In 1791, Israel Keith built an iron blast furnace two miles east of here beside what is now Furnace Brook, using iron ore, manganese, and charcoal from Chittenden and limestone flux from Pittsford for the smelting process. In 1826, Simeon Granger & Sons bought the furnace from Keith's successor, Nathan Gibbs. After a fire, the furnace was rebuilt, and in 1829 the Grangers erected a nearby foundry. Worker housing, a company store, a school, and the Granger family's brick house surrounded the foundry and formed the village of Grangerville. At its peak, the Granger foundry produced 300 tons of cast iron stoves each year for kitchens, laundries, parlors, and bedrooms, shipping them across the eastern seaboard, and it also made kettles, griddles, basins, flatirons, and door hardware. Later owners included C. & E.L. Granger; Granger, Hodges & Co.; Pittsford Iron Co.; Vermont Iron Co.; and Jeremiah Pritchard. Under Pritchard, sixty men worked at the furnace, foundry, mines, and charcoal kilns. As local resources were depleted, iron ore from eastern New York was shipped by rail to Pittsford, and in 1882 operations ceased, closing Vermont's last operating iron furnace.