For more than a century, Pennsylvania was the ironmaking center of America. The iron industry played a critical role in the development of the English colonies and the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Iron was an essential material in the agricultural colonies and industrializing nation.
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1716 |
Thomas Rutter helps erect a bloomery forge, the first ironworks and first bloomery forge in Pennsylvania. |
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1716 - 1840 |
Iron industry relies on charcoal-fueled iron furnaces |
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1720 |
Colebrookdale Furnace, the Commonwealth's first iron furnace, goes into blast in Berks County. |
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1732 |
Peter Grubb buys Cornwall Banks iron deposit in present-day Lebanon County; these banks prove to be the largest, most important deposit in Pennsylvania. |
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1739 |
John Taylor builds Sarum Forge (later renamed Glen Mills) in Delaware County; he is a pioneering ironmaster who helps expand the industry in southeastern Pennsylvania. |
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1749 |
Charming Forge in Berks County begins manufacturing wrought-iron products; this is one of many forges that dominate secondary production to the first decades of the nineteenth century. |
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1752 |
John Potts builds Pottsgrove Manor, the seat of his family's extensive iron-industry empire. |
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1774 |
Baron Henry William Stiegel is thrown in jail for debt, after losing the Stiegel Mansion and his ironworks to foreclosure. |
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1775 |
Well over 2,000 workers, or about one percent of Pennsylvania's population, labor in the iron industry. |
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1777 |
General Washington retreats to Warwick Furnace, one of numerous furnaces that manufacture weapons and munitions for Continental forces during the American Revolution. |
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1780 |
The four largest slave owners in Berks County are ironmasters, who own fifty-seven of the 119 slaves in the county. |
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1785 |
Bedford Furnace, the first furnace in the Juniata Iron region of central Pennsylvania, goes into blast. |
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1790 |
Alliance Furnace, one of the first iron furnaces west of the Alleghenies, begins operating. |
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1792 |
Centre Furnace, at the heart of a typical charcoal iron plantation, starts production in Centre County |
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1794 |
George Ege constructs Reading Furnace in Berks County; in 1845 Henry Robeson buys the charcoal furnace, demolishes it, and builds an anthracite furnace, subsequently renaming it Robesonia Furnace; Robeson is among many eastern Pennsylvania ironmasters who shift to anthracite furnaces. |
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1798 |
Robert Coleman owns Cornwall Furnace by this date; he and his family are very prominent in Cornwall for their paternalistic control of the furnace and community. |
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1810 |
Roland Curtin begins a thirty-four career as the paternalistic ironmaster of Eagle Ironworks in Centre County. |
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1816 - 1817 |
Isaac Meason, owner of the Meason House, constructs one of the first rolling mills in Pennsylvania; rolling mills supercede forges by the 1840s. |
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1819 |
In Huntingdon County, David R. Porter fails in the iron business, as do many ironmasters in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. |
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1828 |
Ironmasters purchase Coleraine Forges in Huntingdon County and integrate them with Pennsylvania Furnace, both of which are part of larger iron plantations; iron making centers on iron plantations through the first decades of the nineteenth century. |
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1830 - 1840 |
Hot blast first adapted for charcoal furnaces and anthracite furnaces. |
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1836 - 1839 |
Construction of Dunlap's Creek Bridge proves the feasibility of making iron bridges. |
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1838 |
Workers at one of Hopewell Village's mines go on strike for higher pay, despite the paternalistic control of Clement Brooke, the long-time ironmaster of the village. |
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1838 - 1839 |
Owners of Karthaus Furnace fail to produce iron using bituminous coke. |
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1839 |
Burd Patterson helps put into blast Pioneer Furnace, one of the first anthracite furnaces. |
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1839 |
David Thomas emigrates from Wales to Catasauqua, and begins construction of one of the earliest anthracite furnaces. |
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1840 |
Pennsylvania furnaces, almost all of them charcoal-fueled, produce about 152,000 tons of iron, or just over half of the nation's entire output. |
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1844 |
First iron "T" railroad rail rolled in the United States. |
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1849 |
The Crane Iron Works are the leading producer of anthracite iron in Pennsylvania, making 14,272 tons or thirteen percent of the state's anthracite-iron output, as anthracite-iron production takes off. |
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1857 |
John Fritz develops the three-high rolling mill to make iron rails. |
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1859 |
Clinton Furnace begins production; with stronger blast pressure, it leads the way in greatly improving the output and efficiency of coke furnaces. |
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1860 |
Anthracite furnaces produce fifty-seven percent of the nation's total output of iron. |
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1862 |
The Phoenix Iron Company develops the Phoenix column, a wrought iron member that becomes the mainstay of the firm's bridge building business. |
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1863 |
William Sylvis becomes president of the National Union of Iron Molders. |
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1865 |
The Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company reaches an annual production capacity of 60,000 tons of iron rails, the second highest in the nation. |
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1867 |
The first commercially successful production of steel begins at Steelton. |
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1871 |
The Lochiel Iron Company, owned in part by Simon Cameron, defeats the local iron puddlers" union in a dispute over puddlers" output. |
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1872 |
Brady's Bend Works, which pioneered integration of a large rail-rolling mill with bituminous-coke furnaces, employs 1,300 to 1,400 workers. |
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1875 |
The production of bituminous furnaces surpasses that of anthracite furnaces in Pennsylvania. |
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1892 |
The output of American steel mills surpasses iron production. |
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1900 |
Bituminous-coke furnaces account for seventy percent of Pennsylvania's iron-making capacity. |
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1904 |
Greenwood Furnace stops production permanently, one of the last charcoal furnaces to shut down. |
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1973 |
Mining at Cornwall Banks ceases. |
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1990 |
Shenango Furnace Company closes two of the last independent iron furnaces in Pennsylvania |
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