Call Number:

3832

Repository:

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Extent:

0.15 linear feet (; 1 volume)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Cite as: [Indicate cited item or series here], John Price Wetherill engineering notebook (Collection 3832), The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Date:

1881-1891 (inclusive)

Creator:

Wetherill, John Price, 1844-1906

Abstract:

J.P. Wetherill, 1844-1906, was a son of American zinc industry pioneer Samuel Wetherill. J.P. Wetherill was born in Montville, N.J., served briefly in the 147th Pennsylvania Infantry in 1863, and graduated from the Polytechnic College of Philadelphia in 1865 with the degree of Mining Engineer. He worked for the Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Company in Schuylkill County and became their chief of mining engineers in 1877. In 1881 he resigned and, together with his brother Samuel P. Wetherill and Richard and August Heckscher, purchased the Lehigh Zinc Company plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which his father had founded in 1852. The firm was incorporated in 1881 as the Lehigh Zinc and Iron Company, with J.P. Wetherill as general manager. Later the company merged with the New Jersey Zinc Company, and Wetherill became a director of that firm. The John Price Wetherill Medal, awarded by the Franklin Institute between 1926 and 1997 for discovery or innovation in the physical sciences, was named for him.

The engineering notebook (which is labeled "Vol. II" on the flyleaf) spans the end of Wetherill's tenure at the Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Company and the first decade of his position at Lehigh Zinc and Iron. It includes technical and business reports, business accounts, lists of suppliers, manufacturing instructions, technical drawings, a hand-drawn map of Pennsylvania's anthracite coal fields, news clippings, and other entries regarding operations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.