PHOENIXVILLE

borough (town), Chester county, southeastern Pennsylvania, U.S., on the Schuylkill River between French and Pickering creeks, 28 miles (45 km) northwest of Philadelphia. The site was originally settled in 1720 by the Reverend Francis Buckwalter, a German refugee, and the town was founded (1731) by his followers. It marked the most westerly point reached by the British in Pennsylvania during the U.S. War of Independence. The steel industry dates from around 1785 beginning with Benjamin Longstreth's unsuccessful iron forge. Other forges, including Lewis Wernwag's Phoenix Iron Works (1812), which gave the borough its name, were established. In 1856 John Griffen, superintendent of the Phoenix Iron Works, turned out the first Griffen gun (a light cannon), later used by the Union army during the American Civil War. Service industries now dominate the local economy, and the borough is mainly residential. Phoenixville is the seat of Valley Forge Christian College (1932). Inc. 1849. Pop. (1990) 15,066; (1998 est.) 15,207.