Iron plantation

Last updated
An example of an 18th-19th century iron plantation at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site a living history museum in southeast Pennsylvania Hopewell Furnace National Historical Site Iron Plantation.jpg
An example of an 18th-19th century iron plantation at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site a living history museum in southeast Pennsylvania

Iron plantations were rural localities emergent in the late-18th century and predominant in the early-19th century that specialized in the production of pig iron and bar iron from crude iron ore. [1] Such plantations derive their name from two sources: first, because they were nearly self-sufficient communities despite an almost singular focus on the production of iron to be sold on the market, and second, because of the large swaths of forest and land necessary to provide charcoal fuel and ore for their operations. The first plantations stretched across the Northeast, Midwest, and Southern United States, “the chief charcoal iron producing states [being] Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky." [2] Many produced raw materials used in the American Revolution or to be exported to England. [3] Throughout the remainder of the 19th century, however, only locations that adopted new technologies first introduced by competing coal- and coke-powered smelters in the rapidly industrializing field persisted.

Contents

Organization and Operation

Plantations typically consisted of a nearly self-sufficient community including the head iron master, workers and their families, and other shopkeepers, blacksmiths, and agricultural workers needed to sustain mining and smelting operations as well as life on the plantation. [1] Plantations were foremost land-intensive operations, commonly comprising thousands of acres. The grounds were typically defined by a conspicuous mansion, belonging to the iron master, which looked out on the charcoal furnace or iron forge from atop a geographically higher location. [1]

The iron master was also in charge of hiring skilled labor and investing capital in construction and maintenance of charcoal furnaces and forges for the refining and working of iron. Workers on the plantation were often not paid directly in wages. Rather, the master tallied an employee’s earnings on a balance sheet, which he then offset with purchases of merchandise from the community’s stores. [1] Whereas the iron master lived a rather luxurious life with the opportunity to afford travel, tutors for his children, and expensive home furnishings, workers had few material possessions of their own. Workers were not well traveled outside of the plantations, and little news outside of the confines of the plantation concerned their daily lives. Notably, however, poverty was not well known on the plantations, even in times of economic depression, and workers’ wages in the United States greatly surpassed comparable wages in the European iron industry.

Work forces on iron plantations consisted of a wide array of labor and included indentured servants, slaves, and free laborers. Indentured servants composed the largest group. [3] Indentured servants and slaves typically performed the least skilled tasks on plantations, serving as woodcutters to supply the charcoal furnaces or as miners to dig iron ore. [3] Few opportunities were afforded to laborers for upwards mobility on plantations.

Development of Plantations and the Iron Industry

Eventually, more efficient fossil fuels substituted for wood-based charcoal, and “the semi-feudal iron plantation was replaced by the urban establishment and the company town” typically possessing a coke furnace. [4] The lack of nearby ore deposits additionally limited many plantations from being able to economically transport large quantities of ore over long distances to be smelted on the plantations themselves. [2] Wagon transport of bar and pig iron to cities further added to costs and could run as high as forty percent of the market price per ton of pig iron in 1728, according to John Potts, a member of an iron plantation in Pennsylvania.

Iron plantations in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri in particular better survived the evolving technological landscape by adopting practices that increased charcoal energy efficiency, that is, the amount of charcoal consumed per ton of iron smelted. One such technique was to raise the heights of furnaces to create a longer and more uniform reaction chamber to produce more homogeneous pig iron. Whereas antebellum furnaces were built with brick and mortar and reached only 30-35 feet in height, new furnaces remodeled in the 1840s reached as high as 65 feet. [2] Continued demand for pig iron to be transported westward provided an additional competitive advantage to plantations in these states.

The iron industry shifted to one largely determined by the production of steel during the British Industrial Revolution and in the later half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. [5] As such, blast furnaces, steam and electric power, and coke fuel replaced the largely land- and labor-intensive practices of iron making on plantations dependent on large tracts of land to produce charcoal and additional labor to sustain both the iron making operations and the community at large. Though iron produced on plantations remained practically useful for Westward Expansion, the eastern United States and Europe increasingly demanded more pliable and resistant steel for use in buildings, ships, engines, and railroads. [5] Though demand still remained for pig iron as an ingredient in steel production, most iron plantations were no longer economically competitive with coke-powered smelters which located themselves increasingly closer to the major cities requiring their products.

See also

Related Research Articles

Coke (fuel) Grey, hard and porous fuel with high carbon content and few impurities.

Coke is a grey, hard, and porous fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ore smelting, but also as a fuel in stoves and forges when air pollution is a concern.

Steelmaking Process for producing steel from iron ore and scrap

Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and/or scrap. In steelmaking, impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon are removed from the sourced iron, and alloying elements such as manganese, nickel, chromium, carbon and vanadium are added to produce different grades of steel. Limiting dissolved gases such as nitrogen and oxygen and entrained impurities in the steel is also important to ensure the quality of the products cast from the liquid steel.

Blast furnace Type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. Blast refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric pressure.

Anthracite iron

Anthracite iron or Anthracite 'Pig Iron' is the substance created by the smelting together of anthracite coal and iron ore, that is using Anthracite coal instead of charcoal to smelt iron ores — and was an important historic advance in the late-1830s enabling great acceleration the industrial revolution in Europe and North America.

Bloomery Type of furnace once used widely for smelting iron from its oxides

A bloomery is a type of metallurgical furnace once used widely for smelting iron from its oxides. The bloomery was the earliest form of smelter capable of smelting iron. Bloomeries produce a porous mass of iron and slag called a bloom. The mix of slag and iron in the bloom, termed sponge iron, is usually consolidated and further forged into wrought iron. Blast furnaces, which produce pig iron, have largely superseded bloomeries.

Reverberatory furnace metallurgical furnace

A reverberatory furnace is a metallurgical or process furnace that isolates the material being processed from contact with the fuel, but not from contact with combustion gases. The term reverberation is used here in a generic sense of rebounding or reflecting, not in the acoustic sense of echoing.

Ironworks

An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ironworks is ironworks.

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in southeastern Berks County, near Elverson, Pennsylvania, is an example of an American 19th century rural "iron plantation," whose operations were based around a charcoal-fired cold-blast iron blast furnace. The significant restored structures include the furnace group (blast furnace, water wheel, blast machinery, cast house and charcoal house), as well as the ironmaster's house, a company store, the blacksmith's shop, a barn and several worker's houses.

Seend Ironstone Quarry and Road Cutting is a 3 acres (1.2 ha) Geological Site of Special Scientific Interest at Seend in Wiltshire, England, notified in 1965. The site contains facies of Lower Greensand containing specimens of fauna not found elsewhere.

Ferrous metallurgy

Ferrous metallurgy, the metallurgy of iron and its alloys, began in prehistory. The earliest surviving iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores from at least Greece to India, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The use of wrought iron was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread defined the Iron Age. During the medieval period, smiths in Europe found a way of producing wrought iron from cast iron using finery forges. All these processes required charcoal as fuel.

Cornwall Iron Furnace United States historic place

Cornwall Iron Furnace is a designated National Historic Landmark that is administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in Cornwall, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The furnace was a leading Pennsylvania iron producer from 1742 until it was shut down in 1883. The furnaces, support buildings and surrounding community have been preserved as a historical site and museum, providing a glimpse into Lebanon County's industrial past. The site is the only intact charcoal-burning iron blast furnace in its original plantation in the western hemisphere. Established by Peter Grubb in 1742, Cornwall Furnace was operated during the Revolution by his sons Curtis and Peter Jr. who were major arms providers to George Washington. Robert Coleman acquired Cornwall Furnace after the Revolution and became Pennsylvania's first millionaire. Ownership of the furnace and its surroundings was transferred to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1932.

Charcoal iron is the substance created by the smelting of iron ore with charcoal.

The Grubb Family Iron Dynasty was a succession of iron manufacturing enterprises owned and operated by Grubb family members for more than 165 years. Collectively, they were Pennsylvania's leading iron manufacturer between 1840 and 1870.

In 2014, the United States was the world’s third-largest producer of raw steel, and the sixth-largest producer of pig iron. The industry produced 29 million metric tons of pig iron and 88 million tons of steel. Most iron and steel in the United States is now made from iron and steel scrap, rather than iron ore. The United States is also a major importer of iron and steel, as well as iron and steel products.

History of the iron and steel industry in the United States Aspect of history

The US iron and steel industry has paralleled the industry in other countries in technological developments. In the 1800s, the US switched from charcoal to coke in ore smelting, adopted the Bessemer process, and saw the rise of very large integrated steel mills. In the 20th century, the US industry successively adopted the open hearth furnace, then the basic oxygen steelmaking process. Since the American industry peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, the US industry has shifted to small mini-mills and specialty mills, using iron and steel scrap as feedstock, rather than iron ore.

Bonawe Iron Furnace

The Bonawe Iron Furnace, was an industrial complex located in Bonawe, Lorn District, Scotland. It operated in the middle of the eighteenth century, with the aim of producing pig iron. Central to this complex was a charcoal fired blast furnace.

Bogolong iron mine and blast furnace

The Bogolong iron mine and blast furnace is an abandoned iron mining and smelting site, near Bookham, New South Wales, Australia. Located in an area known best for sheep grazing and wool, it has been called Australia's 'forgotten furnace'. In 1874, the blast furnace produced a small amount of pig iron—sufficient to allow its testing—that was smelted from iron ore mined nearby. Plans to operate commercially did not eventuate. It is significant as one of the only three remaining ruins of 19th-Century iron-smelting blast furnaces in Australia, and the only one in New South Wales.

British and Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company Iron mining and smelting company

The British and Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company (BTCIC) was an iron mining and smelting company that operated from 1874 to 1878 in Northern Tasmania, Australia. It was formed by floating the operations of a private company, the Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company that operated between 1871 and 1874.

Wundowie charcoal iron and wood distillation plant Charcoal iron and wood distillation plant at Wundowie, Western Australia

The Wundowie charcoal iron and wood distillation plant manufactured pig iron between 1948 and 1981 and wood distillation products between 1950 and 1977, at Wundowie, Western Australia.

The South Australian Iron and Steel Company, officially South Australian Iron and Steel Company Limited, was a colonial era iron-making venture, located in the Hindmarsh Tiers, near Mount Jagged, in the upper reaches of the Hindmarsh River valley, South Australia. Its blast furnace operated intermittently, over the period from 16 July to 5 December 1874.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Bining, Arthur (1933). "The Iron Plantations of Early Pennsylvania". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 57 (2): 117–137.
  2. 1 2 3 Schallenberg, Richard; Ault, David A. (1977). "Raw Materials Supply and Technological Change in the American Charcoal Iron Industry". Technology and Culture. 18 (3): 436–466. doi:10.2307/3103901.
  3. 1 2 3 Steffen, Charles (1979). "The Pre-Industrial Iron Worker: Northampton Iron Works, 1780-1820". Labor History. 20 (1): 89–110. doi:10.1080/00236567908584521.
  4. ↑ Temin, Peter (1964). Iron and Steel in Nineteenth Century America: An Economic Inquiry . pp.  62–76.
  5. 1 2 Allen, Robert. "International Competition in Iron and Steel, 1850-1913". Journal of Economic History. 39 (4): 911–937. doi:10.1017/s0022050700098673.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.