Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Predecessor and subsidiary companies.

The Bethlehem Steel archive contains fragmentary records from 40 of its more than 400 predecessor and subsidiary firms.

The earliest direct predecessor of Bethlehem Steel was the Bethlehem Iron Company (1860-1901). It began as a producer of railroad rails, but beginning in the 1880s it pioneered in the manufacture of heavy forgings, ordnance and armor plate.

In 1916 Bethlehem acquired the Pennsylvania Steel Company (1865-1916), a large integrated producer of rails and bridges. Its subsidiary, the Maryland Steel Company (1891-1919) operated a large steel-works and shipyard at Sparrow's Point. Bethlehem acquired the American Iron & Steel Manufacturing Company, a small manufacturer of nuts and bolts, in 1917.

Bethlehem's next large purchase came in 1922, when it acquired the Lackawanna Steel Company (1902-1922), another large integrated steel maker. Lackawanna Steel was the lineal descendant of the anthracite iron-works established at Scranton, Pa., in 1840 by Scrantons, Grant & Co. The Lackawanna Iron & Steel Company (1884-1925) moved the entire works to a site near Buffalo in 1900-1902 in order to have better access to Great Lakes ores.

In 1923 Bethlehem purchased most of the properties of the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company (1915-1923), a combination of several steel plants assembled to take advantage of wartime orders. The principal component was the Cambria Steel Company (1898-1923) and its affiliate, the Cambria Iron Company (1852-1942), operators of a large steel-works at Johnstown, Pa. Cambria was one of the largest and most innovative producers in the 1860s and 1870s, and rolled the first commercial steel rail in America in 1867.

The Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, Ltd. (1917-1938) was Bethlehem's principal shipbuilding subsidiary. It assumed the operation of several shipyards which Bethlehem had been acquiring since 1905. Among these were the Wilmington, Del., yard founded in 1844 by Betts, Harlan & Hollingsworth, but operated under the name of Harlan & Hollingsworth since 1849. The yard had pioneered the construction of iron and steel-hulled ships. The Union Iron Works Company (1905-1936) traced its beginnings back to a foundry established by James and Peter Donohue in San Francisco in 1849. It was the first iron and steel shipyard on the West Coast.

In 1938, Bethlehem Shipbuilding acquired the properties of United Shipyards, Inc., (1936-1939), formerly United Dry Docks, Inc., (1929-1936). This was a combination of a number of small shipbuilding and ship repair yards in New York harbor. Among its predecessors was the W. ? the Morse Dry Dock ? and the Staten Island Shipbuilding Company (1907-1929).

Bethlehem Steel acquired a shipyard in Beaumont, Texas, from Pennsylvania Shipyards, Inc., (1922-1947) in 1947.

From the description of Records, 1860-1947. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 122516212