Isaac Meason

Isaac Meason (1742–1818) was born in Henrico County, Virginia in 1742.[1] After settling in Pennsylvania in 1771, Issac married Catherine Harrison in 1772, the same family that later gave birth to two presidents of the United States. The couple had five known children: Thomas Meason (1775–1813), Isaac Meason, Jr. (1779–1836), Mary Meason Rogers (1780–1852), George Meason (1783–1870), and Elizabeth Meason Murphy (1787–1840).

About 1775, Meason purchased a 300 acre tract of land in Dunbar Township, Fayette County, from Thomas Gist, the son of the noted frontier explorer Christopher Gist, after Thomas had inherited and subsequently resettled the land around 1765. Beyond tending to the land he had purchased from Thomas Gist, Meason reportedly held several minor local public offices prior to the American revolution.

With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary war, in April 1775, Meason supported “independency” from Great Britain. Initially, he served as a captain in a company of Westmoreland County militia, then the official local jurisdiction.

Meason later served within a Pennsylvania volunteer regiment, under Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne, which was attached to the Continental Army. Throughout the summer of 1777, he participated in various battles that were fought around Philadelphia. By December 1777, Meason had returned to western Pennsylvania and for the rest of his life would be referred to as Capt. Meason.

Meason's civic and community activities included serving as an associate county judge, and in October 1779, Westmoreland County voters elected Meason to be their representative to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. By 1783, Meason was elevated to the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He also was a strong advocate that Pennsylvania ratify the new United States Constitutionin 1787. Afterwards, Meason retired permanently from active politics politician.

After his service in the Revolutionary War, Isaac Meason went on to amass significant wealth through various enterprises. Meason in partnership with Morton Dillon and John Gibson established Union Furnace, the first successful iron works beyond the Allegheny Mountains, located approximately 15 miles east of Brownsville, a major town upon the Monongahela River. Meason would go on to create several other smaller pyramidal furnaces around the region, including the still-standing Ross Furnace (1816), Plumsock Rolling Mill (1817), the first rolling mill in the United States, a salt works in Bedford County, a sawmill, a grist mill, and a shoe and harness shop.

In 1798, Meason traveled to Great Britain to study the burgeoning British iron and steel industry. He was intent particularly on analyzing the country's techniques in constructing iron bridges, and his travels led him to hire Adam Wilson, a British architect, to build such structures in Western Pennsylvania. Supplied with Meason's iron, Wilson oversaw the erection of three iron spans within the Youghiogheny River Valley, including the 1801 construction of Jacob's Creek Bridge, the first iron suspension bridge in the United States, located on nearby Jacobs Creek.

In addition to the iron bridges, Meason tasked Wilson with the construction of his residence, a seven-part, Palladian-style mansion known as "Mt. Braddock", constructed of cut limestone and reminiscent of the colonial mansions of Meason's native Virginia. Meason passed away quietly at Mt. Braddock on January 23, 1818.

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