Durham Furnace, Durham Township, Bucks County

As you might have seen on the Facebook page for the blog, there was no post last week; I came down with a sinus infection that made me very sleepy and unable to focus. Sorry for the delay! We're back to business as usual now.

Before I get started on the subject of last-week's-post-turned-this-week, I do want to give a shout to the Herstory Club, which you might recall accepted me into its ranks last fall. This month's blog theme is medieval history, and I had the chance to make my first contribution! I introduced the Herstorians to one of my favorite historical figures, Princess Gwenllian of Wales; they seemed to really enjoy it and I hope you enjoy it too. Thanks for the opportunity, team!

Back in March, my husband Kevin and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. Most things were still kind of locked down, though, so we decided to just go for a nice drive and enjoy the scenery. The roads brought us down to Bucks County, to where George Taylor had once been the ironmaster, and we got out of the car and snooped around with our phone cameras for a bit. (We must look like weird tourists.)

The marker stands at the intersection of PA 212
and Durham Road, opposite Mine Hill Road

Bucks County, as I think I've mentioned once or twice, was one of the three original colonies established by William Penn himself back when he was first given the land called Pennsylvania. He began granting tracts of land in this county to businessmen from London, and one of these tracts was a place called Durham. Durham was situated roughly a mile west of the Delaware River and was known to contain deposits of iron ore; in 1727, the area became a center of iron production when an iron furnace was built. This was given the relatively unimaginative name of Durham Furnace, and the company which operated it had the even more unimaginative name of the Furnace Company. It was owned by Joseph Galloway, James Logan, and William Allen; that last guy is better remembered for founding the city of Allentown.

The furnace was powered by large water wheels, which turned in the current of Durham Creek, as well as wood fires. Local limestone was quarried and burned to create lime, which was an important factor in the process to remove impurities from the final product. Pennsylvania has many lime kilns left from the iron-smelting heyday of years past, and some of those which existed in Durham can still be seen today. At first, the Furnace Company tried shipping tons of iron back to England; however, it was very expensive to pay the workers to do the dangerous mining and smelting, and then to also pay to ship the stuff down the Delaware River to Philadelphia, and from there ship it to England. Iron is very heavy, so putting it on a ship meant that the ship couldn't carry much else, hence the high cost of shipping it. Rather than funnel all their profits into sending iron overseas, the Furnace Company instead started manufacturing iron products to sell on the local market, such as tools, cookware, and stoves. This was a much more lucrative venture and continued for the next thirty years.

In the mid 1750s, as readers of my post about him know, George Taylor handed off the reins of Warwick Furnace and Coventry Forge to his stepson, Samuel Savage III; Taylor had been running them during the boy's minority. Although Taylor still lived at Warwick Furnace for a couple of years following this transition, he and a few other investors created a partnership to lease Durham Furnace in or about 1755. Under his tenure as ironmaster, the furnace began creating even more iron items. Once the American Revolution began developing traction, Taylor turned the furnace into a supplier of iron munitions for the Continental Army, producing cannons and cannonballs along with other military equipment. According to the Durham Historical Society's website, the house in which Taylor lived can still be seen just outside of the Durham Village Center; however, on my visit we weren't able to explore long enough to find it. (I do plan to return, however. I've got a new project in the works and I want to find this house.)

Durham Furnace, or at least the area in which it existed, was also famous for another contribution to the Revolutionary War effort: the Durham boat. This was a large, flat-bottomed wooden freight boat used to ship materials along the various rivers in North America during the 18th century. They were designed by Robert Durham (whom I presume gave his name to the area), and he is credited with building the original. While their major use in the Revolution was to ferry George Taylor's munitions down the Delaware River to Philadelphia, they served an even more memorable purpose on Christmas night in 1776. George Washington and a column of his troops crossed the Delaware to make a surprise attack against the enemy troops in Trenton, New Jersey. The soldiers were all ferried across the water in Durham boats, which were perfect for the purpose since they were already built to carry heavy loads. Even today, when re-enactors perform the crossing, they still use Durham boats. A replica, protected by a pavilion and seen at left, has been built and can be viewed next to where the original Durham Furnace once stood; the nearby sign (not pictured) states that it was provided by the Durham Historical Society and the Lou Rupp Jr. Memorial Fund in January 2000.

By 1791, the supply of high-quality iron ore in the area had been severely depleted, and competition from other furnaces was too great to withstand; Durham Furnace shut its doors. The main furnace building decayed and was eventually demolished. A brief revival of the industry took place in the late 1840s, when two new furnaces were built to work with anthracite coal, brought down on canal boats from Mauch Chunk (known today as Jim Thorpe). Since the bulk of the iron ore remaining in Durham wasn't of very good quality, most of the ore smelted in the new furnaces was brought from New Jersey. This new incarnation of Durham Furnace continued blasting until it was finally shut down due to insurmountable competition from the Bethlehem Iron Company, or as it was known later, Bethlehem Steel.

Today, Durham Furnace is a quiet and beautifully situated little village. It's one of the seven which comprise Durham Township, which has fewer than 2,000 residents. A grist mill (seen at right) was constructed in 1820 on the site of the original Durham Furnace, and operated until 1967; the building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is currently undergoing an extensive restoration in honor of its 200th birthday. Since 1912 it has housed the Durham post office, which was first established in 1723 and is the second oldest post office in the entire country. History enthusiasts come from all over the United States to see this unassuming little hamlet which had such a big impact on our origins.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Official website of the Durham Historical Society

Author unknown. "Tales of the Towpath: Durham Furnace." Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, date unknown.

Bell, Herbert Charles. Durham Township. A. Warner & Company, Philadelphia, 1887.

Durham Furnace at the Historical Marker Database

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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.