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WOMAN OF IRON

IN 1825 REBECCA LUKENS TOOK OVER HER LATE
HUSBAND’S IRON MILL. THE COMPANY STILL THRIVES–
A TESTAMENT TO THE MANAGEMENT ABILITIES OF
THIS PIONEERING WOMAN CEO.

BY JOSEPH GUSTAITIS

In 1810, when she was sixteen, Rebecca Pennock was a dreamy, romantic girl, fond of appreciating nature’s picturesque beauty from the back of a horse and bounding “over hill and dale as wild, happy, and joyous as youth could make me.” By 1840, however, Rebecca Pennock Lukens had become a businesswoman renowned for her shrewdness–an entrepreneur on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution in the United States and the owner of a thriving steel mill on the banks of Pennsylvania’s Brandywine River.

Rebecca was born on January 6, 1794 to Martha and Isaac Pennock, whose family had been in Pennsylvania since the days of William Penn. Although Isaac had been deeded three hundred acres of farmland by his father in 1792, he saw opportunity in the iron business and wanted nothing to do with farming. Recognizing that the new United States, free from restrictions that had been imposed during the colonial era, would no longer have to buy industrial wares from Great Britain, he proceeded to establish an iron works known as the Federal Slitting Mill on Bucks Run some four miles from Coatesville.*

Another area resident, Jesse Kersey, was inspired by the opening of the Lancaster Turnpike to develop a community on land owned by his father-in-law, Moses Coates that would attract residents and industry. He formed a partnership with Isaac Pennock in 1810 and together they purchased 110 acres of Coates’s land. Pennock converted a saw mill on the property into an iron works, calling it the Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory after the pleasant river that ran alongside it and provided the water power that kept the machinery humming. By 1817 Isaac had become the sole proprietor of the business.

As a child, Rebecca enjoyed considerable freedom, finding special pleasure in the company of three nearby older cousins, a boy and two girls. With them she roved the countryside, and from them she acquired her first taste of the joys of learning. At twelve she was sent to boarding school and then a year later to another institution, where, she later recalled, “life began to open new charms to me.”

When she returned home at sixteen, Rebecca, as the oldest child, was called upon to help raise her six younger siblings, especially the baby. She took a liking to the infant, but missed her studies and garnered solace in solitary reading. Soon permitted to return to a school in Wilmington, Delaware, she demonstrated a characteristic mix of practicality and romance by excelling in chemistry and French.

When Rebecca met Dr. Charles Lloyd Lukens, he had a medical practice in Abington, Pennsylvania. At their first meeting, Rebecca wrote, he “bowed with a peculiar grace, and for a moment my eyes rested on his interesting face and his tall and commanding figure.” She was smitten and never ceased to regard Dr. Lukens with anything but deep love. They were married in 1813.

Dr. Lukens gave up his medical practice and joined his new father-in-law’s iron business. By around 1817–the same time that Isaac became the sole owner of the works–he leased the operation to Lukens, explaining to Rebecca that she would inherit the business when he died.** The former physician set about transforming himself into an iron-maker.

The United States was then entering an expansive, optimistic period. Although the country was already feeling the frictions that would later lead to civil war, its mood was progressive and forthright, as states west of the Alleghenies were ushered into the Union. Mills and factories sprouted as the young republic began developing its industrial muscle. An enterprising man could go far, and Lukens was well positioned.

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