Grubb's First Forge
Cornwall, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Peter Grubb (c.1700-54) carried on his initial efforts at iron-making in 1735 just slightly to the north. He used the Catalan-type forge which had originated in Spain sometime during the tenth century.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Around 1735, Peter Grubb began working iron just north of here, launching an enterprise that would help make Pennsylvania a colonial iron powerhouse. He relied on the Catalan-type forge—a bloomery method with roots in tenth-century Spain—to draw usable iron from ore. Grubb's early efforts seeded the great Cornwall ironworks that followed.
Why it matters
This forge stands at the beginning of Pennsylvania's iron industry, the colonial foundation of an American manufacturing tradition that would one day help arm a revolution and build a nation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the first half of the eighteenth century, colonial Pennsylvania was quietly becoming one of the most important centers of iron production in British North America. The colony had what iron-making demanded: rich ore deposits, vast forests to make charcoal for fuel, and streams to power the works. Around these ingredients grew a distinctive frontier industry.
The area around Cornwall, in what is now Lebanon County, sat atop some of the richest iron ore in the region. It was exactly the kind of place where an ambitious ironmaster might build an enterprise, and where the raw materials of a whole industry lay waiting in the ground and the woods.
It was here, around 1735, that Peter Grubb began his early efforts at iron-making, just north of this spot. He was working at the very beginning of Pennsylvania's iron story, when the industry that would one day loom so large was still a matter of a single forge and one man's determination.
People & events
Peter Grubb, who lived from about 1700 to 1754, was the founder of an iron-making enterprise that would grow far beyond these first efforts. Beginning around 1735, he set to work drawing usable iron from the local ore, laying the groundwork for the great Cornwall ironworks that followed him.
The method he relied on was the Catalan-type forge — a technique with remarkably deep roots. This bloomery-style forge traces its origins to Spain, where it developed sometime in the tenth century. That such an old European technology should be at work in the Pennsylvania woods is a reminder that colonial industry drew on centuries of accumulated craft carried across the Atlantic.
In a Catalan-type forge, ironworkers heated ore with charcoal to produce a spongy mass of iron that could be hammered into usable metal. It was demanding, skilled labor, and Grubb's success with it here helped establish Cornwall as a name that would matter in American iron for generations to come.
Its place in the American story
Grubb's first forge stands at the headwaters of a mighty stream in American history. The iron industry he helped begin would make Pennsylvania a colonial manufacturing powerhouse, and iron and the metalworking that flowed from it became foundations of American economic strength.
That early industry mattered beyond commerce. A colony able to make its own iron could make its own tools, its own implements, and — when the time came — its own weapons. The forges and furnaces of Pennsylvania would prove vital when the colonies broke with Britain, helping to arm a revolution, and the manufacturing tradition they seeded would help build a nation in the century that followed.
That this all reached back to an ore-rich hillside and a single early ironmaster is precisely the point. Great industries have humble beginnings, and the story of American manufacturing runs straight back through places like this one, where the work first started.
If you visit
This is a site to appreciate for what it began rather than for a dramatic ruin at the marker itself. You are standing near the birthplace of a Pennsylvania industry, and the marker invites you to imagine the heat, smoke, and hammering of early iron-making in what would otherwise seem quiet countryside.
Let the setting do its work. Think about why an ironmaster came here: ore in the ground, forests for charcoal, water for power. The landscape around you is the reason the industry took root, and reading the land is part of understanding the history.
If you're touring the region's industrial heritage, this marker makes a natural starting point for the broader Cornwall iron story that grew from these first efforts. Begin here, at the small beginning, and you'll better appreciate the scale of what eventually rose from a single early forge in the Pennsylvania woods.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Peter Grubb
Related events
- · Early Pennsylvania iron-making
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cornwall Banks
Cornwall, PA · est. 1947
The Cornwall Banks were among the richest iron deposits in the world and the oldest continuously worked mine in the New World, yielding ore for more than two centuries. From colonial furnaces that helped arm the Revolution to the industrial age, this Lebanon County hillside fed a steady stream of Pennsylvania iron — long described as the greatest such ore body east of Lake Superior.
Cornwall Furnace
Cornwall, PA · est. 1948
Peter Grubb raised this charcoal-fired iron furnace in 1742, tapping the rich ore of the Cornwall hills to smelt pig iron in an age when American industry was still in its infancy. Under later owners—most famously the Coleman family—the works ran for more than 140 years, outlasting nearly every one of its colonial-era rivals. Preserved as a state historic site, it survives as the best intact example of an early Pennsylvania ironmaking plantation.
Cornwall Furnace
Cornwall, PA · est. 1948
Built by ironmaster Peter Grubb in 1742, this charcoal furnace drew on the abundant iron ore of the Cornwall hills and stayed in blast until 1883—an extraordinary run of nearly a century and a half. It smelted iron through the colonial era, the Revolution, and deep into the industrial age before finally falling cold. Today the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission cares for the site as a monument to the state's ironmaking heritage.
Cornwall Iron Furnace
West Cornwall Township, PA · est. 2005
Founded in 1742 by Peter Grubb beside a rich vein of iron ore and vast charcoal-making forests, Cornwall Iron Furnace grew into a self-sufficient industrial village complete with an ironmaster's mansion and workers' homes. Its furnaces poured pig iron, cast goods, and cannon for the Revolutionary War before passing to Robert Coleman in 1798 and running until 1883. Remarkably, the works survive fully intact nearby — a rare window into early American ironmaking.