HISTORY HIKING The Hampden Emery Co. Lower Mill located at the end of Emery Street just past the Chester Granite and Polishing Works in Chester.

The 1863 discovery of emery in Chester brought its own form of abrasive personal and commercial upheavals. The Chester Iron Company was quickly reorganized as the Chester Emery Company, the principals being Dr. Heman S. Lucas, Henry D. Wilcox, James T. Ames and John E. Lucas, Heman’s brother. Trying to squeeze iron out of rock was soon forgotten as profitability in the emery trade ensued. No longer dependent on importation of emery from Turkey or Greece, companies nationwide contracted with the Hilltown firm to provide them with the mineral, resulting in the rapid growth of the Chester Emery Company within the first few years of its incorporation.

By 1868, James Ames was overseer of the emery company and the Chester mines – gaining the top spot per vote of the board of directors and Dr. Heman Lucas was out. The Hampden Emery Company was formed in all due haste, with Dr. Lucas, Henry Wilcox and Professor Jackson at the helm. The industrial rivals slugged it out in court over the next several years, each asserting rights to the mines with the Chester Emery company ultimately emerging the winner of the six-year skirmish.

The mills of the Hampden Emery Company managed to stay open after the court decision using ore imported from Turkey. Dr. Lucas, seeking other sources of the mineral, purchased land in North Carolina where emery had been located and, shortly after, began mining operations there, securing a steady supply of the industrial necessity for his factories back home before a year had run out on the legal setback his firm had suffered. The 1883 death of his former partner and competitor James Ames brought the deeds to the Chester emery mines back into the hands of Dr. Heman Lucas and the Hampden Emery Company, the rights to the properties purchased by the firm soon after Ames’s passing. Lucas himself passed away in 1900. Around 1913, the Chester emery mines were closed.

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