Welcome to the Lehigh Valley Landmarks with Leon podcast series, celebrating 250 years of independence. I'm your host, Rachel Leon. Since being elected in 2022 and serving as Vice President of Bethlehem City Council, I'm humbled by the opportunity to serve the diverse communities that make up our great city. But to understand where we're going, we need to understand our past. Each week, I'll share a short feature with a big story about the 250 years that made the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, known as the Christmas City, as we explore historic landmarks.
Some say it is town folklore - that before the area was formally named south Bethlehem in 1865, a portion of the town was briefly known as "Wetherill", but a map from 1855 will prove it to be true. In 1854, the town was briefly named Wetherill to honor Samuel Wetherill the II for his role in establishing the zinc industry.
Samuel Wetherill II was the great grandson of Samuel Wetherill the I. The family settled in New Jersey from England in 1682 and brought the Quaker religious movement with them.
Within a century and a half, the Wetherill family had become a prominent manufacturer in Philadelphia and would go on to build a successful chemical-white lead plant in 1804. This would establish the family’s multi-generational industrial legacy.
Samuel Wetherill II was born on May 27, 1821 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He would enter the family business in 1845. In 1850, Wetherill went to work for the New Jersey Zinc Company and in 1852 he developed a process to extract white zinc directly from zinc ore by heating a mixture of ore and anthracite coal.
Samuel came to Bethlehem hoping to extend his family’s control of the paint industry between 1852 and 1853 and built the first industrial colossus to manufacture zinc oxide.
The enterprise was situated on four acres, just east of the present Fahy Bridge, and employed technology both developed and patented by Wetherill himself.
The raw materials for Wetherill’s manufactory were mined just over the ridge of South Mountain in Saucon Valley and brought to the operation along the Lehigh River by packhorse and mule train.
On October 13 of the same year, the first “white zinc” made in the United States was made at the ZincWorks.
On May 2, 1855 the Pennsylvania and Lehigh Zinc Company, also known as Zinkworks, was founded with Samuel his partner Charles T. Gilbert.
Between 1857-1861, the Saucon Iron Company changed its name to the Bethlehem Iron Company with the intent of producing rails.
After the Civil War, on August 21, 1865, the Borough of South Bethlehem was incorporated. ZincWorks would be absorbed by the Bethlehem Steel Company in the early 20th Century.
Wetherill’s Southside operation is credited with bringing to South Bethlehem the first significant influx of foreign-born labor—an event synonymous with the later growth of the steel industry, vital to the community’s ethnic diversity.
Wetherill was a vigilant patriot. He organized among Bethlehem residents, a mounted guard in the summer of 1861, and served for three years during the Civil War.
On March 13, 1865, he received the rank of brevet Lieutenant Colonel.
Wetherill died at 69 in Oxford, Maryland on June 24, 1890.
On September 23, 2003, the South Bethlehem Historical Society dedicated an official state marker sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission on the North side of Columbia Street between Webster and Adams Streets, in south Bethlehem.
Information for this episode was provided by FreeQuakers.org, the SouthBethlehemHistoricSociety.org Wikitree.com and ExplorePAHistory.com
