One of the most important and influential mining engineers and surveyors in the 19th century in Pennsylvania emerged from the mining villages of northern Dauphin County.
Peter Wenrich Sheafer was born in Halifax Township, Pennsylvania in 1819. He spent much of his childhood near the coal mines at Bear Gap in what is now Wiconisco Township where his father was superintending the mines of the Wiconisco Coal Company.
The younger Sheafer went off for school in New York and returned to the Coal Region to participate in surveys and mapping of the anthracite coal basins in parts of Carbon, Luzerne, and Schuylkill counties.
As he gained influence and prominence, he selected locations for many of the mines and collieries in the Mahanoy Valley and at Shenandoah. He’s also credited with laying out the towns of Ashland, Girardville, Mahanoy City, Shenandoah, Mount Carmel, Gilberton and Mahanoy Plane, among others.
Sheafer passed away in 1891 at the age of 71 and is interred at Pottsville’s Charles Baber Cemetery.
You can read a full profile of P.W. Sheafer here.
Read more stories of people from the Coal Region
Black Civil Rights Leader Jonathan J. Wright Returns to Wilkes-Barre | 1870
A tribute to a Coal Region labor leader | John Siney
Major Joseph Anthony | Civil War veteran and mining superintendent
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