Town laid out by Prussian immigrant remains largely unchanged
All boroughs in the county have fascinating tales of their beginnings, as groups of hardy settlers formed villages that would become the small municipalities dotting the landscape today.
But one borough is the result of the vision and foresight of a single man who emigrated from Prussia to escape the chaos of Europe in the early 1830s.
John Roebling and his brother, Carl, who were natives of Muhlhausen, Germany, which was then Prussia, gathered about 40 others looking to enjoy the freedoms and liberties of “the new land” across the Atlantic and boarded a ship to sail west.
The Roeblings safely arrived in Philadelphia, and while some of the voyagers went to Baltimore or remained in Eastern Pennsylvania, the brothers began heading west across the commonwealth, as their abhorrence for slavery precluded them from journeying south to find land.
They heard about available land in a new county named “Butler” and decided to buy almost 1,600 acres here almost 190 years ago, on Oct. 28, 1831.
They bought the property from Sarah Collins, who had purchased it from the estate of Robert Morris, the American Revolutionary War financier.
It is said the land was worth about 28 cents per acre when it was awarded to Morris after the war.
The Roeblings paid either $1.25 to $1.39 per acre for it, according to two separate historical contentions.
John Roebling, a civil engineer, set about laying out the streets that still exist today in the little town he named “Saxonburg.”Fred Caesar, the volunteer curator of the Saxonburg Museum, said Roebling named Main, Isabella and Water streets and included what is now Pittsburgh Street in his plans.“You'll notice there are no alleys in Saxonburg,” Caesar said. “That was intentional.”Roebling sold lots on Main Street with frontages of 100 to 200 feet, so buyers could locate their home and business along the street and use the rear for gardens, livestock, fruit trees, stables and barns.“It was so you could be self-sustaining on these pieces of property,” Caesar said.He said more than 30 buildings still standing in the borough were built in the 1830s, just after the Roeblings established the village.The marquis landmark of Saxonburg, the old white church at the end of Main Street, was built in 1836 on land donated by Roebling. Its first service was held in 1837.Saxonburg Memorial Presbyterian Church, which is now headquartered on Main Street just across from the old church, offered services in the historic church up until last year, when the coronavirus pandemic struck.The office for the church is actually the house Roebling built for himself and his family.“That was the biggest house in town at the time, in 1832,” Caesar said.The large window at Batch on Main Street once displayed the bologna and other meats sold by the Steubjen family, who owned a slaughterhouse nearby.The cozy coffeehouse on Main Street, Saxonburg Coffee & Tea, is smaller and more recessed from the street than other businesses because it was the summer kitchen behind a house that was torn down in the 1970s.Hotel Saxonburg is another Roebling-era building, and once had a stable in the rear where many residents of generations past kept their wagons and carriages.“The whole street is on the National Registry of Historic Places,” Caesar said.Saxonburg was incorporated as a borough on Aug. 11, 1846, by a ruling in Butler County court, Caesar said.
Roebling tried his hand at farming, which was the bailiwick of his brother, Carl, but he eventually left the vocation.“He was not a good farmer,” Caesar said, “so he got a job in 1837 working for the commonwealth as a surveyor.”Little did Roebling know that accepting the position would not only change the trajectory of his life, but also the way bridges were constructed.Caesar explained that Roebling was working as a surveyor when he became acquainted with the portage railroad, where 4-inch ropes were used to pull canal boats and their cargo over the mountains.Roebling noticed that the ropes frequently broke, causing damage to boats and cargo and occasionally fatal injuries to those working on the vessels.He talked to the investors at the portage railroad and promised them he would come up with a metal alternative to the ropes that would not break.“So he started experimenting with twisting wire,” Caesar said.His original version was unsuccessful, but not one to throw in the towel, Roebling perfected the iron wire to suit his purpose.The Allegheny canals began using his “wire rope,” which consisted of strands of wire twisted into a strong cable.“Then he realized it could have other uses,” Caesar said.Roebling came up with the idea to build suspension bridges using his newfangled rope, and submitted a bid to rebuild a wooden bridge in Pittsburgh that had burned.“He won the contract and built the second Smithfield Street Bridge,” Caesar said.
Suspending bridges using Roebling's wire rope soon took off, and early residents could witness eight to 16 men Roebling had plucked from the village to manually crank the reels he invented to twist the wires into rope.Caesar said the longest ropes manufactured in Saxonburg by Roebling were 2,500 feet long, so the manual twisting process stretched from what is now the Roebling Park gazebo, behind the old white church, and south almost to where DuCo Ceramics Co. is now headquartered on South Rebecca Street.In “The Early History of Saxonburg” by Col. Washington Roebling, John Roebling's oldest son, Washington recalled that the men asked to crank the twisting reels were paid well and guaranteed three meals a day, which were cooked by John's wife over an open hearth, and a snack of bread and butter served with whiskey.Raw product to create the wires for the product was shipped up the Allegheny River to Freeport, offloaded and brought to Saxonburg by wagon on muddy, rutted, unmaintained roads.“The final product was taken back on wagons to Freeport, put on barges and sent to wherever Roebling was building bridges,” Caesar said.
Producing and shipping the thousands of feet of wire rope in the tiny village became impossible, and Roebling moved to Trenton, N.J., in 1849 to open a manufacturing facility.“If train tracks had been lain through Saxonburg, the whole town and the whole region would have been different,” Caesar said.Roebling went on to design the Brooklyn Bridge, and the huge wire ropes built for the herculean project continue to suspend the bridge today.For unknown reasons, John Roebling never returned to the little town he designed and founded, even though he later won a contract to build a bridge in Pittsburgh.“He never came back to Saxonburg, even though he was only 20 miles away,” Caesar said.Roebling's foot was crushed by a ferry boat on the Brooklyn Bridge job site and he died of tetanus three weeks later on July 22, 1869, at the age of 63.His son and daughter-in-law, Washington and Emily Warren Roebling, continued the project and the Brooklyn Bridge opened to great fanfare in 1883.
Carl Roebling married and remained in Saxonburg. His daughter, Amelia, married a Knoch, whose descendants donated the land where Knoch High School and the other schools in the South Butler County School District now educate students.Carl donated the land for the Saxonburg Memorial Church Cemetery on Butler Street, not knowing he would be one of the first interred there after he died of heat stroke in 1837 while working in his wheat fields outside of town.Carl and Amelia are the only Roeblings buried in the large cemetery.In 2017, Caesar was planning a celebration to commemorate the 175th anniversary of Roebling's first patent in July 1842.“I said, 'Wouldn't it be great if we got a Roebling to come to the anniversary?'” Caesar recalled.A call to the Roebling Museum in Trenton resulted in Caesar inviting John Roebling's great-great-great-grandson, Kriss Roebling, to the celebration.Roebling, his wife and two young sons participated in the event's parade, met many residents and attended services in the old white church.“He lives in Brooklyn, not far from the bridge,” Caesar said. “He knew about Saxonburg in general terms.”On July 16, 2017, Kriss Roebling and his family toured his ancestor's wire rope shop with Caesar as their guide.“I reminded him that he was there on the anniversary of his great-great-great-grandfather receiving word that he got his first patent,” Caesar said. “He was really moved by how the area had continued to respect John Roebling and the legacy of his work.”Saxonburg continues its connection with John and Carl Roebling's hometown of Muhlhausen, as the city in Germany is its sister city.
