Lehigh Coal Mine Company

The Lehigh Coal Mine Company was an unincorporated joint-stock company formed on February 12, 1792, by sixteen persons including Jacob Weiss, John Nicholson, Michael Hillegas and Godfrey Haga. The intent was to develop a deposit of anthracite coal discovered by Weiss and others at what is now Summit Hill in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. The company acquired 7,100 acres embracing most of the coal basin between the Lehigh and Little Schuylkill Rivers. Numerous attempts to develop the property failed for lack of capital, poor transportation and undeveloped markets for the coal. Lessees of the property achieved some success during the War of 1812, when imports and coastwise shipments of coal were cut off. This prompted Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, Philadelphia wire manufacturers, and George F. A. Hauto, a German adventurer, to begin successful development of the mines and the improvement of the Lehigh River in 1818. They leased the Coal Mine Company's property for twenty years at an annual rate of one ear of corn, payable on demand. White, Hazard and Hauto incorporated their enterprise as the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company in 1822 and secured control of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company in the same year. The last shares could not be purchased until 1839, and on March 23 of that year the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was liquidated and its lands transferred to the LC&N.