Copyright © 2017
John F. Oyler
October 19, 2017
The Flannery Brothers
The
Jefferson College Historical Society has a long and distinguished record
celebrating the history and heritage of the Canonsburg area. They recently
invited me to speak at their Fall meeting. With the subject of the talk left up
to me, I decided to discuss the impact of the Flannery Brothers on the
Chartiers Valley region, knowing that their involvement with the Standard
Chemical Company in Canonsburg was historically significant.
James
Flannery began the family’s successful business career by opening a funeral
parlor in Homewood. By the time his younger brother, Joseph, graduated from
Holy Ghost College (now Duquesne University), there were three Flannery
mortuaries in Pittsburgh,
In 1904
the brothers decided to diversify. They acquired rights to a patent for
staybolts, a key component in the manufacture of locomotive boilers, and
incorporated the Flannery Bolt Company. Their manufacturing facility was
constructed in C. P. Mayer’s industrial park, on the Pennsylvania Railroad just
north of Bridgeville.
Once
they began manufacturing staybolts they realized the advantage of using
“vanadium steel”, an extremely strong grade of steel that had a tiny amount of
vanadium alloyed into it. The vanadium was also extremely expensive. Joseph
Flannery convinced his brother they should enter the vanadium production
business.
In 1906
they established the American Vanadium Company and began researching vanadium
production in their Bridgeville facility. They were able to acquire a mine in
Peru that could produce vanadium ore economically. This ore was shipped to
Bridgeville by a transportation system which included llamas, a steamboat on a
Peruvian lake, railroads, and ocean-going steamers.
By 1909
the Flannerys were successfully operating both companies, as well as four or
five subsidiary firms producing specialty products from vanadium steel. They
built a magnificent five story building, the Vanadium Building, at the corner
of Meyran and Forbes Streets in Oakland, with a large stained glass window
celebrating the vanadium production process.
That
year they learned that their sister had been diagnosed with cancer. After
researching all the possible cures for it, they concluded that radiation
treatment, with radium, had the best chance of helping her. Unfortunately she died;
the scarcity of radium had prevented her being treated.
At this
point Joseph Flannery resigned his positions with the family firms and decided
to find a way to produce radium on a commercial scale in a large enough volume to
ensure that future cancer patients would have access to radiation treatment.
The two brothers incorporated the Standard Chemical Company.
They
found a source of carnotite ore in western Colorado that contained potassium,
uranium dioxide, and vanadium tetraoxide. By now it was well known that radium
existed in uranium deposits as a product of radioactive decay.
The
radium production process was complicated. In an average month they mined 2500
tons of rock containing carnotite. In western Colorado they separated the ore
from the rock in a concentrator, producing 500 tons of carnotite. This was then
bagged in sixty pound bags and hauled on burros to a Denver and Rio Grande
railhead.
The ore
was then transported by rail to Canonsburg where a new processing facility had
been built. At Standard Chemical the ore was treated by 500 tons of chemicals
(probably hydrochloric acid) and reduced to one thousand pounds of salts,
mostly barium chloride with a trace of radium chloride.
Once a
day a messenger would board a streetcar in Canonsburg with a pail full of glass
bottles containing the salts and travel into Pittsburgh, where he would
transfer to a Forbes Avenue trolley and ride to Oakland to deliver his valuable
cargo to the Vanadium Building.
The
final step in the process was the subjecting of the salts to twenty five or
thirty cycles of fractional crystallization, eventually producing one gram of
radium. By 1920 more than half of the radium produced in the whole world had
been produced by Standard Chemical.
Both
Flannery brothers had died by 1921 when Madame Marie Curie visited Canonsburg
as part of a grand tour of North America honoring her scientific achievements,
a tour that culminated in a visit to the White House where President Harding
presented her with a gram of radium.
It is
reported that the highlight of her tour was the visit to Standard Chemical and
the observation of her laboratory techniques being practiced on a commercial
scale.
Standard
Chemical operated until the early 1930s when it was replaced by a mysterious company,
the Vitro Manufacturing Company. Vitro’s business was the reclamation of
uranium from the waste piles left by its predecessor.
The
motivation for this activity became known years later when it was learned that
Vitro’s customer was the Manhattan Project. In 1957 the Atomic Energy
Commission took over the site. In 1978 it became a subject for reclamation under
the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation
Control Act.
A large
pile of radioactive debris was collected on the site and from neighboring
buildings and has been encapsulated in a containment cell that is regularly
monitored. Although there certainly were many serious health issues in the
Canonsburg area during operation of standard Chemical and Vitro Manufacturing,
it appears that long term consequences have been avoided.
Thanks
to the Jefferson College Historical Society for entertaining me, and for their
continued contribution to preserving local history and heritage.
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