The
Historic Iron and Charcoaling Industries
The
beginning of the iron industry in America goes back over 100 years
before the Revolution. Pig Iron for the
revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War was
obtained in large quantities from the Virginia
pig iron industry.
It might
be said that American iron making began in England. In 1609, iron ore mined by Jamestown
colonists was shipped to England
where it produced superior metal.
Following this successful venture, the first American iron works was
erected about 1620 on Falling Creek about 7 miles south of Richmond.
However, in the Indian raid of 1622 these first American furnaces were
destroyed even before being put into operation.
The first
successful iron making industry in the south did not develop until over a
century later when Governor Spotswood established furnaces in Spotsylvania
Country near the Rappahannock
River. The Rappahannock
furnace was placed in operation in 1714.
For the next 50 years, growth in the iron industry was slow and although
furnaces continued to be built, others failed to operate economically or were
closed.
In 1781,
five operating furnaces were listed in Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia”. Of these, Mossy Creek and Zane Furnaces were
in the Shenandoah valley, in the 1800’s there were several furnaces operating
in the Shenandoah valley area Columbia, Liberty, Caroline, Boyer, and Elizabeth
Furnaces to name a few.
Having
learned the iron making art during their indentured service to Governor
Spotswood eighteenth century Swiss, English, and German settlers scattered
across the Common wealth and carried their knowledge into the Shenandoah
Valley, where there were already other workers following the valley down from
Pennsylvania. Their early furnaces were
a far cry from today’s massive blast furnaces of Pennsylvania
and Ohio. Though small, there were several essentials
for the location of a furnace found in the Valley – an adequate supply of iron
ore and limestone, sufficient waterpower to turn a water wheel that operated a
bellows for the fire, and an abundance of timber for charcoal that was the fuel
for smelting the iron ore.
Elizabeth
Furnace is a typical example of these early furnaces. A self-contained community grew up around the
furnace – known colloquially as an “iron plantation” under the direction of the
owner or “iron master”. These
communities (the forerunners of the company towns seen in the coal fields
today) consisted of the mansion of the iron master, cottages for the labourers,
tool and storage sheds shops for carpenters and blacksmiths, a store, stables,
for mules and oxen, schools for employees’ children, and the furnace. The furnace itself was a pyramid of stone,
varying in size, usually about 30 feet square at the base and 25 to 40 feet
high, furnaces were erected against the side of a small hill so that the charge
(iron ore, limestone, and charcoal0 could be carried or wheeled from the
stockpile across a bridge and dumped into the stack at the top.
While the
furnace itself required a relatively small crew to operate it there were dozens
of people working in the woods felling trees, burning the charcoal, working the
ore diggings, mining the limestone, and caring for the mules and oxen.
MINING
IRON ORE AND
QUARRYING LIMESTONE:
Before the mining
could begin, the ore had to be located; therefore the first step was
prospecting. After a general geological
survey was made, trenches or pits were dug.
The loose earth was removed and digging continued until the solid strata
of the rock was laid open. If the
expected vein of ore was not found, the trench or pit was continued farther
uphill or downhill until the mineral vein was located. Since the early prospectors had crude tools
to execute this type of prospecting. It
was best to select the steepest terrain to reduce the amount of work in
removing the overburden 9the non-mineral covering of dirt and rock). Many of these trenches and pits may still be
seen today throughout the George
Washington National
forest.
Another method
of locating ore was to sink a shaft. A
shaft was about four feet wide and 30 to 70 feet deep. These shafts are also extant today on the
National forest, appearing as depressed areas in the ground. The costs of sinking the shafts varied from
one to three dollars per foot, up to seventy feet, depending on the diameter of
the shaft; over 70 feet, the cost increased considerably.
There were
two methods of ore mining. These of
course were the same as prospecting – surface or strip mining and subsurface
mining. Subsurface mining was
accomplished either by digging a drift (horizontal) or a shaft (vertical). The mines had to be protected from cave-ins
by the use of black locust, white oak, and red oak shoring timers ten to twelve
inches in diameter. Most of the mining
was the more economical strip mining that entailed the removal of all
overburden covering the ore. Miners then
excavated the ore with pick and shovel.
When the overburden became too thick to remove economically, the strip
mine was abandoned and the miners moved to another location. Wages for digging ore and quarrying limestone
varied considerably, according to the location and facilities, with the price
ranging from one to four dollars per ton.
Deposits
of Oriskany brown iron ores occur locally in the western portion of the
Appalachian belt, from Maryland to
south-western Virginia. Minor deposits in the Shenandoah Valley occur
in the Buffalo Gap area, in the Massanutten
Mountains, and on North Mountain
in Shenandoah and Frederick countries.
The iron content of the Oriskany ore ranges between 35% and 50%. After mining and quarrying, the ore and
limestone were hauled on wagons pulled by oxen or mules to the furnace bank
where it was piled along the road for storage until needed by the furnace.
CHARCOAL
MAKING:
The third
ingredient needed for iron making was a material to provide heat; charcoal when
fired provided the heat to melt the ore.
The process of making charcoal was considered an art and the charcoaling
skill was called the “Mystery of Charring”.
The master collier and one or two helpers “coaled” together work as many
as eight or nine pits at a time. The
collier’s hut was placed in a central location to the group of pits being
fired. The hut was conical in shape,
having a base about eight feet in diameter and height of about ten feet. It was constructed of three-inch poles that
were covered with leaves to form a mat so that the final dressing of topsoil
would not sift through the remaining crevices.
A door just large enough for one person to get through was p0alced on
the pit side of the hut and a wood stove and rough long bunks wee the
furnishing of this temporary structure.
The hearth
of the charcoal 9or collier’s) pit was a flat space 30 to 40 feet in diameter
and free of all brush, roots, and stumps.
Much care was taken so that the surface of the hearth was hard and
smooth so s to afford good shoveling and raking of the coal. The hearth had to be level to assure uniform
burning.
A
collier’s responsibilities did not begin until the wood had been sledded in
from the woodchopper’s ranks to the hearth, and there set on end until the
entire surface was filled. This wood
usually was cut during the winter months and allowed to season until the
coaling operations began in late spring.
Colliers often became woodchoppers during the winter in order to receive
a full years’ pay.
Two sizes
of wood were used by the colliers to “set up” their charcoal pits; lap wood
ranged in size from one and a half to four inches in diameter, and billets
varied from four to seven inches. All
wood was cut in four- foot lengths. The
woodchoppers “ranked” the cut wood separating each cord by up-right poles so
that the owner, in computing the woodchopper’s wages, could count the number of
cords readily.
Woodchoppers
received 40 to 50 cents per cord ranked.
An expert “ranker” could sometimes cut and put up five cords per
day. This system was to turn all bark
sides down in the rank and use crooked sticks to prevent the wood from packing
closely. The average amount cut was two
cords per day.
The wood
hauler brought the billets and lap-wood from the woodchopper’s ranks to the
hearth on a wooden sled pulled by a mule or hose. The road leading to the pit always went right
through the hearth so that the hauler could unload easily and drive out on the
other side on his way for another load.
When the hauler had filled the hearth with wood, that job was
finished. It was at this point that the
collier and helpers began the building of the pit. Actually, the word “pit” is misleading for it
refers to the structure as a whole including the hearth and the pile of wood
and does not convey the impression of a hole in the ground.
The first
step in building the pit was to find the centre of the hearth and erect the
“Fagan” a green pole 18 feet long and three or four inches in diameter. A three-cornered chimney was constructed
around the Fagan using lap wood. When
the chimney was five feet high, the collier placed the billets carefully
against it, allowing each piece to protrude slightly at the base. When the first ring of billets had been
placed, another ring was begun, the base protruding a little more each time, so
the outside ring would have enough slope to the sides of the pit to enable the
final covering of leaves and dust to rest securely without sliding off, lap
wood was fitted whenever possible to take up the air spaces.
After the
first tier of billets and lap wood, which was called the foot, had been set out
from the chimney far enough to give the collier a footing; he climbed up on it,
built the chimney up another four feet or so, and then set the second tier of
billets and lap wood called the waist.
This procedure was continued until the chimney was completed and a
rounded structure was fashioned.
Throughout the operation great care was taken to set and fit the pieces
substantially together to prevent the whole from reeling or twisting. Lapping-off was the last job in completing
the construction of the pile. This consisted of using what lap wood was left to
fill in all possible air spaces and cracks on the sides before the final
covering of leaves and dust was spread on.
The Pit
now “set”, the colliers constructed a ladder by notching out steps in an 8 inch
log long enough to reach from the ground to the head. Enough chips and fire kindling were cut to
fill the chimney within a foot of the top and a bridge of three billets and
several pieces of lap wood to cover the chimney made the pit ready for “leafing
and dusting”.
Leaves
were raked by the collier’s helper, from the forest floor into piles then
carried to the pit in baskets. The
leaves were scattered uniformly over the pit to a depth of several inches. The long-handled collier’s shovel was used to
spread on the dust that had been raked in a ring around the circumference of
the hearth during the early preparation of the site. Several inches of dust were required for the
sides and at least a foot on the head and shoulders.
The pit
was then ready for firing. A shovelful
or so of red-hot coals from the colliers cooking
Fire is
placed on top of the kindling in the chimney when the bridge and covering were
replaced. The lighting of the pit was usually done toward evening in order that
the collier might have at least one more good night’s sleep before the constant
watching began for it was not likely that the pit would “burn through” or need
dressing until the following afternoon.
Any kind of wood was used to make charcoal but it must be “solid”. It was generally held that the harder the wood,
the better the coal. It was usually the
practice to cut clean, using everything except deadwood and in 30 years the
tracts would be coaled again,
The
collier’s enemy was fire; the “live” fire, which would consume and undo all of
his painstaking efforts to achieve the “dead” or charring fie. Flames might break through the covering and
destroy the whole pit. A gas explosion
might blow off the cover. Soft spots had
to be found by the rather dangerous operation of jumping up and down on the
surface. They had to be reinforced or
dug out and replaced with new wood, leaves, and dust to preserve the original
shape of the structure. The pit was
tended in this manner every evening in order to prevent, if possible, its burning
through during the night. The number of
days required for a pit to burn off varied greatly with the size of the hearth
and the kind of wood. For the average
hearth, this held 30 cords or so of partly seasoned wood. It took from ten days to two weeks for the
pit to come to foot, that is for all billets to char.
Because
charcoal carries fire for a long time only small amount could be removed at a
time making the ranking at a tedious and painstaking task .The collier chose a
side of the pit where the dust was driest and with a shovel dug out a portion
starting at the foot. This opening acted as a draft and soon there were signs
of fire .At that point the collier stooped digging and covered the burning area
with dry dust to reseal the pit and allow it cool. The long iron-toothed
collier’s rake was then used to draw back into the ring the pile of charcoal
which had just been dug out and each pile was kept in a separate ring so that a
single fire might not destroy the total.
On the day
when the wagon was to come for the first load, the colliers were up early and
ready to start work at dawn. They spent several hours in raking out the coal
and the rest of the morning in seeing that no fire remained in it. The same
collier’s baskets that were used to carry leaves to the head of the pit were used
to fill the wagon with charcoal. Charcoal wagons held about 200 bushels of
charcoal. They were drawn by six mule teams and equipped with high sideboards
and a button that would pull out. Upon reaching the charcoal house, the
teamster unhooked the lead team from the “spreaders “and fastened their
whiffletree to a coupling connected to the sliding floor of the wagon. In that
way the load of charcoal was dumped without effort to the teamster or damage to
the brittle charcoal.
Charcoal
made an ideal fuel, being almost free of sulphur, and its ash, consisting
largely of lime and alkalis, supplied part of the necessary flux. Hickory was the best wood
for making charcoal but all trees were used. The wood was not charred
immediately after being cut but only a short time before it was needed. Large
as most of the strong-walled charcoal houses were, they could not hold enough
fuel to feed the furnace for any length of time and to have left the charcoal
outside would have made it unfit for use. An average furnace would consume from
600-800 bushels of charcoal every 24 hours. This required about 30-40 cords of
wood from trees 25 – 30 years old. Some
furnaces consumed the yield of an acre of woodland each day.
Perhaps
the one disadvantage of charcoal as a fuel was its lightness that made it easy
to crush. This was the factor that
limited the height of early furnaces in the Shenandoah
Valley to a maximum of about 35 feet.
The clear
cutting of the forest went on year round to provide enough wood for the
charring season. As many as ten or
twelve colliers were needed to keep a furnace going. Three cords of wood made enough charcoal to
fire the furnace for about two hours and produce one cubic foot of iron;
therefore it took about 8 cords of wood to produce one ton of pig iron. Once the furnace started it ran 24 hours a
day during the summer months. If you
assume that this season was from May 1 to September 1, then the furnaces
operated 123 days. This means that the
furnace ran for 2952 hours and consumed 3 cords of wood (in the form of
charcoal) every two hours. This meant
that each year 4,428 cords of wood was cut off provide the charcoal. This is
the approximate yield of about 150 acres of woodlands each year, in the middle
1800’s there were five furnaces operating in the Massanutten area of the
Shenandoah Valley alone meaning 750 acres of land was clear-cut to provide
charcoal for the furnace and that it would be between 25-30 years before that
area could be coaled again. In this
amount of time between 19,000 and 23,000 acres of forest had been clear-cut in
continuous bands. These operations
caused impressive impacts on the forests of the Shenandoah
Valley that may still be seen to this day as the mountains were
criss-crossed with roads, dotted with collier’s pits, covered with iron ore
test pits, and scarred by mining operations.
Three main
raw materials were needed for the successful operation of charcoal ironworks:
water, iron ore and timber. All of the Shenandoah Valley’s forges and furnaces were located on
or near water sources. The bellows
connected to a water wheel. As water
turned the wheel, the bellows alternately injected blasts of air into the
furnace that helped to create and maintain the high temperatures needed for the
furnace and forge to work.
The relatively
primitive transportation techniques in the 19th century made it
necessary to locate furnaces within a convenient distance from the ore
beds. In the Shenandoah
Valley a brown hematite ore was the main supply used.
