July's been very topsy-turvy for me, as you might have guessed from last week's post. This past week has been no different, as I've been occupied with what feels like everything under the sun, including but not limited to doctor's appointments and also seeing my late Aunt Gene's beloved cat off to his new home. He's living out west of here with my dear friends at Moon Family Studios, and the photos I've been receiving suggest that he's being absolutely spoiled. As he should be.
I've also been getting ready for a short trip for husband Kevin's birthday, which is next week. We're not going quite as far this year as we did a couple years ago, when we ventured out to Altoona to (try and fail to) ride Leap-the-Dips. Instead, I've been invited to the museum of the Sullivan County Historical Society, as they very much enjoyed my recent post about the Old Woolen Factory. Since nobody gets more excited about people paying attention to my blog than Kevin (no, not even me), he immediately suggested we make it a road trip for his birthday. So we'll be going there and we'll also be checking out the natural beauty at Penn's Cave, which is in that neck of the woods.
But first, a blog post. It's been a while since I did anything from Berks County, so I think it's time for a visit. I collected this one a while back and I sat on it in the hopes that I might be able to get a picture of whatever's left of the furnace, but apparently there isn't much to see. There's always history, though.
Well, since no one can agree on how to spell his surname, we'll just call him Thomas. We do know that he established Hereford Furnace in what is now Hereford Township, Berks County, in 1745. According to one of my sources, he was a slave owner and also sometimes rented slaves from his neighbors to get more work done. I want to condemn him for this but I'm trying to remember that this was normal at the time. That doesn't make it right, of course; still, there's no getting around the fact that it was considered acceptable back then. I can assure my readers, however, that Pennsylvania didn't allow that for too long compared with other states, and within a couple decades of the founding of Hereford Furnace, the majority of ironworks had stopped using slave labor altogether.
Hereford Furnace was not Thomas's only ironmaking endeavor. His name was also connected to Mount Pleasant Furnace in a nearby part of Berks County, Pool(e) Forge in Lancaster County, Warwick Furnace in Chester County, and Green Lane Forge in Montgomery County. It's thanks to his ownership of Green Lane Forge that I was able to find some of the little information I have about Thomas. For whatever reason, it seems that with the exception of Warwick Furnace (which I'll profile in the future), none of the other forges have historical markers, so I want to give them a little focus here. Thomas was not part of the company which built Pool (or Poole, sources vary) Forge in 1725. I'm actually not sure how Thomas was involved with that forge at all; the records of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania only state that he owned it at some point. Mount Pleasant Furnace, which was built in 1737, was never owned by Thomas, but he leased it in 1742 to create 48 tons of iron bar per year while he held the lease.
Thomas definitely was the founding owner of both Hereford Furnace and Green Lane Forge, however. Green Lane was actually the older of the two, having been constructed in 1733, and it sat at the mouth of a narrow ravine. This ravine overlooked the actual Green Lane, a road which led from the highway to the forge, and was almost completely overshadowed by evergreen trees. Green Lane Forge was largely very successful, and today, the former forge site is occupied by the borough of Green Lane. Thomas's profits at Green Lane Forge enabled him to then build Hereford Furnace in 1745. He was joined in his work by at least two sons, Thomas Jr. and William, and later a grandson, Thomas III. There was also a Willoughby Mayburry who later co-owned forges and sawmills with William.
Oddly, there is a discrepancy with regard to the year that Hereford Furnace was established. The marker gives 1745 as the year, and most sources seem to either agree with this or else avoid mentioning a founding year altogether. However, a document on the official website of Berks County says that Hereford Furnaces (note the plural) "was built and brought into operation in 1734, employing 100 to 150 men." Remember this, because it comes back later.
As the marker says, Hereford's major claim to fame was the fact that they made North America's first cast-iron stove. Well, as much as it pains me to contradict the good people at the PHMC... no, they didn't. Most sources assert that the first such stove was actually built in 1642 in Lynn, Massachusetts, and of course there was the "Pennsylvania fireplace," or Franklin Stove, designed by our old friend Ben in 1742. In fact, according to an article in the archives of the Historical Society of Montgomery County, the "Mayburry Stove" was absolutely not the first cooking stove cast in the United States. However, they add, it was "the earliest such stove extant which is complete and intact." In other words, to be more accurate, the marker should say that Hereford Furnace made the oldest surviving cast-iron stove.
Thomas died in 1747, just two years after the establishment of Hereford Furnace and apparently without having made payments on his lease of the Mount Pleasant Furnace. I'm sure his sons took care of the outstanding bills, and the actual owners of the furnace continued to operate it until it apparently ran out of iron ore. William took over operations at Green Lane Forge, which continued for several more decades; the exact year of closure has not been recorded but it seems to have shut down somewhere around 1830. Thomas Jr. and Thomas III, meanwhile, kept Hereford Furnace alive and churning out iron for a while, but I'm not sure exactly when it closed either. I do know that the iron industry in Pennsylvania fizzled out in the late 1800s, though, so if Hereford Furnace was still operating at that point, it didn't last much longer. Iron mining had shifted out to the upper Midwest, leading to the dissolution of the Colebrookdale railroad tracks which had transported the products of the furnaces, and ultimately to the demise of the furnaces themselves. Hereford Township, which grew up around the furnace in the form of the village of Hereford, holds no living memory of its once-vibrant iron forges.
I did find this, however, in my searches. This is a picture of a postcard dating to around 1910; I apologize for the lack of clarity. It depicts all that remained at that time of Hereford Furnace, and the inset image is of a stone monument to the industry which stood at the time of the postcard's printing. If you click on the image to enlarge it and zoom in to read the stone, you can see that it agrees with the claim that the founding date was 1734. Maybe this original marker is where the author of that paper got the idea - or maybe it's the correct date after all. It also gives the "Maybury" spelling of Thomas's last name, and maintains the inaccurate statement that the furnace created "the first cook stove in North America." As far as I know, this little monument no longer exists, and was likely replaced by the blue and gold marker. But I think it explains where a lot of the information on the current marker was originally found.
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.
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