Rebecca Webb Pennock Lukens was born on January 6, 1794 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Isaac and Martha (Webb) Pennock. Her father was the founder of the Brandywine Rolling Mill, the first mill in the United States for the manufacture of boiler plate.
Rebecca Webb Pennock Lukens attended the boarding school in nearby Wilmington, Delaware, where among other subjects, she studied chemistry.
Rebecca Lukens entered the iron business about 1913. After the death of her father, her husband assumed the management of the iron works, and when he died in 1925, in fulfilment of his wish she succeeded him as manager.
Employing a superintendent to direct the works and handle the employees, she herself assumed full control and management of the commercial end of the business. Among the difficulties confronting her was the problem of transportation. Her finished product had to be hauled by teams thirty-eight miles to Philadelphia or twenty-six to Wilmington, while her coal was carried from Columbia, a distance of more than forty miles. Her exceptional ability in marketing her product enabled her to enlarge the business. The boiler plates made in her plant became famous among engineers, and several shipments were made to England, where they were used in the building of some of the earliest locomotives. She died in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, leaving the business to be carried on by two sons-in-law, Abraham Gibbons and Dr. Charles Huston. Upon her death the name of the iron works was changed to Lukens Mills in her honor, and in 1890 the business was incorporated as the Lukens Steel Company.
In 1813 Rebecca Webb Pennock was married to Charles Lloyd Lukens, a physician, to whom she bore three children. He died in 1825.
