The Siberian Iron Works
Leechburg, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Established by William Rogers and T.J. Burchfield in 1872, the company was one of the first in the nation to produce black plate and tin plate. The Works entered a market dominated by imports from England and Wales and attracted skilled labor...
The Story
In the years after the Civil War, American industry was straining to break free of its dependence on British metalworking, and tin plate was one of the last holdouts—nearly all of it still shipped in from mills in England and Wales. When William Rogers and T.J. Burchfield opened this works along the Kiskiminetas River in 1872, they were making one of the earliest domestic bids to produce black plate and tin plate on American soil, luring the skilled rollers and dippers who alone knew the trade across the Atlantic to western Pennsylvania. Leechburg thus became a small but genuine frontier in the nation's long campaign to build a self-sufficient iron and steel economy.
Why it matters
The site marks an early chapter in America's drive to wrest the tin-plate trade away from British dominance—an industrial coming-of-age that, a generation later, would make the United States the world's leading producer.
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Related people
- · William Rogers
- · T.J. Burchfield
Themes & tags
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