Harmon Hendricks

Harmon Hendricks was a metallurgist, businessman and inventor who helped to transform the United States from an importer to a manufacturer of copper.

His father, Uriah Hendricks, had established a metals business in the American colonies, importing copper and brass from England, which discouraged manufacture of these commodities in the colonies. When Uriah Hendricks died in 1797, Harmon took over the metals importing company, as well as the family role in leading Shearith Israel, where he served as parnas from 1824 to 1827.

He married Frances Isaacs in 1800 and together they had five children.

In 1812, during the American war with England, Hendricks and his brother-in-law Solomon Isaacs built one of the nation’s first successful copper rolling mills in Soho, New Jersey. The Hendricks firm produced the copper used to sheath three Navy vessels in New York harbor at the same time that Paul Revere, a good friend of the Hendricks family, was cladding a fourth, the Constitution, with copper probably supplied by Hendricks. In addition, Hendricks made another contribution to the war effort by subscribing the then-considerable sum of $40,000 to government issued war bonds.

When Harmon Hendricks died in 1838, his three sons and four grandsons succeeded him in the business. The last member of the family to operate the business was Harmon Washington Hendricks, who died in 1928.