After the Civil War ended, the charcoal-fired furnace was owned by Clement Grubb's son-in-law, L. Heber Smith, a former colonel who married Clement's daughter Ella Jane Brooke Grubb in 1868.

It then passed through several hands before Smith took ownership, possibly after the war and before his marriage to Ella Jane.

It is likely that the Grubbs assisted with the furnace's major technological upgrade in 1889, when his wife inherited her father's sizable estate that year.

[4] The furnace continued in operation under Smith until it was "blown out" after his death in 1898 at the age of sixty-one.

The furnace was acquired by Bethlehem Steel, which deeded it to the Hay Creek Valley Historical Association in 1979.