David Thomas, Catasauqua, Lehigh County

Well, they say it's best to start at the beginning. So to start this adventure, I set the quest marker on a small community that used to be known as Biery's Port. It's not the site of the first historical marker placed by the PHMC, or anything like that; it's my hometown, and since that's where I started, it seemed like a logical place to start the show.

Edited 2/20/2024: This blog post is now available as a podcast episode! Learn even more facts about David Thomas, his work, and his family by downloading the episode today at Audio.com, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

The marker is on Pine Street,
immediately next to the Thomas house

Nowadays, the town is called Catasauqua, and if you've never heard of it, you're by no means alone. (It's pronounced Cat-uh-SAW-kwuh, by the way. And yes, there is a U both in front of the Q and after it.) It's actually oddly famous, in its own weird fashion, for three main things. One, it has a house that belonged to a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Two, back during World War I, it was the first community in the United States to raise one million dollars in war bonds, earning it the nickname of "Million Dollar Town." And three, it was the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, mostly because of the gentleman in this story.

Local apocrypha, which is generally held to be true, says that Welsh native David Thomas walked into Biery's Port with his son, Samuel, on the towpath owned by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. This was one of the biggest industries in the Lehigh Valley in the early 19th century, and they had hired Thomas to come to the United States and do what he'd been doing in Wales. He was considered one of the foremost ironmasters of the United Kingdom, and in 1837, he did something which caught the attention of industrialists around the world - using a hot blast, he smelted together iron ore and anthracite coal. The resulting product, anthracite iron, had already been patented thirty years earlier, but Thomas's smelting method made it much easier to produce the stuff.

(Anthracite iron is also known as "pig iron." I don't know why. But if you're local to the Lehigh Valley, you've probably heard of our AAA baseball team, the IronPigs. Now you know where they get their name - it has nothing to do with bacon.)

Anyway, the Lehigh Valley had plenty of both anthracite coal and iron ore, so it was exactly the sort of place that could use a process like the one Thomas created. With his wife Elizabeth and their five children, he left Wales for New York on a ship called The Roscius, and on July 9, 1839, he and his son strolled into Biery's Port. Almost exactly a year later, the first successful anthracite iron furnace in the United States was fired up and, lo and behold, we've got ourselves an Industrial Revolution.

The Thomas mansion, Second and Pine Streets

Thomas quickly became the richest man in Biery's Port, which somehow entitled him to rename it as Craneville, and his company was the Crane Iron Company. Both were named in honor of his old boss back in Wales, making him way overdue for an Employee of the Month coffee mug. (The name of Catasauqua was adopted a few years later, when the borough was formally incorporated in 1853.) He had a stunning home built for his family, which is still here.

Growing up in Catasauqua, you learn the landmarks pretty well. Things change in the borough, of course, but there are certain constants and one of them is the Thomas mansion. The gray stone house with its yesteryear elegance stands out even in the so-called 'mansion district.' You don't expect a community that's roughly a mile square to have a mansion district, but it does; in the early 1900s, Catasauqua had more self-made millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the United States, and a lot of the houses are still standing. Like the Thomas mansion, most of them have been turned into residential apartments. Once a year, some of them throw open the doors publicly for a walking tour conducted by the Historic Catasauqua Preservation Association.

The Thomas mansion is situated on a sloping lawn. Even though the family is long gone, the wrought-iron gate of the low stone fence still has the monogram worked into it. Across the street is the First Presbyterian Church of Catasauqua, which David Thomas founded; it remains the oldest surviving church in the borough. He also installed the public water works, started the first fire company, and was the first burgess. It's not hard to see why he and Elizabeth were known as the "Father and Mother of Catasauqua." 

Outside of the borough, Thomas kept himself busy and highly regarded. Anthracite iron from Crane Iron Works was used in many high-profile projects across the country, including the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in New York City. Thomas was the first president of the American Society of Metallurgy; this organization is known today as the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, and they even have a picture of Thomas on their website. Records indicate that he was also a founding member of the American Association of Industrial Engineers, although I can't seem to find that organization mentioned anywhere except in old directories and a couple of obituaries. If anyone knows about it, I'd love to hear from you.

My favorite piece of trivia about the Thomases has to do with another church. This was really more Elizabeth's thing, because there were a number of people who had, like herself and her husband, immigrated to Catasauqua from Wales and wanted to worship in their native language. She sympathized with this and helped with the founding of the Welsh Congregational Church, where they could do exactly that. Because of the Thomases, the church never had any sort of debts; all the same, however, the congregation dwindled and the place eventually closed its doors, and nobody knows why. Not only that, but nobody even knows who used to worship there - somehow, all of the church records disappeared.

David and Elizabeth Thomas are still in Catasauqua. Strictly speaking, they're in the neighboring township of Whitehall, in Fairview Cemetery; during their lifetimes, however, the cemetery was located in a neighborhood which is still today colloquially known as West Catasauqua. The Thomas family vault is a bit of an oddity, since you don't know what it is if you don't know what it is; it rises in one part of the cemetery like a green hill with a door on it, almost like a hobbit house. It hasn't been opened in a long time. I remember reading that the last member of the family to be interred there was David and Elizabeth's granddaughter, Gwenllian, sometime in the mid-20th century.

There's not much left of the Crane Iron Works today, of course. Industry in the borough waned after the World Wars, especially with other local communities getting in on the act. But Catasauqua has plans for what remains of the property, which you can read about on their website; in fact, if you go to this page, you can even see several photographs of David Thomas's famous iron works. 

Your town hasn't forgotten you, Father Thomas.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Fox, Martha Capwell, Images of America: Catasauqua and North Catasauqua. Arcadia Publishing, 2002.

David Thomas at Welsh Biography Online.

David Thomas at The Hopkin Thomas Project. Of note, this site not only has a picture of Thomas himself, but also a drawing of the ship which brought him to the United States and an early photograph of his mansion.

David Thomas at the Historical Marker Database

If you've enjoyed this, please leave a comment!

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.