Includes: Approx. 50 manuscript drafts, most drawn on the Bank of Chester County, signed by Rebecca W. Lukens. c.1826-29. * Approx. 30 printed checks drawn on the Bank of Chester County, accomplished in ink and signed by Rebecca W. Lukens. c.1826-29. * Nearly 100 business letters and commercial correspondence, invoices, etc., most addressed to George W. P. Coates, who ran a freight forwarding company, was a nephew of Rebecca W. Lukens, and for a while was in business with Rebecca’s son-in-law Charles Huston. c.1858. * Approx. 40 checks signed by George W.P. Coates, drawn on the Farmer's Bank of Lancaster, PA. c.1856. * Album with about 36 carte-de-visite photographs, many identified in pencil on the window mounts, including many members of the Huston family. (binding broken, lacking front cover; some cards have been removed.) * Album with about 27 carte-de-visite photographs, many identified in ink or pencil on the window mounts, including Charles Penrose, Marion Penrose, several members of the Gibbons family, a few Hustons, etc., a small number in uniform; some cards have been removed. * Framed steel engraving of The Old Mill at the Lukens Iron and Steel Co. * Miniature painting of Mrs. James Penrose (Harriet L. Huston) by Trumbull. * 8 page typescript by Stewart Huston, giving a “Brief History of Lukens Steel Company & Its Predecessors.” 1968.
Significant little archive relating to the Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory of Coatesville, Pennsylvania and its successor companies, now called the Lukens Steel Company, the oldest steel mill in commission within the United States. Founded by Isaac Pennock in 1793 as The Federal Slitting Mill, the company was run by Pennock’s son-in-law Dr. Charles Lloyd Lukens until his death in 1825, at which point the operation was left to his widow, Rebecca W. Luckens. This inheritance made Rebecca Lukens the first woman in the United States to be a part of the iron industry. She was also the first female chief executive officer of an industrial company. When Rebecca retired in 1847 she became a silent partner with Abraham Gibbons, who was one of her sons-in-law, and was the sole manager of the mill. The company was known as A. Gibbons and Company. The following year Gibbons took on his brother-in-law, Dr. Charles Huston as a partner. In 1849 the men renamed the mill Gibbons and Huston. Gibbons had married Rebecca’s oldest daughter Martha, while Dr. Charles Huston married the youngest Isabella. The archive captures an important moment in the industrialization of the United States, the remarkable success of the hard-headed business-woman Rebecca Lukens, and the expansion of the iron and steel industry that laid the basis for America's industrial might.