For more than a century, Pennsylvania was the ironmaking center of America. The iron industry played a critical role in the development of the English colonies, and the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Iron was an essential material in the agricultural colonies and industrializing nations. [1]

Between 1840 and 1880 the iron industry experienced profound technological changes, including a shift in fuel from charcoal to anthracite coal and then to bituminous coal and coke. During the 1840s and 1850s furnaces fueled by anthracite superseded charcoal furnaces, and rolling mills replaced forges. [2]

Danville, Montour County was a center of the iron industry in the middle Susquehanna Valley because of its readily available iron deposits along Montour Ridge, and its workforce of Welsh, Irish, Germans, Lithuanians, and other ethnicities. But other communities also had iron furnaces, such as the old Beaver Furnace in Snyder County, mentioned in a previous post.

An iron furnace in Winfield, Union County was put into operation in 1853, as described in a 1913 article in the Lewisburg Journal. At times, its continued operation was dependent on the financial aid businessman Thomas Beaver of Danville.

“The iron industry rose, flourished, and died away at Winfield and nothing is there now to reveal the workings of the years gone before than the old brick stack crumbling to ruin near the river banks and at which location it was erected when the furnace for the melting of iron ore was built at that place in 1853. Like many other industries in other sections, it grew from a small beginning to gigantic proportions, and then as time grew onward, the works gradually were left to ruin and the history of the workings is preserved through the generations by the tales of the grandfathers as they sit around the fire on a cold winter evening.

Such is the case with the old iron furnace at Winfield. Although it has not been so long ago that the last work was performed there, the beginning of the work on the grounds was far back in 1853, and the grandfathers of today are telling their grandchildren the tales of work and the melting of the iron on the river banks of the Susquehanna. But little, if anything is known, of the early date at which iron ore was discovered in these parts.

The first authentic record we have at this day is according to Linn's Annals, which states that in the year 1841 Napoleon Hughes, of Franklin County, found the iron ore at. the present site of "Yankee Spring" in Winfield, contained a good amount of metallic iron and he opened up a drift at that place and a short time later he also opened one in Miner's Hollow. These places were worked intermittently, and as there was no furnace at Winfield, the product was loaded on boats at the Winfield ferry and then taken to Red Point on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River where the products were sold.

In 1853, however, Samuel Geddes. James S. Marsh, Frederick Marsh, Elisha C. Marsh, and Joseph Shreiner, all of Lewisburg, who were operating a foundry at Lewisburg under the name of Geddes, Marsh and Co., erected a furnace in Dry Valley. Work on what was called the Union furnace at Winfield (1913), the ruins which still stand a short distance on the other side of the Philadelphia and Reading R. R. tracks was begun in 1853. The stone for the stack was hauled from Blue Hill.”

According to the newspaper article, three other men were brought into the firm. “They were Thomas Beaver, of Danville, Peter Beaver, of Lewisburg, and Charles E. Morris, of Chester County. The latter named was the manager until 185S. From that time until 1863 the firm was known as Beaver, Marsh, Geddes & Co. Dr. Levi Rooke, who had been manager at the mines, was admitted as a partner in the firm in 1856. The plant when completed in 1854 comprised the large furnace stack, stock house, casting room, engine and blowing tub room, four large boilers, a hot blast, and a flue stack nearly 100 feet in height The stack was made higher later on account of insufficient draft. An additional hot blast was also built so that the air could be heated to a high temperature before entering the furnace.”

As in many fledgling businesses, the first few years were difficult, with many breakdowns, but management pushed on to make the iron furnace flourish.

“In 1857 and 1858 they were enabled to manufacture iron more successfully. It was under most trying circumstances that the furnace was operated. In any one year of the ten which followed there was not a cent realized from the investment by the management and at the end of those ten years, they were left in poorer circumstances than they had been before. Without the assistance of Thomas Beaver, who was a wealthy member of the firm, the furnace would have been shut down and would have gone into bankruptcy many a time. In 1863 Thomas Beaver sold his interest to his brother Peter.

During the war times, the furnace was in poor straits. The management was fearful that the furnace would be a failure. But it was not. From the year 1865 to 1872 the demand for iron, which the war had created, carried prices to what would seem a high price in these days, and it was during this time that the firm prospered greatly.

For a short time, they operated a coal mine near Mt. Carmel, but they found that they could buy coal very much cheaper than it cost to mine it, and they consequently sold out. Leases were obtained on some valuable ore deposits at Millerstown, Perry County. The firm built many buildings at Winfield for the use of the men employed at the furnace.

Again from 1873 to 1878 the furnace was in poor straits and these years were lean ones for the management and the business was carried on at a loss. In 1875, 1867, 1877, and 1878, the furnace was closed down nearly all of the time, and in 1878 the wages fell as low as eighty cents a day. In 1879 and 1880 the conditions at the furnace improved to a considerable extent and from that time until 1890 the business improved although it never rose to the height obtained during the years following the war. In 1890 the iron trade began to fall off to such an extent that Dr. Levi Rooke, both of his partners, Mr. Peter Beaver and Mr. Marsh, having died, decided to close down the plant. In March of 1891, the last casting was made at the old furnace and since that time it has stood silent, the ruins telling a story of iron ore industry in days agone.”

The newspaper reported that during the early days of operating the furnace, mule teams brought ore up and down either side of the ridge above Winfield. The finished product was then hauled to Northumberland. Following the construction of a ferry, the product was placed on a wagon and placed on the ferry. During the winter, when the river froze over, mules were hitched to a bobsled, loaded with a half-ton of iron. Many times, the weight of the mules or the sled broke through the ice, sending both into the Susquehanna River.