The next village, Neffs, has an ancient graveyard, burial place of many Revolutionary patriots. Then to Slatington, heart of the slate region. A chain bridge built over the Lehigh River in 1826 leads to Lehigh Gap. Another state road from Allentown goes through Catasauqua; here, in 1914, was celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the successful uniting of the state’s two chief resources, the use of Anthracite Coal in the Iron Furnaces, by David Thomas from Wales. Coke has since replaced anthracite, but the furnaces and the general method are much as Thomas left them; these were the mother furnaces of the Bethlehem Steel Works, Cambria Iron Works, Thomas Iron Works at Hockendauqua, and the stupendous development of the iron trade in this country. A private art collection owned by D. G. Dery, Esq., comprises an important collection of paintings, statuary, bronzes, ivories, Chinese porcelains, and jades. Continue on state road through Mickley’s to Egypt. Union Church, Lutheran and Reformed, founded, 1734, in log church; present brick building erected, 1785. Near by is Deshler’s Fort, built, 1760, and the Troxell-Steckel House, stone, built, 1756. A mile north is tablet, placed by Lehigh County Historical Society, marking place where occurred the last Indian massacre in this county, of three families in 1763.
XLVII
LEBANON COUNTY
FORMED February 16, 1813; Scriptural name, from the cedar trees covering the range of mountains on northern boundary, “Cedars of Lebanon”; settled by Germans in the east, by the Scotch-Irish in the west. Leading industries, agriculture, iron, tobacco. Three solid hills of rich, magnetic iron ore have been worked for over 170 years, and still seem inexhaustible; they require no mining, simply to be quarried; down to the present these mines have produced more iron ore than any other single iron ore property in the United States. In 1737, Peter Grubb became sole owner of these ore hills; he built Hopewell forge on Hammer Creek, and the large blast furnace was named for Cornwall, his ancestral home in England. The property was inherited by his two sons, who were colonels in the Revolutionary War; cannon balls and stoves were cast here for the Continental Army. In 1798, Robert Coleman purchased five-sixths of these ore banks; they were near the old road between Harris Ferry and Philadelphia, known as the Berks and Dauphin Road. Later his grandsons, Robert and G. Dawson Coleman, built furnaces on the Union Canal, then the great means of transportation; by that time charcoal furnaces were going out.
The construction and operation of the Union Canal through this county, connecting the Schuylkill River at Reading with the Susquehanna at Middletown, was a
Lebanon County
THE OLDEST CANAL TUNNEL IN THE UNITED STATES
North Lebanon