Although barely more than a dozen in number, the letters in this collection are among the relatively few that have survived from Rebecca Lukens's time as proprietor of the Works. They are sufficient to suggest several things. First, brother-in-law Solomon Lukens was an important figure and received equal or greater amounts of correspondence relating to orders. Either Solomon possessed some important technical skills related to production, or some customers were more culturally conditioned to deal with a man rather than a woman, or both. At the same time, Rebecca is clearly dealing with matters of equal significance. Second, although Lukens was litterally a very small "mom-and-pop" operation in the 1830s, it was nonetheless tied into the mainstream of the larger U.S. metalworking community, with such correspondents as the major Albany, N.Y., merchant-industrialist-politician Erastus Corning, the Anglo-American iron merchants A. & G. Ralston, and the important Philadelphia foundry of Moses Starr & Son. Clearly, Lukens was already carving out the niche market that has kept it in busines almost 200 years later. Third, Lukens was utilizing the just-completed Main Line of Public Works to receive Wyoming Valley and Allegheny Mountain coal and to ship products.