Leisenring family.

Members of the allied Leisenring, Bertsch, and Wentz families played leading roles in the development of the nineteenth century anthracite coal and iron industries in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania.

The Leisenring family is descended from John Conrad Leisenring, who came to the Lehigh Valley from Saxony in 1748. His grandson, John Leisenring (1793-1853), moved to the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company's new town of Mauch Chunk around 1828 to run the company's hotel. He became a hardware merchant in 1835.

Most of his seven surviving children married into the families of other LC&N officials, forming a kinship group that prospered as the LC&N's canals and railroads opened up the territory.

John Leisenring (1819-1884) joined the LC&N's engineer corps at the age of seventeen, reaching the position of chief engineer and superintendent in 1860. Beginning in 1854, he also undertook a growing number of anthracite mining ventures on his own account. He expanded into bituminous coal mining in western Pennsylvania and southwestern Virginia in 1880. His son, Edward B. Leisenring (1845-1894), inherited and enlarged his properties. He, too, began in the LC&N engineer corps and was made president of the company in 1893.

John Leisenring's daugher, Mary Douglas Leisenring, married Dr. John Shriver Wentz in 1871. Dr. Wentz had come to one of Leisenring's company towns as doctor around 1867. He soon turned to the coal business and, after the death of E. B. Leisenring, he assumed the leadership of most of the Leisenring family companies. Dr. Wentz died in 1918 and was succeeded by his son, Daniel Bertsch Wentz (1872-1926).

From the description of Papers, 1850-1930. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 86093982