Welcome to the Lehigh Valley Landmarks with Leon podcast series, celebrating 250 years of independence. I'm your host, Rachel Leon. Since being elected in 2022 and serving as Vice President of Bethlehem City Council, I'm humbled by the opportunity to serve the diverse communities that make up our great city. But to understand where we're going, we need to understand our past. Each week, I'll share a short feature with a big story about the 250 years that made the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, known as the Christmas City, as we explore historic landmarks.
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania has a deep history that is often defined by two distinct elements: the Moravian settlement and the steel.
Historians often depict the Historic Moravian settlement of North Bethlehem and the industrial hub of South Bethlehem as separate forces that were at odds with each other. The life of Augustus Wolle, a Moravian merchant and the founder of Saucona Iron Mill, acts as a rebuttal to this claim.
Augustus Wolle was born on September 8, 1921 into a large and well-connected Moravian family. He lived in Bethlehem with his mother, father, and nine siblings.
Augustus lived his early life in the Moravian lifestyle of communal pay and no private ownership, working in his father’s store.
In the 18th century, Bethlehem’s Moravian leaders intentionally isolated their community from the capitalistic American economy, but this isolation, combined with Revolutionary War propaganda, ultimately caused Moravian men to desire independence.
Gradually, by the 19th century the Moravians began adopting American values and relying more on the regional economy. In the 1840s, the church dismantled its traditional system and allowed its members to purchase land along the Lehigh River.
It was within this time period that Augustus began buying large plots of land on the Southside of Bethlehem and in the greater Lehigh Valley. Wolle also purchased the remaining stock of the Bethlehem store from the Moravian church. He financed trips to Europe to gain experience in industrial affairs, but remained loyal to his religious community, serving in the committee of the Young Men’s Missionary Society.
In 1854, Wolle became a shareholder in the Thomas Iron Company in Hokendauqua on the Lehigh River. After learning about the development of iron ore beds in Saucon Valley, Wolle secured a charter for the Saucona Iron Company in 1857.
Wolle moved his iron business to the Southside and went into business with Charles Brodhead, another large landowner. The goal of the Saucona Iron Company was to produce pig iron to make rails for train lines. When the company shifted to manufacturing iron ores, Wolle and Brodhead recruited Robert Sayre and John Fritz to provide industrial and engineering expertise.
By 1863, the company had a fully operational blast furnace. By the 1870s, it had begun to produce steel. This is the point in the company’s history at which Augustus Wolle’s involvement seems to have tapered off. Wolle remained a stakeholder but Sayre and Fritz took over decision making.
Since 1857, the company has held many names, including the Bethlehem Rolling Mill and Iron Company, Bethlehem Iron Company, Bethlehem Steel Company, and the famed Bethlehem Steel Corporation.
Augustus Wolle is not often mentioned in the history of Bethlehem Moravians or Steel, but his life story represents the way in which the entities interacted with each other, forming a holistic history of Bethlehem.
Information for this episode was provided by a presentation posted on the National Museum of Industrial History’s YouTube channel by Toby Gardner on “Augustus Wolle, Moravian Industry and the Origins of Bethlehem Steel” and the "Bethlehem Iron Works” from the Moravian Archives and the book - Bethlehem Steel: Builder and Arsenal of America by Kenneth Warren.
We want to give a special thanks to Jordan Knox, an undergraduate student studying English and Environmental Studies at Lehigh University for her writing contribution for this episode.
