Expected Release Date: April 2025

The Pennsylvania iron industry began in Berks County, Pennsylvania at Pine Forge in Douglass Township in 1716. Thomas Rutter, Germantown blacksmith, assembly member, and 7th Day Baptist minister went up the Schuylkill River to the Manatawny Region and built a bloomery forge there, the first ironworks in Pennsylvania. Four years later, he converted his bloomery to Pennsylvania’s first refinery forge and built Colebrook Dale Furnace on the Manatawny Creek, its first cold-blast charcoal furnace. Pennsylvania’s iron industry began in earnest. By 1776, Berks County had six active furnaces and nine forges that were making cannons and munitions for the Continental Government.  This volume provides brief sketches of those early ironworks and the ironmasters who ran them.   

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