Harry Clay Trexler

Henry Clay Trexler (April 17, 1854 – November 17, 1933) was an American industrialist who built a business empire in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Harry Clay Trexler was born in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Allentown businessman Edwin W. Trexler and Matilda (Saurbuck) Trexler. He was a descendant of Peter Trexler (died 1758), one of the early Pennsylvania German settlers of the Lehigh Valley.

After attending Allentown public schools and Tremont Seminary in Norristown, he joined his father's lumber business. In 1885, Trexler married Mary M. Mosser of Allentown (Fink 1925; Hall 1981).

When Trexler began his career, in the late 1860s, Allentown, the commercial center of the agriculturally rich Lehigh Valley region, was undergoing a tumultuous economic transition. The town's first burst of growth had been fueled by the construction of the Lehigh Canal, by the boom in anthracite coal, and by the growth of an extensive local anthracite iron industry. In the early 1870s, the invention of Bessemer steel-making technology, the discovery of bituminous coal in western Pennsylvania, and the national depression following the Civil War destroyed the local economy (Folsom 1981; Hall & Hall 1982, 1987a).

Led by a visionary Board of Trade, in which Trexler was active, Allentown determined to diversify its economy, giving generous incentives to enterprises willing to locate in the city (Gobron 1916). The success of this initiative set off a housing boom from which the Trexler firm profited enormously. By the first World War, Trexler's lumber business was among the largest in the United States, owning tracts of timber and sawmills in Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with distribution yards in Portsmouth, Virginia and Newark, New Jersey (Hall & Hall 1987).

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