasselli and Meadowbrook plants. The gas wells and lines were sold to the Hope Natural Gas Company in 1927.
In 1927 the plant at Grasselli (Anmoore) was closed and all operations of the Grasselli Company moved to Spelter (Meadowbrook) four miles north of Clarksburg.
Meadowbrook (Spelter) Plant
In April 1910 the Grasselli Chemical Company purchased approximately 200 acres of land at Meadowbrook for $10,000 from the E. I. Du Pont Company and leased 300 acres of Pittsburgh coal to supply fuel for the zinc smelting plant that began operation in 1911 with eight horizontal retort furnaces.
Furnances were fired with natural gas until the coal mine (Maureen) was opened in 1916. Natural gas again was used for fuel beginning in 1946. The coal mine was sold to the Consolidated Coal Company which continued to supply coal to meet the needs of the plant.
Construction of the sixteen vertical type retorts began in 1929; a seventeenth was added in 1951; and an eighteenth in 1952, the year an extensive modernization of buildings was started.
Each of the following men had more than fifty years' service at the Meadowbrook Plant when he retired: Herman A. Gronemeyer, Albert B. Morrison, Samuel C. Loria, Eugenio Alvarez, and Joe M. Vasquez.
Owners of Meadowbrook Plant
Grasselli Chemical Company 1910-1928
E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. 1928-1950
Matthiessen & Hegeler Zinc Co. 1950-
Superintendents of Meadowbrook Plant
E. W. Eaken 1911-1919
Herman E. Gronemeyer 1919-1957
Thomas R. Ferguson 1957-1967
David C. Kinder 1967-1968
William E. Coolbaught 1969 (57)
(Comment: This book was published in 1970 prior to the plant ceasing operations in 1970-1971. After which T. L. Diamond Company resumed operations in a small section of the facilites to fabricate zinc dust until the early 2000's when total operations ceased and a demolition and reclamation of the factory site started. The reclamation is near completion at this writing.)
(Comment: DuPont, during the reclamation project, left the original office building from the Powder Hill days to be used as a possible museum to tell the tale of Spelter and its workers. Also, DuPont is redeveloping the old reservoir that supplied water to the plant, and one time the town, into a lake, and the old school athletic fields into a new baseball field complete with lights. Plans are to donate the lake and baseball field to the Harrison County Park Commission. I have pictures taken in 1917 of the plant and town being built and other photos of Spelter from that era that I will be donating to the museum. DuPont has been a good corporate citizen to Spelter in the past and present.)
Spelter Townsite
In 1910 the Grasselli Company started construction of the town of Spelter near its plant on "Powder Hill" in Meadowbrook. By 1911, eighty houses existed; in 1915, when the town had a population of 1,500, 175 houses had been built. The houses rented for $11 a month. Occupants were provided with free water, free garbage disposal, and major repairs to the houses.
The company built a swinging footbridge across the West Fork River in 1910 to connect the town of Spelter with the Fairmont-Clarksburg interurban trolley line. The trolley stop was called "Ziesing". Wagons forded the river to bring supplies not carried into the town by the B.&O. Railroad. A school house was built on the hill.
Three stores existed in the town in 1913, the same year a new school building was constructed. In 1914 an old iron vehicular bridge was moved from the Lumberport-Haywood area and installed to span the West Fork River. A post office was established in Spelter in 1928.
DuPont sold the townsite in 1950, including the swinging bridge, to John J. Moschetta who immediately sold the houses to the employees occupying them at the time. Mr. Moschetta dismantled the swinging bridge in 1951.
In 1962 a new cement bridge was constructed north of the old vehicular bridge.(58)"
(Comment: The three stores mentioned in this book where the Standard Supply Company (previously Knight Brothers), Joe Alvarez Grocery and Scarnati's. Two other stores also existed, Fesslers and one other).
In Ms Davis' book she mentions another zinc factory and the following is about that plant and location:
"In March 1907 Joseph Loudourette and Company purchased six acres of land in North View (a section of Clarksburg), constructed a small zinc smelting plant, and moved its zinc plant from Marion, Ohio, to North View. (59) A group of Clarksburg men, S. C. Denham, Virgil L. Highland and William E. Oesterle leased the plant in 1908 and purchased it in 1909 for $40,122. The Clarksburg Zinc Company employed seventy men in 1909. (60) Martin M. Pearlman of Phildelphia, Pennsvlvania, purchased the plant June 29, 1911, and operated it under the name of Pearlman Company, Inc. The plant was closed down during 1918 and was sold on June 12, 1920."
Credits: (52) Charles Carpenter, "Coming of the Chemcial Industry to Middle Appalachia," West Virginia History, vol. xxx, no. 3, April 1969, p.537; (53) Albert B. Morrison, "Brief History of the Meadowbrook Plant, 1964; (54) Carpenter, "Coming of the Chemical Industry," p.537; (55) Clarksburg Telegram, August 21, 1903; (56) The Daily Telegram, Clarksburg, W. Va., January 3, 1913; (57) Morrison, Brief History of the Meadowbrook Plant; (58) Albert B. Morrison, Spelter Townsite; (59) Clarksburg Telegram, March 7, 1907; (60) Ibid., September 28, 1909
This summer (2004) the State of West Virginia and Du Pont erected a highway plaque on US Highway Route 19 at the entrance to the Spelter road giving the history of both the zinc plant and town. The following are pictures from that site (Also in our Photo Album in American Places).
There are a couple of errors in the signage, one being the year the plant ceased operations. The year listed is 1960, and actually it was 1970 into 1971. Also, the name of the company was not Meadowbrooks Works, but Matthiessen and Hegeler Zinc Company, also known as M&H Zinc Co. Hopefully a correction will be made so history will not be distorted.
The side of the sign about Spelter mentions two churches: Ziesing Methodist Church and Holy Family Catholic Church. The school was named Ziesing Grade and Junior High School (grades 1-9), and the stores were Standard Supply Company, Joe Alvarez Grocery (read about "Joe "Mike" Alvarez, Spelter Merchant" in the Forum) and Scarnati Grocery. Only the churches exist today, and Scarnati's is now the town post office (see picture in the Photo Album under American Places).
The following story about Spelter and the coming of the zinc industry to West Virginia is taken from the book, "History of Harrison County", as written by Dorothy Upton Davis in 1970.
Powder
Fairmont (DuPont) Powder Company
"The first chemical plant in the middle Appalachian area(52) was established by the DuPont Company on land leased from the Monongah Company and the Fairmont Coal Company seven miles north of Clarksburg at Meadowbrook in 1899. The DuPont Company built a mill to manufacture black powder and five large homes for their employees on a site known as "Powder Hill" (Spelter). (Note: the homes are still being lived in today). The mill operated for two years before a disastrous explosion in 1901 closed it down.
The land where the plant had stood was sold to the DuPont Company on February 9, 1910, which sold the entire property to the Grasselli Chemical Company on April 7, 1910. Six buildings built by the Fairmont Powder Company were in use in 1969: four residences; the Matthiessen and Hegeler Zinc Company Yard Office building; and a structure used by the zinc company as a garage for trucks.(53)
Zinc
Grasselli Chemical Company
Grasselli (Anmoore) Plant
At the turn of the century (20th Century) the Grasselli Chemical Company of Cleveland (Ohio) roasted zinc ore, which was 30 percent sulphur, in order to produce sulphuric acid. An employee of the firm, Richard Ziesing, who has been called one of the fathers of present-day middle Appalachian chemical industry, (54) urged the firm to branch out into a new industry--the smelting of zinc.
Lynn S. Hornor and Edward Davis bought 453 acres (the Ash and Smith farms) east of Clarksburg in August 1903. Guided by Thomas G. Brady, industrial promoter, the men named the site "Steelton" and gave 68.08 acres to the Grasselli Chemical Company. The B.&O. Railroad Company built two miles of track to the area where future industries would locate.(55) Mr. Ziesing came to Clarksburg to establish the zinc plant east of Clarksburg in the area which would later be named "Anmoore." Although his official residence was Cleveland, Ziesing lived for many months of each year from 1903 until 1927 at the Waldo Hotel (Clarksburg). In 1913 "next to the largest spelter plant in the country is the Grasselli Chemical Company at Clarksburg; the largest is at Collinsville, Oklahoma, where gas is even cheaper." (56) The Grasselli Company owned and operated a natural gas field that extended over Wolf Summit, Lost Creek, Lumberport, Grasselli (Anmoore), Glen Falls, and Meadowbrook and operated a gas compressor station at Wolf Summit to supply fuel for the Grasselli and Meadowbrook plants. The gas wells and lines were sold to the Hope Natural Gas Company in 1927.
In 1927 the plant at Grasselli (Anmoore) was closed and all operations of the Grasselli Company moved to Spelter (Meadowbrook) four miles north of Clarksburg.
Meadowbrook (Spelter) Plant
In April 1910 the Grasselli Chemical Company purchased approximately 200 acres of land at Meadowbrook for $10,000 from the E. I. Du Pont Company and leased 300 acres of Pittsburgh coal to supply fuel for the zinc smelting plant that began operation in 1911 with eight horizontal retort furnaces.
Furnances were fired with natural gas until the coal mine (Maureen) was opened in 1916. Natural gas again was used for fuel beginning in 1946. The coal mine was sold to the Consolidated Coal Company which continued to supply coal to meet the needs of the plant.
Construction of the sixteen vertical type retorts began in 1929; a seventeenth was added in 1951; and an eighteenth in 1952, the year an extensive modernization of buildings was started.
Each of the following men had more than fifty years' service at the Meadowbrook Plant when he retired: Herman A. Gronemeyer, Albert B. Morrison, Samuel C. Loria, Eugenio Alvarez, and Joe M. Vasquez.
Owners of Meadowbrook Plant
Grasselli Chemical Company 1910-1928
E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. 1928-1950
Matthiessen & Hegeler Zinc Co. 1950-
Superintendents of Meadowbrook Plant
E. W. Eaken 1911-1919
Herman E. Gronemeyer 1919-1957
Thomas R. Ferguson 1957-1967
David C. Kinder 1967-1968
William E. Coolbaught 1969 (57)
(Comment: This book was published in 1970 prior to the plant ceasing operations in 1970-1971. After which T. L. Diamond Company resumed operations in a small section of the facilites to fabricate zinc dust until the early 2000's when total operations ceased and a demolition and reclamation of the factory site started. The reclamation is near completion at this writing.)
(Comment: DuPont, during the reclamation project, left the original office building from the Powder Hill days to be used as a possible museum to tell the tale of Spelter and its workers. Also, DuPont is redeveloping the old reservoir that supplied water to the plant, and one time the town, into a lake, and the old school athletic fields into a new baseball field complete with lights. Plans are to donate the lake and baseball field to the Harrison County Park Commission. I have pictures taken in 1917 of the plant and town being built and other photos of Spelter from that era that I will be donating to the museum. DuPont has been a good corporate citizen to Spelter in the past and present.)
Spelter Townsite
In 1910 the Grasselli Company started construction of the town of Spelter near its plant on "Powder Hill" in Meadowbrook. By 1911, eighty houses existed; in 1915, when the town had a population of 1,500, 175 houses had been built. The houses rented for $11 a month. Occupants were provided with free water, free garbage disposal, and major repairs to the houses.
The company built a swinging footbridge across the West Fork River in 1910 to connect the town of Spelter with the Fairmont-Clarksburg interurban trolley line. The trolley stop was called "Ziesing". Wagons forded the river to bring supplies not carried into the town by the B.&O. Railroad. A school house was built on the hill.
Three stores existed in the town in 1913, the same year a new school building was constructed. In 1914 an old iron vehicular bridge was moved from the Lumberport-Haywood area and installed to span the West Fork River. A post office was established in Spelter in 1928.
DuPont sold the townsite in 1950, including the swinging bridge, to John J. Moschetta who immediately sold the houses to the employees occupying them at the time. Mr. Moschetta dismantled the swinging bridge in 1951.
In 1962 a new cement bridge was constructed north of the old vehicular bridge.(58)"
(Comment: The three stores mentioned in this book where the Standard Supply Company (previously Knight Brothers), Joe Alvarez Grocery and Scarnati's. Two other stores also existed, Fesslers and one other).
In Ms Davis' book she mentions another zinc factory and the following is about that plant and location:
"In March 1907 Joseph Loudourette and Company purchased six acres of land in North View (a section of Clarksburg), constructed a small zinc smelting plant, and moved its zinc plant from Marion, Ohio, to North View. (59) A group of Clarksburg men, S. C. Denham, Virgil L. Highland and William E. Oesterle leased the plant in 1908 and purchased it in 1909 for $40,122. The Clarksburg Zinc Company employed seventy men in 1909. (60) Martin M. Pearlman of Phildelphia, Pennsvlvania, purchased the plant June 29, 1911, and operated it under the name of Pearlman Company, Inc. The plant was closed down during 1918 and was sold on June 12, 1920."
Credits: (52) Charles Carpenter, "Coming of the Chemcial Industry to Middle Appalachia," West Virginia History, vol. xxx, no. 3, April 1969, p.537; (53) Albert B. Morrison, "Brief History of the Meadowbrook Plant, 1964; (54) Carpenter, "Coming of the Chemical Industry," p.537; (55) Clarksburg Telegram, August 21, 1903; (56) The Daily Telegram, Clarksburg, W. Va., January 3, 1913; (57) Morrison, Brief History of the Meadowbrook Plant; (58) Albert B. Morrison, Spelter Townsite; (59) Clarksburg Telegram, March 7, 1907; (60) Ibid., September 28, 1909
This summer (2004) the State of West Virginia and Du Pont erected a highway plaque on US Highway Route 19 at the entrance to the Spelter road giving the history of both the zinc plant and town. The following are pictures from that site (Also in our Photo Album in American Places).
There are a couple of errors in the signage, one being the year the plant ceased operations. The year listed is 1960, and actually it was 1970 into 1971. Also, the name of the company was not Meadowbrooks Works, but Matthiessen and Hegeler Zinc Company, also known as M&H Zinc Co. Hopefully a correction will be made so history will not be distorted.
The side of the sign about Spelter mentions two churches: Ziesing Methodist Church and Holy Family Catholic Church. The school was named Ziesing Grade and Junior High School (grades 1-9), and the stores were Standard Supply Company, Joe Alvarez Grocery (read about "Joe "Mike" Alvarez, Spelter Merchant" in the Forum) and Scarnati Grocery. Only the churches exist today, and Scarnati's is now the town post office (see picture in the Photo Album under American Places).