The Magazine of the Greater Jim Thorpe Area
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Drug Chain to Demolish Coal Era Heritage Building

The Wilmot Company, which once dominated the west landing of the Rt. 940 Bridge at White Haven, has sold the land on Berwick St. where its remaining office and warehouse buildings are located, to be razed to make room for a Rite-Aid drug store. Under the agreement, Wilmot must vacate their current property by Sept. 5. There are constructing a new 8,800 sq, ft. building in White Haven, which they anticipated to be completed in time for the move.
George W. Wilmot started the Wilmot Engineering Company in 1908 in Tamaqua to sell a rivetless chain patented by James Henry Weston in 1907. In 1911, Wilmot purchased the Samuel Wallace Foundry property in White Haven and located his business there.

 
Drawing of the Wilmot complex from about 1940 shows the extensive series of buildings bordered by the Lehigh River, Lehigh Canal and Basin, the Central of New Jersey Railroad, and Berwick Street. The corporate offices on the south side of Berwick Street were expanded in 1951 when well over 100 people were employed there.
 

Howard McCluskey, Wilmot's current manager, displays a rivetless chain, the product that started Wilmot and the product that continues to keep it in business.
 

Offices of former coal breaker company to be demolished for new drug store.

The Wilmot Company, which once dominated the west side of the Rt. 940 Bridge at White Haven, has sold the land on Berwick St. where its remaining office and warehouse buildings are located, to be razed to make room for a Rite-Aid drug store. Under the agreement, Wilmot must vacate their current property by Sept. 5. There are constructing a new facility in White Haven, which they anticipated to be completed in time for the move.

The current firm, Wilmot Company, Inc. with four employees, is a shadow of its former grandeur that built most of the coal breakers in Pennsylvania with a payroll that peaked at 150 employees. When the coal breaker business died, they became a much smaller company. They currently sell one productÑrivetless chain, which is the technology that originally started the business.

George W. Wilmot started the Wilmot Engineering Company in 1908 in Tamaqua to sell a rivetless chain patented by James Henry Weston also of Tamaqua in 1907. In 1911, Wilmot purchased the Samuel Wallace Foundry property in White Haven and located his business there.

These shops were constructed half way up the basin as an iron foundry and machine shop by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company in 1859, and operated by Miner & Lippincott. Around 1866, they were relocated between the basin and the river, and later purchased and operated by Samuel Wallace. It was run by water from the basin and produced 100 tons of iron a month employing forty men. The water from the basin was used to operate a municipal power plant, a silk mill, and the machine shop.

Wilmot Engineering Company engineered, assembled and sold its rivetless chain from it White Haven plant, but never manufactured the parts for the chain there. The patent expired in 1924.

The forged steel parts were made at Bethlehem Steel until 1933, when Wilmot became a major shareholder in Huron Forge & Machine in Detroit. When Huron closed in 1988, Wilmot began purchasing from Jervis B. Webb Company in Carlisle S.C., a manufacturer of rivetless chain conveyor systems.

Martin Quinn joined Wilmot as an apprentice pattern maker in 1939. He became manager of the company and served on the Board of Directors until it was sold in 1996.

When he started, Wilmot had 110 employees and was manufacturing heavy material for coal breaker construction. Wilmot designed the processing systems and oversaw construction of the breaker. During WWII, he joined the Marines, while Wilmot became a defense industry making tank parts and gearboxes, employing 150 people.

After the war, as the demand for coal breaker construction waned, Wilmot constructed a pilot plant along the Lehigh River to demonstrate a process for separating coal from rock by gravity in an exchanger circulating a water slurry containing magnetite iron ore powder. The magnetite was removed magnetically before returning the water to the river.

Howard McCluskey is Wilmot's current manager. He was hired in 1974 as a purchasing agent. At that time, Wilmot employed 50 people: 30 fabricating steel heavy plate, 15 in engineering department, and the rest in the office.

Jim Redding, the chief engineer, operated the James A. Redding Company in Pittsburgh. He designed the sampling systems that Wilmot manufactured.

In the 1950s, after Wilmot purchased the steel casting foundry in Weatherly, they closed their White Haven foundry. A Hazleton sales office closed in 1951.

In 1996, Wilmot Engineering Company was sold to by a Pittsburgh investment group, Constitutional Capital. K. Glenn Cole became the new president of the renamed non-engineering company, Wilmot Company, Inc. The James A. Redding Company sampling business was sold to Beaumont Birch in 1998, and after they folded, the business was taken over by Allen-Sherman-Hoff.

In 2003, the Wilmot property and buildings on the north side of Berwick Street were sold to Evolution Custom Coach, a producer of custom motor coaches. Around 2004, Rite-Aid approached Wilmot about selling the remaining office and warehouse on the south side of Berwick Street. In 2007, Wilmot agreed to sell this property and build a new 8,800 sq, ft. sales and warehouse building.