THE HISTORY OF GOULDSBORO
As Told By Charles Sebring, 1974
Published in the Villager
Situated in the southwestern corner of Wayne County, Pa., lies the community of Gouldsboro, named for Jay Gould, who with his partner, Zaddock Pratt, built the Pratt & Gould Tannery, which was located in what is now Thornhurst, formerly Gouldsboro Borough.
The business was started in the years 1856-61. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad,
which was built in the years 1840-1851 cut through this town which in the early days, was called “Sand Cut” for the great banks of sand that were cut through to make way for the railroad. This railroad and the “Drinker Turnpike, constructed by Henry W. Drinker, opened up the vast territory that Drinker had acquired in 1789 against the Connecticut Claim”; originally owned by William Penn, who was granted this tract from the King of England. Many of the old deeds are recorded at the Court House in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. This turnpike started at the Water Gap and ran to Slocum Hollow (now the City of Scranton). Many early settlers acquired land for 10 cents an acre, some by what is known as ‘squatters rights’. The vast forests of hemlock, pine, spruce and hardwoods, beech, chestnut and oak attracted men who built lumber mills to saw the timber for use in the cities. It was the hemlock which drew Gould and Pratt to the area. Hemlock bark was necessary in the tanning of leather. Hundreds of thousands of hemlock logs were left to rot after the bark was removed and sold to Gould and Pratt. Roads in those days were plain dirt, rutted by rain and impassable when the frost came out in spring. To get the raw hides from the storage house at Sand Cut to the tannery at Gouldsboro Borough, Gould and Pratt constructed the “Plank Road”. This unique road was constructed from 2 inch planking securely nailed to stringers of logs, sawed in two, and on the graded right of way, it made the surface smoother than a concrete highway of today. This road was eleven miles in length and it took 10 million feet of lumber to construct.
The first U.S. Post Office in “Sand Cut” was established by Postmaster General McClellan on Dec. 27, 1861. On July 19, 1886, the name was changed to Gouldsboro Station, and on Nov. 1, 1892, the present name of Gouldsboro was adopted. The first postmaster, was John Simons, the second, Sydenham H. Rhodes, who was also the “toll gate tender” because the toll gate on the
eastern end of the Plank Road stopped at his store and the post office. After Rhodes came the following men: Elisha Price, John Perkins, Charles Cress, Sylvester Adams, Arthur Rhodes, Edgar Dowling, and Robert Courtney, who was postmaster for 32 years. Jay Gould was a youth of 20 when he came into this area to establish a tannery business in the year 1856, and he became the first postmaster of Gouldsboro Borough, now Thornhurst. The tannery closed in 1861.
Henry Drinker began to think poorly of the 25,000 acres, a family investment of wild land in the Lackawanna region, east of what is now Scranton and Tobyhanna. Drinker had gathered a fortune by building turnpikes and selling land. He persuaded Pratt to join him in the venture of building the railroad. Grading for the railroad, the price of the land and equipment sent the original estimates beyond what they expected. Cost of construction in 1853 was $2,162,048.75. Items taken care of were “right of ways”, “T” rails, building expenses and track laying, the Pocono tunnel job, 13 locomotives, 10 passenger and baggage cars, 60 box cars and 60 flat cars, 854 coal cars, car shops and equipment. There was a mortgage of $1,500,000 and a second mortgage of $2,600,000. Cash was needed and no other than Moses Taylor could engineer its entry into the coffers. Moses Taylor was head of the National City Bank of New York, which was a heavy investor in the coal lands of Lackawanna County. Some of the first settlers and residents of “Sand Cut” were the following: Silas Flower; Enoch and Sylvester Adams; Frank and Peter Bender; Sydenham Rhodes; George Smith; Robert Decker; John Simons; William Crooks; the Newells; William Harvey; William and Joseph Matthews; Hugh Surplus; Benjamin Henry; George Tritchler; Andrew Sebring and his sons, Edward, William and Harry; William Hagar and the Wolf family. Lumber was the first business; it was tall, large in circumference and plentiful. There were several mills in the Sand Cut area. Rhodes had two, one where the West End Lake was located, presently Lake Natalie in the Big Bass Lake Development, and the other was on the Lehigh River, near the present road to Big Bass Lake. There was also a large mill near the old Klondike Ice Plant on Lehigh Road. The largest was the one owned by Andrew Sebring at what was called the “Marsh,” presently Pocono Springs Development. Sebring owned 3,500 acres of virgin timber, mostly hemlock and pine. The mill was steam operated and 5 miles from Sand Cut. To get the finished lumber to the city markets, Sebring built a narrow gage railroad from the mill to the Lackawanna railroad site at Sand Cut. He worked this tract for many years and sold his holdings to the Tobyhanna Lumber Co. for close to a million dollars. The lumbering business had to come to an end due to the limit of virgin forests and the wanton cutting of the hemlock just for the bark. Some farmers took small contracts to supply the wood for burning locomotives that chugged up the grades of the Poconos.
Some men left for the steel mills of Slocum Hollow (Scranton) where they made “T” rails for the railroad. The steel “T” rails carried a heavier load that would outwear the wooden rails, secured with a steel strap fastened by nails to the wood. The steel rails provided a smoother surface on which cars would travel. The wooden nails were called “strap rails”. George Scranton began to experiment and after a stagnant period, manufactured the “T” rail. The completion of the railroad through the Poconos to the city markets brought prosperity to Sand Cut. The lumber business and the bringing in of outside capital and men from the distant cities all helped.
The mill ponds provided them with pure clean ice. The ice was cut and stored in buildings and covered with sawdust to keep from melting. In the heat of summer it used to keep the milk and fresh meats from spoiling. Crude ice boxes were found on most back porches and in the city hospitals. Everyone clamored for ice and thus the money came to Sand Cut and the Ice Storage began.
​ ICE STORAGE, a manufacturing concern GARWOOD devoted a lot of money to in the manufacturing of special equipment for the ice business, saws, ice picks, ice tongs, spud marking machines, elevators, chains, planers, and many more items. All of these were essential and it brought the ice business up to being a very profitable venture, so much so that from a meager beginning it grew to a million dollar venture.
As the business of the railroad increased and the shipping of coal grew to its height, the Gouldsboro
railroad yard was increasing to its maximum. Repairing the rolling stock required a great number of men. The car knockers’ job was to repair the damaged cars, to replace worn wheels and brake shoes, test the air brakes and replace worn drawheads. This work was done on the “light side”, so named portions of the coal yard that handled mostly empty cars. The other side, the “heavy” side was the portion where the coal trains were made up. A train of 100 cars would constitute a “train” for Hoboken, N.J., or to Oxford storage. At Oxford storage, the excess coal was stored in great piles for winter distribution in the cities. Very little repairing was done on the heavy side. There were two yard engines at all times. Both had a specific job to perform. There were three crews of workmen each day for 24 hours. Every community had a school. Sand Cut had a crude lumber one. It stood
where the present Lehigh Cemetery is located. All town business was conducted there. During the blizzard of 1888 the building was completely covered in snow drifts. The present school’s main section (currently the Township Building) was constructed to accommodate the increase in population. The school had two rooms. The present building has two additional that were added during 1902-03 and heated with pot-bellied stoves. Later the entire building was outfitted with steam heat.
The people of yester-year were a religious people. Through each village there would be a Circuit Rider, an itinerant preacher who traveled from village to village. He professed no particular religious group; he was just a man of God who wished to help other people. They would hold meetings in schools or any place that was suitable. At one such meeting, a group of men formed a Union Church. The first church in Sand Cut was the present Lutheran Church 1875-76; Rev. George Rhodes was the first minister there. In the year
1888, another Church was constructed—The Methodist Episcopal Church; Rev. Gibbs was the first minister there. The present Catholic Church was constructed in 1921 of stone, coming from what is called conglomerate rock. The conglomerate rock was situated south of the United Methodist Church, some of it weighed more than 1,000 tons. A geologist determined that they did not belong in this area, but rather, were brought here by an avalanche about 3 million years ago.
In the ‘good old days’, a fourth of July picnic was a necessity, so east of the town, in a grove of maple trees alongside a small field, the people of the town formed a Union Picnic Ground. They sold shares and accumulated sufficient funds to purchase the land, build a kitchen, band stand, snack stand, and a dance pavilion. In the field they built a baseball field; a game was played every Saturday and all picnics were held there. Every community needs a water supply. W.L. Harvey had a well drilled in the center of town and he constructed a tall steel tower with a large wooden plank perched atop of it. It supplied water to the area west of the railroad tracks. No water main was aid east due to the right of way across the railroad. After a few years, Harvey had another well drilled on a hill near the West End Ice Plant and built a concrete supply auxiliary. This well provided a sufficient amount of water to that portion of town and the well in the center was razed. Some of the early businesses that were started in Sand Cut, other than the largest employer (ice making and railroads), were started by men in the community— George Simon, store and cola business; S.A. Adams built the Carr Company Store, a general store (now the site of Penn Security Bank). The post office was also a general store. John Crooks built a store across from the railroad. The store was operated by a man from Moscow, until it burned. George Trichler and his son, Theodore operated a pool room and barber shop. The railroad YMCA was built in the early 1900’s and the barber shop was opened there. The only hotel, the Simons House was where the present post office is now located. The shoe maker, Robert Decker was located on Third Street; it was a small shop. Everett Smith had a bicycle shop and the town doctor was Dr. G.A. Kerling. Near where the Methodist Church stands today, Malcolm Kinney had a blacksmith shop. Almost every family grew their own crops, had chickens and a cow. A horse-drawn buggy could be seen near the barns, cattle would graze along the streams at the edge of town and the gardens were protected from roaming cattle by picket fences. This is just a small bit of the history of Gouldsboro, told by Mr. Charles Sebring, 80 years old in the year 1974.
