Dates

• Majority of material found within 1881 - 1998

Extent

1,000 boxes Linear Feet (In operation for more than 100 years, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company (R&P) became one of the largest employers in Indiana County, Pennsylvania. The parent company of R&P was founded by Walston H. Brown as the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal & Iron Company (R&PC&IC), which was incorporated in November 1881 after Franklin Platt and his brother W.G. Platt, geologists from the Second Pennsylvania Geological Survey, mapped and determined the extent of the coal fields in Pennsylvania. The company would eventually own many coal mining operations. The company began to develop, purchase land, and plan the layout of mines in 1882. In 1883, R&P started to mine and sell bituminous coal commercially. On July 1, 1883, the company’s first railroad, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad, reached Buffalo, New York and the company made its first coal shipment. Company records indicate that the first company mines were the Beechtree and Walston Mines in Jefferson County. In 1884, R&P built company housing for miners near Beechtree Mines at a cost of $250 per house, and the houses were rented to the miners’ families for $60 per year. The Walston Mines were known for making coal coke for the steel industry. In 1885, despite initial prosperity and success, the railroad company went into receivership, and its property and the stock of R&P were purchased by Adrian Georg Iselin, Sr. (1818-1905), a Swiss investment banker from New York City. The Iselin family remained involved in the company business, and Franklin Platt was elected company president in 1886. Over the next 10 years, R&P amassed large tracks of land to develop as mines to meet the nation’s growing demand for coal. New mining operations opened in Armstrong, Jefferson, Clearfield, and Indiana counties. Adrian G. Iselin, Jr. (1846-1925) was responsible for the expansion of the company into Indiana County. Ernest Iselin, son of Adrian G. Iselin, Jr., was director of the company from 1924 to 1934 and chairman of the board from 1936 to 1954. The company's first mines were located in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, in an area known as the Saw Mill Run Valley. These mines, including the Walston Mine which, by 1885, was using much of the coal it produced to make coke, boasted the longest string of coke ovens in the world. More than 500 employees worked in the ovens alone. R&P became one of the largest employees in the area. During the 1880s, with the backing of the Iselin banking firm, R&P expanded significantly, with large operations opened at Beachtree, Walston, Adrian, Florence, and Eleanora. By 1890, the company had acquired over five thousand acres of coal lands. The Company had also purchased several small railroads, which they consolidated into one large railway company, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh (BR&P) Railroad. Coal and coke shipped from the R&P mines found a ready market in the developing iron and steel industry adjacent to the Great Lakes area. The BR&P Railway, which connected the rich coal fields of southwestern Pennsylvania with Buffalo, Rochester, and other more distant markets in New England and Canada, afforded the shortest rail route, and consequently the cheapest route, to these markets. In addition to the development of its own mines, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal & Iron Company actively pursued the acquisition of older mines with established output levels. Along with the Jefferson & Clearfield Coal & Iron Company, a company with an identical Board of Directors, R&P purchased the Helvetia mine in Clearfield County at the price of $1.1 million, an exorbitant sum in 1895. But for that price, in an average year Helvetia produced 252,142 tons of coal and 9,331 tons of coke. R&P also acquired the Bell, Lewis & Yates Mining Company in 1896, a purchase which included the rights to the Rochester Mine, an operating mine near Dubois in Clearfield County which dated back to 1877. The Rochester Mine produced an average of 504,720 tons of coal per year and employed six hundred miners. At almost the same time, R&P added the Big Soldier Mine near Reynoldsville, Jefferson County, to its holdings. With these new property acquisitions, R&P became one of the largest mining companies in the bituminous coal regions in southwestern Pennsylvania. As the 19th century drew to a close, R&P continued to expand its existing operations, all the while seeking new coal lands and more lucrative markets for the coal it was producing. Lucius Waterman Robinson became president of R&P in 1899, and he remained company president for the next 20 years. He purchased large tracks of land in White Township and Blacklick Township in Indiana County. By obtaining track rights between Indiana and Pittsburgh over the B&O rails, R&P expanded the BR&P's area of operations, capitalizing on the growing Pittsburgh iron and steel industries. In 1899, plans were under way to move the company headquarters from Jefferson County to Indiana County. In 1900, electricity and electric haulage systems were installed in company mines at Walston, Florence, Adrian, London, Sykesville, Trout Run, Eleanor, and Helvetia. In 1907, the electric haulage system used at the Yatesboro Mines was considered by mining engineers to be the highpoint of modern technology. In April 1900, R&P purchased several thousand acres of land in the north-western section of Indiana County. For the opening of these coal fields, R&P retained its president, Lucius Waterman Robinson, and its Board of Directors, and formed a complex system of subsidiary companies to head each of its new mines. This was done to protect the parent company from potential bankruptcy and to insure that all income tax advantages were exploited. The Iselin family continued its financial backing for all of the company's business ventures. In 1901-1902, business operations for R&P Coal & Iron were moved to Indiana, Pennsylvania. In 1902, the company purchased 40,000 acres in Indiana County, which Iselin were parceled out subsidiary companies such as Consolidated Coal and Iron, Indiana Coal Company, R&P Coal and Iron, and the Jefferson and Clearfield Coal and Iron Company. The R&P building on Church Street in Indiana was built in 1919. By 1920, R&P had 15 mines operating in Indiana County alone, the largest of which was Ernest, which employed 1,000 men. This company-owned town epitomized the "mining patches" of southwestern Pennsylvania, with over a dozen different nationalities residing there. These immigrant miners and their families attended the company-built churches, schools, and community centers, bought their groceries in the company-owned stores, and lived in company owned housing. Overproduction, price wars, and competition from alternate fuels during and after World War I all contributed to a serious decline in coal company profits during the 1920s. By 1922, in an effort to recoup some of their losses, many coal operators attempted to reduce the union wage scale. Since 70% of all coal mined in the U.S. was mined under union wage agreements, this resulted in a series of nationwide strikes. By 1925, the center of the bituminous coal industry had shifted from Pennsylvania to Kentucky and West Virginia. As a result, many of R&P's mines were in operation for only one or two days a month. Company town residents searched for work on local farms, trading labor for food. Company executives gave up vacations and worked for periods of time without pay. On November 23, 1927, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company was incorporated after the consolidation of the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal & Iron Company (R&PC&I) and the Jefferson & Clearfield Coal & Iron Company (J&CC&I). R&P entered the 1930s faced with the same economic problems which plagued the entire coal industry during the Depression years. A lack of uniform wage standards created still more difficulties in the coal industry, and by 1932, bituminous coal production in the U.S. fell to 305 million tons, the lowest rate since 1904. As the economy gradually improved in the late 1930s, the coal industry showed signs of recovery. With World War II on the horizon, the demand for coal increased. By 1939, R&P was producing 395 million tons of coal, which escalated to 514 million tons in 1941. This increase in production combined with the potential loss of employees to the armed forces forced R&P to modernize. R&P responded by installing updated mechanical loading equipment in all company mines. After World War II, bituminous coal production in the United States hit an all-time high of 631,000,000 tons in 1947. In 1948, Dr. Charles Jackson Potter began his 22-year tenure as president of the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company. In order to retain their portion of the market, R&P began to seek new coal fields as older operations were mined out. Several new mines were leased from other Indiana County operators, and R&P placed a new emphasis on surface mining. By the late 1940s, many Indiana County mines including those of the R&P Coal Company were nearly exhausted, although large quantities of coal were now obtained through strip mining. Underground mining continued for a while in the Company’s towns. The first of McIntyre’s two mines closed in 1952, and the second one in 1963. It was clearly becoming obvious that strip mining was more profitable than mining underground. Because surface or strip mining no longer required company housing, in 1947 the 17 remaining towns including McIntyre, and their water rights, were sold by the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company to the Kovalchick Company in Indiana, Pennsylvania, for $890,000. The names of the 17 company towns, located in Indiana, Armstrong, Clearfield, and Cambria counties were: McIntyre, Coal Run, Iselin, Waterman, Lucernmines, Aultman, Ernest, Tidesdale, Coy, Luciusboro, Fulton Run, Nu Mine, Yatesboro, Margaret, Helvetia, Twin Rocks, and Yatesboro. Post-War coal production rates continued to climb. In order to retain their portion of the market, R&P began to seek new coal fields as older operations were mined out. Several new mines were leased from other Indiana County operators, and R&P placed a new emphasis on surface mining. R&P also expanded a significant portion of its operations into West Virginia, where the company acquired the coal rights to 7500 acres of land. By 1955, production at O'Donnell, their largest West Virginia operation, had reached 998,728 tons annually. During the 1950s, R&P struggled to offset the losses of another major slump in the coal industry due to competition from non-union fields and alternate fuels. In 1954, the company joined with the Vitro Corporation of America to form the Vitro Mineral Corporation. For several years, Vitro Minerals mined uranium, silver, feldspar, and titanium at sites as far away as Canada, French Guiana, Columbia and Alaska. Although these efforts to attain profits outside of the coal industry were moderately successful, the Vitro Minerals Corporation was dissolved in 1962 and R&P again concentrated on the coal fields of Indiana County. The same year that Vitro Minerals was dissolved, Pennsylvania Electric Company (Penelec), a major consumer of coal, announced a plan to build the Keystone Steam Electric Generating Station. As railroad freight rates per ton of coal exceeded the market price of coal at the mine itself, utility companies sought alternatives that would reduce their costs. Based on the theory that it was cheaper to produce power near its fuel source and transmit the electricity to the point of usage than it was to ship the fuel to a power plant away from the fuel source, Penelec planned to build this station near the abundant coal fields of central Pennsylvania. Penelec officials approached R&P to determine whether there were sufficient coal reserves to fuel such a large facility. By mid-1964, R&P and Penelec had reached a coal supply agreement for this Station, and several new mines were under development by R&P to reach the terms of this agreement. By 1969, a second plant similar to Keystone had been constructed near Homer City, PA, which was also fueled by R&P coal. Despite these two mine-mouth stations, which at least locally created a demand for coal, the 1960s were bleak days for the coal industry everywhere. R&P was forced to close many of its West Virginia operations, and the future of the Company depended upon the success of these mine-mouth operations. Entering the 1970s, R&P had successfully altered its fundamental business strategy from that of selling coal on the commercial market to that of selling virtually its entire production under long term contracts to only two customers, the Keystone and Homer City generating plants. Throughout the decade, R&P remained profitable in a difficult market marked by economic uncertainty and governmental regulation. It became a Fortune 500 company and the largest employer in Indiana County. In 1981, R&P celebrated its centennial, commemorating 100 years of continuous coal production with the publication of Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company: The First One Hundred Years by Eileen Mountjoy. Financial control of the company remained in the Iselin family from 1885 until R&P was acquired by CONSOL Energy, the family remained actively involved as officers of R&P's Board of Directors. In 1998, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company was bought by CONSOL and incorporated into CONSOL Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNX). The Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company records were donated to the Special Collections & University Archives at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and the collection continues to serve as a valuable resource to researchers and historians. In 2009, the University Museum hosted the exhibition A Walk Through Time: Pennsylvania Coal Culture featuring the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company Collection. The Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company records constitute one of the most complete collections of coal company records in existence. They are housed in one hundred and two archival boxes and are arranged in five series. Series have been designated for the presidents' office files, the Board of Director's files, Vitro Minerals Corporation files, real estate transaction files, and company ledgers. The president’s office files are further divided into five subseries, one for the early materials, and one for each administration between 1920 and 1978. These records primarily include daily correspondence, financial information, shareholders and Board of Directors reports and meeting notices, deeds and land acquisition files, as well as material pertaining to the United Mine Workers of America. These records are fairly comprehensive for the span of dates contained, particularly with regard to R&P's early years of operation and the company's later involvement in the Vitro Minerals Corporation. A significant amount of material relating to the operation of the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad is also interwoven throughout the collection. For more information about photographs and oral history interviews related to R&P, please see Manuscript Group 94: Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company Media Collection.)

Language of Materials

English