Mount Union borough

Matilda Furnace's Namesake

Did you know? Samuel Drake came into possession of the 50 acre Ferry tract in 1783, and in 1790 he took up 150 acres more, ground later known as the Matilda Furnace farm. The furnace was built there in 1836, says the 1897 Juniata Valley encyclopedia, and named in honor of a daughter of Samuel Drake, afterwards married to Captain Caldwell, who died in the Mexican War from a wound received in the attack on the City of Mexico. Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union tells it the same way.

The encyclopedia's own family list complicates the story. It names Jane Matilda, wife of Captain Caldwell, born in 1810 and died in 1842, among the children of James Drake, Samuel's eldest son, which would make her Samuel's granddaughter.

The year the furnace went up is not settled either. Lytle's 1876 county history says it was built in 1836 and 1837, and Welch reports that Owen J. Cassidy, who helped take the old stack down, saw the date 1837 on it.

Lytle placed Matilda Furnace opposite Mount Union, in Mifflin County, and in 1876 he wrote that it made about seventy five tons of pig metal a week and gave work to eighty men. Its name was later changed to Lucy Furnace, and Mount Union was the shipping and business point for its products. By 1909 Welch could write that Lucy Furnace remained only in name, and that all that was left of it were a few ruins.

Checked and confirmed. CONFIRMED 2026-10-30 against the sources listed: every factual sentence was tied to a verbatim passage and a script confirmed each passage is in its source. Where sources disagreed on a number, the number was left out.

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