ABSTRACT
George Frederick Augustus Hauto was a German expatriate of distinguished bearing, the nephew and putative heir of a baron, and a man who claimed other moneyed connections as well as a reputation as an authority on coal. Whether he was any of these things remained an open question among some Philadelphians—there was no quick way to check his references—but he professed fascination with White's work and ideas, and he proved his sincerity by investing in a wire bridge that White built across the Falls of Schuylkill in 1816. The following year he and White rode sixty miles north on horse-back to visit the moribund Lehigh Coal Company's original anthracite mine, at Summit Hill on top of Mount Pisgah. Soon Hauto was raising funds to help White and Hazard acquire the old company and its anthracite coal lands.
