Huntingdon County Information Page

Mount Union borough

Leather Before Brick

Before the brick works came the tannery. In 1883, when Mount Union's chief industry was A. D. Faust and Sons, they could process 13,000 hides a year with a crew of 25 men. The tannery had been built in 1859 by Mr. Bare and ran for decades before silica brick would transform the town.

The 1909 photograph shows the Juniata Oak Extract Works, part of that leather era. Workers and buildings stand in it that you might recognize if your family was here then. Among the people who made their way to this valley was Franz Heidel, a German cabinetmaker born beside an old castle in Freidenberg, Baden. In 1865, at 22 years old, he survived an 80-day Atlantic crossing starting from Antwerp. A serious storm almost destroyed the vessel mid-voyage, but Heidel made it through to a new life in America.

Mount Union's boom decade came fast and fierce. The tannery gave way to three brick plants and an explosives factory. The population more than tripled between 1900 and 1910.

What the fact check confirmed. Published without a source list. The tannery figures are Africa's 1883 county history word for word, and every detail of Franz Heidel's crossing is in Welch's 1909 history, including the storm. Two claims are carried by other sourced stories on this site rather than by these two books: the population more than tripling between 1900 and 1910, which "The J. E. Everett grocery" sources, and the explosives factory, which is the Aetna powder plant documented in "Aetna Explosion 1916". One small thing left as the post has it: Africa writes the firm as A. D. Faust & Son, singular. Checked 1 September 2026.

Sources

  1. J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties (1883), on the Mount Union tanneries: the Juniata Tannery, the first at the place, built in 1859 by John Bare, Sr.; and of A. D. Faust & Son, "they have a capacity of thirteen thousand hides per year, and give steady employment to twenty-five men, and is the leading industry of Mount Union borough."
  2. Charles Howard Welch, History of Mount Union, Shirleysburg and Shirley Township (1909), p. 690, the Franz Heidel entry: born at Freidenberg, Baden, 16 February 1843, in a house called "The Temple" that adjoined an old castle; learned cabinet-making at Worth in Bavaria; came to America in 1865 at twenty-two on a passage of eighty days from Antwerp, on which "a serious storm almost destroyed the vessel enroute". The Juniata Oak Extract Works is among the book's plates.

Checked 2026-09-30 · Historic Mount Union collection

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