Robert Habersham Coleman

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Robert Habersham Coleman (1856 - 1930) was an iron processing and railroad industrialist and owner of extensive farmland in Pennsylvania. He was the fourth- and last-generation scion of a family which controlled Cornwall Iron Furnace, in Cornwall, Pennsylvania, a major coal-burning ironmaking facility that was founded in 1742 by Peter Grubb and which produced pig iron, domestic products and, during the American Revolution and Civil War, cannon barrels. Robert Coleman shut the facility in 1883, opening new facilities for the company. In 1881, at the time he took over his family's business, Coleman was worth about seven million dollars. By 1889 he was estimated to be worth thirty million dollars. By 1893 the fortune had vanished. One of his homes, Cornwall Hall, was a "symbol of the rise, fame and decline of the "king" of Cornwall (Pennsylvania) during America's Gilded Age" and was demolished after 1914.