JOHN RICHARDS BUCHTEL:

A PATERNALISTIC OHIO COAL OPERATOR

By Dr. Ivan Tribe
itribe@urgrgcc.edu
History professor at Rio Grande College

Toledo's importance as a coal shipping port ranked among the factors in its development into major city status. Lake steamers used coal as fuel and transported the "black diamonds" to more distant locales. Although largely forgotten today, the origins of Toledo's rise as a coal port can be traced back to the 1870s. Then, railroad links with the mineral-rich Hocking Valley in the Appalachian portion of Ohio provided the northern city with connections that proved valuable in contributing to its future growth.

The Hocking coal region, situated in southern Perry, northern Athens, and western Hocking counties began to attract serious attention from outside business interests and local promoters in the years following the Civil War. After 1843, the Hocking Canal allowed some limited development of coal mining near its banks, but this outlet seemed inadequate for major growth. Besides, the most desirable coal veins lay several miles eastward in the vicinity of such tributary streams as Monday Creek, Sunday Creek, Snow Fork, and Brush Fork. Led by a salt manufacturer named Milbury M. Greene who secured sufficient financial support, the Columbus and Hocking Valley Railroad extended southward and reached Nelsonville, the center of the coal region in September, 1869.

Under Greene's leadership, the Columbus and Hocking Valley built branches to the coal lands in the nearby hills and incorporated and constructed two more rail companies. The Columbus and Toledo reached northward to give Hocking coal decent access to the lake trade. The Ohio and West Virginia extended trackage to the Ohio River. In 1881, the three companies merged to form the Columbus, Hocking Valley and Toledo.

Meanwhile, the coal and iron lands in the Hocking Valley attracted numerous speculators, investors, and developers. A few coal operators such as Lorenzo Poston, Peter Hayden, W. Barker Brooks, and Thaddeus Longstreth had entered the coal business in the era when the canal dominated transportation. Others became patriarchs of newly platted mining camps, like Lancaster banker John D. Martin for New Straitsville. Another business-minded individual who became deeply involved in the Hocking Valley was Akron entrepreneur John Richards Buchtel.

In 1887 when John Buchtel reached the twilight years of his life, the historian in his adopted home town of Akron, Ohio, Samuel A. Lane, characterized him by such terms as "big-hearted" and "large-hearted."¹ This may seem an atypical description for one whose primary occupation for the past decade had been that of owner-operator of coal mines and an iron furnace. It contrasts sharply with the comments of such twentieth century labor radicals as Aunt Molly Jackson's "rich parasites" and Sarah Ogan Gunning's "dirty rich aristocrats who never missed a meal" as descriptive terms for their husband's employers.² While granting that these women may have been unusually harsh in their judgments, the overall image of coal operators has not been good. This narrative takes a closer look at this one particular mining man and tries to see what made him different.

John Richards Buchtel was born in Green Township, Stark County, Ohio on January 18, 1820. His father, John Buchtel, like most Ohioans of that generation farmed for his livelihood. His mother, Catherine Richards Buchtel, was probably a typical farm wife. Green Township lies roughly midway between what would later become the thriving industrial cities of Akron and Canton. After 1840, Green became part of the newly created Summit County. He grew to adulthood while experiencing the hard labor that developing a farm from the wilderness entailed in that era. His educational opportunities like many of his generation have been described as "limited." One report had it that he could scarcely write his name at the age of twenty-one. The spelling and grammar of his few surviving letters have been described as poor.

Insufficient education failed to prevent Buchtel from attaining affluence, prosperity, and wealth. His initial endeavor in economic activity took place as a young adult when his father deeded him one hundred acres of land in exchange for paying off a seven hundred dollar debt. The young farmer did so and over the next two decades bought and sold two larger farms in Summit County--one of two hundred ten acres and another of one thousand acres--worked them successfully and profitably, and apparently also earned money by selling lumber on his larger purchase. A few days prior to his twenty-fourth birthday, the young farmer married Elizabeth Davidson, a Pennsylvania-born woman who had come to Ohio with her parents in 1834. The marriage survived for forty-seven years, but the Buchtel's were childless.

In the early 1860s, Buchtel purchased another farm in LaPorte County, Indiana, and was on the verge of leaving Ohio when he took a position instead with a farm implement manufacturer. In 1864, he persuaded his employer to build a factory in Akron which soon emerged as an independent firm, the Buckeye Mower and Reaper company, with Buchtel as president. When John R. Buchtel reached the age of fifty in

1870, the former farm boy represented the epitome of the self made man. He had gone literally from rags to riches, become one of a growing city of ten thousand's richest citizens engaged in a successful business and an active participant in local politics, church affairs, cultural endeavors, agriculture promotion, and philanthropy. While hardly in the same class with the soon to be billionaires Carnegie and Rockefeller, John R. Buchtel appeared with good reason to be a fine example of what popular lecturers like Russell Conwell would promote, to-wit, the notion that one should get rich in order to do good and benefit humanity with his wealth.³

During the decade of the seventies, Buchtel expanded his business interests to take in the Akron Iron Company. He now became the principal figure in this entrepreneurial endeavor to develop some two thousand acres of iron and coal properties in the Hocking Valley region of southeastern Ohio. Buchtel himself later described his role in the process.

The Akron Iron Company owned a furnace in Akron which they wanted to move somewhere where they could get to use it to a profit. I was sent down to the Hocking Valley, and I selected a piece of land. . . and moved the furnace there and was the General Manager of the Akron Iron Company business until the spring of 1883. . . .⁴

The valley had undergone an intensive boom since 1869 with the completion of the railroad. Nelsonville, a small coal shipping village on the Hocking Canal, had virtually tripled in population within a few months and the towns of New Straitsville and Shawnee and attained populations in excess of 2000 shortly after rail lines reached there. The Panic of 1873 and resulting depression slowed the pace of speculation and growth for a few years, but by 1876 and 1877 when the Akron Iron Company became involved in the Valley, things had begun to stir again.⁵

To be more precise, the already existing Akron Iron Company took over the assets of a speculative endeavor--the Bessemer Coal and Furnace Company--that experienced financial problems when the depression hit and crippled its progress. John R. Buchtel and the Akron Iron Company had the capital to pour into the project and get it rolling again. The company directors even thought for a time that they would relocate their already existing rolling mill to the Hocking Valley. They hired a Pennsylvania born Union Army veteran named Robert D. McManigal to run the project, but John R. Buchtel soon overshadowed him, spending most of his time at the scene of construction. An Athens Journal reporter who visited the site in May 1877 took note of the furnace construction, opening of iron ore and coal banks, and the commencing of a brick yard. Commenting on the locality's new benefactor, the journalist wrote "You may search the state in vain for a man of greater vitality and business tact, with unbounded conversational ability and good humor" concluding that there is "no danger of the blues when he is there; they would be scared to death at the sight of him."⁶

While the mining lands of the defunct Bessemer corporation fell into the hands of Buchtel's firm, the proposed town site of Bessemer passed into the ownership of a Newark real estate concern Birkey and Lee. The latter hoped the coming boom expected from the soon to open mines and furnace of the Akron Iron Company would revive their hopes to develop the town of Bessemer which certainly ranked as the most elaborately planned city in the Hocking Valley. With over a thousand lots, two city blocks reserved for parks, one for a business block, smaller lots for workers near the furnace, and larger lots for the bourgeois in a more suburban neighborhood, Bessemer had the potential--in theory--to rival and even surpass Nelsonville. Its promoters termed it "the seat of AN EMPIRE OF INDUSTRY." Unfortunately, their grandiose plans became instead the most notorious speculative fiasco of the Hocking Valley in the decade, surpassing James Taylor and Nelson Rogers' aborted town of Ferrara a few miles away on upper Sunday Creek. Birkey and Lee's local agent, one Captain E. P. Abbot subsequently committed suicide and Bessemer reportedly by April 1878 consisted "of a few stumps and stakes." Bessemer probably failed because it was not near enough to the site of the Akron Iron Furnace. The town of Buchtel that did spring up adjacent to the furnace seems to have been somewhat influenced by the ideas conceived by the planners of the ill-fated Bessemer.⁷

By December 1877 when the furnace was "blown in," the community that developed beside it already contained some thirty-five buildings, seventy families, and one hundred seventy employees with a payroll of $7000 per month. On May 5, 1879, the Post Office Department changed and possibly relocated the Bessemer office to what now became officially known as Buchtel. While one reputable historian contends that "in recognition for his role. . . the inhabitants named their town Buchtel," given the already common practice of naming company towns for corporate executives, it seems unlikely that the local residents actually had a voice in the matter although they might well have done so if given the opportunity.⁸

The 1880 Census showed that the unincorporated community of Buchtel had 417 residents, 17.74% of them foreign born. Sixty men worked in the coal mines while another fifty-four worked in a variety of skilled and unskilled jobs, mostly at the Akron Iron Furnace. By contrast only seven people worked in white collar, managerial, and professional positions. An 1883 description of the town stated:

The village grew rapidly, and in the course of a few months nearly two hundred houses had sprung up, most of which were built by the Akron Iron Company. This company still owns one hundred seventy-eight of the houses, at least half of which are occupied by two or more families. The inhabitants are almost all laborers and clerks in the employ of the company. It has at present two physicians, H. T. Lee and F. C. Armstrong, with about fifteen hundred inhabitants [this figure seems exaggerated]. Two churches are in the course of erection a Roman Catholic and a Methodist Episcopal. The store at this place erected by the company in 1881, is decidedly the most extensive mercantile establishment in the Hocking Valley. Since the early history of the village a store had existed which was controlled by the company but managed by Mr. O[liver] B. Jackson, who was an independent partner in the store. The present store is a massive brick structure, 60 by 130 feet in dimensions, two stories high, with a cellar under the entire building. It handles nearly everything known to the mercantile business and comprises four departments, each of which occupies a large store-room, the average stock being worth $70,000. The store building and fixtures cost over $30,000. On the second floor, besides a large store room, is an opera hall with a seating capacity of five hundred, a hall occupied by the Odd Fellows lodge, and a doctor's office. The furnace at Buchtel is one of the largest in the valley, and this, together with the coal mining at this place makes it an important mining center. ⁹

John R. Buchtel demonstrated himself to be a benevolent , if somewhat paternalistic, coal operator. He donated the land for both of the aforementioned churches as well as a cemetery. He gave some degree of encouragement to fraternal orders and perhaps even labor unions. Buchtel Lodge #712, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, was instituted on July 6, 1882 with sixteen charter members. The Lodge increased its membership to seventy-four within a year. After that, membership increased slowly until 1893 when it peaked at one hundred fifteen. York Lodge #75, Knights of Pythias, had originally been located in Nelsonville, but relocated to Buchtel in the fall of 1882, increasing its numbers from sixty to sixty-seven in the first year of movement. By 1910, the Pythians in Buchtel numbered 167. Both groups met in a lodge room in the Opera House/company store building complex. Perhaps, so too, did Buchtel's three Knights of Labor Assemblies. Keystone Assembly #1516, organized in 1880, boasted one hundred fifteen members in 1882 and flourished until 1888. Humboldt Assembly #2026, first organized in 1882, had forty-nine members by 1884, apparently all of them German-speaking. A short-lived third local, Assembly #2607, had an additional forty-two members in 1884.¹⁰

How much of these community and workman-oriented activities enjoyed the direct support of J. R. Buchtel is not really easy to determine, but until 1883, it seems safe to assume that it was at least moderate and perhaps even more. He demonstrated his benevolence in the field of education, too. When the York township Board of Education claimed that they were too poor to build a school house, Buchtel "got up plans" and had one constructed at a personal cost to him of $3,000.

However, in March 1883, two events occurred which resulted in major change. The first happened when the Akron Iron Company merged with several other iron and coal firms to form the Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Company which controlled a sizable portion of the production in the region. Samuel Thomas, operator of the Thomas Furnace at Gore, became president of this enlarged corporation while J. R. Buchtel was relegated to the vice presidency along with Walter Craft and Thaddeus Longstreth. Generally known as the Syndicate, this new combination controlled some five iron furnaces, eighteen mines, 12,579 acres of coal and ore lands, five hundred seventy houses, and twelve stores. Company directors hoped to reduce the cost of producing and marketing their raw resources. The second event came a few months after the merger when the economy went into a recession which caused a lessening demand for coal.¹¹

The labor force viewed the formation of the Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Company with considerable uneasiness. They feared that wage reductions might be part of the Syndicate's long-range plan. Whether it had been part of their original objective or not cannot be ascertained, but it quickly became one as the demand for coal and iron receded. Since the coal market was always lower in the spring and early summer, miners normally took a ten-cent wage cut on March 1, from eighty to seventy cents. But over the objections of William P. Rend and J. R. Buchtel, the operators decided in January that they would seek a twenty-cent reduction instead. Ohio miners had developed a moderately successful organization in April 1882 under the leadership of John McBride of Massillon. Christopher Evans, a forty-three year old British-born miner residing in the nearby town of New Straitsville, served as district president for the Hocking Valley. The miners refused to take more than the customary reduction which went into effect on March 1. Hard times continued, particularly in the mines which fueled furnaces. By early April, seven syndicate mines were shut down while the other eleven worked only part time. Syndicate leaders persisted in asking for another wage cut while the miners kept refusing. The latter argued that accepting the cut would only lead to further reductions in other competing coal fields. Finally, C & H C & I made the unilateral announcement that after June 20, 1884, they would pay but sixty cents a ton for mining coal. This act precipitated what has become known to labor historians as the Great Hocking Valley Coal Strike of 1884-1885 which lasted for nine months.¹²

The private feelings of John R. Buchtel during the strike remain unknown but one can assume that they must have been dominated by agony and anguish. Prior to the walkout, he had donated ten dollars (of a $23.75 total) to the union collection for those destitute miners who were in dire circumstances from lack of work. He had also helped negotiate an agreement to keep the mines that supplied coal to the furnaces working in the event that a general work stoppage took place. For one who had a record of good work relations as long as he had been in charge of the Akron Iron Company, he must have had second thoughts about his entry into the larger conglomerate known as the Syndicate.¹³

Buchtel's paternalistic approach to labor relations had manifested its best side in the Akronite's approach to the perennially touchy issue of the company store system. When he testified before the Legislature's Hocking Valley Investigation Committee on March 21, 1885, Buchtel had a great deal to say about his company store experience:

When we first went into the Valley, we decided that we would do nothing but a cash business; that we would have no connection--I am now speaking of the Akron Iron Company--that we would have no store connected with our business. We commenced operations and we found it almost impossible to conduct our business without having a store. For this reason--there were not any stores in the neighborhood nearer at that time than Nelsonville, and many men that were working for us had to draw their wages almost from day to day, and they had to have the necessaries of life to live on, and it took a good portion of their time to go and get these necessaries of life; so I finally made arrangements with a man by the name of Jackson, who came there and started a store; but it created a great deal of dissatisfaction, as I thought, because most of our men, or nearly all of them, were very anxious that we should have a store of our own; so I finally bought Jackson out, and we then, since that time had a store of our own. . . . we have been carrying there, for the last three years, about sixty thousand dollars' worth of goods; I found it necessary, in connection with our store, to try to supply everything that was necessary for the family comforts of the miner; so I connected a meat market with the store, so as to furnish them with everything that was needed. I used to say to them, "Here, if there is any complaint or any overcharge in any way, shape or manner, let me know it and I will see that it is rectified." I didn't know but possibly the man in charge of the store might try to take advantage of the miners. I have always enjoined upon him to sell the goods as cheap as they could be afforded. I have frequently gone to the stores in Nelsonville--of course there would be some complaints, and I wanted to see if there was anything in a complaint--I have frequently gone to the stores in Nelsonville and priced goods, and if I found that there was any article sold cheaper than we were selling the same, I at once made them come down, because I determined that no goods should be sold to the miners for more money than they would have to pay elsewhere; my object was to try to create a home-like feeling for the miners; I built the store, which your Committee probably saw: I arranged my cellar with a view to laying in a large stock of potatoes and other necessaries of life, when they could be bought at a very low price; now, for instance, a year ago last fall--I had a cellar 130x60--I bought, I think, 15 or 16 car-loads of potatoes; I sold potatoes all along as cheap as they could be bought at wholesale a year ago this last spring.¹⁴

Upon cross-examination, Buchtel elaborated upon the pricing situation in the company store under his control. I stated that I had gone to different stores and have always tried to sell as cheap as the markets--cheaper, in fact, than they could be sold elsewhere; and we could afford to do it, because we buy our goods by the wholesale, as you would call it. Now, in the last week, I happened to be down there (indicating)-I Don't know whether I can name it now--oh, yes, Hayden's I think it is--and I asked the price of potatoes. He said 90 cents. We are selling the same potatoes at 70 cents--Burbanks, per bushel, and meat--we have been selling better beefsteak than they have at 20 cents, and we have never asked more than 15 cents for; and furthermore, I never allowed them to kill anything but the best beef. I says, "I don't want to give the miners anything that I would not eat myself," and in justice to us I must say, that there was never a complaint of our treatment of our men in that regard.¹⁵

When questioned as to a comparison with Columbus retail prices Buchtel answered: I can only speak of one grocery, and that is down here at Scott's grocery, where I have some property and am boarding. They ask more for their goods than we asked at our store. . . . we have always enjoined upon him [i. e. superintendent] not to ask any more than a reasonable profit on the goods, and not sell goods any higher than the same goods could be bought for in any other markets.¹⁶

In fact, Buchtel criticized his labor force on only one count, he believed they drank excessively. Or as he said it "a great many of them get the worse for liquor." While not an absolute teetotaler, Buchtel was sympathetic to the aims of prohibition and once ran as the Prohibition Party candidate for Secretary of State (under normal circumstances he supported the Republican Party as he had been an anti-slavery man and had been a Presidential elector for Grant in 1872). Buchtel presented evidence that even during the hardest months of the strike of December-January-February (1884-1885) that alcohol consumption in Buchtel (based on shipments that the train station had received) had in monetary value exceeded those of the previous year, $12,923.55 to $8,073.35. Unlike some employers Buchtel did not attempt to ban drinking in his town, but it obviously worried him a great deal. He concluded his testimony with a statistical breakdown stating that "I think that it [excessive drinking] has had more than anything else to do with the poverty in the valley--this excessive use of beer and whiskey."¹⁷

The end of the Great Strike brought a degree of relative industrial peace to the Hocking Valley and to Buchtel. The Syndicate made no more efforts to expand its holdings and even leased out some of the operations it already had. The company continued, however, to maintain a strong presence in Buchtel, although after it abandoned the use of the scrip or "truck" system, its image improved as the following newspaper item from 1888 suggests: Last night [February 10, 1888] witnessed one of the finest and most social affairs ever witnessed in this place in the masquerade ball given by the C. & H. C. & I. Co., in their commodious and highly suitable Opera House there. The committee . . .spared neither pains or expense in making it a success and their greatest hopes were realized. There were 75 masked couples and about 150 spectators present. The "Tannyhill Orchestra of Logan did themselves great credit. . . . Newman as "Don Carlos," Culver as the "Frenchman," Hoffman as "Lazy German," Baker as "Black Hussar," Skiles as "Hindoo," Snyder and Crawford as "Twin Chinamen," Sleeper as "Highlander," Newman H, as "Clown," were especially well received and continued to defy recognition. H. K. Terry as the Negro Dude captivated all the ladies. Dr. Pritchard in his costume of pure white well presented his true self and made several good hits. The ladies were all attractive and as pen could not express it, I will desist trying. The order was exceptional and this town is to be congratulated on having a manager for the Hall who will never be satisfied short of the best in everything.¹⁸

One might assume that Buchtel had arrived at a state of middle class respectability had not other newspaper reports such as the following also appeared from there: Saturday last was pay day and an unusual number of fights and drunken brawls occurred, the most horrible of which was the stabbing of Moses Keney by a Hungarian named Michael Morris. Morris with several other Hungarians were at Donahue's saloon drinking, when Keney and some others whose names were not obtainable came in and attacked them with rocks and whereupon Morris whipped out his knife and commenced cutting right and left. Keney received two ugly gashes on the right side of his head and one on the back. Morris was struck on the head with a large rock, inflicting a dangerous wound. Morris was arrested and taken to Nelsonville jail by Constable Henry Radcliff until he can be given a hearing. For some time after the cutting, excitement ran high and threats of lynching Morris was freely indulged in [sic]. This was occasioned by the true facts in the case being suppressed by the friends of Keney. About an hour later, some of Keney's friends went to Donahue's saloon and proceeded to administer a severe thumping to McKnight [the] bartender for allowing Morris to cut Keney.¹⁹

No doubt John Richards Buchtel would have expressed a degree of pride in the first of these events--unless perchance he frowned upon it as wasted time--and shuddered at the thought of the other. However, by this time the aging captain of industry had more problems. Several months earlier, in the spring of 1887, he had suffered a stroke which left him a cripple. His wife had experienced a similar attack some time earlier. Mrs. Buchtel passed away in 1891. A year and a day later on May 23, 1892, her husband followed her in death. The once active business leader had spent the last five years of his life in a wheel chair.²⁰

No immediate information has been uncovered as to the reaction of Hocking Valley residents to the death of John R. Buchtel although there undoubtedly were some. However, in Akron, an outpouring of grief took place which was virtually unprecedented. Buchtel had not only been one of the city's leading citizens, but also one of the most philanthropic and public spirited. As such, he had been much appreciated and the townspeople expected--correctly--that his passing would create a void which would be difficult to fill.

To Akronites, Buchtel's generous nature was both genuine and deep. His chief contribution had been in the field of education. In 1867, when the Universalist Church of which Buchtel was a prominent lay member began soliciting funds to start a college, Buchtel led the drive and made the largest contribution, $31,000. Accordingly, when the cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1871, the trustees had already decided that the institution would be named Buchtel College.

Buchtel's contribution did not end there. He continued as the leading donor, usually making up any shortfall in the annual budget. By the time of his death, his contributions to Buchtel College totaled $471,000. Besides cash donations, Buchtel made other gifts, too. For instance, he paid expenses to room and board out-of-town students, purchased books and furniture, paid for cadet uniforms, provided free housing for Lucinda "Amity" Brown--the long-time, all-purpose "housemother," and paid the tuition for dozens of needy students. He served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees from the school's founding until his death. At some point in his life, he made it a regular practice to attend graduations at Akron High School where he gave scholarships to those graduate orations which impressed him.²¹

Buchtel's philanthropy manifested itself in other areas also. He gave generously to the Akron Library Association, helping to convert it to a free public institution in 1877. He served as treasurer of the Summit County Agricultural Society and contributed financially to it as well. In addition to the gifts to his own Universalist Church, it was said that he "made generous donations to virtually every church and worthy cause in Akron and beyond." Finally, he also served as one of the first trustees of Ohio A. & M. College (today known as the Ohio State University), helping to select the Neil Farm north of Columbus as the site for the campus. One doubts that another Gilded Age businessman could be found who exemplified the ideal of Christian stewardship to a greater degree with his relative wealth than did John Richards Buchtel.²²

Buchtel manifested his generosity much more in Akron than he did in the Hocking Valley coal camp that bore his name. Of course, his initial pattern of philanthropy in Akron predated his involvement with the Akron Iron Company or the formation of the Buchtel Coal Company. To be sure, he exhibited considerably more generosity than did the other coal operators in the Hocking Valley whose names lived on in the villages that grew up around their mines such as Longstreth, Rendville, Haydenville, or the town later founded by Buchtel's one-time store associate, Jacksonville. Thad Longstreth compiled a record of bitter animosity with his labor force. While William P. Rend gained a degree of fame as a "good" coal operator by keeping his mine at New Straitsville working and paying his men the seventy cents a ton rate during the 1884-1885 strike, it is hard to determine whether he was being a generous employer or taking advantage of the problems of his competitors. There is no evidence that Rend bestowed as many benefactions upon the Rendville townfolk as Buchtel did upon the citizenry of Buchtel.

As long as John R. Buchtel retained control over the Akron Iron Company and his own Buchtel Coal Company, he apparently experienced little in the way of difficulty with the labor force. After he became one of many officials in the larger Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Company, labor relations deteriorated. Still Buchtel maintained a better reputation than did other officials in the Syndicate. During the legislative investigation in 1885, Representative Kohler asked the question:

In your opinion, if Mr. Buchtel had been free to operate his mine, Mr. Rend his, and the other independent companies theirs, according to their own judgment, and not under the control of a combination, there would have been no such strike?

Alex Johnson, the district secretary of the Ohio Miners Amalgamated Association gave the following reply: I don't think there would ever have been thirty-eight weeks of a strike. I don't think it would have extended that long. That is a plain simple answer. I think Mr. Buchtel or some of them would have settled long before that and broken the strike.²³

This answer suggests that the miners continued to retain some respect for J. R. Buchtel in spite of the difficulties which the strike had wrought upon them. Both in Akron and in Buchtel, the legacy of John R. Buchtel outlived him. Buchtel College flourished until 1913 as a private institution when it became the University of Akron. In 1967, it gained the status of a state university. For several decades, Buchtel Field was the scene of its athletic contests. Old Buchtel Hall burned in 1899, but a new Buchtel Hall replaced it in 1900 and is the oldest building on campus. A Buchtel College of Liberal Arts is still part of the University. Akron has a Buchtel High School and a Buchtel Avenue is one of the city's principal streets. A later generation of Akron business tycoons with names like Firestone, Goodrich, and Seiberling associated with the rubber industry eclipsed Buchtel as Akron grew to a city of a quarter million in the half century after his death, but the Buchtel name still retains a strong presence in what became known as the Rubber City.

The coal camp in the Hocking Valley also survived, but endured recurring hard times and decline. The Panic of 1893 hit Buchtel hard and the furnace closed, never to reopen. An 1897 state census of "miners needing relief" found one hundred fifty-five families (841 persons) in a destitute condition, including fifty-two homeowners and three hundred and fifty-eight children. This figure represented a probable eighty per cent of the town's population. That same year, the local Buchtel High School graduated its first class as six youths walked across the Opera House stage to receive their diplomas. Recovery came slowly, but by 1900 conditions had improved as the following January news dispatch reported: The mines here are working full time and good prospects for the rest of 1900. . .. The wrecking and shipping of the furnace is just about completed. . . . One year ago it was no trouble at all to secure a house here, but now a man has to almost repeat the Lord's prayer to get one. It is not because the company will not rent them, but the cause is that all of them are occupied. Prosperity has surely hit Buchtel a terrible blow.²⁴

Unfortunately, Buchtel's second prosperity did not endure. The town incorporated in April 1900 by which time 28.2 per cent of the town's two hundred sixteen households (1,025 persons) had become homeowners. The population peaked at 1,180 in 1910 and held up through 1920. The next depression took a greater toll than before and by 1990 the population declined to 640 although it had been smaller in 1960.²⁵ Other than the state highway, the town's major thoroughfare bears the name Akron Avenue and the two churches built on land donated by the original town benefactor still thrive. Other than that, none of Buchtel's influence survives as the town's working population now commutes elsewhere to their jobs. The town's heyday as a rough-and-tumble mining camp is but a distant memory as is that of the man who created it.

In conclusion, this narrative has briefly surveyed the life of John Richards Buchtel, a Gilded Age industrialist and philanthropist, whose legacy consisted of a small private college which evolved into a large, public urban university and a mining town which endured hard times, but eventually declined in the manner of most coal camps. As a person, Buchtel endeavored to live up to his generation's ideal of Christian stewardship and succeeded after a fashion although his generosity proved more beneficial to the people of Akron than it did to those in the Hocking Valley. His brand of benevolent paternalism earned him respect among the miners, but he probably fell short of their ideal of a boss just as their intemperate practices fell short of his ideal labor force.

ENDNOTES

1 Samuel A. Lane, Fifty Years and Over of Akron and Summit County (Akron: Beacon Job Department, 1892), p. 165.

2 Quoted from Aunt Molly Jackson, The Library of Congress Recordings, Rounder LP 1002 and They'll Never Keep Us Down: Women's Coal Mining Songs, Rounder LP 4012.

3 Lane, Fifty Years of Akron and Summit County, p. 150; George W. Knepper, New Lamps for Old: One Hundred Years of Urban Higher Education at the University of Akron (Akron: University of Akron, 1970), pp. 24-25.

4 Ohio General Assembly, Proceedings of the Investigation Committee (the Hocking Valley Investigation) (Columbus: State Printer, 1885), p. 187.

5 Ivan M. Tribe, Little Cities of Black Diamonds: Urban Development in the Hocking Coal Region, 1870-1900 (Athens, Ohio: Athens County Historical Society, 1986), pp. 1-65.

6 Athens Journal, May 10, 1877.

7 Albany Echo, June 13, 1878; Logan Republican, January 3, 1878; Hocking Sentinel (Logan), November 8, 1877.

8 Knepper, New Lamps for Old, p. 24; John S. Gallagher and Alan H. Patera, The Post Offices of Ohio (Burtonsville, Md.: The Depot, 1979), p. 36; Hocking Sentinel, January 10, 1878.

9 History of Hocking Valley (Chicago: Inter-State Publishing Co., 1883),

pp. 409-410.

10 Ibid., pp. 410-411; Gladys Wade, "Buchtel United Methodist Church," in Beverly I. Schumacher and Mary L. Bowman, compilers, Athens County Family History (Athens, Ohio: Athens Ancestree, 1987), p. 241; Knights of Pythias, Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Ohio (Hamilton: Knights of Pythias, 1911), p. 231; Ivan M.Tribe, Sprinkled with Coal Dust: Life and Work in the Hocking Coal Region, 1870-1900 (Athens, Ohio: Athens County Historical Society, 1989), p. 78; Jonathan Ezra Garlock, "A Structural Analysis of the Knights of Labor," (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Rochester, 1974), p. 362.

11 Proceedings of the Hocking Valley Investigation, p. 238; The Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Company (New York: Globe Printing Company, 1883), pp. 3, 11,28.

12 The best account is John William Lozier, "The Hocking Valley Coal Miner's Strike, 1884-1885" (M.A. Thesis, The Ohio State University, 1963), passim. See also Tribe, Sprinkled with Coal Dust, pp. 63-66, and Frank R. Levstik, "The Hocking Valley Miner's Strike, 1884-1885: A Search for Order," The Old Northwest 2 (1976), pp. 55-65.

13 Proceedings of the Hocking Valley Investigation, p. 103.

14 Ibid., pp. 237-238.

15 Ibid., p. 238.

16 Ibid., p. 239.

17 Ibid., pp. 239-243.

18 Athens Herald, February 16, 1888.

19 Athens Journal, June 28, 1888.

20 Knepper, New Lamps for Old, p. 77.

21 Ibid., pp. 77-78.

22 Ibid., pp. 25, 77-78; Lane, Fifty Years of Akron and Summit County, p. 150.

23 Proceedings of the Hocking Valley Investigation, pp. 107-108.

24 "Census of Miners Needing Relief, 1897" (Governor's Papers, Ohio Historical Society); Journal-Gazette (Logan), April 15, 1897; January 25, 1900. See also Knepper, New Lamps for Old, passim.

25 Population figures quoted in Tribe, Little Cities of Black Diamonds, p. 95 and Harry Shay, editor, All About Ohio Almanac, 1995 (Hartland, Mi.: Instant Information Co. 1995), p. 145.

Used with permission of the author Dr Ivan M. Tribe. Was first published in Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Maume,Ohio

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