File:2022 - Samuel Milton McHose - Allentown PA.jpg

McHose has an interesting history. In 1868, David Thomas joined with Oliver A. Ritter and Samuel McHose of Allentown to form the Lehigh Fire Brick Co. Thomas was a Welsh immigrant who in 1840 established in Catasauqua the first commercially successful anthracite coal-powered iron furnace in America, sparking this country's industrial revolution.

McHose and Ritter had experience with fire brick. They had founded the Allentown Fire Brick Works in 1854 at Front and Gordon streets. This company, later renamed McHose and Ritter, was in business for 25 years. Between 1854 and 1873, McHose, an industrial contractor, "built nearly every iron furnace in the Lehigh Valley," notes Charles R. Roberts in his 1914 Anniversary History of Lehigh County.

McHose also built iron furnaces in New Jersey and one near Richmond, Va. While in Richmond, McHose witnessed a slave auction. McHose was so revolted by it that he became a Republican and active in the anti-slavery movement. McHose was a delegate to the Republican Convention in Chicago that nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the one that nominated Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. When Allentown became a city in 1867, McHose was elected its first mayor.

In 1872, a major fire struck the Lehigh Fire Brick works. The works were immediately rebuilt, but the collapse of the railroad building boom in the Panic of 1873 had a major impact on McHose; he was heavily invested in the Hope Rolling Mills, which made railroad rails. As a result, he withdrew from Lehigh Fire Brick.

Thomas became Lehigh Fire Brick's sole owner in 1873. Sons Samuel and John and his son-in-law Joshua Hunt ran the business until the father's death in 1882. McHose rejoined the company the year after Thomas' death and was active in Lehigh Fire Brick until he died in 1892. The local iron and iron-related businesses in the Valley closed for good in the early 1920s. He adds that farmers often would salvage the unused fire brick for their limestone furnaces.