Albemarle Furnace Company

The Albemarle Furnace Company was a private corporation that was established in 1771 to manufacture iron within Albemarle County.

History

Background

The sites of various operations of the Albemarle Furnace Company (as well as the then-defunct Albemarle Iron Works) labeled on a map of Albemarle County. Reproduced from Virginia Minerals.

A diagram demonstrating the process by which iron ore was refined in blast furnaces during the era of the Albemarle Furnace Company. Reproduced from James Harvey Brothers IV.

A widespread desire to develop local resources within early Albemarle County eventually led three men from Baltimore named Nathaniel Giles, John Lee Webster, and John Wilkinson to buy ten acres of land in the area for the purpose of manufacturing iron in November of 1767. Giles and Webster disappeared from the county records soon after this first purchase was made, with Wilkinson being joined in their former shared venture by John Old from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1768.

On December 28, 1770, Wilkinson and Old together organized Albemarle Iron Works "for [the] construction and operation of [a] sawmill and an iron furnace for producing pig iron and also common and flat castings," with an Articles of Agreement being made and implemented. The pair made further purchases of land on what is now Dudley Mountain and along the Hardware River in the vicinity of North Garden and Covesville. Although Albemarle Iron Works would cease all operations in June of 1772 (with no usable iron having ever been produced throughout the course of the enterprise), its brief existence had sparked further interest in the metalworking industry from several other notable individuals.

Formation and activities

In 1771, the Albemarle Furnace Company was organized by numerous prominent inhabitants of the county under Old's direction. Possessing an initial capital of £2,000 sterling, the company's stockholders during this time included Colonel William Cabell (£200 sterling), Dr. William Cabell (£200 sterling), Joseph Cabell (£100 sterling), Allen Howard (£200 sterling), Edward Carter (£300 sterling), Thomas Jefferson (£100 sterling), Nicholas Lewis (£100 sterling), John Scott (£100 sterling), John Walker (£100 sterling), James Buchanan (£300 sterling), and Thomas Walker (£300 sterling). As founding members of the company, the aforementioned individuals immediately set to work purchasing larger areas of mineral land along the lower Hardware and among the Ragged Mountains.

The company would construct at least three furnaces within the county. One furnace was erected along the Hardware about a mile downstream of Carter's Bridge, eventually giving rise to a colonial-era church that was later built nearby and went by the name of 'Forge Church.' Another furnace was erected where Old Lynchburg Road crossed the north fork of the Hardware at the modern intersection of Route 631 and Route 708 (with the area long after being known as 'Old's Forge'), while still another furnace was erected on the south fork of the Hardware below the falls and south of Garland's Store. As of the early twentieth century, the last-named furnace was still in a tolerable state of preservation, although it was covered with a thick growth of shrubbery. These forges functioned by refining crude pig iron through heating and hammering with a trip hammer and thus producing bar iron, a malleable material that became the source metal from which blacksmiths were able to create wagon tines, horseshoes, hinges, nails, and tools.

Because it was illegal under British law at the time to produce and distribute iron-ware for local usage within the Thirteen Colonies, furnace production records were loosely maintained in the early years of the company's existence. According to local traditions, iron ore was excavated near North Garden and Covesville during the Revolutionary War, with Jefferson later recording in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1781) that among the iron mines worked in Virginia at the time of his writing was "Old's, on the north side of the James River in Albemarle."

Dissolution

In the waning years of the eighteenth century, the Albemarle Furnace Company began to lose steam, with Colonel Old himself having at some point switched professions from iron-master to farmer. In 1796, a suit that was instituted in the County Court under the appellation of "Cabell v. Wilkinson" was determined and winded up the affairs of the company, with Andrew Hart and Samuel Dyer being appointed as commissioners and selling the relevant lands to Nicholas Cabell. As of the early twentieth century, the only mine still remaining of those that had originally been opened by Old and Wilkinson was that known as the 'Betsy Martin Mine' in Cook's Mountain (near North Garden).