1853 Kollner Map of Hopewell, Pennsylvania Coal Deposits w/ Manuscript Annotations

This is an unrecorded and likely unique 1853 promotional broadside with significant manuscript annotations, printed by Augustus Köllner for a land auction held in Philadelphia. The land being sold, located in Bedford County in southern Pennsylvania, was rich in coal deposits and historically supplied the Hopewell Furnace, a legendary American ironworks located in Berks County which supplied cannon and other war materials during American Revolution. By this time, the Hopewell Furnace had long ceased to operate, but its valuable coal-land, as here, took on new significance with the emergence of the Industrial Revolution.

A Closer Look

This map, oriented towards the east, portrays an area of Bedford County, Pennsylvania, where coal-rich land was scheduled for a June 15, 1853 public auction. All these lands were associated with the Hopewell Iron Works (Hopewell Furnace, c. 1771). They are, in fact, far west of that site. Settlements, such as Riddlesburg at bottom-left, and other features are labeled. Several waterways are depicted, which are tributaries of the Juniata River, which is itself a tributary of the Susquehanna River. Elevation is indicated by hachure lines, while iron ore and abundant coal deposits are represented according to the legend at bottom-left.

The Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain Railroad runs along the Raystown Branch of the Juniata at bottom to the iron works. The railroad, only chartered earlier in 1853, was a short line between Huntingdon to Bedford that was primarily meant to provide coal producers an alternative to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which aspired to and nearly achieved a monopoly on coal transport in Pennsylvania.

In relation to the main purpose of the map, local landholders' plots are traced and their names recorded, with owners of the lands being auctioned (traced in green) appearing with the acreage of their lands noted. Handwritten pencil annotations suggest that some plots were subdivided in the course of sale, as the map's subtitle also implies, while the acreage of others may have bene slightly adjusted from the amount originally printed.

Pennsylvania Coal and the American Industrial Revolution

This map was produced when the extraction of coal from Pennsylvania's hills and mountains was powering the industrialization of the United States and demand was nearly insatiable, leading to the search for new deposits to exploit. Beginning in the late 18th century, Americans gradually gained a better understanding of the different types and uses of coal and how to best harness them for smelting iron, powering steam engines, and other uses. At the time of this map's production, harder anthracite coal, which burns cleaner, hotter, and for longer than the softer bituminous coal, was in especially high demand. Given the location of Bedford County, the coal in question with this map was very likely bituminous coal, which was easier to mine and more abundant than anthracite, and was used for making coke, an important input for ironworks, explaining the presence here of one such foundry (often called 'plantations' at the time). In later years, the rich deposits of bituminous coal in southwestern Pennsylvania helped the Union side win the U.S. Civil War and then made Pittsburgh into the 'Steel City,' thanks primarily to Carnegie Steel.

Publication History and Census

This map was lithographed by Augustus Köllner, based in Philadelphia, in 1853 for M. Thomas and Sons, land auctioneers also based in Philadelphia. We are unaware of any other examples of this map in institutional collections nor any history of it being on the market.