Cow Manure and Cannon

Molly Pitchur manning a Revolutionary War cannon during a battle

When the troubles between the British and the Colonists broke into open warfare on April 19, 1775 one of the first acts of the then Governor of Connecticut, Jonathon Trumbull was ti send a dispatch rider to Salisbury in the northwest corner of Connecticut seizing the iron furnace at Salisbury under the name of the Committee of Public Safety.  The furnace by that time belonged to Richard Smith an English entrepreneur who was a suspected Tory.  Smith at the time was in England on a business trip where the outbreak of war left him stranded until the war was over in 1783.  Included in the dispatches sent to Salisbury was another to Squire Samuel Forbes of East Canaan urging him to come out of retirement to operate the furnace for the Colonials.

Samuel Forbes at the time was the only man in the colonies capable of casting canon without bursting. When George Washington took command of the colonial forces besieging Boston the number of cannon possessed by the colonials could be counted on one hand. Their opponents, the British Army was well supplied with all kinds of artillery that came from the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. In a daring raid led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold they succeeded in capturing 59 cannon weighing sixty tons.  They were dragged all the way from Ft. Ticonderoga 300 miles to Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston. The threat presented by these cannon drove the British out of Boston getting the colonials their first taste of victory. Most of these cannon were lost later during the Battle of Long Island, but by then George Washington was being supplied by cannon cast by Squire Forbes at Salisbury.

When the war broke out the furnace at Salisbury had passed into the hands of Richard Smith from which its supplied pig iron to Smith's finery and Robertsville Connecticut that produced wrought iron and crucible steel. The crucible steel was a real secret weapon in the hands of the colonials because they were able to make cutters for the boring mill that produced the cannon cast in Salisbury. The finery in Robertsville marked the beginning of the United States steel industry.

From the iron furnace at Salisbury Squire Forbes was able to cast 150 tons of cannon during the first six months of the Revolutionary war. Throughout the war to Salisbury canon was able to produce over 850 cannon ranging from 4 to 34 pounders. It was these cannon that gave Washington's army's enough edge so they were able to meet the British on equal terms, and combined with the artillery supplied by the French were able to find the defeat the British at Yorktown Virginia.

In the process of casting these cannon for sent to make use of several innovations. For instance it was necessary to bore the cannon in a vertical position by suspending them from a framework over the boring mill, and lowering them down out of the cutter had until the cannon was bored to its finished depth.

The process actually began by making a wooden pattern of the cannon that was covered with oil and coated with a mixture made from clay, cow manure, straw and strips of old cloth. This was removed from the pattern that was made in pieces so it could be taken apart like a puzzle to release the mold. The mold was alone to thoroughly dry before it was used.

After the mold was completely dry it was buried in the sand of the casting floor clear up to the muzzle. The furnace was breached allowing the cast iron to flow out through a series of channels into the molds. It was the practice of Squire Forbes to cast several cannon in one pour.

The cannon were then suspended over the boring mill sold their bores could be made. After that they were test fired in an area of Lakeville that is even today known as the ordinance grounds where it is still possible to find an occasional cannonball leftover from the Revolutionary war.

When the cannon were finished and mounted they were shipped off to war usually by way of Poughkeepsie New York. These cannon found many uses aside from accompanying the Army; they were also used in coastal defense and onboard some of the ships used by the colonials during the war.

It was the casting of these cannon returned for Connecticut the name, “Arsenal of Democracy.” It is passing strange that there are hardly any historical monuments to this period of American history; so they Salisbury Connecticut is known as a home for New Yorkers. In its day however, Northwestern Connecticut and Salisbury were well on their way to becoming the iron and steel producing center of the United States. For almost 2 centuries they were to play this role until the last furnace went out of blow in 1923.

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.