Ira T. Clement, an area industrial magnate for 50 years, was just 5 when he left New Jersey and came here with his widowed mother in 1818. He lived with Jacob Hoover on what became the Odd Fellows orphanage farm between Sunbury and Snydertown and learned the woodworking trade.
His first business venture was a logging and sawmill operation near Arter’s Station. In 1847, he moved to Sunbury and built the town’s first steam sawmill between Front and Third streets, north of Race Street. He added a planing mill and coffin works at the site during the 1860s.
After the Sunbury Canal Co, failed, he acquired its upper basin, near the present day Oppenheimer Pleasure Grounds, and used it as a boom to hold lumber for his factories.
Clement capitalized on Sunbury’s rapid growth and influenced its development. He was responsible for the construction of the Northumberland County Prison during 1875 and 1876 as well as some of the Market Street business district buildings. In 1880, Clement started manufacturing tables, built a table factory and added lumber yards and railroad sidings near the industrial site because of the increased demand for his goods.
At the peak of his career, he employed more than 200 people and owned more than 100 properties in Sunbury. Clement paid the highest amount of property taxes in Sunbury at that time.
In 1853, he built the first two steamboats used on the Susquehanna at Sunbury. The Shamokin Valley and Pottsville Railroad owned “The Susquehanna.” Clement towed canal boats back and forth from the canal along the river’s west shore to the east shore’s coal docks using his steamboat, “The Shad Fly.”
He established the Sunbury Steam Ferry and Tow Boat Co. in 1870 and built five more steamboats and a strictly-for-pleasure double-decker boat, which had to be towed. As people began to have more leisure time, around 1880, he acquired land on the west shore near the boat landing (near Tedd’s Landing, from the river to the area where Routes 11-15 join) and created Clement’s Park, the area’s first picnic area and amusement park. Steamboats transported passengers to the park for 5 cents. The park had three dance pavilions, a toboggan slide and a baseball field.
In his later years, Clement’s mobility was affected by rheumatism, but it did not affect his ability to manage his businesses. He died in 1898 at the age of 85 in Sunbury and was buried in Pomfret Manor Cemetery. His son, Henry, took over several of his father’s businesses.
Clement’s Park was the area’s top summer attraction until about 1900. A flood in 1904 wiped out the wooden dam near where the Adam T. Bower Memorial Dam now is located and made boating with larger boats nearly impossible.
n Cindy Inkrote is director of the Northumberland County Historical Society. The society’s Genealogical Library and Historical Research Center are at 1150 N. Front St., Sunbury, and open from 1 to 4 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. For information, call 286-4083. “Once Upon A Time In ....” is a Monday feature provided by the historical societies in Union, Montour, Northumberland and Snyder counties. The columns focus on people, places and objects of historical significance.
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