Thomas, Samuel, 1827-1906

Samuel Thomas was born in Wales in 1827, the son of David Thomas (1794-1882), a Welsh ironmaster who pioneered the smelting of iron with anthracite coal using the hot blast. Thomas was induced to emigrate to Pennsylvania in 1838, where he operated the works of the Lehigh Crane Iron Company, a firm organized by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company as a means of increasing the utilization of its coal. David Thomas left the Crane Company in 1854 and founded his own Thomas Iron Company across the Lehigh River in Hokendauqua, Pa. Samuel Thomas served as president of this company from 1864 to 1887, when he retired.

Samuel Thomas was one of many northern industrialists to invest in the South in the 1880s. In 1886 he organized the Pioneer Mining & Manufacturing Company and began the construction of a blast furnace complex in Jefferson County, Ala., four miles west of Birmingham. It went into operation in 1888, and the town that grew up around it became known as Thomas. This entire Alabama operation was sold to the Republic Iron & Steel Company in 1899.