Iron refining begins on the Blackberry River in East Canaan, Connecticut

Although the Forbes family was the moving force in creating an iron industry along the Blackberry River in East Canaan and Norfolk they weren’t the ones who began refining iron along the Blackberry River. The credit for that was Richard Seymour who built a bloomery on the south bank of the Blackberry in East Canaan during 1736. Seymour’s operation attracted the attention of John Forbes, a blacksmith, who came from Simsbury, Connecticut to work at Seymour’s Forge. In turn he attracted his son Samuel Forbes who moved from Simsbury to first live in Sheffield, Massachusetts to join his father at Seymour’s forge in 1743. Samuel Forbes later became famous as an early industrialist, and was the iron master that cast the cannon during the Revolution for George Washington.

Although they were making iron from iron ore in East Canaan over two and a half centuries ago Mother Nature beat them to the punch by several hundred million years by producing native iron in the area. This is one of the few places where native iron exists on the face of the earth. The only other locality in the western hemisphere where it is found is in Greenland.

The Forbes family originally came from Taunton, Massachusetts an early iron center in the eastern part of the state where iron had been produced from bog iron in the early part of the 1600s. John Forbes had worked there in his youth and following the dictum, Go West young man, he did eventually finding himself in East Canaan. In 1746 he built his own forge alongside the Blackberry and by 1751 had bought half interest in Seymour’s forge.

By 1759, his son Samuel built his own forge on the Blackberry the second one that was located in East Canaan. By 1760 Samuel and his brother Elisha owned a one-eighth interest in the Iron Mine at Ore Hill in Salisbury, Connecticut. That marked the beginning of Salisbury Iron gaining a worldwide reputation.

Thomas Lamb, and the Beginning of the Iron Industry

The first person to discover its importance after the discovery of iron ore in 1731 at Ore Hill, that was named Old Hill at the time was Thomas Lamb, a clever entrepreneur from Springfield, Massachusetts. He established the first iron forge in the Lime Rock district of Salisbury. This was the first bloomery forge for producing wrought-iron in the town of Salisbury. Iron that is produced in this fashion ore is heated to a white heat by use of charcoal causing the iron to separate from its ores. It has to be beaten with a heavy hammer to drive the particles of slag out of the iron to produce wrought iron.

Because the owners of land were nobles that were granted their lands by the king who never came out from England they did not know the true value of their land. Thomas Lamb was able to buy 5,000 acres of land, and the water rights for $137 on several of the rivers and streams flowing through Salisbury.

Lamb’s purchases were the basis of the iron industry in Salisbury. Among the streams he got water rights on was the Salmon Fell Kill that runs through Line Rock before it enters the Housatonic River. It was on the Salmon Kill that he established his forge, because it was 4.4 miles from the location of the money to forge the iron ore was carried to the forge in saddlebags on horses. He erected his forge in 1734 after he been awarded the water rights on the Salmon Fell Kill.

He had several workers that were mining iron ore from a mind at a time was called “Lamb’s three acre grant.” This was eventually renamed Hendrik’s ore bed, and still later the Davis ore bed or Davis mine.

With the passing of time Thomas Lamb's forge employed several men working there too produce wrought iron. For the most part the output of this forge was making household utensils or other iron parts that were used on farms.

A few years later Thomas Lamb sold off all of his Salisbury holdings for $1000. He then Moved to North Carolina where he became a sea captain, and never had any further dealings with the Salisbury area.

The development of the district would have to wait for other people like Squire Samuel Forbes and Ethan Allen who would become famous later for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain during the Revolutionary war.

The Discovery of Ore Hill

The Discovery of the Ore Hill Mine:

One summer afternoon Ezekiel Ashley and John Pell climbed a small hill on a 100 acre tract of land they were surveying in the Town of Salisbury Connecticut. At the top of the hill they discovered soil that looked exactly like iron rust. That was exactly what it was, hydrous iron oxide, more commonly known as “limonite” an ore of iron. In 1887 the decedents of Ezekiel Ashley were still proprietors of the mine on Ore Hill.

At first the local blacksmiths came to the mine and hauled the ore off in their saddlebags where they refined it into wrought iron at their forge. This is a way of smelting iron ore directly into iron by causing the ore to be reduced to iron by removing the oxygen in the ore by combining it with charcoal. This process makes a spongy mass of iron and slag that afterwards is hammered on an anvil. This process called louping causes the impurities to be driven from the iron. The result is a bar of wrought iron ready to be used for other articles made of iron.

The first furnace capable of making cast iron was erected seven miles away in Ancram, NY by Phillip Livingstone. This furnace was to take an active part in the Revolution as it was this furnace that forged one of the chains that George Washington caused to block the Hudson River at West Point.

We can thank nature for this wonderful ore, but we have to look into the dim past over four hundred years ago when there was a volcanic arc of islands similar to modern Japan that in the process of erupting caused a layer of volcanic ash to rain down on top of the vast coral reefs along the east coast of North America. This was called the Walloomsac formation. Between eruptions the coral reef laid down another thin layer of limestone that then would be buried by the next eruption. This created a formation that was a layer of volcanic ash interbedded with a limestone. The result was a calcareous schist that was rich in iron and magnesium.

Both iron and magnesium are capable of acting as a weak acid under the right conditions. The right conditions were met by the underlying limestone reef. Over years this calcium carbonate extracted both iron and magnesium from the Walloomsac formation. The remarkable iron ore found on Ore Hill was one result of this chemical magic, another was the replacement of some of the calcium in the limestone leaving a new rock called Dolostone.

The combination of iron ore and Dolostone was just what the doctor ordered. One was the ore, and when it was added to the iron furnace the Dolostone acted as a flux making the ore easier to smelt using charcoal.

The Salisbury Iron District

Early Iron Work in Connecticut

by John Carter

Connecticut used to be a renowned far and wide for its manufacturing, but what is less well known is that mining was also a very large part of Connecticut's industrial scene. According to the Connecticut Geological Survey in Hartford there are over 600 abandoned mines and quarries within the borders of Connecticut. The iron ore of the Salisbury District gave rise to some of the largest mines in Connecticut. The Salisbury District was not just one town it consisted of seven towns in Connecticut as well as other iron producing towns in Western Massachusetts and Eastern New York. Iron was produced throughout the district that at its peak contained twenty seven blast furnaces producing cast iron as well is innumerable forges capable of producing wrought iron for almost two centuries.

Iron itself was not a monopoly of Salisbury as the first iron furnace in Connecticut was erected in West Haven at the outlet of Lake Saltonstall by the first Governor of Connecticut John Winthrop Jr. Winthrop had been active in setting up several of the furnaces and Eastern Massachusetts including the one located at Saugus. The Saugus Massachusetts furnaces have sense been reconstructed and are now part of the National Park Service.

In 1644 Winthrop petitioned the General Courts of Connecticut for permission to erect an iron furnace in what is now West Haven at the outlet of Lake Saltonstall. In 1651 he finally gained the General Courts permission or wrecked a furnace under some very liberal terms. This was the earliest iron furnace that was located in the State of Connecticut. Winthrop’s furnace continued in production until 1678 to produce “sowes” (pig iron) and pots until the ore bed was presumably depleted. The furnace was allowed to go out of blast, and it wasn't until some 80 years later that another iron furnace was erected in Salisbury, Connecticut. In the intervening 80 years all the iron that was produced in Connecticut came from small forges.