Colerain's Iron

---

First published in the April 2025 Colerain Courier Newsletter

When you visit Colerain Forges Mansion, it can be hard to visualize it as the center of a busting iron industry. For almost 80 years, the area surrounding the mansion was a loud, smoke-filled, and busy hub of an ironmaking community.

Several times in the last few history talks, people have asked, “What were the statistics of the amount of iron being produced by Colerain Forges?” With this question in mind, I set out to gather as much information as I could. I researched primary publications from the period and will explain each one in the next few paragraphs. I only know of a few business ledgers from the early years of Colerain Forges, and I have not had the opportunity to fully research them. They are privately owned, and there are plans to scan them in the future.

In 1828, a man named Samuel Hazard started a publication called Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania. This register was a periodical that was published from 1828 to 1836 and covered informational facts concerning Pennsylvania. In Volume 1 of 1828, Colerain Forges was listed as having Sligo Forges 1 and 2, plus Samuel Marshall’s Forge. The owners were John Lyon and Robert Stewart. Colerain Forges had ceased making bar iron before 1828, and was making blooms for the Sligo Iron Works in Pittsburgh. A bloom is a block of wrought iron that was made to be reheated and run through rolling mills to form iron plates and other shapes of iron bars. They were making 800 tons of bloom iron annually; prior to that they were making 450 tons of bar iron per year.

The next source of statistics for Colerain comes from the Bulletin of the American Iron Association. The American Iron Association was formed after 1849 by ironmasters from various parts of the United States, in the hopes of discussing and controlling the problems with tariffs that were happening in the US with the iron industry at the time. In this bulletin, it states that Lyon, Shorb and Co. owned Colerain, and the statistics go from 1849 to 1856. In 1849, Colerain produced 1,031 tons of iron blooms. Other years that were listed are: 1854 (738 tons of iron blooms), 1855 (718 tons of iron blooms), and 1856 (784 tons of iron blooms). It also stated that the forges were water operated, and they had seven fires and three hammers.

An additional fruitful source was the Iron Manufacturers Guide to the Furnaces and Forges and Rolling Mills of the United States. This book was written in 1859 by Joseph Peter Lesley, who traveled the United States in the 1850s and collected data of all the different iron making operations. Lesley's entry for Colerain listed that in 1856, Colerain had produced 784 tons of blooms. His work reinforced what was already published in the American Iron Association's bulletin.

Another interesting statistic that I found was about the number of employees. It comes from the American Journal, an early Huntington County newspaper. In June of 1868, there was an article about getting protection for American ironworkers. This was because of low tariffs on imported iron. It was noted that Colerain and Barree had 88 employees between the two forges. The number of employees would have been higher than that for both forges prior to this time. The iron and steel industry shifting to Pittsburgh caused this region to begin to downsize, leading to a decrease in employees' need to produce iron.