Saltillo borough

782,000 Pounds Of Leather A Year

Did you know? The Saltillo tannery turned out 782,000 pounds of heavy sole leather a year. That is the annual figure in the 1897 Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of the Juniata Valley, and Jordan's 1913 history gives the same number, seven hundred and eighty two thousand pounds, as the plant's capacity.

The leather was tanned with bark. Jordan calls it chestnut and oak bark tanned sole leather; the 1897 encyclopedia says chestnut oak bark.

Africa's 1883 county history traces the business to a partnership Samuel McVitty formed with William B. Leas in 1855. The two ran a rented tannery in Black Log Valley for four years and then erected the tannery at Saltillo. Their sons, D. P. Leas and T. E. McVitty, later became partners, and the firm took the name Leas, McVitty & Sons.

In 1893 Calvin Greene, McVitty's son-in-law, bought the entire concern, real estate and stock, and organized Calvin Greene & Son, with his eldest son, Edward M. Greene, as junior partner and manager at Saltillo. Jordan says the tannery was kept in operation until 1911, when the raw stock on hand was tanned and the plant closed, though Greene still owned it.

Checked and confirmed. CONFIRMED 2026-10-30 against the sources listed: every factual sentence was tied to a verbatim passage and a script confirmed each passage is in its source. Where sources disagreed on a number, the number was left out.

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