The Endor Iron Furnace

Thanks Bruce. I didn't know that and I live in Blaenau Gwent.
p.s. I wonder if Rhys and I are related.


Really? When you mentioned Wales earlier, I just assumed you were already aware of the connection.:smile:

By the time the Civil War started, a man named Joseph Anderson was the owner, and the Welsh connection had been broken, except for the Tredegar name. Anderson was of Scots descent, and had all the characteristics we commonly associate with the Scots. He did appreciate the value of experienced UK iron workers, though, and sought to recruit immigrants to Richmond even during the most trying years of the war. He wasn't successful in the effort, however, and labor shortages of all kinds plagued the iron works throughout the war years.

I don't want to he hard on the Blaneau Gwent Heritage Forum, but its not really accurate to say the Richmond plant "greatly influenced US industrial development and history." Iron factories in the North were more technologically advanced, and British companies were selling a lot of iron rails in the South into the early 1860s, partially because Anderson just couldn't compete. Anderson's real forte was munitions, especially cannon, and he was an important contractor to the US federal government before the Civil War. Indeed, much of Anderson's success as a businessman 1861-1865 can be laid to the fact that he had the only factory in the South that was already up and running and able to produce new cannon. The Confederates would work hard to establish other new cannon production centers in other parts of the South, but were never successful on the scale needed.
 
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I was just reading through an old local history book of my home town which states that 'a man from the town, James Leonard, arrived in America in the year 1626, ' To survey the hills for iron, on behalf of the Massachusetts Bay Company' and in 1642 with his brother Henry established the first successful ironworks at Lynn, Massachusetts.'
 
There are the ruins of two in the Land Between the Lakes area. The Great Western Iron Furnace in what was Model, Tenn. and in operation from 1854 to 1856. It's poor location is the reason given for it's short life. There was also a shortage of ore and a slave insurrection by the furnace crew. The furnace remains is located just south of the Homeplace 1850's working farm. Center Furnace near Hematite Lake, Ky. which was in operation intermittently from 1852 to 1912. It was one of the few iron furnace in operation during the Civil War. There others also located in this area. Laura Furnace opened in 1855, and was forced to close by the Civil War. Others in this are included Mammoth, Fulton, Empire, Iron Mountain and Peytona Furnace. The first two are the only ones with any remains. The others are under Lake Barkley, or nothing remains of them. All were constructed from the 1840's through 1855.
 
What were these furnaces used for?
The Furnaces provided iron (pig iron) to the Confederacy and the Union armies from 1862 to 1865 thus supplying armaments and various materials needed for the war and thereafter some furnaces operated periodically through the nineteenth century and depending on location and state of condition of the furnace some survived into the twentieth century.
 
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