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Mosch, Dr GeorgeC article written FB200227PLGMoKo

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Paul Lynn Gardner?Mosch-Kortz Family Descendants
Admin · Yesterday · 27 February 2020

After posting the “GERMAINA BARK PEELERS”, and going through my collection of bulletins, published by the Potter County Historical Society, I found the following relevant article written by one of our cousins, Dr George Mosch.

TANNERIES & TANNING IN POTTER COUNTY BEFORE LATE 1860’S

By George C. Mosch (Potter County Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin July 1999)

TANNING - WORLD WIDE

The treatment of hides and skins to convert them into useful and durable leather products has been worked out by many cultures throughout the world as long ago as 3000 B.C. or 5000 years ago. Variations in geography, climate, types of plants and animals resulted in development of somewhat different techniques for tanning in different parts of the world.

TANNING IN EUROPE

Europe lost much of the art of tanning during the Dark Ages, but regained knowledge in the 15th Century which was passed on to our ancestors before America was settled.

TANNING IN AMERICA AND POTTER COUNTY

Immigrants to America then brought the European process of tanning when they came in the early 1600’s. The pioneers coming into Potter County in the early 1600’s. The pioneers coming into Potter County in the early 1600’s, from New York and Connecticut mostly, were familiar with what had been done in the Old Worlds. They probably used some of the primitive techniques described in a book, “Foxfire 3”, which recorded ways which Appalachian mountain people practiced tanning. Sometimes they used the brains and liver of the killed animas, rubbed well into both hairy and fleshy sides of the skin. This resulted both in making removal of hair and flesh possible, and tanning at the same time.

They also used the same method as Benjamin Burt who recorded first efforts at tanning soon after he cam here in 1811. He, and the Appalachian mountain people, used hollowed out longs into which the packed hides and skins, lye, in form of wood ashes, and water. After rinsing, Burt and they used bear grease or oils.

In 1840, when there were 26 state in the Union, there were 8,229 tanneries in the United State. Many communities were very isolated, separated by miles of wilderness with no roads as we know them now, with transportation often limited to horse or oxen, wagons, or canoes. There was need for leather items for footwear, aprons, harnesses, saddles, bridles, gloves, belting hinges for doors, coats, breeches, bellows, book bindings, powder and bullet bags and pails.

For Potter County settlements, most supplies had to be transported up to 60 miles from such earlier established towns as Ceres, Jersey Shore and Dansville, NY. (on Erie Canal); but raw materials for production of leather were right here in Potter County in the form hides and skins from wild and domestic animals, tannin from hemlock and other tree barks, abundant sources of flowing water, lye (wood ashes) and chicken manure. Therefore, almost every town had one or more tanneries.

Many of the very earliest tanneries were family operated or by one or two workers; they grew somewhat larger from 1820 until 1860’s when tanneries employing fifty to several hundred men were common throughout Pennsylvania.

By definition, leather is a hide (large animal) or skin (small animal) that has been converted by chemical treatment and processing, known as tanning, to a stable and non-decaying state. The object of tanning is to produce leather resistant to decomposition or decay, particularly when wet; to improve strength, flexibility and resilience, abrasion resistance a permeability to water.

Before the actual tanning process could be done, there were several preliminary steps. The tanner accumulated enough hides or skins for his needs and had to preserve them temporarily until he was ready to proceed. Raw hides and skins were first cleansed with water to remove dirt, blood, manure and other foreign materials. Then the hides and skins could be air-dried to inhibit bacterial decay; or they could be wet-salted by packing hides and skins with clean coarse salt (which dissolves in water of the hides); or by soaking the hides in a brine solution.

The hides and skins were washed again to remove salt or brine; and then soaked in large vats of lime and water to loosen the hair; or hides could be hung in “sweat pits” - large, lined rooms for control of temperature and humidity. Either of these techniques loosened the hair so that it could be removed by scraping the hide while it was draped over a “beam” - a curved surface of a length of tree trunk set at an angle to the floor so that a “beam” knife could be drawn over the hair side of the hide to remove the hair and flesh side when hide was turned over. Thus hair and flesh were both removed.

Hides and skins needed to be softened again by soaking in a mixture of chicken dung, salt and water (this process was “bating”); or stored in lofts where they were sprinkled with water a treated with oil. After several months they were scrubbed and cleaned again with water.

Now, the actual tanning phase of making leather could be stared. In Potter County the primary source of tannin was form hemlock bark. Thousands of hemlock trees were stripped of bark and the trunks left to rot in the woods until later when a market for hemlock lumber developed. Felling and peeling of hemlock trees usually took place from May through August, when sap was running and bark could be peeled off trunks much more easily. The peeled bark was stacked in the woods, then hauled to the tannery during winter when ground was firmer (or frozen) and covered with snow. Large sleds were used for transportation.

Bark was girdled around the trunk about every four feet. Then removed with a tool called a spud (it was used like a lever to pry bark away from the free trunk). When bark was brought to the tannery, it was stacked in long rows (in later years, up to 300’ long and 8 to 12’ (high and wide) amounting to hundreds or thousands of cords of bark. The bark had to be ground into a course dust with grinding stones, sometimes powered by a horse waling in a circle, or by water power.

The hides or skins were place in vats, usually built down into the ground. Vats were 8 to 12 feet in diameter or rectangular. The bark was layered alternately with the hides and with water added. The hides had to be shifted from time to time to have equal exposure to the tannin. In a later development the bark dust was mixed with hot water, and pumped into the vats. Vats were formed from closely fitted hardwood planks; occasionally they were made of stone or brick. Water was added to the vats by buckets or barrels, later by pumps or horse power and emptied by hand buckets until vats were developed that could be drained out the bottom. This step in tanning could take 6 to 18 months. (Use of hot water with the bark speeded up the process.)

Hides were next thoroughly cleansed with fresh water, stretched, hung in a loft, “dubbe” (coated with an oil or grease). They were then rolled and polished, ready to be made into usable products.

Waste products from tanneries included the bark, which eventually was often burned to provide steam power; and the hair which was used to strengthen plaster, make felt, carpets and blankets; the flesh side of the hide was made into glue.

One of the problems of the tanning industry was the pollution of air, water and soil. This was recognized in the mid 1800’s, and although laws were enacted to reduce such contamination, they were not successfully enforced for many years.

Mechanization and labor saving procedures were slow to be introduced into the tanning industry as compared with other parts of the Industrial Revolution. However, particular contributions by Americans did include a leather splitting machine in 1809; this immediately doubled the out put of usable leather. In 1852 a shoe-pegging machine tremendously speeded up the fastening of sole leather to the upper part of the shoe. In 1850 a machine was invented for the unhairing of hides; it combined the use of a moving table and a moving knife. Also around 1850, it was found that a mixture of oak and hemlock tannages improved leather and led to standardization in the industry.

From the late 1860’s into 1870’s many much larger modernized tanneries came into existence throughout Pennsylvania. Read Quarterly Bulletins #3, 26, 37, 60, 71 for additional information about tanneries in Potter County.
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16You, Adam Wetzel, Barbara Ellen Mosch and 13 others
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Doug Vaughan
Uncle George was too kind! No mention of the sickening, puke-inducing stench that settled in these valleys on hot summer nights.
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1John C Wetzel
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