Abraham Darby I

person · earth · Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, England

Quaker ironmaster (1678–1717) who leased an old blast furnace at Coalbrookdale in 1708 and the following year smelted iron with coke. He had come to iron from brass and from malting, and it is likely that the malting trade — where coke was already used to dry barley without tainting it — supplied the idea. His religious community mattered to the outcome as much as his technique: Quakers were barred from the universities and from public office, married within a network that spanned the ironmaking districts, and had a reputation for plain dealing that made credit easier to obtain, so capital, marriage and business partnership ran along the same lines for three generations of Darbys at Coalbrookdale. It was his grandson, Abraham Darby III, who cast and erected the Iron Bridge in 1779.