A Considerable Building On Bushkill Creek: William Henry of Nazareth At Jacobsburg
May 24, 2013 in Articles
Research Supplement by Scott Paul Gordon
“The sequence of Henry gun factories in Northampton County is familiar: Nazareth, Jacobsburg, Boulton. William Henry of Nazareth (1757-1821), the eldest son of William Henry of Lancaster, owned the first two gun works; his sons, J. Joseph Henry (1786-1836) and William Henry III (1794-1878), built Boulton. But this elegant chronology – in which the Jacobsburg works replaces those in Naz- areth and is in turn replaced by Boulton—tends to obscure the actual life cycle of Henry’s factories. This article draws on the detailed records of Pennsylvania’s Moravian congregations, as well as materials in the Jacobsburg Historical Society archives, to attempt to fill out the picture of the Jacobsburg factory, its founding and its later fate, and of the varied activities of William Henry of Nazareth (WH).”