America's First Iron Puddling Furnace
Menallen Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
In 1817 ironmaster Isaac Meason and Welshman Thomas Lewis built a puddling furnace and bar rolling mill here using a process from Wales that revolutionized the iron industry. It removed carbon from brittle pig iron creating malleable wrought iron in one step, making iron production much more efficient and less costly. Later, "puddlers"Â in Pittsburgh formed the first metals union, the Sons of Vulcan, fore-runner of United Steelworkers.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In 1817, in the iron-rich hills of Fayette County, ironmaster Isaac Meason and Welsh craftsman Thomas Lewis brought a technique from Wales that would transform American metalmaking. Their puddling furnace and rolling mill burned the carbon out of brittle pig iron to yield tough, workable wrought iron in a single step, making the metal far cheaper and more plentiful just as the young republic began to build with it. The skilled "puddlers" who mastered the roaring furnaces later organized in Pittsburgh as the Sons of Vulcan, an ancestor of today's United Steelworkers.
Why it matters
This furnace helped seed the American iron and steel industry and, through the puddlers who tended it, the American labor movement that grew up alongside it.
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Related people
- ¡ Isaac Meason
- ¡ Thomas Lewis
Themes & tags
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