Ringwood's Iron Industry

By Jack Chard

ORIGINS OF THE IRON INDUSTRY

           Ironmaking in the Ringwood area had its beginnings in 1736, when Cornelius Board, and Englishman of Welsh descent, was prospecting for precious metals.  He discovered instead the local magnetite iron ore.  With his partner, Timothy Ward, he purchased land and built a bloomery at what is now known as Sterling Lake, about five miles north of Ringwood.  In 1740 Board sold his interest in the Sterling ironworks and moved to what is not the Ringwood area, where he bought land from the Proprietors of East Jersey and erected a forge.  Less than two months after buying the land, he sold acres to the Ogden family of Newark, New Jersey.  One wonders whether a family connection was involved.  The Ogdens also purchased land from the Proprietors, formed the Ringwood Company in 1742 and built the first blast furnace in the area.

           In 1762 the Ogdens built a new blast furnace.  In 1764, however, the works were offered for sale by advertisement in the "New York Mercury" of March 5, 1974.

           The next character on the scene was the remarkable Peter Hasenclever.  Born in Remscheid, Germany, in 1716, he worked as a boy in the local ironworks, but later became a traveling salesman of cloth and needles and established a business at Cadiz, Spain.  In 1763 he went to England and became a British citizen.  Although he had not visited America, he was sure of the tremendous potential of the New World.  He formed a partnership (Hasenclever, Seton, and Crofts) with a capital of 20,000 pounds sterling and in April 1764 sailed for New York, arriving six weeks later.  It seems he had learned that the Ringwood Ironworks was for sale; he purchased it July 5, 1764, and proceeded energetically to repair and improve it.

           Before leaving Europe, Hasenclever had contracted with a large number of skilled German ironworkers to bring them and their families to America.  The more than five hundred people involved in this ambitious operation started to arrive in the autumn of 1764.  Meanwhile, Hasenclever had bought 122 horses, 214 draft oxen, 51 cows, and a "vast number of implements for the works".  With great energy and remarkable organizational ability, Hasenclever within two years established four blast furnaces (in Ringwood, and also at Charlottenburg, Long Pond, and Cortlandt – all within about 20 miles of Ringwood), seven forges, two stamping mills, all the necessary waterwheel systems, charcoal houses, and all the necessary buildings for housing the workers and animals.  He constructed a network of roads, with bridges connecting the plants and supporting sawmills and carpenters' shops.  A tremendous investment!  But the winter of 1765 brought great floods and washed out many of the dams, which had to be rebuilt.  The German ironworkers demanded more money.  A shipment of iron from Ringwood received high praise in England, but expected large profits did not materialize.  However, the foundations of a large and potentially efficient enterprise had been laid.

           In addition to his ironmaking projects, Hasenclever had also purchased large tracts of land for proposing hemp, flax, and madder plantations.

           In 1766 Hasenclever heard disturbing reports that one of his partners, Andrew Seton, had been indulging in a spending spree, apparently using the partnership money.  In November, Hasenclever returned to England to investigate.  He found that some new and influential partners had become involved, in expectation of substantial profits.  Hasenclever appears to have convinced them of the soundness of the enterprise and his actions, and a new deed of partnership was drawn up, appointing him manager of the American operations.  He set sail on June 1, 1767, arriving two months later in New York.  Forty-six days later, a Jeston Humfray arrived from London with orders to supersede Hasenclever and take over management of all the properties.  This was a terrible blow.  In Hasenclever's own words:  "This clandestine maneuver does little honor to the discernment of the trustees, as they had engaged a man for the conducting of such important affairs without informing themselves about his abilities or character – a man who had never managed ironworks and was utterly ignorant of his business."  In December he received a letter from the company, ordering him to send back his books, suspending him, and repudiating debts he had incurred in the name of the company.  Again, in Hasenclever's own words:  "This was…a premeditated deceit – a plot which they had formed before they signed the deed of partnership with me…They acknowledge (in their petitions in Chancery) that they make this deed of partnership that I might return to America and assign the lands and estates to them, which I never refused to do."

           There seems no doubt that Hasenclever was treated very badly.  He returned to England and years of legal proceedings ensued, in which were included, to Hasenclever's disadvantage, indications of some very questionable activity.  Finally, in despair, he left London in 1773 to return to Germany, where Frederick the Great gave him the assignment of reorganizing the linen industry, in which project he appears to have been very successful.  He died June 13, 1793.  Less than seven months later, the long, drawn-out legal proceedings in England ended with a decision in his favor, awarding heavy damages.  Unfortunately, the American company was in bankruptcy, and there was no money to collect.

           Hasenclever was highly respected by his contemporaries in America.  At the time of his recall by the company he asked the Royal Governor to appoint a commission of important ironmasters and industrialists to inspect the ironworks he had established.  The report was highly favorable to Hasenclever, stressing the technical innovations and efficient operation.  There seems no doubt that he received outrageous treatment from his partners.  In justification of his conduct, he published in England an account of his activities in America, entitled "The Remarkable Case of Peter Hasenclever, Merchant".  This 1773 book was reproduced in facsimile by the North Jersey Highlands Historical Society in 1970, with a brief introduction and map.  Hasenclever had the vision and energy of a great industrialist.  It is tragic that he was not able to complete the undertaking he started so well.

           The company, still concerned about getting returns from its large American investment, in 1770 engaged Robert Erskine, F.R.S., to take over management and report what should be done with the property.  Although no ironmaster, Erskine was a well-regarded engineer who had been granted a patent for a new type of pump.  His election to the prestigious Royal Society as "a gentleman well versed in mathematics and Practical Mechanics" speaks well for his abilities.  He spent some months visiting ironworks in England to acquire some practical knowledge of the art and practice of ironmaking.  On arrival in Ringwood in June 1771, he found the works under the direction of an experienced ironmaster, John Jacob Faesch, one of Hasenclever's men.  They were supposed to run the works jointly, but as would be expected, friction developed, and in the following year Faesch left to set up his own ironworks, at Mount Hope.

           Erskine's recommendation to the company was to sell the works, but there were no takers.  Meanwhile, events were leading up to the American Revolution.  Erskine's sympathies were with the colonists, and he warned in letters that the policy of the government in England would inevitably lead to a break.  In 1775 he raised a company of militia from his workmen, with prime responsibility of defending the works.  When war came, he supplied iron the Revolutionary army.  However, his request for deferment of his men from military duty was turned down, and he soon lost many of them.  By the end of 1777 iron production had ceased.

           Among his accomplishments, Erskine had surveying skills.  At the request of George Washington he was appointed Geographer and Surveyor-General to the Continental Army on July 27, 1777.  Throughout the war he provided invaluable service in making maps of the areas involved in hostilities.  After a mapping trip in the autumn of 1780, he developed "a severe cold" and died two weeks later.  He is buried in the cemetery at Ringwood Manor.

           After the end of the Revolutionary War, the Ringwood estate passed through a number of hands but apparently was not operated as an ironworks until it was bought in March 1807 by Martin Ryerson, who already owned and operated the Pompton Ironworks, about ten miles south of Ringwood.  Under Ryerson the works prospered, but soon after his death in 1839 his sons were in debt and the property was up for sale by the sheriff.  Finally, in 1853, Ringwood was bought by Peter Cooper as a source of iron ore for the Phillipsburg blast furnaces of his Trenton Iron Company.  The purchase was negotiated by Abram Hewitt, business partner of Peter Cooper's son Edward, and manager with the latter of the Trenton works.  Abram and Amelia took a fancy to Ringwood and decided to make it their summer home.  The original manor house (iron master's house) had been pulled down by Martin Ryerson and a small "modern" house built in about 1810.  The Hewitts extended this house and moved into it in 1857.  The house was again enlarged in 1878, forming the elegant Victorian country house that can be seen and visited today.  The blast furnace at Ringwood was never run again after the Ryerson period, and the remains were in due course tidied away as part of the landscaping for the new house.

           The Ringwood estate had been purchased primarily for its iron mines.  However, with the pressure for iron during the American Civil War, two blast furnaces were built at the Long Pond site, about five miles away.  But by the end of the war, the economic advantages of cheaper raw materials in the Pittsburgh area forced the closing of all the eastern furnaces.  The Long Pond furnace went out of blast on May 28, 1880, ending the long history of ironmaking in the Ringwood area.  The ruins of the bases of the furnaces remain, with the skeletons of the old waterwheels.  Nearby, the ruins of the older, 18th century blast furnace were excavated in 1963.  All the furnaces were built of stone and all had waterwheel-powered blowing machinery.  A huge new 50-foot waterwheel was planned for Long Pond in 1873 but never completed.  Charcoal was used throughout the period until one furnace at Long Pond was converted to anthracite coal and operated briefly on this in 1879.

           The iron mines continued in operation until 1931.  During World War II, the Government spent much money in restoring the Peters and Cannon mines, but peace came before they were used.

          The mines were sold to private interests and changed hands several times over the next ten years.  Some iron ore was shipped during this period, but in 1961 the mines were abandoned.  An era closed.

THE IRONMAKING PROCESS

           Most iron ores are oxides of iron – that is, stable compounds of iron with oxygen.  To obtain metallic iron it is necessary to remove the oxygen.  The ironmaking process depends on the fact that carbon when heated has a great affinity for oxygen, forming carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide gas.

           The earliest method of ironmaking was the so-called bloomery process, which goes back to prehistoric times but continued in use into the 19th century in less-developed areas.  In this process small pieces of iron ore were mixed with charcoal (carbon) in something very like a blacksmith's hearth.  An air blast was applied to the ignited charcoal to produce a hot fire, and the carbon reacted with the iron oxide are to produce metallic iron and carbon dioxide gas.  (Actually the carbon formed carbon monoxide gas with the air blast and this gas, rather than solid carbon, reduced the iron oxide.)  The temperature never became hot enough to melt the iron produced; it was produced as a pasty mass and was pulled out of the hearth and hammered to squeeze out as slag the charcoal and earth impurities produced form the ore.  The product was essentially carbon-free iron, soft and malleable, although still containing some slag particles.  It was a very small-scale process, producing only a few pounds of iron in a day's work.  But the equipment was simple and the capital investment small.  By the 18th century, waterwheels were used to operate a bellows to provide the blast, and also to operate a tilt hammer to forge the "blooms" produced.  A bloomery was often called a "forge".

           The major improvement in ironmaking was the invention of the blast furnace, which goes back to the 1400's.  A vertical shaft was provided over the hearth, originally probably to preheat the incoming charge with hot gases.  The shaft, which actually had a bottle-shaped configuration, was contained in a square stone tower about 25 feet high.  The iron ore and charcoal were tipped in at the top, and bellows produced an air blast at the bottom.  (See diagram.)  In the upper part of the shaft or stack the carbon monoxide gas reduced the iron oxide to metallic iron, as in the bloomery; but as the iron particles worked their way down in contact with the red-hot charcoal, they picked up about 3˝% carbon, which dissolved in the iron.  The melting point of iron containing this amount of carbon is much lower than that of pure iron; hence, at the bottom of the blast furnace, the carbon-containing iron melted.  It accumulated in the "crucible" and was run out every 12 hours into channels in the sand floor of the "casting house".  A series of parallel channels at right angles to the main channel was thought to resemble a sow suckling her young, hence the term "pig iron".

           A big advantage of liquid iron was that it could be run into molds to form cast firebacks, pots, and cannon.  But because the high carbon content was present as flakes of graphite running through the iron, the cast iron was brittle and could not be forged by the blacksmith into such items as hinges and horseshoes.  To make a malleable product, it was necessary to remove the carbon.  This was done in a "finery", which was very much like a bloomery in appearance.  The pig iron was melted in an air blast in a hearth with a charcoal fire, and the excess carbon was in effect "burnt out" by reacting with the air blast to form carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide gas.  As the carbon content fell, the melting point increased, so that the final product was pasty and was removed to be hammered into a rough bar.  Again, this was essentially carbon-free iron and was therefore soft and malleable.  Needless to say, it required skill to control this operation satisfactorily.

           There was usually a third step.  The rough bar from the "finery" was reheated in a separate hearth called a "chafery" and forged down to the required shape and form for sale.

           Usually the blast furnace, finery, and chafery were built at some distance from one another along a stream, for the amount of power available to work bellows and hammers by waterwheels was limited at any one point.  Further downstream, additional heads of water would be available again for more waterwheels.

           The finery was often referred to as a "forge".  We see reference to "a forge with four fires", that is, with four working hearths.

           Blast furnaces were usually built against a hillside, so that the charcoal and ore could be brought across a "chargin bridge" to the level of the top of the furnace.  A small amount of limestone was added to help flux the impurities in the ore.

           All early furnaces were open at the top, and smoke and flames rose day and night.  Only well into the 19th century was the technique developed to close in the furnace and collect the gases for use as fuel in heating furnaces.

          Originally, charcoal was the only fuel used, but by the beginning of the 18th century in Britain there was a severe fuel shortage – it required many acres of woodlands each year to make the charcoal to keep a blast furnace going.  After many fruitless attempts, Abram Darby finally, in 1709, found a way to use coke (partially pre-burned bituminous coal) to replace charcoal.  By the end of the 18th century, very few blast furnaces in England were still using charcoal.  But here in America there was still plenty of wood and the fuel problem did not become acute until later, when anthracite coal was used.  The first successful anthracite furnace operated at Stanhope, New Jersey, in 1841.  The anthracite was stronger than the charcoal and thus did not crush as easily, so that it was possible to build the furnaces higher.

           The use of coke and anthracite required more effective blast that the old waterwheel-driven bellows could give.  The old leather bellows had been generally replaced by the end of the 18th century by piston and cylinder devices of cast iron.  Isaac Wilkinson in England used the steam engine to work the blowing engines.  In 1757, steam power made improved blast possible.  However, in the Ringwood area waterwheels were used up to the end of the ironmaking at Long Pond works, in 1880.  Abram Hewitt calculated that for the Long Pond site the use of waterpower, rather than steam, saved 50 cents per ton in the cost of the iron made.