Green Lane Forge

[Built] 1733

Montgomery County

This forge, on Perkiomen Creek, twenty miles north of Norristown, was built in 1733 by Thomas Maybury. "The foliage covering the rocky hills north and west of Perkiomen Creek, and the narrow crooked lane that led from the highway around the base of the hills," to the forge, are responsible for the attractive name.

The earliest settler in Marlborough township was Thomas Maybury, who bought in 1730 a tract of land, twelve hundred and forty acres, on which he erected this forge, which before 1747 was supplied with pig iron from Durham furnace. He married a descendant of the first Thomas Rutter.

Green Lane Forge was owned by Rev. George Michael Weiss before 1763. The workmen here, at one time, were chiefly negro slaves. "For many years the best blooms in the market were produced here. In those days the country blacksmith purchased his bar iron at the forge, and converted it into the hardware used in building houses, from the wrought nails in the floors, to the hinges, and latches of the doors. Iron was a commodity that eighty years ago was fashioned into a thousand forms by the village smith; forms which are now produced by the foundry, and sold at the village store." The transition has changed the face of affairs at this village. The forge has long since gone into decay; "the old water wheel, the huge bellows, the ore crushers, the cone-like charcoal kilns, the famous weekly teamsters who made their trips to town and back;—the huntsman and his hounds;—these are all gone;—and Green Lane is an ordinary railroad village."¹

¹ T.W. Bean, History of Montgomery County, p. 721.

Source: Committee on Historical Research, Pennsylvania Society of the Colonial Dames of America. Forges and Furnaces in the Province of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1914, p. 66.

Submitted by: Nancy.