Established by English Quakers in 1679, Trenton began as an agricultural community linked to the surrounding region by Delaware River ferries. Despite its small size, it was an important 18th-century town because of its location on the river and on the post road between New York City and Philadelphia. Its major rise in the 19th century came largely from expanded regional transportation through the combined Camden and Amboy Railroad and Delaware and Raritan Canal. Trenton's earliest recorded manufacturing was a grist-mill formed in 1679, followed by several forges and iron works by the early 1700s. In the 19th century, rubber goods became one of the city's primary industries after Goodyear established production in 1856, helping make Trenton one of America's greatest rubber manufacturing centers through the mid-20th century. Pottery was its most extensive early industry; after unsuccessful and short-lived pre-18th century companies, primitive but permanent facilities existed by the mid-18th century, and Trenton became a world-renowned ceramic center in the 1850s as manufacturers such as Lenox and Maddock founded numerous pottery companies whose wares were sold worldwide through the mid-1900s. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city also had locomotive works, flour and lumber mills, paper and leather factories, and major iron and steel production. Beginning in the 1850s, the city's iron and steel industry grew because nearby railroad and canal facilities allowed structural items, tools, and machinery to be shipped around the world. Firms such as Cooper Hewitt and Phoenix Bridge, along with the company established by sons of John A. Roebling, designer of the Brooklyn Bridge and developer of wire rope, gave Trenton international fame. Roebling remained in operation until the 1950s, supplying cables for some of America's greatest suspension bridges, including San Francisco's Golden Gate.