It was an ordinary day. Googling and reading about the Cornwall Iron Furnace's impact on the small community of Mount Gretna which is about a half-hour drive from my home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Cornwall Iron Furnace is a great example of furnaces that covered the countryside in Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19 centuries. A few days I posted a story about the village known as Mount Gretna which was one of many small villages and towns that covered the countryside near a variety of iron furnaces. The Cornwall Iron Furnace is one example of a furnace that garnered artisan's shops, stores, schools, churches, homes as well as the mansion of the wealthy iron master. All of the raw materials needed for the smelting process such as iron ore, limestone and wood for charcoal, were found at the Cornwall Iron Furnace. Today, Cornwall is the only surviving charcoal cold blast furnace in the Western Hemisphere.
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| The Grubb Mansion in Cornwall, Pennsylvania |
Back in the 1730s a stone mason known as Peter Grubb began to mine the area known as Cornwall. He had named the area Cornwall in honor of he area in England from where his father had emigrated. Then in 1745 he leased the ironworks to a consortium known as Cury and Company. Ownership eventually went to Peter's sons, Curtis and Peter Jr. when he died. The brothers took control and ran it quite successfully until the 1880s. Curtis lived on site and built the original 19 room mansion that still stands prominently next to the property. Peter Jr. ran a forge at Hopewell, refining the pig iron produced by the furnace into more valuable bar iron. The ironworks were major suppliers to the Revolutionary War effort and General Washington once made a visit to inspect the operation. In 1750 the British Parliament tried to restrict the production of iron in the colonies, but the immigrants wouldn't have it. The output from the furnaces began to rise with Pennsylvania being the top producer, smelting about one-seventh of the world's iron. By 1798 a fellow by the name of Robert Coleman had gained ownership of the furnace operation and eventually became one of Pennsylvania's first millionaires. Coleman's son, William, was named manager of Cornwall Furnace and lived in the mansion. In 1865 the Coleman's remodeled the mansion into the 29 room structure known today as Buckingham Mansion. The furnace remained in operation until 1883 when iron furnaces started to become obsolete since furnaces fueled by anthracite coal became popular. Eventually the furnace was abandoned, leaving the building untouched until it was given in 1932 to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by Margaret Coleman Freeman Buckingham, Robert's great grand-daughter. In the mid-19th century, Cornwall's iron plantation contained industrial, residential and agricultural activities with small villages, created for furnace workers and miners. Most structures were built in the gothic Revival style with stone and brick. Bethlehem Steel acquired ownership of the mine between 1917 and 1922 where both strip mining and underground mining were used to extract ore from the ground. The open pit mine began to flood in 1971 and today the open pit is filled with water. As of 1973 all operations have been stopped. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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