Beginning in 1889, the DeFrehn family turned a former tannery west of town into a chair factory. Within a few years the works employed more than forty people, produced wood-seat chairs with a growing reputation, and shipped its products beyond Mount Union.
A 1950 Mount Union Times retrospective said William DeFrehn and his sons came from Williamsport, Maryland, around the fall of 1889. The family had worked in chairmaking under Thomas Welch. After the 1889 flood damaged their Maryland factory, Mount Union offered a new start, access to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and a building that could be adapted for production. A 1910 biographical account independently confirms that Frank DeFrehn moved with his father and brothers to Williamsport in 1880, entered the chair trade there, came to Mount Union after the 1889 flood partially destroyed their establishment, lived here until 1898, and then moved to Johnstown. The same account identifies A. I. and George C. DeFrehn as brothers involved in the family’s chair business.
R. J. Faust sold the family an old tannery west of town along the railroad. The tannery was dismantled and reused as the first factory. The same retrospective recalled thousands of chairs in many styles leaving the works for customers across the country. A contemporary 1892 account specifically praised the company’s wood-seat chairs.
The factory was already busy by February 1890. The Times reported that orders were arriving so rapidly that the company began operating machinery as soon as it was installed and had no trouble selling all the chairs it could produce. A company advertisement in that issue sought locally delivered logs of poplar, linn, cucumber, chestnut, beech, birch, maple, sugar maple, ash, hickory, red, black and pin oak, elm, sycamore, and gum. The unusually broad list shows the range of hardwoods feeding the operation.
By February 1892, the factory employed upward of forty hands and paid several hundred dollars in wages each week. Those figures made the chair works a meaningful early industrial employer before Mount Union’s later refractory boom. The factory complex included a main building, storage and painting departments, boiler house, dry house, and bending house.
Late on Friday, February 19, 1892, fire swept through the works. The main factory burned with the storage and painting departments, boiler house, dry house, and bending house. Firefighters could not reach the upper portion of the building, and the paper reported that without pumps or hose there was no way to direct water to the third floor.
The newspaper placed the total loss at $25,000, with only $8,000 in insurance. Finished chairs, seasoned lumber, stock for chairs, machinery, and the buildings themselves were included in the loss.
On March 31, 1892, the Times returned to the disaster in an appeal for municipal waterworks. The writer pointed directly to DeFrehn’s chair works, described as having been totally destroyed by fire only a few weeks earlier, and urged residents to consider a public system supplied by Jack’s Spring.
The argument connected household, sanitary, industrial, and firefighting needs. Whether every technical promise in that editorial was realistic is a separate question, but the article shows that residents used the factory loss to press for better civic infrastructure.
The prediction of immediate rebuilding proved accurate. On December 23, 1892, the Times described the new chair factory and its automatic fire-extinguishing apparatus, an investment reported to cost more than $2,300.
A 5,000-gallon tank stood above the main roof and fed pipes running through every story and room of the principal factory, paint shop, dry house, and boiler house. Heat-sensitive valves were designed to open automatically during a fire. A 25,000-gallon cistern and a steam pump capable of moving 500 gallons per minute provided additional protection. The system directly answered the firefighting failures exposed ten months earlier.
The rebuilt operation carried a substantial financial obligation. A later Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision records that the DeFrehn Chair Company gave a $12,000 mortgage on February 11, 1893. Newspaper notices show the factory still employing local people in 1898. The 1950 retrospective and the 1910 family profile agree that the DeFrehns moved to Johnstown around that time and continued in the chair-manufacturing trade there.
By May 1901 the Mount Union company was in receivership. A court-appointed auditor announced that he would distribute the final fund held by receiver W. T. Bell and instructed anyone with claims against the DeFrehn Chair Company—especially labor claims—to present them. That notice provides the clearest documented bridge between the DeFrehn operation and the Moudy company that followed later in 1901.
By November 1901, the local paper identified W. H. Moudy as a Mount Union chair manufacturer. In July 1902 it identified W. W. Moudy as president of the W. H. Moudy Chair Manufacturing Company. A January 1903 report described an 80-horsepower Frick engine installed to return the plant to full operation after part of the machinery had been powered temporarily by a traction engine.
Short local notices reveal something of the workforce behind the company name. Charley Byers was identified as the firm’s bookkeeper in January 1902. In November, the paper reported that employee Abram Davis suffered a serious injury to his left eye when struck by a chair rung. The account added that he was still working despite the painful injury—a stark glimpse of factory labor in that period.
The 1950 retrospective credited Moudy with constructing a large home on East Garber Street and employee houses on East Milford Street. Four of the latter were remembered locally as “Moudy’s Row”; a 1907 newspaper notice independently shows that name in everyday use.
The clearest account of the company’s final ownership period comes from Moudy v. Bell, decided by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1911. The court record states that Orlena Moudy leased the Mount Union chair factory from the William H. Moudy Manufacturing Company on January 11, 1906, for $600 a year. The property remained subject to the DeFrehn company’s earlier mortgage.
By April 1908 the mortgage balance had been reduced to $7,500. When a required $500 payment could not be made in April 1909, foreclosure proceedings followed. The factory property was sold at sheriff’s sale on May 14, 1909, to A. S. Welch. This establishes the end of the Moudy company’s control of the plant, though the sources reviewed do not yet establish the last day on which chairs were produced.
A November 1909 advertisement placed the former Moudy plant back on the market and documented the property in unusual detail. The complex occupied a 180-by-300-foot tract. Its main mill measured 42 by 106 feet, stood three stories high, and retained numerous woodworking machines and line shafting. Separate structures included a stone engine house with a 90-horsepower Frick Corliss engine, a brick boiler house with a 120-horsepower Coatesville tubular boiler, a 36-by-56-foot lumber-drying and bending building, a blacksmith shop, pump house, lumber sheds, and a three-story 40-by-48-foot paint and storage building.
Pennsylvania Railroad and East Broad Top Railroad sidings served opposite sides of the plant, allowing lumber and coal to arrive and finished products to leave without wagon drayage. The listing also described automatic sprinklers, a steam fire pump rated at 500 gallons per minute, a complete shaving-exhaust system, and an independent electric-lighting plant. By August 1910, a local notice was already using the phrase “old chair factory” as a familiar landmark.
On September 5, 1913, the former chair-factory buildings and equipment were offered at public sale. The Times reported the following week that the auction brought about $1,300—an amount the paper considered very low for the buildings, machinery, and other property involved. The main mill and a paint shop went to W. H. Spangler of Mapleton; William Bolinger of Mount Union bought the tramway; A. S. Welch bought the boiler house and dry house; and the Juniata Junk Company of Lewistown purchased the machinery. Other sheds and structures were also sold separately.
The newspaper illustrated its report with a broad photograph of the industrial site. The auction explains why most of the once-integrated complex disappeared, while later accounts could still identify one surviving former finishing building.
By 1950, most of the factory complex had disappeared. The local retrospective identified a surviving three-story former painting and finishing building. J. S. Shapiro Sons, Inc. had acquired it at public sale from the E. A. Reaver estate and used it for furniture storage, giving one portion of the old chair works a second commercial life.
| Year | Documented event |
|---|---|
| 1889 | William DeFrehn and his sons establish a chair factory in a converted tannery west of Mount Union. |
| 1890 | The factory reports heavy orders, rapid production, and demand for a wide variety of locally delivered hardwood logs. |
| 1892 | The works are destroyed by fire on February 19; a larger factory with automatic fire protection is operating by December. |
| 1893 | The DeFrehn Chair Company places a $12,000 mortgage on the property. |
| c. 1898 | The DeFrehn family moves to Johnstown and continues in the chair business; Mount Union employees are still associated with the local factory. |
| 1901 | The DeFrehn company’s receiver prepares a final distribution to claimants, including workers; W. H. Moudy is documented as a local chair manufacturer later that year. |
| 1902–03 | The W. H. Moudy company is documented operating the chair works, employing local workers, and upgrading its power equipment. |
| 1906 | Orlena Moudy leases the factory from the William H. Moudy Manufacturing Company. |
| 1909 | Mortgage default leads to foreclosure and a May 14 sheriff’s sale; a November listing documents the full industrial complex. |
| 1910 | The inactive property is already known locally as the “old chair factory.” |
| 1913 | The former factory buildings, machinery, tramway, and support structures are divided among buyers at public auction. |
| 1950 | A former painting and finishing building survives as furniture storage; most of the complex is gone. |