This was the beginning of the Age of Steam. And, steam power requires boilers, which, in turn, require iron plate. In 1818, Lukens’s mill became the first in the United States to roll iron boiler plate. Orders came in from steamboat manufacturers, and the Brandywine Iron Works became one of the world’s most renowned makers of rolled iron and steel.

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In late March 1825, Lukens received his most prestigious commission. John Elgar of York, Pennsylvania needed iron “of the best quality and sound” in order to build an iron-hulled steamboat to ply the Susquehanna River. Lukens iron fit the bill. The Codorus, the first steamer to operate on the river, was launched in November, but Lukens was not there to see it. That summer, he died at age thirty-nine, leaving Rebecca with two children and one more on the way.

Lukens’s love for his wife, it seems, also included a keen appreciation of her talents. For it was his idea–and his dying request–that she carry on the business. For Rebecca, it was not only a time of grief, but a time of peril. The iron works was in debt and in need of repair. As well, her family was not happy about her running the firm. As she later put it, “necessity is a stern taskmistress; my every want gave me courage.” Lukens’s brother Solomon took over the supervision of the business’s day-to-day affairs, but Rebecca was the sole manager and owner.

So far, most of Brandywine Iron Works’ business was in the making of iron plate for ships, but only a year after Rebecca took over the firm, the first railway steam locomotive in the United States was run on a small track in Hoboken, New Jersey. Rebecca had the foresight to see in the new railways–such as the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad begun in the 1830s–opportunity for her business, and Brandywine started manufacturing iron for locomotives.

During the Panic of 1837–in reality a full-blown depression that plagued the country for six years–Rebecca refused to lay workers off, but instead set them to repairing the mill or working on her farm. When there was no cash, she paid them in produce. “The difficulties of the times throw a gloom on everything,” she wrote. “All is paralyzed–business at a stand.”

Rebecca survived, and by the mid-1840s she was able to think about stepping down. She had paid off all debts, solved the legal problems caused by her father’s ambiguous will, and turned the business into the top boiler-plate company in the United States. Moreover, two of her daughters had married husbands who were well able to shoulder the firm’s burdens. As she contemplated her achievements, she said, “I had built a very superior mill, though a plain one, and our character for making boiler iron stood first in the market, hence we had as much business as we could do. . . . There was difficulty and danger on every side. Now I look back and wonder at my daring.”

On December 10, 1854, five years after she retired from managing the firm, Rebecca died. The company that she built–Lukens Steel–still thrives on the banks of the Brandywine River and is renowned for steel plate. Rebecca herself has not been forgotten. January 6, 1994–the bicentennial of her birth–was proclaimed “Rebecca Lukens Day” by the Pennsylvania State Senate. Three months later, she was inducted into the National Business Hall of Fame at a banquet in New York City.

*A slitting mill was so named because it produced iron sheets that were then slit into strips to make such items as barrel hoops and wheel rims.*Isaac Pennock died in 1824.
**Issac Pennock died in 1824.

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