From Forest and Mine to Foundry and Cannons: An Archaeological Study of the Blast Furnace at the...

From Forest and Mine to Foundry and Cannons: An Archaeological Study of the Blast Furnaceat the West Point FoundryAuthor(s): T. Arron KotlenskySource: IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, Vol. 35, No. 1/2, WESTPOINT FOUNDRY (2009), pp. 49-72Published by: Society for Industrial ArcheologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41550365 .

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From Forest and Mine to Foundry and Cannons:

An Archaeological Study of the Blast Furnace at

the West Point Foundry

T. Arron Kotlensky

The West Point Foundry Association established a charcoal blast furnace at Cold Spring , New York , in 1827 to make pig iron for the foundry. Owners integrated the furnace within the foundry layout to take advantage of the existing property and waterpower system, making it unique among period blast furnaces. To estab- lish a history of the furnace and surrounding site , researchers from Michigan Technological University conducted investigations of the West Point Foundry blastfurnace site between 2004 and 2006 through historical background research , archaeological site excavation and documentation, and archaeo-metallurgical analysis of pig iron samples. Results allowed researchers to outline the history of the site and more fully understand the integration of the furnace within the foundry. Further research provided insight into the quality of pig iron produced at the furnace and helped place the success and subsequent closure of the furnace within evolving trends in the technology and organization of antebellum pig iron production. Research demonstrated that managers and tradesmen consistently produced relatively high-grade pig iron that the foundry could use in the production of ordnance and other castings. However, the comparative high cost of making pig iron in Cold Spring motivated owners to cease production after 1844 in favor of purchasing pig iron from less costly external sources, while continuing to rely on production from regional furnaces under their management.

The West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York, was in operation by the fall of 1818, funded by individual investors associated with Gouverneur and William Kem- ble, two merchants from New York, and with a large advance payment from the Department of the Navy for manufacturing cannon. The foundry grew quickly and was soon producing not only cannon and other iron

T. Arron Kotlensky, "From Forest and Mine to Foundry and Cannons: An Archaeological Study of the Blast Furnace at the West Point Foundry," IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 35, nos. 1 & 2 (2009): 49-72.

© 2012 by the Society for Industrial Archeology. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the Society for Industrial Archeology's website: http://www.sia-web. org/iajournal/siaia.html.

goods for the navy; but gears, rollers, gudgeons, and iron machine parts of most any description its custom- ers would want. Thus, the owners and managers could content themselves with this flourishing enterprise, where craft-workers cast pig iron into ordnance and machine assemblies. While there are no surviving production numbers for the foundry's overall output, in each year of its first decade, the operation produced an average of 140 tons of cannon for the army, the same if not more for the navy, and probably well over 200 tons of shot and shells - and these quantities reflect only the military output.1 The foundry's demand for pig iron no doubt put a great strain on the furnace output of the surrounding region and may well have necessitated ob- taining iron from further afield.

Consequently, within a decade of its founding, operators of the maturing foundry realized the need to secure a convenient and reliable source of iron for their products, and chose to begin iron production on site, using local ores and charcoal. To achieve such integration, in 1827 the owners built a charcoal blast furnace 300 yards northeast of the foundry, with the first smelting campaign commencing that October. The furnace made pig iron for use in the nearby moulding shop, where skilled foundry tradesmen would re-melt the pigs in cupola and air furnaces to produce castings. Managers and semiskilled workers maintained the blast furnace with practices common to other contemporary furnaces, smelting proven sources of iron ore, using charcoal for fuel and water-powered machinery for generating blast. However, their furnace stood apart from other charcoal furnaces in two significant respects: owners integrated the furnace into an established foundry operation and, to produce pig iron with particular qualities desired by the foundry's managers, secured iron ore from sources more than twice as far in distance from Cold Spring as those pursued by most period furnace proprietors.

To build the furnace, designers extensively engineered a marginal share of the foundry property to support the site and adapted the foundry's waterpower system to

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Industrial Archeology

provide power for blast machinery. Moreover, at forty feet in height, they designed the furnace stack with one- third greater capacity than most other period charcoal furnaces. Probably imitating what they accepted as best practice, managers used a combination of iron ores from different sources in the Hudson River valley to make what commentators judged to be a high-grade pig iron that compared well with the best grades of foreign pig iron. Teamsters and Hudson River boatmen brought iron ore to Cold Spring from mines up to twenty-three miles away, eighteen miles further than sources typi- cally pursued by most other charcoal furnace owners at that time. Such a broad network constituted a bold but costly supply strategy given the high cost of overland transport and certainly led to higher raw material costs than those tolerated by other furnace owners. At the same time, the small-scale methods used to mine iron ore closer to Cold Spring further elevated final costs. Despite such drawbacks, the foundry's ownership maintained the furnace until the summer of 1844, when they suspended operation in favor of securing pig iron of presumably similar quality from cheaper sources.

Historical and archaeological records associated with the West Point Foundry blast furnace constitute valuable source material for a case study of a distinct antebellum ironmaking site (figure l).2 Previous research on the foundry blast furnace focused attention on manuscript collections and other archival sources that provide key but often incomplete details on the furnace site, its operation, and those who maintained it.3 Although in- valuable for their content, the limited scope of these sources falls short in supporting a more complete account of the furnace and does not replace the value of physical study of the site itself. Although subjected to at least two salvage episodes and in a state of benign neglect (less than ten feet of the masonry furnace stack remain intact), the West Point Foundry blast furnace and its surrounding site have retained enough physical integrity to permit a series of worthwhile surface and subsurface investigations (Figures 2 and 3).

Between 2004 and 2006, researchers and students with Michigan Technological University conducted historical, archaeological, and archaeometallurgical investigations of the furnace operation, structure, and prod- uct materials.4 The present study is a synthesis of their results and aims to expand current understanding of the West Point Foundry (WPF) blast furnace and con- tribute to the study of antebellum pig iron production, a critical industry that undergirded the developing

Volume 35, Numbers 1 and 2, 2009

American economy. This article traces the historical arc of the furnace through its origins and design, years of operation, and the end of pig iron production in 1844. Concluding remarks frame the West Point Foundry blast furnace within the reflexive trends in innovation created by American pig iron makers in the decades before the Civil War.

"... a blast furnace to be worked by water from the main dam:" Origins and Design of the West Point Foundry Blast Furnace and Site Until the late eighteenth century, blast furnace owners supplied American consumers with most of their cast iron products. By the 1820s, with the growing number and profitability of separate iron foundries closer to urban markets, many American furnace proprietors adapted to the changing technical landscape by making pig iron alone, an unfinished commodity that would, in turn, be purchased by foundries.5 Semiskilled tradesmen made pig iron, an iron-carbon alloy containing roughly four percent carbon, by casting molten metal tapped from a furnace into a series of ingot-like bars called "pigs." Most furnace owners profited by selling pig iron on an open market not only to foundries, but also to forges and rolling mills that would further pro- cess it into finished or semi-finished products, such as wrought iron merchant bar. Differing from this strategy, the WPF built the Cold Spring furnace to make pig iron almost exclusively for its own use.

Skilled tradesmen at the West Point Foundry remelted pig iron in air and cupola furnaces to make castings. A periodical account published in 1819, a year after production started, reported that the foundry needed 2,000 tons of pig iron per year to fulfill demand for its products. Known records from this period are few but demonstrate that the managers of the foundry probably relied at least in part on foreign sources of pig iron during the initial years of operation. In a brief diary kept during the first months of foundry organization and construction in 1817, Gouverneur Kemble, the principal organizer of the foundry, noted that he spoke with other foundry partners, "on importing iron from Scot- land" and, "from G. Britain and Sweden."7 Kemble saw his ideas fulfilled since an 1818 shipping list details an order for 130 tons of "No. 1" pig iron from Liverpool, England, priced at £7 per ton (or about $31.50 in U.S. dollars at the time).8 Confidence in the accepted high quality of British, particularly Scottish, and Swedish pig iron probably influenced the decision-making of

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From Forest and Mine to Foundry and Cannons

Figure 1 . Map depicting the location of the West Point Foundry blast furnace site within the overall foundry property, and inset showing the location of Cold Spring within the Hudson River valley. Illustration by author (using an 1854 map of the site by John Bevan, courtesy of the Putnam History Museum).

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Industrial Archeology Volume 35, Numbers 1 and 2, 2009

Figure 2. Overview of the West Point Foundry blast furnace site , depicting current conditions; view to the west-southwest. Photograph by author.

Kemble and others. Buying foreign pig iron with a trust- worthy reputation was a rational, if not ironic, quality- motivated choice for making dependable ordnance for national defense.

Over the ensuing years, the foundry looked towards domestic suppliers of pig iron. In 1822, managers largely used pig iron produced by a blast furnace of the An- cram Iron Works in Columbia County, NY, for completing ordnance contracts for the navy, while four years later they purchased 200 tons of pig iron from the newly constructed Wassaic furnace in nearby Dutchess Coun- ty.9 However, beginning in the mid-1 820s and continuing for much of the history of the foundry, Gouverneur Kemble and his associates began taking a direct role in producing pig iron for the foundry by purchasing an existing blast furnace and developing new furnaces. By 1832, Gouverneur and his brother William owned three charcoal-fueled blast furnaces that probably satis- fied a majority of the foundry's pig iron demands. In 1825, workers began construction of the West Point Foundry blast furnace, with the first season (or "campaign") of operation beginning in October 1827. 10 Also in 1825 the Kembles purchased the "Greenwood tract," a large parcel of land located fourteen miles southwest of Cold Spring largely within what was then the Town of Monroe, in Orange County, NY, that included established iron ore mines, extensive wooded areas suited

Figure 3. Overview of the West Point Foundry blast furnace site, depicting current conditions ; view to the north. Photograph by author.

52




for making charcoal, and a charcoal blast furnace (the Greenwood "no. 1" furnace) built in 1811. 11 In 1832, the Kemble brothers also silently financed the construction of the Woodbury charcoal blast furnace, located along Woodbury Creek about six-and-a-half miles north of the Greenwood furnace.12

Owners and managers in large part chose Cold Spring as a site for their foundry because of the power potential offered by Margaret (later Foundry) Brook, proximity to the Hudson River for transportation, and adaptable local terrain. As he voiced concerns for securing pig iron supplies in late spring of 1817, Gouverneur noted in his diary that a blast furnace might be included in the physical layout and waterpower system of the overall foundry. In his June 9th entry of that same year, Kemble wrote that John Muirhead, a principal designer of the

foundry, "pointed out the ground and gave me a general idea of his plan for a blast furnace to be worked by water from the main dam."1' Kemble gave no further details on the proposed furnace or its exact purpose, but he and others most likely envisioned it as a dedicated supplier of pig iron for the foundry. With the War of 1812 and the earlier Embargo Act of 1807 fresh in their minds, the foundry's owners probably envisioned a furnace in Cold Spring as a bulwark against disruption of their pig iron supply. Less tangible considerations, such as material self-reliance, may have motivated the foundry's owners, as well. Despite the discussion between Kemble and Muirhead and their immediate need for pig iron, the

foundry's ownership did not act on plans for the furnace until 1825.

Considered against period convention, Cold Spring was a less-than-ideal site for a blast furnace because the hamlet was located nearly ten miles in travel distance from the nearest sources of iron ore, twice the distance between most antebellum furnaces and their mines.14 Most owners placed their furnaces closer to iron ore mines than markets for pig iron in an effort to keep transportation costs down because transporting pig iron to buyers was more profitable than shipping the same weight of iron ore to a furnace.15 This convention evolved from the remoteness of many iron ore sources exploited during the early to mid-nineteenth century and the reliance on costly overland transport to ship ore from mines to furnaces. At the same time, furnace owners were further restricted in site choice by waterpower availability and nearby woodlands for charcoal production. Given these factors, the dilemma of distance may have been difficult to overcome altogether because Cold Spring probably

offered a share of the most adaptable waterpower potential found between iron ore mines within Putnam County and the Hudson River. The negligible cost of hauling pig iron the short distance between the furnace and nearby foundry moulding shop, however, undoubt- edly offset some of the expense of transporting iron ore over such extended distances.

Although Putnam County mine owners supplied most of the iron ore smelted at the furnace, records show iron ore came from sources in Orange County on the opposite side of the Hudson River as well. Owners often used different types of iron ore (such as hematite and magnetite) or the same type of iron ore but from different mines to ensure an even quality of pig iron, a common practice at many antebellum furnaces. 16 Given this approach, owners probably viewed Cold Spring as a convenient mid-point between iron ore sources in Putnam and Orange Counties, and transport along or across the Hudson itself was relatively easy.

With Cold Spring chosen as the location for the new furnace, tradesmen began construction of the site in 1825, with work completed by October 1827. 17 A letter (discussed in detail below) written at the outset of the first furnace campaign identified William Young, an influen- tial designer of the West Point Foundry and other Amer- ican ironmaking sites, as the chief designer of the furnace. The completed site included components found at most American blast furnaces in the 1820s: a stone

masonry furnace stack, blast machinery (also referred to as a "blowing engine" in period literature) powered by an all-iron, thirty-six foot diameter vertical overshot waterwheel,18 an enclosed timber charging bridge or "deck" that connected an adjacent terrace to the top of the furnace, and a frame building attached to the base of the furnace that enclosed the casting area. Two period maps provide overall impressions of the layout of the site

(figure 4) .

A map of Cold Spring from the 1840s depicts three structures associated with the furnace site and workers' hous- ing on Vinegar Hill, located on the opposite bank of Foundry Brook.19 A second map from the 1850s depicts more articulated structural footprints, with a longer stor-

age barn beside Foundry Brook above the main dam, a headrace penstock that channeled water from the dam to the furnace blowing engine waterwheel, a T-shaped layout for the blowing engine, and the exit of the tailrace culvert leading from under the south face of the furnace to Battery Pond.20 Although there is a lack of consistency

53




Figure 4. Two maps of Cold Spring from the 1840s (left, anon.) and mid-1 850s (right, by John Bevan) depicting structures and general layout of the West Point Foundry blast furnace site. Maps courtesy of the Putnam History Museum.

between the two maps, they are useful for providing a general impression of the number and layout of structures within the furnace site. Additionally, the second map suggests that the furnace site may have remained intact into the 1850s, with owners keeping the site ready for possible future use.

Frederick Overman, a prolific commentator on mid- nineteenth century American ironmaking and industry, reported that the West Point Foundry blast furnace "is forty feet in height, and nine feet in width at the boshes. Its hearth is six feet six inches high; one foot nine inches wide at the bottom, and three feet six inches at the top"'1 (figure 5). These dimensions formed an internal volume of approximately 1,000 cubic feet (28m3). A period painting of the furnace by John Gadsby Chapman provides a clear image of the intact site (figure 6). 22 Ac- cording to Chapman's painting, the furnace stack re- sembled those of other period furnaces, in the form of a truncated pyramid with a clapboard-sided structure attached to the south face of the furnace at its base, enclosing the casting area. In addition, Chapman's painting depicts a slightly skewed, enclosed charging bridge connecting the top of the furnace to the adjoin- ing terrace overlooking the valley, and the faint outline of a vertical overshot waterwheel and penstock along

the northeast side of the furnace stack. The waterwheel provided power for blast machinery arranged near the north face of the furnace.2"

The Archaeology of the Furnace Historical maps, Overman's remarks, and Chapman's painting together provide a coherent impression of the furnace site but archaeological exploration of the site revealed additional details unaddressed by these sources. Site investigations revealed that designers incorporated naturally occurring features and the foundry waterpower system to create the furnace site (figure 7). They chose a narrow shelf of granitic gneiss bedrock south of the main foundry dam as a foundation for the furnace and its blowing engine. The surrounding narrow, steeply-sided valley physically enclosed the furnace site on all sides but the south, where the valley widens and descends towards the foundry site. Archaeologists recorded evidence of large-scale bedrock removal from the adjacent channel through which Foundry Brook flows. This suggests that designers deepened a segment of the channel below the grade of the furnace foundation in an effort to drain groundwater away from the furnace. A site survey also documented a roughly 2 ft. wide by 3 У2 ft. high channel cut into bedrock that be-

54




gins under the furnace foundation and empties into Foundry Brook (figure 8) . Designers presumably built the channel to drain water away from the foundation to prevent dangerous contact between groundwater and the intense heat of the furnace masonry, a condition warned against by Overman.24

Without question, the furnace stack would have rep- resented the most imposing feature of the site. Masons built the forty-foot tall stack from local granite and gneiss, perhaps quarried from the southern edge of Breakneck Ridge, two miles north of Cold Spring (figure 9).25 They fitted the stonework of the furnace together in a rough- faced manner, leaving wide joints between larger stones, which they sealed with smaller stones and mortar. The rapidly maturing Hudson River valley brickmaking industry probably supplied the red brick used to reinforce the squat Syrian-style arches and construct other features, including the chimney.26 Masons constructed the hearth of the furnace from high refractory red and gray conglomer- ate sandstone quarried near Haverstraw, New York, about eighteen miles south of Cold Spring.27 Furnace designers

procured firebrick for lining the interior of the furnace from the emerging firebrick manufacturers of Perth Am- boy and Woodbridge, New Jersey. 28 Both hearth stones and firebrick could be shipped to Cold Spring on the Hudson River. Workers used wrought iron tie rods and cast iron plates to bind the masonry of the stack together, which helped prevent stonework from dislodging as it expanded and contracted from thermal cycling. Research- ers recovered one such cast iron plate during excavation of the blowing engine footprint in 2004.

At forty feet in height, the foundry blast furnace was several feet taller than most other antebellum charcoal blast furnaces. Period owners generally built furnace stacks less than thirty feet in height to accommodate the low capacity and pressure provided by earlier blowing engine designs, while the "light and porous charcoal" used at many furnaces would crush under the weight of an excessive column of iron ore.29 One period commentator noted, though, that "furnaces of even forty feet have been found to answer an excellent purpose, where the charcoal was prepared from oak." Overman

Figure 5. Detail from Frederick Overman's The Manufacture of Iron in All its Various

Branches ( Philadelphia , 1850), p. 150 , showing the interior outline of the West Point Foundry

blastfurnace (referred to as the " Cold Spring blast furnace ") compared with the interior outline of a

period Pennsylvania charcoal blast furnace.

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Figure 6. John Gadsby Chapman, Blast Furnace at the West Point Foundry, oil on panel, 1865. Image courtesy of the Putnam History Museum.

cautiously advised, "if the charcoal is coarse, and the ore not mouldy, but in pieces, a stack forty feet in height will be found very advantageous."30 The designers of the foundry blast furnace may have been inspired to build their furnace to a height of forty feet by the size of the Greenwood furnace. In 1825, owners raised the height of the fourteen-year-old Greenwood furnace stack to forty-two feet and expanded the diameter of the boshes to eleven feet, proving that a furnace of such dimensions could successfully smelt the region's iron ore.31

Site survey and excavation in 2005 discovered that the base of the furnace conforms largely to a pattern ad- opted in the construction of other period furnaces. Measuring thirty-three feet square at its base, the furnace included four arches.32 The largest of the four, the south or "casting" arch, provided access for tapping the hearth of the furnace. Site designers placed a deep bed of fine sand adjacent to the casting arch for casting pigs

and collecting slag. Site excavation in 2005 revealed that the sand bed extends up to a depth of eight feet (2.5m) and rests on bedrock, which underlies the overall site.33

Although researchers were unable to fully excavate the tuyere arches during the 2005 field season, period literature suggests that designers used tuyeres made from cast iron or even high refractory ceramic to direct blast into the furnace. The foundry blast furnace probably included at least two tuyeres fixed in two matching arches (set opposite each other into the east and west faces of the furnace) that allowed access for inspection and maintenance. Unlike the south, east, and west arches - which together resemble a "maltese cross" in plan view - excavation revealed that parallel walls formed the sides of the north arch (see figure 10). Written sources provide no explanation for the difference; however, this may have resulted from the addition of the north arch after initial construction, perhaps to accommodate an addi-

56




Figure 7. Plan view of the West Point Foundry blast furnace site, features, and excavations.

57




Figure 8. Profile view of the West Point Foundry blast furnace site.

Figure 9. Profile view of the masonry stack of the West Point Foundry blast furnace, based on interpretation of written sources, archaeological investigation, and John Gadsby Chapman '5 painting.

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Figure 10. Plan view of the masonry stack of the West Point Foundry blast furnace , based on archaeological investigation and site documentation.

tional tuyere. Such modification has been documented at other furnace sites, such as at the Wharton Furnace in southwestern Pennsylvania where proprietors under- took such refitting in the 1860s.34 At present, only the brickwork and partial stonework supporting the west arch of the foundry blast furnace remain intact, while the brickwork that supported the other three arches has collapsed or been removed during salvage episodes.

Site designers also adapted the terrain surrounding the furnace to suit its operation. They utilized the broad terrace that overlooks the furnace site as an area to stockpile raw materials in storage barns. The charging bridge connected the terrace with the top of the stack, allowing workers to add raw materials into the furnace without the aid of hoisting machinery. The terrace, while an aid to the operation of the furnace, also presented a drainage dilemma. Site researchers in 2005 documented a segment of a rough-faced stone retaining wall that workers built into the embankment of the terrace that is in line with the south face of the furnace (figure 7).S3 The retaining wall separated the stack from the slope of the hillside and groundwater runoff, while creating a passageway that permitted access to the west and north arches of the furnace and perhaps supported the footings of the charging bridge.

The main foundry dam, composed of rough-faced granite blocks similar to those used in the construction of

the furnace and its retaining wall, spanned the gorge between the terrace overlooking the furnace site and the south bank of Foundry Brook. The reservoir created by the dam provided power to several waterwheels simultaneously by taking advantage of the descent in elevation between the main dam and the operations of the foundry, beginning at the furnace. At the same time, the dam formed a reservoir that created head for the furnace blowing engine waterwheel, with water channeled to the blowing engine along an elevated flume (see figures 4 and 8). Through this arrangement, managers could harness all or just a portion of the water current regulated by the main dam to power the blowing engine. This arrangement might have allowed managers to maintain a regular waterpower supply at the furnace, especially during low water levels in late summer and early autumn.

Archaeological excavations in 2004 and 2005 demonstrated that designers of the furnace site incorporated a feeder for the foundry's waterpower system into the furnace layout by laying a stone-lined culvert through the site and the foundation of the furnace (figure 7). The culvert could collect water from the brook below the main dam near the furnace blowing engine, while also receiving water discharged from the blowing engine waterwheel. After exiting the south face of the furnace foundation, the culvert fed water into nearby Battery Pond, an artificial reservoir that regulated water flow

59




to the waterwheels of the foundry complex. Elevation data collected during archaeological excavations suggests that site designers graded the bedrock base of the culvert along a steady descending slope from Foundry Brook to Battery Pond.36 They devised unknown means to prevent water from leaking from the culvert into the drainage system underlying the furnace foundation. Site researchers could not safely assess this segment of the culvert but presumably masons joined the culvert stonework under the furnace by tight-fitting joints to minimize water loss. Masons may have also used hy- draulic cement, a critical element in the construction of the locks on the recently completed Erie Canal, to seal the joints.47 Given several years of success in making pig iron at the foundry blast furnace, the culvert obviously channeled water beneath the furnace hearth without endangering workers or crippling the operation of the furnace or foundry.

"a soft Grey Pig . . . such as will answer for Cannon:" Making Pig Iron at the West Point Foundry Blast Furnace In October of 1827, Samuel Laurence Gouverneur, an early supporter of the foundry who had served as personal secretary to President James Monroe, and was Gouverneur and William Kemble's maternal first cousin, boasted of the new furnace in Cold Spring, New York. In two letters to Samuel Wright, a prominent Philadelphia merchant and ironmaker, Gouverneur gave his favorable impressions of the furnace, perhaps as gestures of reas- surance to a business affiliate. In his first letter of October 2, Gouverneur reported, "William Young has finished his Blast Furnace, the machinery works to admiration, and they commence charging her tomorrow."48

[n his second letter to Wright, dated October 24, Gou- verneur elaborated further:

[T]he Furnace ... is in full and successful Blast. The machinery works to admiration, far superior to the most sanguine expectations of W. Young. [The furnace] was yesterday charged about 1 1 O'Clock with 6/10ths of our Mountain Ore, l/10th Bog Ore and 3/10ths Bed Ore from the other side of the [Hudson] River and in 12 hours [the furnace] was tap'd and produced 2 tons of eligant [sic] Iron, or a soft Grey Pig . . . such as will answer for Cannon. [T] he Bellows gives more Blast than is required . . . [and the furnace] has made about 4 Tons of Pig in 24 hours and has not yet consumed more than about 700 Bush. Coal in that time . . . Our Mountain Ore after being perfecdy roasted breaks up, and smelts very easy.10

While published more than twenty years after Gouver- neur penned his two letters, Frederick Overman's ac-

count of the foundry blast furnace echoes many of the same points:

In [the WPF blast] furnace, magnetic ores from the neighbor- hood, mixed with a small portion of brown hematite, and a small quantity of bog ore, are those chiefly smelted. These ores are somewhat expensive, averaging three dollars per ton. The gray pig iron manufactured is of superior quality, very fusible and uniform. Two tons, and a third of a ton of ore, and 120 bushels of charcoal, are required to make one ton of metal. The wages of workmen average about three dollars per ton of iron. A very small amount of coal supplies this furnace.4"

Each author gives attention to the make-up of the "burden," a term for the collection of iron ore, fuel, and flux material charged into a furnace. Both Gouverneur and Overman believed that making "superior quality" pig iron partly depended on using certain types of iron ore in the right proportions. Both authors note that magnetite iron ore (what Gouverneur refers to as "Mountain Ore") made up over half of the iron ore smelted at the furnace. In addition, Gouverneur's note of "our Moun- tain Ore" suggests that the ore probably originated from mines in Putnam County, perhaps under the ownership of the foundry. Altogether, furnace records and period sources show that furnace managers secured iron ore mostly from three sources within a fifteen-mile radius of Cold Spring (figure 11).

Although limited to only a few campaigns, known furnace records show that managers continued to maintain a preference for magnetite iron ore over ensuing campaigns.41 Managers secured most of the ore smelted at the furnace from a rich magnetite seam that follows a northeast-southwest strike through central Putnam County, approximately five to ten miles east of Cold Spring, while they continued to use magnetite iron ore from the Kembles' Greenwood tract as well.42 Records list various charges of "Canada," "Sunk," or "Denny" iron ore, referring to mines in Putnam County, while other entries include "Greenwood" ore from Orange County.

In his 1843 report on the geology of New York state, William H. Mather listed other mines that supplied iron ore to the furnace, including, "the Philips mine . . . the Townsend mine in Canterbury, and the O'Niel mine in Warwick, Orange County."43 Operators excavated the Philips mine, southwest of the Canada mine near the Cold Spring-Philipstown Turnpike (current New York State route 301); the Townsend mine near Salis- bury Mills, a hamlet eight-and-a-half miles northwest of Cold Spring in Orange County; and the "O'Niel" mine

30




Figure 1 1 . Geo-referenced period maps depicting the location of the Greenwood, West Point Foundry, and Woodbury blast furnaces within the Hudson Highlands and local sources of iron ore smelted at the foundry blast furnace.

Putnam and Orange County maps from David Burr with annotations added by author.

(alternatively "O'Neil" or "Nail" by some sources) located between the Village of Monroe and Lake Mom- basha, also in Orange County.41 The hematite iron ore listed in Overman's remarks (what Gouverneur refers to as "Bed Ore from the other side of the [Hudson] River") probably originated from the Townsend mine, despite Mather's assertion that it produced magnetite iron ore.45 One source notes that "Kemble's furnace" smelted bog ore found near the hamlets of Kinder- hook and Claverack in northern Columbia County, NY, seventy-five miles north of Cold Spring.4* William Blake mentioned that "bog ore occurs in many places in [Put- nam County] and Westchester county," suggesting that furnace managers could have used bog ore from more local sources as well.47

Known records of charcoal deliveries at the furnace are limited to 1834. Records for that year show that Joseph Burns, John Burns, and Charles Crosby, presumably

charcoal-makers, or "colliers," furnished the foundry blast furnace with all or most of the charcoal supply for the campaign that began later that year. In the months between May and October, each supplied the furnace with several thousand bushels of charcoal, for a total of 174,148 bushels delivered by the end of autumn.48 Con- sidering Gouverneur and Overman's Figures of 120-175 bushels of charcoal consumed per ton of pig iron, the total charcoal supplied could have produced 1 ,000 to 1 ,450 tons of pig iron. The months listed in the entry match Overman's suggestion for the ideal charcoal-making season: "[t]he time best adapted for charring, in the woods, is from May till October inclusive. During the summer, the air is bland, the roads good, and the furnace yard dry; considerations of great importance."49 From a seasonal perspective, Overman's advice suggests that managers probably stockpiled fuel and charcoal in advance of the winter months of a campaign, since poor weather could easily disrupt overland and river transportation.

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Tabulation of charcoal deliveries from 1834 provides further insight into the local exchanges that maintained the foundry blast furnace. To produce 174,000 bushels of charcoal, colliers needed to cull approximately 4,300 cords of wood from about 220 acres of woodland.50 Given these figures, seventeen campaigns required six square miles (or 3,840 acres) of woodland for fuel. However, since charcoal could crush into nearly useless particles and dust over extended road travel, colliers probably focused on woodlands within ten miles of Cold Spring in the surrounding Town of Philipstown, and east of the Hudson River to avoid further loss through river-borne trans-shipment.

William Blake wrote that farmers in Philipstown some- times leased wooded areas of non-arable land for charcoal making.51 Farmers could reap significant profit in doing so, with one farmer reporting a gain of $1,000 over one year from the charcoaling of one hundred acres of woodland. Since farmers in Philipstown at that time considered only about one-third of their hold- ings as arable (forming a total of approximately 11,000 acres), the remaining two-thirds, if containing standing timber, remained quite profitable.52 Yet, the same farmers who leased acreage to colliers could also sell their timber to other possibly more-accommodating buyers. Describing the natural resources of Philipstown, Blake noted with only modest pride (if not hyperbole), "from no other township between Albany and New York, for its size, is so great a quantity of wood and timber car- ried to market."5' Such competition for timber around Cold Spring also probably accounted for the high price per bushel that the owners of the foundry blast furnace paid for their charcoal supply (eight cents compared with four to six cents per bushel in Pennsylvania) .51

Besides iron ore and charcoal, furnace records from 1834 include limestone as a portion of each charge. Antebellum furnace managers added limestone to a furnace to act as a flux to aid in slag extraction. The addition of highly basic minerals like limestone or do- lomite helped separate unwanted acidic constituents ("gangue") to prevent them from accreting in the burden. Some ores contained enough basic minerals that little additional flux was necessary. Blake noted that the iron ores chosen for the furnace "flux each other easily with a small addition of the Sing Sing limestone."'5 Re- cords give no indication why managers preferred limestone from Sing Sing (present-day Ossining in Westches- ter County, twenty miles downriver) , given local sources of limestone in Putnam and Dutchess Counties, but the

advantage of cheaper river transport or perhaps proven quality may have steered their choice.

Records of the foundry blast furnace, along with current and period commentary on blast furnace practice, provide an overall impression of how people made pig iron at the West Point Foundry. With ore, charcoal, and limestone stored on the terrace above the furnace, workers took on the responsibility of preparing the burden materials and charging them into the furnace. They often prepared iron ore for a furnace by "roasting," where they would burn wood or charcoal in mounds of ore in order to reduce the size of ore nodules (which acceler- ated reduction in the furnace) and drive off moisture and some of the sulfur entrained in the ore.56 Samuel Gouverneur referred to this practice in his second letter to Wright. Antebellum furnace managers tried to minimize the amount of sulfur that entered the pig iron, since a high content could render critical weaknesses in finished castings and wrought iron.57 Most likely, managers oversaw roasting of iron ore at the WPF furnace on the terrace overlooking the site.

At the top of the furnace stack, workers (called "fillers" in furnace records) charged weight-measured amounts of charcoal, iron ore, and limestone into the furnace through a narrow circular opening called variously the "trundle," "trunnel," or "tunnel head." As the collection of burden materials descended through the furnace, blast machinery fed 1,000-2,000 cubic feet of air per minute into the bottom of the furnace through the tuyeres. At the discretion of a furnace manager called a "keeper," workers tapped the furnace to remove slag and cast approximately seventy or more three-foot long pigs in the sand casting bed.58 Once cooled, workers took on the arduous task of breaking the pigs up with sledgehammers, while teamsters carted the pigs to the foundry with a cart and draft animals like those de- picted in Chapman's painting (figure 6). A page from a daily ledger of the foundry blast furnace dated January 1838 shows that workers tapped the furnace twice a day at midnight and noon. Workers also removed slag from the casting area, piling much of it close to the furnace beside Foundry Brook. As was the custom at furnaces elsewhere, two shifts of workers tended the furnace on a twenty-four hour basis to keep it in blast. The records of beginning and ending dates of campaigns suggest that workers kept up this weekly rhythm from September or October until sometime the following summer during each campaign. For two or three months between the end of a campaign and the beginning of the next, work-

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ers made general repairs to the site and probably re- placed the firebrick lining of the stack. Besides making needed repairs, external factors, such as low water levels and crop harvesting, could have influenced managers to blow out the furnace during this time of the year.

Together, secondary sources and furnace records give some clue as to the amount of pig iron workers produced at the foundry blast furnace during a typical campaign. The author of an 1835 state almanac noted that the furnace produced 850 tons of pig iron per year, while more than ten years later, Blake remarked that furnace output stood between 1,000 and 1,400 tons per year.59 Known furnace records include weekly tallies for only a select number of campaigns: between 1835 and 1836, furnace workers cast 20-34 tons of pig iron per week, while in 1839, weekly production stood at 34-39 tons per week.60 Averaging these figures, pig iron production increased from a mean of 27 tons to a mean of 36 tons per week between 1835 and 1839. Given these weekly totals, workers may have produced between 1,080 and 1,440 tons of pig iron in an estimated 40-week campaign in the mid- to late-1830s, a range that supports Blake's figures and output estimates based on the charcoal consumption rates given by Gouverneur and Overman.

Furnace records and other sources do not provide an explanation for the increase in weekly output between 1835 and 1839. The increase could have stemmed from a greater charcoal supply, the advantage of accruing experience over consecutive campaigns, or general improvement of the furnace site and blast machinery. However, evidence from contemporary charcoal furnaces points to the introduction of pre-heated blast at the foundry blast furnace sometime after 1836. 61 Ameri- can pig iron-makers began introducing preheated blast technology into their furnaces in the mid-1 830s and charcoal furnace owners in Ohio, Tennessee, and Penn- sylvania reported similar increases in pig iron output and decreases in charcoal consumption when they con- verted to hot blast.62 After adopting the new technology, owners in these places reported a twenty to thirty percent decrease in charcoal consumption. Comparison of Gouverneur and Overman's accounts of the furnace match these reports. Gouverneur claimed that the furnace consumed 175 bushels of charcoal to produce one ton of pig iron during the outset of the first campaign, while Overman wrote that by the early 1840s, the furnace required only 120 bushels of charcoal to produce the same weight of pig iron, a thirty percent decrease in charcoal use. However, this figure is partly inconclu-

sive since Gouverneur and Overman's figures may not represent typical charcoal consumption rates over the course of seventeen campaigns. In particular Gouver- neur pointed out in his second letter to Wright that "all has yet been experiment" as the first campaign got un- derway. Also worth noting, Overman believed that the width of the trunnel head of the foundry blast furnace helped keep consumption of charcoal low compared to other furnaces.03

Samuel Gouverneur's second letter to Samuel Wright implied a confident sense of supply-side independence for the young American foundry in the autumn of 1827. The foundry ownership, as Gouverneur believed, could now content itself with its own local furnace yielding four or more tons of pig iron per day, while consuming less charcoal than anticipated, but above all, producing a grade of pig iron approximating the quality that they had expected from the best-judged foreign or domestic suppliers. For them, such quality was essential for making ordnance that would pass and preferably exceed the proving standards established by Ordnance Department officers. The testimonies of Gouverneur and Overman suggest that managers and workers succeeded in their pursuit to make "soft Grey" pig iron "of superior quality" from the initial campaign through the final campaign of 1843-44. A memorial published by Philadel- phia iron workers in 1831 gives even more credit to the furnace, stating "so also at the Greenwood furnace in Orange county, N. Y., and at West Point [foundry blast furnace], iron approaching to the Scotch in softness, but very superior in strength, has been produced."6' Nineteenth-century American foundries and machine works held Scottish-made pig iron in high regard for its suitability in producing castings that were both durable and easily machined.65 By the late nineteenth century, many foundry managers had learned that they could use most grades of American pig iron for many of the same applications.™ Interpreting pig iron recovered at the furnace site through a metallurgical viewpoint provides a measure of support for the opinions of period commentators.

Testing claims to quality: Archaeometallurgical insight into WPF pig iron

Archaeologists have demonstrated that archaeometallurgical investigations of blast furnace site materials like pig iron and slag can yield data that augments conventional records.67 For the present study, the author arranged for the analysis of pig iron and slag samples

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recovered from the foundry blast furnace site in 2004 and 2005. The analysis and interpretation of the pig iron samples is only included here, however, since data derived from site slag samples is less conclusive due to limited sampling.68 During excavation of the blowing engine footprint in 2004, archaeologists recovered two intact pigs and a fractured mid-section of a third pig. By chance, they found the intact pigs submerged in Foundry Brook, adjacent to the furnace site; even more remarkable, one pig is embossed with the figures "WPF 1828," indicating that workers cast the pig during the first or second campaign of the furnace. For analysis, researchers cut samples from one intact pig (dubbed the "bent" pig because workers either cast it in an el- bow or "bent" form, or they handled the pig while it was cooling, subsequently bending it) and the fractured partial pig (the "broken" pig); given the aesthetic value placed on the "WPF 1828" pig, researchers did not remove samples from it for the current study.

Data from the two pigs provide a measure of additional perspective that would otherwise be unobtainable. After reviewing archaeometallurgical studies of blast furnace sites and current literature on pig and cast irons, the author conducted analysis of samples from the bent and broken pigs to categorize each pig according to relevant foundry nomenclature {i.e., "gray" or "white" pig iron), to compare with period accounts of pig iron produced at the furnace, and to interpret the quality of each pig against current standards established for pig iron used in foundry casting work. Assessing the suitability of the pigs against current foundry standards is a valid ana- lytical approach because metallurgists established these standards to achieve similar quality thresholds aimed at by nineteenth-century foundry managers.69

Interpretation of photomicrographs of these samples and comparable samples of cast iron demonstrate that the bent and broken pigs conform to gray pig iron.70 Most telling is the presence of large flakes of graphite, as they appear in cross-section as long dark irregular bands diffused across the surface of each sample (figure 12). Free uncombined carbon precipitated as graphite flakes while the pig iron cooled and impart a characteristic gray color to the naked eye along a fracture, lending this form of pig iron its common name. By the mid-nineteenth century, metallurgists such as Overman had determined that graphite flakes, or "plumbago" in period literature, were responsible for the gray color observed in some pig iron.71 In addition, microscopic inspection showed that each sample contained metallic phases common to gray

cast iron, including pearlite and cementite, with significant amounts of steadite, a phase formed by higher quantities of phosphorous in the pig iron.

Chemical analysis of the pig iron samples yielded both qualitative and quantitative data (that is, both the elemental composition and proportions) .72 Table 1 lists the results of chemical analysis techniques used in this study. The minor and trace element contents detected in each sample remain low enough to have had negligible effects on the quality of castings produced from each pig.73

Figure 12. Photomicrographs of samples etched in 2% natal solution taken from the "bent " ( top) and " broken " ( bottom ) pigs. Both photomicrographs are 50X magnification with а 50ц scale. Key: 1-steadite 2-cementite 3-manganese sulfide. The fingerprint-like lamellae are pearlite, while the long dark bands are graphite flakes in cross-section. Photographs by author.

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Table 1 Composition of pig iron samples recovered

from the West Point Foundry blast furnace site

Key elemental constituents of pig iron samples according to weight percentage of overall sample

Major elements Minor and trace elements

Sample origin Cc Si P Sc Mn Cu Ni Sn Ti Cr Mo

"Bent" pig" 3.87 0.69 0.91 0.065 0.11 0.01 0.023 0.01 0.02 trace trace

"Broken" pig® 3.99 0.94 0.52 0.093 0.32 0.02 0.019 0.01 0.02 trace trace

Trace indicates less than .005 percent by weight composition of sample. Reference materials and standards for XRF analysis developed by third-party companies and United States Steel laboratory personnel according to ASTM or BSI certified methods. Overall accuracy of XRF analysis is approximately ±1-2% of total content. A. "Bent" pig removed from Foundry Brook during 2004 field work at the furnace blowing

engine site; sample taken from an end of the pig. See Figure 7 for field discovery location of pig.

B. "Broken" pig removed from excavation unit 9B (level 17; adjacent to the blowing engine foundation) during 2004 fieldwork at the furnace blowing engine site; sample taken from the interior of the pig. See Figure 7 for field discovery location of pig.

C. Carbon and sulfur composition determined by LECO laboratory personnel

Metallurgical studies of ferrous alloys have demonstrated that besides carbon, different percentages of silicon, phosphorous, sulfur, and manganese in pig iron will indirectly influence the physical properties of castings, such as the degree of shrinkage that occurs during cooling, porosity, and brittleness at ambient temperatures. The silicon content of both samples is modestly higher than the average 0.4 percent reported for charcoal pig iron produced in the nineteenth century but falls within the current preferred range of 0.5-3.0 percent.74 Depending on the presence of other elements, pig iron with silicon content in this range can decrease shrinkage in a casting as it cools. Too much shrinkage can lead to stress fractures in large cross section castings, such as cannon tubes, imparting critical weaknesses that could prove dangerous.

The phosphorous content of each sample is high, compared with the current preferred range for foundry grade pig iron.75 As an advantage for foundry work, such phosphorous content could lengthen the time that cast iron remains liquid within a mold, a helpful quality for detailed thin cross-section castings.76 As opposed to silicon, an overabundance of free sulfur can impair the quality of castings by increasing shrinkage during cool-

ing.77 Curiously, the broken pig contains almost fifty percent more sulfur than the bent pig. Underlying causes for this difference are unknown but may have resulted from the use of iron ore that contained greater concen- trations of iron sulfide, incomplete roasting of such iron ore, or even the inclusion of mineral fuels in the burden that contain sulfur, such as anthracite coal. 78 Offsetting its harmful effects, nearly all of the sulfur in pig and cast irons will combine with an equal or greater amount of manganese, if present.79 In the bent pig, the manganese content is double that of the sulfur content, while manganese in the broken pig is over three times that of sulfur, leaving little free sulfur in either pig. As a result, sulfur content in either pig would not have injured the quality of castings.

Based on these interpretations, both pigs conform to period and current definitions of gray pig iron and within antebellum foundry practice would have been suitable for making a range of castings. At the same time, variations between each sample and other examples of nineteenth-century charcoal pig iron demonstrate why period commentators advised foundry managers to use pig iron from various furnaces to produce castings of a more even and predictable quality.80 An incomplete led-

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ger from March 1836 lists pig iron produced at the furnace by different grades, similar to those discussed by Overman.81 Furnace and foundry managers most likely graded pig iron through visual inspection of a fractured pig. Overman and other commentators focused on the color and grain displayed in the cross-section fracture of a pig to categorize it and judge its best purpose. Even if not entirely reliable or consistent from one observer to the next, grading by sight gave managers of the foundry some means to choose pigs for use in different castings, probably relying on accumulated experience with the use of similar types of pig iron.

"The cost . . . was found to be greater than purchasing it abroad:" The End of Pig Iron Production at the West Point Foundry Blast Furnace After seventeen campaigns, the West Point Foundry ceased operating the Cold Spring blast furnace in 1844. Five years later, William Blake commented that,

The Blast Furnace, just north of the Blacksmith shop, is not now in operation. Up to June, 1844, large quantities of iron ore were smelted here, obtained from the mines in the Highlands of this town. The cost of quarrying, transportation, blasting, &c., was found to be greater than purchasing it abroad, in a state fit for immediate use.82

No records indicate what impact, if any, the depressed economy of the late 1830s and the tariff debates of 1842 had on production at the West Point Foundry, but few- er contracts to fulfill may have motivated the owners to keep the furnace out of blast from 1844 onwards. They probably decided that they could purchase pig iron of presumably similar quality from other sources, in part re- verting to the strategy they had followed in the late 1810s. By "abroad," Blake may have been pointing to foreign suppliers since the price of Scottish-made pig iron had been steadily decreasing during the early 1840s.83 Oddly enough, for a few years after 1844, many American furnace proprietors found heightened domestic demand for their pig iron, perhaps due to the combined effects of higher tariffs and an expanding British economy that absorbed surplus pig iron output that would have otherwise found American buyers.84

The closest sources of iron ore to the foundry blast furnace may have also been the most costly to use. Mather believed that the inefficient methods used to extract iron ore at the Denny mine in Philipstown elevated the

final cost to three dollars per ton, a rate at which he wrote "scarcely any profit can be realized."85 For their part, the owners of the Denny mine may have had little incentive to improve how they mined ore since the foundry blast furnace was the only furnace in operation in Putnam County in the 1830s and 1840s. Equally frus- trating, the torturous topography of the interior of the county mitigated against canals or railroads that might have decreased transportation costs. In addition to the high cost of iron ore, rising costs of charcoal may have also played a part in the demise of the furnace.86 With the cutting of one square mile of local woodland ev- ery three years and increased competition from other timber buyers, colliers may have struggled by the late 1830s to make charcoal at their previous rates. As Paul Paskoff observed about most furnaces, "It was only after an ironworks had been in operation for a number of years that the supply of timber became a cause for real concern."87 One year after owners suspended the operation of the foundry blast furnace, they ceased operating their Woodbury furnace in Orange County as well. Although his comments seem somewhat doubt- ful since the nearby Greenwood furnace remained in blast for nearly another thirty years, Eager noted that owners closed the Woodbury furnace in 1845 because it had consumed "all [the] necessary materials to con- duct it for several miles around."88 After 1845 and until they commenced the first campaign of the Greenwood no. 2 furnace in 1854 (later renamed "Clove furnace"), the WPF controlled only one furnace (Greenwood no. 1), probably leading them to purchase pig iron from other producers. These may have included foreign and domestic suppliers, including new anthracite furnaces coming into blast in nearby eastern Pennsylvania.

The increasing output of pig iron at anthracite furnaces by the mid-1 840s probably contributed to pushing the furnace out of blast and keeping it idle until salvagers dismantled the site.8-1 Foundry owners and managers were obviously content with the quality of castings made from anthracite pig iron by 1854, as they began relying on their Greenwood no. 2 anthracite furnace for a majority of their pig iron supply in the years before the Civil War. By 1850, anthracite furnace proprietors had proven that they could make gray pig iron with qualities resembling those found in gray pig iron made with charcoal.90 Perhaps through communication with managers at other foundries or a degree of experimentation in their own moulding shop, the West Point Foundry's quality-minded but cost-mindful ownership had decid-

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ed by the early 1850s that they could use anthracite pig iron to make castings as well. Yet, since they maintained their charcoal Greenwood no. 1 furnace through 1871, the owners apparently believed that charcoal pig iron remained important for making at least some types of castings. At forty-two feet in height and producing thirty tons of pig iron per week by the early 1840s, the Greenwood furnace possessed similar capacity to the WPF blast furnace. However, unlike their Cold Spring furnace, the hot-blast Greenwood furnace consumed fuel and iron ore from nearby property controlled by the foundry's management, decreasing both transportation and price costs.

The opinions of US Army ordnance officers may also have influenced the foundry's maintenance of the Greenwood no. 1 furnace, for as Captain James G. Benton wrote in 1862, "[o]res suitable for 'gun-metal' should be reduced in the smelting furnace, with charcoal and warm blast ."9I Benton also noted that iron ore from the Greenwood mine, along with "Bloomfield" iron ore from Pennsylvania and "Cloverdale" iron ore from Virginia, served best in making pig iron for ordnance.'- As a further cost advantage to making pig iron in Orange County, the New York Sc Erie Rail Road began service between the towns of Monroe and New- burgh in 1850, decreasing the cost of transporting pig iron to the foundry.93 From Newburgh, Hudson River boatmen shipped the pig iron seven miles downriver to Cold Spring.

Blake's statement suggests that the furnace and site remained intact until at least 1849. Although not surpris- ing, owners were in little hurry to dismantle a significant investment of capital and capacity, perhaps looking to put the furnace back into blast once again under a more favorable economy. Yet with overland shipping still the only mode of transportation available for the interior of Putnam County in the early 1850s, the foundry ownership may have seen little value in putting the furnace into blast with iron ore remaining so costly. In any case, their investment in the second Greenwood furnace, one that would produce in its first campaign more than three times more pig iron than the foundry blast furnace did in a similar period, may also have dis- suaded the foundry's owners from putting their Cold Spring furnace into blast after 1854.

By the 1840s, the foundry's managers relied on anthracite coal to fuel the furnaces of the moulding shop.

With regular access to this mineral fuel via the Dela- ware Sc Hudson Canal, and its proven use in blast furnaces in Britain and Pennsylvania by 1840, managers may have experimented with it for fuel in the foundry blast furnace, possibly using it for more than a trial basis. During excavation of furnace demolition debris in 2005, archaeologists recovered fused burden materials that included partially reduced iron ore, charcoal, and anthracite coal. Deposited twenty feet southwest of the furnace stack, salvagers probably discarded the materials as they dismantled the stack during the initial salvage episode. The inclusion of charcoal and anthracite coal in the burden is intriguing since no known records list the use of both fuels at the foundry blast furnace. By the mid-1 850s, however, nearly a dozen furnace proprietors in nearby Dutchess County and western Connecticut were successfully using combinations of charcoal and anthracite coal to produce foundry-grade pig iron.94 All of these furnaces included the use of preheated blast. Although inconclusive without supporting evidence from further records, the use of anthracite coal at the foundry blast furnace, even if short term, suggests that owners and managers were attempting to reduce costs while making an acceptable grade of pig iron.

Although the demise of the West Point Foundry blast furnace did not stem from outright failure, resource costs did prove too challenging for managers to overcome, even though they had proven capable of making the right grade of pig iron needed by the foundry. Throughout the nineteenth century, pig iron proprietors often abandoned their blast furnaces before re- covering their initial investment because they could not maintain a sufficient market share. Only fifty-four percent of the blast furnaces active in eastern Pennsylvania in 1832 remained in operation eighteen years later.95 As a result, many owners left their furnace properties to salvage or decay years before their usefulness had actu- ally been exhausted.

Sometime after the late 1840s, the foundry's ownership allowed salvagers to dismantle the furnace. No records offer a date for dismantling, but a map of Cold Spring and the WPF from 1868 does not include the furnace or other related structures, suggesting removal sometime prior to that year.96 The absence of any remains of thirty feet of the stack from the site is clear evidence that salvagers removed most of the stone and brickwork for reuse elsewhere. Contractors probably used stone from the furnace in constructing local buildings, while fire-

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Figure 13. View of east sidewall of excavation units 9L and 90 that bisected the casting arch. The masonry base of the arch can be seen in the lower left corner of the photograph. Photograph by Elizabeth (Norris) Hartneil and

T. Arron Kotlensky with annotations added by author.

brick manufacturers may have purchased any discarded firebrick for making new firebrick.97

Excavation close to the base of the furnace stack revealed evidence for at least two separate salvage episodes; an initial episode in which salvagers dismantled most of the stack and site, and a subsequent episode, during which salvagers removed another quantity of stone and red brick from the south, east, and north arches, leaving only the west tuyere arch intact, and approximately ten feet of the stack remaining (figure 13). The second episode post-dates the closing of the foundry in 1912, since salvagers allowed a large quantity of stone and brick to fall into the culvert as they removed it from the stack, obstructing any flow of water between Foundry Brook and Battery Pond. The boring mill, an integral part of the foundry complex, remained depen- dent on waterpower until at least 1912, when ownership ceased operation of the foundry. With little inclination

to maintain the free passage of water through the culvert, salvagers freely let unwanted stone and brick fall into the open void at the foot of the furnace.98

Conclusions In his advice to would-be furnace owners and builders, Frederick Overman wrote, "[fjailure [of a blast furnace] depends not so much on the material used, as upon other circumstances, at times beyond our control."99 The West Point Foundry's owners did not stop making pig iron at their Cold Spring furnace because of outright technical failure or incompetence. By all accounts, they had built and sustained a charcoal blast furnace worthy of imita- tion. Yet national and international circumstances beyond their control certainly shaped owners' balance sheet perspective, since they decided to take advantage of cheaper sources of pig iron by the summer of 1844 rather than commence the next campaign of the furnace.

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When they designed their Cold Spring furnace in the mid-1 820s, owners looked to charcoal for fuel and waterpower to drive blast machinery, following common American practice at that time. They supplied their forty-foot tall furnace with a combination of higher- cost iron ores that they deemed necessary for making proper quality gray pig iron. To add the furnace to the foundry layout, designers engineered the existing waterpower system to provide power to blast machinery without interrupting the power needs of the boring mill and blacksmith shop. In doing so, the West Point Foundry's first generation of owners proved that in a single location they could use waterpower to operate a blast furnace and foundry side by side. Very few antebellum foundries opted for such a strategy, which may have helped allay the concerns of the foundry's clients and their agents, such as resident inspecting army and navy ordnance officers, who were keen to gauge the quality of the pig iron used by the foundry.

A little more than fifteen years later, however, several emerging domestic ironmakers had proven their abil- ity to make foundry-grade pig iron with larger furnaces that smelted iron ore with anthracite coal or bituminous coke and preheated blast driven under higher pressures by more efficient waterwheels or steam engines. The ex- pansion of waterborne transport and railroads brought greater volumes of cheaper iron ore and coal to the newer furnaces. Innovations such as these led to far greater outputs of pig iron than what other proprietors could achieve with conventional charcoal furnaces tied to local road networks, creating new supplies of cheaper pig iron for foundries and rolling mills to consider. By 1860, two decades of cumulative experience with using mineral fuels had helped a number of domestic furnace proprietors arrive at practices to make pig iron suitable for most foundry applications.

As the American pig iron industry absorbed these innovations in the 1840s, the West Point Foundry's ownership - principally Gouverneur Kemble, his later business partner, Robert P. Parrott, and Robert's brother Peter who ran the Greenwood Furnaces - supplied the foundry with pig iron through control of their own furnaces and purchase of pig iron from outside suppliers. Most likely during the 1840s, perhaps even before the final campaign of the foundry blast furnace, moulding shop managers at the foundry learned to make castings with pig iron made from anthracite coal. As managers and tradesmen at the West Point Foundry and at other foundries grew confident in their use of anthra-

cite pig iron, Robert and Peter Parrott organized the construction of the second Greenwood furnace that used anthracite coal, steam-driven blast machinery, and preheated blast. At the same time, they maintained the older Greenwood furnace to keep the foundry supplied with charcoal pig iron. In shifting production from their Cold Spring furnace to the purchase and construction of their Greenwood furnaces, the owners of the West Point Foundry followed a series of pig iron supply strat- egies that followed larger trends in antebellum pig iron production.

Acknowledgments In completing thesis research on the West Point Found- ry blast furnace through Michigan Technological Uni- versity's (MTU) Industrial Archaeology (LA) program, I drew upon the assistance of several people. Scenic Hudson Land Trust (SHLT) of Poughkeepsie, New York, generously supported fieldwork and follow-up research and writing. Rita D. Shaheen, Director of Parks for SHLT, was especially helpful in coordinating the archaeological study of the West Point Foundry. Serving as the assistant field director for the project, Dr. Elizabeth (Norris) Hartnell, an IA program alumna, provided unflagging support and direction during the 2004 and 2005 field seasons. Thesis advisor, Dr. Patrick Martin, gave me the opportunity to take on this project, while providing guidance in my planning, thinking, and writing. Committee members, Dr. Bruce Seely, Dr. Timothy Scarlett, and outside reader, Dr. Mark Plichta, provided excellent suggestions and critical feedback.

Within the Materials Science and Engineering Depart- ment at MTU, staff scientists Ruth Kramer and Edward Laitila provided guidance in choosing the best suite of analysis techniques and aided in preparing pig iron samples for metallographic inspection. Laboratory personnel at United States Steel's Great Lakes Works in Ecorse, Michigan, in particular, David Kruszka, divi- sional manager of sheet technology and Richard Ezak, area manager of chemical and metallurgical services, were exceptionally helpful in providing their time and resources for gathering the data needed to carry out the elemental study of pig iron samples. Kaylan Khan and Louis Lherbier at United States Steel's research services provided helpful commentary on microphotographs and data from pig iron samples.

I am further grateful for the commentary I received from those who took the time to review the draft of this article.

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Notes 1. See Steven A. Walton, "Founding a Foundry: the Diary of the Set-

ting-Out of the West Point Foundry, 1817," ZA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 35, nos. 1-2 (2009): 25-38 at table 2 and n. 62.

2. Different proprietors operated two blast furnaces at separate lo- cations in Cold Spring during two exclusive periods during the nineteenth century. The West Point Foundry operated a charcoal blast furnace between 1827 and 1844 (the subject of this research), while the West Point Iron Company (later West Point Furnace Company) operated an anthracite coal and later coke blast furnace (also called the "Cold Spring furnace") from 1863 to 1893 on the Cold Spring waterfront. See Directory of Iron and Steel Works of the United States and Canada (Philadelphia: American Iron and Steel Institute, 1894), 67.

3. See Edward Rutsch, JoAnn Cotz and Brian H Morrell with Herbert J Githens and Leonard A Eisenberg, "The West Point Foundry Site, Cold Spring, Putnam County, New York" (Newton, NJ: Cultural Resource Management Services, 1979); Elizabeth Nor- ris, "An Historical and Industrial Archaeology Strategy for the West Point Foundry Site, Cold Spring, New York" (master's thesis, Michigan Technological University [MTU], 2002); Alicia B. Valentino, "Visualizing the Past at the West Point Foundry, Cold Spring, New York" (master's thesis, MTU, 2003); Kimberly Finch, "Waterpower: A Geophysical and Archaeological Investigation of the Waterpower System at the West Point Foundry, Cold Spring, New York" (master's thesis, MTU, 2004).

4. See Erin Timms, "The Historical and Archaeological Interpreta- tion of Waterpower and Blowing Engine Technology at the West Point Foundry Blast Furnace, Cold Spring, New York" (master's thesis, MTU, 2005) and T. Arron Kotlensky, "Between Mine, For- est, and Foundry: An Archaeological Study of the West Point Foundry Blast Furnace, Cold Spring, New York" (master's thesis, MTU, 2007).

5. David Meyer, Networked Machinists: High Technology Industries in Antebellum America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 28.

6. "Extract of a letter from , to his friend in New York," National Advocate [New York], June 7, 1819 p. 2.

7. Diary attributed to Gouverneur Kemble, entries for 15 and 20 June 1817; see also Gouverneur Kemble, "The Diary of the Setting-Out of the West Point Foundry," ZA: The Journal of the Society for Indus- trial Archeology 35, nos. 1-2 (2009): 14-24; Walton, "Founding a Foundry," (note 1).

8. Manuscript from 1818 in the New-York Historical Society (NYHS), New York, NY, Misc. WPF Collection.

9. William H. Keating, "Observations upon the Cadmia found at the Ancram iron works in Columbia County, New-York, erroneously supposed to be a new mineral," The American Journal of Science and Arts 6 (1823): 185. James F. Lewis, "The Hematite Ore Mines and Blast Furnaces East of the Hudson River," Transactions of the Ameri- can Institute of Mining Engineers 5 (1877): 216-235.

10. See WPF 1826 blast furnace manuscript [NYHS, Misc. WPF] and two letters from Samuel L. Gouverneur to Samuel Wright, 1827 [Hagley Library, Wilmington, DE, Wright Family Papers (acc. 1665), Box 21.

11. James M. Ransom, Vanishing Ironworks of the Ramapos. (New Bruns- wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966), 140-142.

12. Ibid., 220 and personal communication, Dr. Michele Figliomeni, Orange County Historical Society, NY, 14June 2010.

13. Kemble diary (note 7), June 9, 1817. 14.J.P. Lesley, The Iron Manufacturer's Guide to the Furnaces, Forges, and

Rolling Mills of the United States (New York: John Wiley, 1859) , passim. 15. Paul F. Paskoff, Industrial Evolution: Organization, Structure, and

Growth of the Pennsylvania Iron Industry, 1750-1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 8.

16. Lesley, Iron Manufacturer's Guide (note 14). In his survey of North American blast furnaces in the mid-1 850s, Lesley makes frequent reference to the use of a combination of iron ore types by furnace owners; see also, Frederick Overman, The Manufacture of Iron in All its Various Branches (Philadelphia: Henry C. Baird, 1850), 224-225.

17. WPF blast furnace manuscripts 1826, 1827: NYHS, Misc. WPF Col- lection, New York, NY.

18. Carl Frederich Ganzel and Frederich Wulff, "Contribution to the Understanding of American Mills and Flour Production" [1832], in Derek Ogden and Gerald Bost, Ganzel & Wulff: The Quest for American Milling Secrets [Bibliotheca Molinologica 20] (Congle- ton, U.K.: International Molinological Society, 2010), 23.

19. "Map of the Village of Cold Spring, Putnam Cy, N.Y.," c. 1840s. Flat-file map collection, Putnam History Museum, Cold Spring, NY (hereafter PHM).

20. John Bevan, "Map of the Village of Cold Spring, Putnam County, New York," c. 1854-1859, PHM.

21. Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 150-151. 22. Betsy Fahlman, John Ferguson Weir: The Labor of Art (Cranbury, NJ:

Associated University Presses, 1997), 70. 23. Timms, "Historical and Archaeological Interpretation" (note 4). 24. Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 154. 25. William J. Blake, The History of Putnam County , N. Y. (New York:

Baker and Scribner, 1849), 52-53. 26. George V. Hutton, The Great Hudson River Brick Industry: Commemo-

rating Three and One Half Centuries of Brickmaking (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 2003), 15. Richard P. O'Connor, "A History of Brickmaking in the Hudson Valley," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1987, 55-58.

27. Frank B. Green, The History of Rockland County (New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1886), 162.

28. Timothy Scarlett, Jeremy Rahn, and Daniel Scott, "Bricks and the Evolving Industrial Landscape: The West Point Foundry and New York's Hudson River Valley," Northeast Historical Archaeology 35 (2006): 43; Heinrich Ries and Henry Leighton, History of the Clay-Working Industry in the United States (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1909), 138-139.

29. "Iron," The American Quarterly Review 9, no. 18 (June 1831): 352-85 at 367.

30. Ibid, and Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 167. 31. Lesley, Iron Manufacturer's Guide (note 14), 33-34. 32. Kotlensky, "Between Mine, Forest, and Foundry" (note 4), 127. 33. Ibid., 115. 34. Robert A. McDowell, "An Historical Investigation of the Needs,

Natural Resources, Design and Technology of the Blast Furnaces of Fayette County, Pennsylvania from 1789 to 1876" (master's thesis, California State College/California University of Pennsyl- vania, 1975): 90-93. The owners of the Wharton furnace added a tuyere to use coke for fuel, a shift that necessitated more dispersive blast than that required for the combustion of charcoal.

35. Kotlensky, "Between Mine, Forest, and Foundry" (note 4), 130. 36. Ibid., 130-31. 37. Gerard Koeppel, Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the Amer-

ican Empire (Cambridge, MA: DaCapo Press, 2009), 246.

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38. Hagley Library, Wright Family Papers (note 10) 1827, Box 2. 39. Ibid. 40. Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 150-151. 41. See blast furnace records for 1833-1835 [NYHS, Misc. WPF] and

1838 [PHM, Misc. WPF Collection]. 42. William H. Mather, Geology of New-York, Part I (Albany: Carroll and

Cook, 1843), 561-562; Art Schneier, "The Mines of Fahnestock Park," Appalachian Trailway Nervs (March/April 1990): 10-13; Ed- ward J. Lenik, Iron Mine Trails (New York: New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, 1996), 107-108.

43. Mather, Geology of New-York, Part I, 564. 44. Ibid., p. 562; John C. Smock, First Report on the Iron Mines and Iron-

Ore Districts in the State of New York, Bulletin of the New York State Museum of Natural History 7 (Albany: Charles Van Benthuysen & Sons, June, 1889), 62; David H. Newland, The Mineral Resources of the State of Nexu York, New York State Museum Bulletin 15, 223-224 (Albany: The University of the State of New York, 1919), 120.

45. Lesley, Iron Manufacturer's Guide (note 14), 552. 46. Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, sixty-first session (Al-

bany: E. Croswell, 1838), 14:156. 47. Blake, History of Putnam County (note 25), 46. 48. WPF blast furnace manuscript, 1834 [PHM, Misc. WPF Collection]. 49. Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 117. 50. Ibid., p. 117; Robert B. Gordon, American Iron: 1607-1900 (Balti-

more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 40. 51. Blake, History of Putnam County (note 25), 145. 52. Ibid., 144 and 355. 53. Ibid., 145. 54. WPF blast furnace manuscript, n.d. [PHM, Misc. WPF Collection].

Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 117. 55. Ibid., 75-76. 56. Ibid., 40-41. 57. Ibid., 25. 58. During the 2004 field season, researchers recovered two pigs that

weighed approximately 55 pounds each. Based on their weight and Samuel Gouverneur's remark that the furnace produced approximately two tons of pig iron during a single tapping of the furnace, workers would have cast approximately seventy or more pigs at any one time.

59. Edwin Williams, The New-York Annual Register (New York: Edwin Wil- liams, 1835), 142. Blake, History of Putnam County (note 25), 76.

60. WPF blast furnace manuscripts, 1835, 1836, 1839 [PHM, Misc. WPF Collection].

61. Gordon, American Iron (note 50), 112. 62. Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (Cincinnati: published

by author, 1854), 584; J. B. Killebrew, Tennessee: Its Agricultural and Mineral Wealth (Nashville: Tavel, Eastman, and Howell, 1876), 139; Isaac B. Brown, Annual Report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Part III, Industrial Statistics, Volume XXII (1894) (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1895), 610.

63. Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 213. 64. "Iron" (note 29), 370. 65. Edward Kirk, The Cupola Furnace, a Practical Treatise on the Construc-

tion and Management of Foundry Cupolas (Philadelphia: Henry Car- ey Baird 8c Co., 1903), 213.

66. Ibid., 207-10. 67. See R. Bruce Council, Nicholas Honerkamp, and M. Elizabeth

Will, Industry and Technology in Antebellum Tennessee: The Archaeology of Bluff Furnace (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992); John R. White, "X-Ray Fluorescent Analysis of an Early Ohio Blast

Furnace Slag," Ohio Journal of Science 77, no. 4 (1977): 186-188; and John R. White, "New Light on Early American Ironmaking: the Eaton Furnace," Historical Metallurgy 15, no. 2 (1981): 88-93.

68. Kotlensky, "Between Mine, Forest, and Foundry" (note 4), 146-49. 69. For comparison of period and current foundry practice and pig

iron, see Frederick Overman, The Moulder's and Founder's Pocket Guide (Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird 8c Co. 1878); David W. Payne, The Founder's Manual (New York: D. Van Nostrand Com- pany, 1920); and J. R. Davis (ed.), ASM Specialty Handbook: Cast Irons (Materials Park, OH: ASM International, 1996).

70. Light optical microscopy served in visual inspection of the pig iron samples at the microscopic level and aided in their visual charac- terization. The author prepared the samples by mounting each in epoxy, and subsequently ground and polished each using micro- abrasive compounds, finally etching them with a dilute acid (2% nital) to augment microstructural relief across the surface of the samples. Following these steps, the author examined each sample and captured digital photomicrographs with the use of an inverted stage light microscope. For comparison between photomicrographs of samples of pig iron from the West Point Foundry blast furnace and other gray cast irons, see online photomicrograph catalog sponsored by University of Cambridge, Dissemination of IT for the Promotion of Materials Science (DoITPoMS) <http://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/miclib/compositions.php?id=120>; and Davis (ed.) ASM Specialty Handbook.

71. Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 140. 72. Laboratory personnel at United States Steel's Great Lakes Works

in Ecorse, Mich., processed samples from the bent and broken pigs using a Siemens MRS404 multi-channel wave-dispersive x- ray florescence (WD-XRF) spectrometer. XRF analysis of the pig iron samples involved the use of instrument calibration curves based on elemental matrix standards established for basic oxy- gen furnace (BOF) steel plant blast furnace "hot metal" (pig iron produced for conversion into steel). The compositional ranges established for these standards compare closely enough to chemical compositions of nineteenth century charcoal pig iron that the standards remain valid for analysis (see "Communication" note below). Each sample underwent approximately five minutes of processing time. XRF spectrometry is not well adapted for detect- ing elements lighter than sodium, so the author employed a different method to determine the carbon and sulfur content of the samples. Laboratory personnel at the LECO Corporation com- mercial laboratory in Saint Joseph, Mich., measured the carbon and sulfur content of similar samples taken from the pigs with a LECO CS600-series carbon-sulfur analysis instrument. Commu- nication via email list service, courtesy of Thilo Rehren <ARCH- [email protected]>, "Re: A question regarding current XRF analysis standards for charcoal pig iron and associated slag," 15June 2010. Text accessible at: < https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi- bin/webadmin?A2=ARCH-METALS;fbe8a927. 1 006>

73. Davis (ed.), ASM Specialty Handbook (note 69), 35. 74. William Rostoker and William Bronson, Pre-Industrial Iron : Its

Technology and Ethnology Archaeomaterials Monograph 1 (Phila- delphia: privately published, 1990), 108. William T. Lankford, Jr., Norman L. Samways, Robert F. Craven, and Harold E. McGannon (eds.), The Making, Shaping, Treating of Steel, 10"' ed. (Pittsburgh: Association of Iron and Steel Engineers, 1985), 1222.

75. Ibid., 1222-1223. 76. Richard W. Heine, Carl R. Loper, Jr., and Philip C. Rosenthal, Prin-

ciples of Metal Casting (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).

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77. Lankford, et al., Making, Shaping, Treating of Steel (note 74), 1222. 78. Period authors noted that iron ore from the Philips mine in Put-

nam County contained high quantities of pyrite (iron sulfide); see Blake, History of Putnam County (note 25), 24 and New York State Museum, 57th Annual Report 1903 (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1905), 1:181.

79. Davis (ed.), ASM Specialty Handbook (note 69), 34. 80. Overman, Moulder's and Founder's Pocket Guide (note 69), 185. 81. Ibid., 179-84 and WPF blast furnace manuscript March 1836

[PHM, Misc. WPF]. 82. Blake, History of Putnam County (note 25), 243. 83. "Memorial to Congress, published on behalf of the Convention

of Iron Masters," Documents Relating to the Manufacture of Iron in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Published by the General Committee, 1850), 37.

84. Joseph H. Davis and Douglas A. Irwin, "The Antebellum U.S. Iron Industry: Domestic Production and Foreign Competition," Explo- rations in Economic History 45 (2008): 254-69 at 262.

85. Mather, Geology of New-York (note 42), 71. 86. Rutsch, et al., The West Point Foundry Site (note 3), 78. 87. Paskoff, Industrial Evolution (note 15), 8. 88. Samuel W. Eager, An Outline History of Orange County (Newburgh,

N.Y.: S.T. Callahan, 1846-1847), 568-569. 89. James M. Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages (Phila-

delphia: American Iron and Steel Association, 1892), 362. 90. Overman, Moulder's and Founder's Pocket Guide (note 69), 179-184. 91. James G. Benton, A Course of Instruction in Ordnance and Gunnery;

Compiled for the Use of the Cadets of the United States Military Academy (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1862), 144. Italics in original.

92. Ibid., 146. The Bloomfield Furnace was located near the bound- ary of Blair and Bedford counties in south-central Pennsylvania; Cloverdale Furnace was located in Boutetour Co., north of Roa- noke, Virginia.

93. Edward Harold Mott, Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie (New York: Ticker Publishing Company, 1908), 35.

94. Lesley, Iron Manufacturer's Guide (note 14), 31-33. 95. Paskoff, Industrial Evolution (note 15), 86. 96. "Cold Spring, Nelsonville," in F. W. Beers, Atlas of New York and

Vicinity (New York: Beers, Ellis, and Soule, 1868). Flat-file map collection PHM.

97. During the nineteenth century, firebrick manufacturers added crushed used firebrick, or "grog," to refractory clays in the making of new firebrick, creating a market for used firebrick; see: Karl Gurcke, Bricks and Brickmaking: A Handbook for Historical Archaeology (Moscow: The University of Idaho Press, 1987), 99.

98. Rutsch, et al., The West Point Foundry Site (note 3), 78. 99. Overman, Manufacture of Iron (note 16), 166.

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