While towns like Danville, Montour County, boasted large iron mills, smaller furnaces also provided steady income for families and communities in the Susquehanna Valley

THE OLD BEAVER FURNACE

A Historical Sketch Written for the “Williamsport Grit” republished in the “Middleburgh Post”

Located at the foot of Shade Mountain on the road from Selinsgrove to Lewistown, Pa., is the village of Paxtonville. The railroad station is Benfer. It is a village of about 300 inhabitants and was originally known as Beaver Furnace, the name being derived from the town's chief industry, a furnace, one of the oldest in the state.

This furnace was of the old-fashioned kind, being run by an overshot waterwheel, or rather two of one above the other. The water to run these wheels was diverted from its course down the mountain about 200 feet above the furnace and run through pipes to the place where it was used. The indentations are still in the side hill, but the pipes have long since rotted and no trace of them can be found. Nothing remains of the old wheels either, except two posts and a lot of rubbish almost unseen on account of the growth of brush in the pit where they used to do duty. 

In 1848, Ner Middleswarth, Jacob Kern, John Kern, Daniel Kern, and John Wilson formed a company and erected a blast furnace at this place. John C. Wilson was made manager of the concern and under his guidance, the furnace was fired August 22nd of that year and run until 1856 when it blew out.

The company made a good quality of charcoal pig iron* and averaged from six to eight tons per day. The property at this time - 1856 - changed hands and passed into the control of Ner Middleswarth, who operated it for some time and then disposed of the concern to a company made up of Doctor Rooke, Jesse Walter, and Nutting & Francis, who run it from 1863 to 1866, when it was again stopped, and since that time it has not been run. The iron ore was mined a short distance up the mountain, and with these industries once established, the town was quite an active place. The ever-present company store was one of the side issues during the operation. Those of us who today see everything carried on railroad ears can but imagine the sight made by the long lines of wagons loaded with iron anil drawn by six horses.

The "pigs" were conveyed in this way to Selinsgrove, a distance of 14 miles, where they were loaded on canal boats, and taken to different ironworks throughout the State. About 1871, the property was purchased by Robert Paxton when the name of the village was changed to Paxtonville in his honor who worked the mines for some time. The stack of the furnace was built of stone, about 1,600 perch being used. The machinery and buildings have all been removed and nothing is left to tell the tale of past glories but this big pile of stones. *(Pig Iron could be used to make frying pans, cooking pots, fencing, and other items.)

Middleburgh Post (Middleburg, Pennsylvania) March 02, 1899, Page 01