New Castle is a city in and the county seat of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located along the Shenango River at the mouth of Neshannock Creek, it is northwest of Pittsburgh near the Pennsylvania–Ohio border, approximately southeast of Youngstown, Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 21,926. The commercial center of a fertile agricultural region, New Castle is included in the northwestern part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
History
18th century
In 1798, John Carlysle Stewart, a civil engineer, traveled to western Pennsylvania to resurvey the "donation lands", which had been reserved for veterans of the Revolutionary War. He discovered that the original survey had neglected to stake out approximately at the confluence of the Shenango River and Neshannock Creek, at that time a part of Allegheny County. The Indian town of Kuskusky was listed on early maps in this location. Claiming the land for himself, he laid out in April 1798 what was to become the town of New Castle. It comprised approximately that same , in what was then part of Allegheny County.
19th century
In 1825, New Castle became a borough, having a population of about 300. The city later became a part of Mercer County. On April 5, 1849, the governor of Pennsylvania signed an act creating Lawrence County, named in honor of U.S. Navy Captain James Lawrence. New Castle became a city in 1869 and was headed by its first mayor, Thomas B. Morgan. At that time, the population had increased to about 6,000.
In 1849, a group of Old Order Amish families from Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, settled just north of New Castle in New Wilmington. Later migrations from Holmes County, Ohio, would make this Amish community one of the largest in Pennsylvania. Approximately 2,000 Amish live and work presently in the townships north of New Castle.
Business in New Castle began to flourish in the early 19th century with the construction of the Beaver and Erie Canal system, which made its way through the city. Numerous manufacturing plants became located in New Castle because of the availability of transportation facilities and ready access to raw material markets. The canal system was later supplemented and then replaced by railroads which offered greater speed and capacity for freight, as well as year-round service.
In the 1870s, the city became a major hub of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. New Castle's population swelled from 11,600 in 1890 to 28,339 in 1900, and to 38,280 in 1910, as immigrants, particularly from Italy, flocked to the city to work in the mills and nearby limestone quarries. Italian laborers of the era were frequent victims of the Black Hand society, which employed blackmail and extortion to rob the workers of their pay. In 1907 the headquarters of the Black Hand for the entire region was discovered in the village of Hillsville a few miles west of New Castle. By this time New Castle was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and with the construction of the largest tin plate mill in America, the city became the tin plate capital of the world. The tin plate industry marked a new increase in the city's prosperity.
20th century
In 1908, New Castle was linked to Pittsburgh by the Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler and New Castle Railway, an interurban trolley line. Steel and paper mills, foundries, a bronze bushing factory, and car-construction plants contributed to the region's economy. Shenango China produced commercial china and created the fine Castleton China line for the White House, including dinnerware for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson. Other ceramic factories produced bathroom fixtures and industrial refractory materials.