Born in West Marlboro Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, on January 6, 1794, Rebecca Pennock was reared in a liberal and hardworking Quaker family. She attended school at home and in Wilmington, Delaware, and in 1813 she married Dr. Charles Lukens, who became a partner in her father╒s iron business. A few years later Charles Lukens leased the Brandywine Mill in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, from the elder Pennock and set about converting it to the production of high quality charcoal iron for use in steam boilers. At his death in 1825 he left the mill functioning but in a financially precarious state. Rebecca Lukens quickly assumed charge. She brought in her brother-in-law, Solomon Lukens, to superintend the operation of the mill, while she took over the commercial and financial duties, securing raw materials, making contracts, selling, and stabilizing the firm. Her work was complicated by expensive and protracted probate litigation of her father╒s and her husband╒s wills, which was not settled until 1853, but by the 1840s she had built a strong and widely respected business. Lukens boiler plate was used as far away as Boston and New Orleans, and George Stephenson was said to have used it in the construction of his early locomotives.
In 1847 and 1849 sons-in-law were brought into the business as partners. Lukens, the first woman in America to engage in the iron business and perhaps the first in any heavy industry, died near Coatesville, Pennsylvania, on December 10, 1854, leaving an estate of over $100,000. The Brandywine Iron Works was renamed the Lukens Iron Works in 1859 and incorporated as the Lukens Steel Company in 1890. Still in business in 1980, it was the oldest steel manufacturing firm in the nation.
