The father of seven children, including Albert and Norman, this was a man whose tremendous abilities, honed in hard work, were passed on to his sons. In adddition, he was, in a sense, the writer who started a good many of his descendants on genealogies and histories when he wrote, by hand, his own story: "Fifty Years of Married Life." This man's life is a good example of the phrase, "pulling yourself up by your own boot-straps." As he himself said, "Not being possessed of much worldly goods, we started out with the prospect of nothing else but hard work, and that has been the watch-word of all these fifty years - work, work, work." He was born in November, l8l3, near Doe Run Village in Chester County, Pa.; his father moved in l828 to a farm near Homeville. Isaac, who admits to being of a mechanical turn of mind, left the farm to go to Camden, New Jersey, with his brother, James, to learn the trade of millwright. When he
returned home, at the age of about twenty years, he worked for Joel Smedley, a millwright, in the capacity of a foreman, for about three years. "We built a large saw mill near Newark, Del., during this time," he says, "and I remember very distinctly walking home twice, twenty-two miles."

In l838 Isaac married Rachel Harkins Wilkinson, (who was born at New London Cross Roads) at the home of her parents in Harford County, Maryland, where her father had moved in l824.
Isaac and his brother-in-law, James Davis (married to Elizabeth Broomell) had bought, together, a farm on Muddy Run Creek, and Isaac took the land south of the creek, containing about thirty acres. Here he built a small frame house, where three of his seven children were born. "At this time", he writes, "finding that farming and mill-wrighting did not work well together, and being in debt,"he sold his property, and bought two acres of land where Homeville is now situated. This was the first of seven moves, and we can only imagine how Rachel, his wife, managed both moving, and having children at regular intervals.

One of these moves was to Andrews' Bridge, in Lancaster County. There Isaac relates that he "worked at his trade", but also, "while resting" built an over-shoot water wheel about twenty feet in diameter, and put in a turning lathe. When they moved again, in l845, Isaac left the water wheel "it not being a handy thing to move", to pay the rent.

After another move back to Homeville for a year, Isaac bought 23 acres of land east of the village and built a stone house there. In addition, he built a barn. The mind reels at the amount of sheer physical labor this man did, as well as his skill in doing it. He contrived to have the water forced up to the house from Rattlesnake Run, a stream about thirty feet below the level of the house. "We fenced and improved the property," he says, "all of which we had to pay for by working at our trade. We fed and clothed the family off the produce of the farm." Two children were born during this period, Thomas in l845, and Albert in l847.

In l852 the family moved to a house bought in Homeville and Isaac built a machine shop there. "With the help of our boys we did quite a good business in making agricultural implements," he writes. There was, of course, no TV and no radio, but it seems that the boys started to work at an early age. Two more children were born, Eva in l854, and Norman in l858.

In the fall of l862, Col. James Boon came proposing to trade the Christiana foundry, which he owned, for Isaac's property in Homevil-le. After careful consideration, and also because, as Isaac put it, "the boys were beginning to want to spread themselves" (they were then teenagers), this proposition was accepted. The family moved to Christiana, living first in a frame house and then buying a brick house with a double lot, where, surprisingly enough, they lived for l3 years, until l878.

Isaac relates that he paid a total of $7,000 for both the foundry property and the tools and machinery. At this time the Civil War was being waged, and at first, nothing was doing in the machine shop. A favorable circumstance, however, was the fact that people in the North found their sugar and molasses supply cut off, and were forced to substitute sorghum. Isaac, having found an inventor who had patented a sorghum cane mill, paid him $500 for the right to manufacture the mills in parts of Pennsylvania and Maryland. There was a great demand for them, as well as forge casting caused by the war, all of which helped them, to a point. "It took," he says, "l85 cents to buy a gold dollar."

This family belonged to the Society of Friends, who were pacifists. Isaac mentions, however, that "Edward was out twice with the militia, and got as far as Hagerstown, Maryland. I guess he did not shoot anybody. He got home sick, and had enough of the war.... We took him in partnership on the first day of April, l864, he taking one-third interest." In l868 the company began to manufacture the Burnham turbine water wheels, requiring an outlay for more patterns
and machinery, and in l878 they built an addition to the shop. In April l87l, a third partner, Thomas W., was taken in to the firm, which would now be known as I. Broomell & Sons. Two years later, Thomas withdrew from the firm and Henry took his place.

There were more changes: in January, l878, N.F. Burnham bought half the real estate, and the Christiana Machine Company was formed. Six months later, Isaac relates "it dropped back to the old company." In l880 they began to build a new foundry, and then a shop extension.
The cost of these two buildings was $3,500. A new smithy was needed and, after buying a new piece of land, the smith shop was erected.

Almost all of this hard work, however, went up in flames on Oct. l, l883, when all the stone and frame buildings, and $l5,000 worth of patterns, were swept away in a few hours. The company had many or-ders at that time, and could not afford to stop long. They were insured in three companies, for a total of $ll,000, which was $4,000 short of the loss on the patterns, and nothing for the buildings and machinery.

Have I mentioned courage as an ingredient of this family? "We went to work to build up again," says Isaac, "putting all of our men and boys to work at whatever they could do. In place of the wooden buildings we built a stone structure. On account of the change , we had to move the engine, a considerable job. On the 9th (of November) just five weeks after the fire, the carpenters finished the roofing, and by the first of December the buildings were all finished. The
cost of rebuilding was $5,240. . . We give our men and boys great credit for their promptness in taking hold . . to do what they could to help us out of this difficulty."

In the spring of l872, Isaac bought Edward's house and lot across the road (having sold him the lot about the time he was married) and built a double brick house the same season. Here he ends his "history" without any more explanation or narrative, on what seems to be a peaceful and prosperous note. Isaac died in Oct., l89l. In l972 the Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society published A History of the Christiana Machine Company, written by Ferdinand L. Molz, with the editorial assistance of Donald J. Summar. The history, which is detailed and thorough, was written as a doctoral dissertation. He derived the majority of his material from letters written in the course of business, most of them by Edward. Molz sums up: "Entrepeneurs . . fall into two classifications: men such as Carnegie and Ford who command economic events, and those
men such as the Broomells who seemed to be commanded by economic change. . .Their accomplishments and rewards were considerably more limited. .Nevertheless, they are important as examples of what was taking place . .By multiplying the activities of the Broomells in introducing technological change by thousands of other such entrepeneurs explains how America became an industrial society par excellence." Not a small part of the structure of America and its excellence was the life of Isaac Broomell.