What is Falling Creek?
Falling Creek has two distinct
but related industries superimposed upon one another. One was the 1619-1622
first iron blast furnace in the New World, heralding the great industrial might
of what became the United States. The other is a 1750-1781 iron forge, begun by
a wealthy industrial entrepreneur, and continued as part of the manufacturing
base in the fight for American independence in the Revolutionary War. Both were
ended by wartime events. Both water powered industries at Falling Creek were
lost from view only to re-emerge in the late 20th and early 21st
centuries as signature site types.
Falling Creek was the site of the
oldest blast furnace in the New World. Starting in 1619 and ending on March 22,
1622, the Virginia Company of London built the first heavy industry on this
side of the Atlantic. This site was the only location on the James River
between the Atlantic Ocean and the Fall Line at Richmond for that venture,
having raw materials, water power, iron ore and transport all available in one
spot.
Falling Creek was also the site
of Archibald Cary of Ampthill’s Chesterfield Forge, starting in 1750 and
ending in 1781 when it was burned by Benedict Arnold. Cary was a major backer
of the American Revolution and ran the forge for the war effort. He also had a
gunpowder mill on Pocoshock Creek and owned mines in Wythe County. He was one
of the true patriots who backed the war with his own funds and effort.
Falling Creek also has one of the
very few 17th century buildings in the state. The stone foundations
on the north side of the creek were reputedly built as a gristmill by William
Byrd in the 4th quarter of the 17th century. The date
attribution is untested. The building itself is a wonderfully complex set of
rebuilds in stone attesting to the power of Falling Creek and the tenacious
mindset of the people who worked in the mill.
Quick Review Page
Who: The Virginia Company of London,
the sponsors of Jamestown, had an early interest in money making ventures and
financed a blast furnace to produce pig iron to ship to England. After
searching the James River, they found Falling Creek. They enlisted Captain
Bluett, an ironmaster, for the job. He died before reaching Virginia. The
Virginia Company then enlisted John Berkeley with his son Maurice to take over.
They promised a plentiful supply of iron by Whitsuntide of 1622 (June 9).
What: The first iron blast furnace in
the New World.
The beginning of heavy industry
in the New World.
A site attacked and destroyed by
Opechancanough of the Powhatan Chiefdom.
A forge for the American
Revolution.
A site attacked and destroyed by
Benedict Arnold in the American Revolution.
When: Late spring, 1619: construction
began. March 22, 1622: the site was destroyed by the Powhatans. Summer, 1622:
unsuccessful effort to repair the works by Maurice Berkeley. 1630’s: another
unsuccessful attempt by the son of Sir John Zouche to restart the furnace.
1680’s and 1690’s: William Byrd mentions attempting to start an ironworks.
1750-1781: Archibald Cary’s Chesterfield Forge operates. Burned in 1781 by
Benedict Arnold.
Where: On the banks of Falling Creek
east of Rt. 1, west of I-95 and exactly on the Fall Line dividing Tidewater
from the Piedmont. The site is a Chesterfield County Park. Falling Creek, about
5 miles below Richmond and about 3/4th of a mile inland from the
James River there is a waterfall that the early writers said “…his farther description of the
place (called The falling Creeke) to be so fitting for that purpose, as if
Nature had applyed her selfe to the wish and direction of the Workeman; where
also were great stones hardly seene else where in VIRGINIA, lying on the place,
as though they had beene brought thither to aduance the erection of those
Workes.”
How: At the falls, the Virginia Company
built a wooden dam to empound Falling Creek to have a constant water supply, a
wooden flume to carry water from the dam to the water wheel, a water wheel to turn the axle that in turn provided
power to the bellows, a bellows (1 or 2) to provide a blast of air to the furnace, a
furnace of up to 25 feet square and 25 feet tall to smelt iron, a set of
buildings for storing ore, charcoal, flux, a charging bridge from the hill to
the top of the furnace, a forge to make wrought iron, a set of worker’s houses
probably on top of the hill and other buildings that might be needed.
Wheelbarrows or baskets delivered set amounts of iron ore, flux
and charcoal to the top of the stack via the charging bridge. They were added in layers after the entire
furnace was filled with charcoal and lit to “run it in”, as one would preheat
an oven before baking. The stack was filled to the top with a triple layer of
iron ore (raw material), charcoal (fuel), and flux (silica remover) after the
furnace was “run in”. The blast of air onto the furnace created a chemical
reaction inside the stack of the furnace that allowed the oxygen in the ferric
oxide (iron ore) to combine with the carbon in the charcoal. What came out of
the top of the furnace was carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. What came out of
the bottom was glassy silica slag as a waste product. The money making product
was a compound of mainly iron, but with small amounts of silica and carbon.
The molten iron flowed into a large shallow channel called a sow and then into
smaller but deeper forms called pigs wherein the whole thing looked like a sow
with suckling pigs, hence the name. However, in the early 17th century in what was effectively the infancy of the industry, the molten metal may have flowed into sows which were then processed and only later when mass production techniques improved did the sow and pig system come into common usage. When the pigs cooled, they were ready for
either shipping to market or were sent to a forge for processing into wrought
iron that a blacksmith could use or to a foundry where they were remelted and
cast into end-user items such as kettles, frying pans, cannons, firebacks, etc.
What Can Be Seen Today At
Falling Creek?
Falling Creek is part of the
Chesterfield County Parks system. If you stand on the promontory to the north
of where old Marina Drive ends, you can see the entire site.
The site has two sets of falls.
The upper falls has a drop of less than 3 feet and the lower falls has a drop
of about 6 feet. On the right or south bank on the stream edge several square
and rectangular post sockets are visible. These are thought to be part of the
dam and flume system for the ironworks. Some were visible in the 1950’s but the
floods of the 1990’s and early 2000’s have exposed far more. At the lower
falls, a small set of post sockets extends across the upper lip of the falls,
probably supporting a strongback dam.
The concrete walls just below the
falls with the automobile axle that is a vertical support are remnants of Roger
Bensley’s 1930’s planned community.
The pool east of the lower falls
is about 20 feet deep and has been a favorite swimming hole for generations of
residents. Before Gaston, a sycamore tree with a rope provided a swing out to
drop into the water.
A rock ledge is visible on the
east side of the pool. This was exposed by Gaston and also has post sockets cut
into it.
There are also signs of rock
quarrying on the south side of the creek. Various 1” diameter holes can be seen
that were used to place gunpowder to obtain quarry blocks probably in the 1823
for the bridge just upstream. Some may be part of the Falling Creek Ironworks
and/or part of Cary’s Forge operations.
The south channel has wooden crib
timbers of Archibald Cary’s Forge visible. The cribwork is a wooden framework
infilled with boulders and clay to provide a firm base for the working
apparatus that powered the forge. At low tide, the highest timber is nearly out
of the water. Beneath it, if the water is clear, two 24” square timbers can be
seen placed at right angles to the east-west upper timber. These are the
foundation for the water wheel, the axle and bellows for Cary’s forge. They
were cut in two phases. The first were cut from 1730-40 and the second set were
cut from 1760-1770 according to the dendrochronology work done that calibrated
the tree-rings to calendar year dates.
The stone building on the north
bank was a gristmill. It may have been built by William Byrd in the late 17th
century. It was certainly in use by Archibald Cary. He constructed a headrace
that appears on an 1802 plat. The gristmill was last used in the 20th
century to grind mica which makes glossy paint “glossy”. On the high ground
behind the mill there was a whiskey distillery that operated in the early 20th
century. That area also includes the miller’s house shown on the 1802 plat.
The 17th Century At
Falling Creek
Soon after the settlement at Jamestown
began in 1607, exploration of the interior began. The James River was explored
to Richmond by Captain John Smith and Christopher Newport. While Captain John
Smith was probably accurate in his assessment of some of the settlers, it is
highly questionable that such a broad brush can be applied to all. When
writing, one perhaps refers to incidents that involve not all of a group. Bill
Kelso’s excavations at Jamestown have shed fascinating light on the abilities
of some of the people there. Among the fops, dilettantes and other assorted
idiots that history has erroneously labeled them, men of science were also
included. Looking for the Northwest Passage and for gold were the top orders of
the day. People knowledgeable in minerals very early on located iron ore,
assayed it and shipped a few tons back to England. Somewhere between 1607 and
1610, Falling Creek was identified as a near perfect place for heavy industry.
Communication back to the
Virginia Company in England extolled the virtues of Falling Creek. Venture
capitalists of the day were contacted and a Captain Bluett (his first name has
yet to be discovered) was hired as ironmaster. Bluett and 150 men were sent to
establish no less than 3 ironworks in Virginia. There is no indication of
another ironworks apart from Falling Creek being started. Doubtless this was
because Bluett died on the voyage over and because others of his men likewise
perished from “seasoning”, a process that killed from 50 to 90% of the early
immigrants. The remnants were not able to complete the blast
furnace at Falling Creek.
Interest in iron making did not
stop. John Berkeley was hired on the same conditions as Bluett. With a crew
to finish one blast furnace, they set sail for Virginia. John Berkeley, with
his son Maurice and 25 others, they promised a plentiful supply of iron by
Whitsuntide (June 9, 1622). “And the Iron-workes brought after five thousand
pounds expences to that assured perfection, as with in three months they
promised to send home great quantities. However, the Powhatans had other plans. The death of
Powhatan and the ascension of Opechancanough as paramount chief brought an end
to any accommodation with the English who had expanded their settlements
farther into Powhatan territories. A coordinated attack was planned for all of
the English settlements for the morning of March, 22, 1622. Hundreds of
settlers were killed in the attacks. Their aim was to force the English to
leave the Powhatan territory. At Falling Creek, 2 children survived and the ironworks
was destroyed.
The second iron working venture
followed immediately after the 1622 uprising when Maurice Berkeley attempted to
restart Falling Creek but was unsuccessful.
The third attempt was in the period 1634
to 1636. Sir John Zouch came to Virginia in 1634. In his 1636 will that was proved in 1639 he lamented that his son had spent upwards of £250.00 plus more of Zouch’s own to no result in
getting the ironworks going again. Zouch had sold his English holdings for
£10,000. If his expenditure equaled his son’s, putting over 5% of his worth
into this venture showed extraordinary resolve.
The fourth and fifth iron working
ventures came after William Byrd I accumulated at least part of the original
Zouch patent via various transactions. The Higgins, et. al. Report cites Hatch
and Gregory who cite Brock (1885) who stated that in 1687 and 1696 William Byrd
I undertook the revival of the ironworks at Falling Creek. Unfortunately, the
extent of his revival is unknown. He is credited with the erection of a sawmill
and tannery on the property.
The 18th Century At
Falling Creek
The sixth iron working venture
started no earlier than 1749 when Archibald Cary inherited the property from
his father. According to Robert Brock (1937:12) Cary started an iron works to
produce bar iron from pig. This finery forge operation has a varied history.
Hatch and Gregory (1962:280) using unattributed sources, state that the forge
was unprofitable and the land soon returned to grist milling. However, they go
on to cite other referenced sources that argue for continuous operations
through to 1781 when the structures on the property were burned by Benedict
Arnold. Hatch & Gregory (1962:281) cite a 1769 visitor who had seen the
operating iron works, and a 1779 visit by a British POW relates that the iron
works at Falling Creek were in use. The 1769 visitor published his book in 1784
and commented in margin notes that the works were destroyed in 1781 by the
British. It appears that the assertion that the ironworks were unprofitable and
turned to other operations including gristmilling needs further study.
The 19th Century At
Falling Creek
The gristmill continued after the
death of Archibald Cary. It was improved by adding a headrace from a new dam
upstream that provided a more steady water supply than the volatile waters at
the falls downstream. In that century, the mill appears to have been built
higher by the addition of at least 2 floors, as well as extended westward to
fit the new headrace. The headrace flume was replaced by a pipe, the hole for
which may still be seen at the mill seat.
Robert Alonzo Brock of the
Smithsonian started academic research at the site when he visited in 1876 and
published his findings in 1885. He wrote that he found “scoriaie” on the ground proving the
site produced iron.
The 20th Century At
Falling Creek
The 20th century was
the swan song for industrial activity on Falling Creek. Gristmills had been
gradually phased out as the monster mills of the Midwest superceded the smaller
custom mills elsewhere. Their demise was greatly aided by sanitary laws that in
effect forced the smaller mills out of business due to the cost of upgrading.
The owners of the Falling Creek mill diversified their operation to include grinding
mica for the paint industry. Mica was the basis for the gloss in paint. Falling
Creek mill probably went the way of most mills in Virginia that were within the
reach of a wrecker’s cable that was used to pull out the metal for the war
effort in World War II.
The mill burned and what was left
was a set of stone walls that hold the history of the site in them. The mill
walls show various repairs, rebuilds, extensions and upgrades chronicling the
life of the mill from probably the 17th century into the 21st
century. Even the east doorway is enigmatic. Rather than rectangular, it is
trapezoidal. Ned Heite remarked that the shape was found in iron buildings in
the northeast.
The site refused to go quietly
into that good night. A small and very determined group of people who grew up
in the area and who came to know of the importance of the site from other areas
and states came to investigate. Sporadic investigations by historians, amateur
and professional archaeologists, metallurgists and geophysical surveyors were
made.
Roger Bensley developed Bensley
Village in the 1930’s and acquired Falling Creek as part of his holdings. It
was the first Bon Air type of planned community south of the James. Bensley had
a bulldozer and used it to uncover what he termed the furnace with several
enigmatic structures. His efforts were used as the basis for more formal
investigations by historians and archaeologists. Unfortunately, Bensley never
produced a map of his work, nor was one produced later that showed where he found
his features.
Roland Wells Robbins who
excavated at Saugus in Massachusetts visited the site twice. Paul Hudson,
curator at Jamestown and Frederick Pease of the Chesterfield Historical Society
conducted extensive correspondence regarding the site. Charles Hatch &
Thurlow Gates Gregory investigated the site and performed metallurgical
analysis on pig iron recovered from the site. Howard A. MacCord, Sr., then
State Archaeologist, conducted excavations at the site in 1962 using
Archeological Society of Virginia volunteers, and the College of William and
Mary also surveyed on both sides of the creek. Higgins, et al. all claim to
have found evidence of a blast furnace on the site. Their efforts provided the
first accurate map of the gristmill, the falls and the post sockets visible
before the later floods uncovered more. Their work on the gristmill property
has compiled the archival history of the property (Linebaugh & Blanton
1995).
Browning & Associates, Ltd.
interest in the project grew out of long-term interest in ironworking sites and
by James H. Brothers IV’s Masters Thesis work on iron. We had by then decided
to work from first principles to re-examine the entire issue of when the
ironworks operated there, how it operated and what happened after the 1622
termination. We were also cognizant that the Cary Forge had altered the
landscape enormously. Visits to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources
and the Virginia Historical Society revealed that artifacts previously
identified as part of the 17th century venture were in fact part of
Cary’s Forge. All of the slag samples were bubbly slag that is a mixture of
prills of iron, pieces of unrefined iron, charcoal and silica. The voids in the
matrix of forge slag come from air bubbles trapped in the viscous mass that is
being processed.
The signature product of a blast
furnace is pig iron and glassy slag. The former is the currency produced by the
site and may not be expected to be found at the site where it was produced. The
latter is a waste product and will be discarded in close proximity to the
smelting site and is quite unmistakable. Glassy slag is pure enough to be
recycled into glass objects.
Our concern was that despite
strenuous and long-term claims that Falling Creek had gotten into blast, the
signature artifacts (glassy slag) demonstrating that fact had not been recovered from the
site. The window of opportunity from the documents was quite small. Beverley
sent back a letter in the autumn of 1621 stating that he would have a plentiful
supply of iron by the next summer. His campaign would have started in early
1622, possibly in the middle of February. The outside temperature has to be
warm enough that the water wheel will not freeze as the bellows would then not
work and the furnace would cease to work. Ironmasters started a campaign late
enough in the year to ensure the water supply would not stop and kept going
until the following winter when temperatures got low enough to stop the wheel.
Beverley would have had at most 5 weeks of smelting and possibly as little as 3
weeks before the Powhatans attacked and stopped the venture.
What We Thought We Knew
Conventional wisdom had the
Falling Creek Ironworks on the south or right bank of Falling Creek and
Archibald Cary’s Chesterfield Forge on the north or left bank of Falling Creek.
This was uniformly accepted from the 1885 Brock investigation to the 1994
William & Mary excavation. However, later investigations showed that
interaction between the two banks had occurred and that what are now known to
be erroneous assumptions were made.
The dam across the channel that
today hugs the north side of the floodplain was a ripple except at extreme low
tides when the character was more evident. It contained skulls and mossers from
Cary’s forge operation. The floodplain was also littered with forge slag.
Therefore, if the north bank belongs only to Cary hypothesis was true, there
should have been no Cary material on the south bank. The biggest problem with
this is that it flies in the face of standard practice. Cary owned both banks
for a considerable distance on either side and there was no sound reason for
him to have avoided the south side of the creek. In light of the very large
pile of slag reportedly removed by the Highway Department in the 1930’s for
road fill being on the south bank on the lower floodplain, the left bank
supposition was built on no real evidence. Cleanouts of a culvert under Marina
Drive just below the promontory were about half full of forge slag. The
excavations of Hatch and Gregory as well as MacCord all had copious amounts of
forge slag in them.
Cary operated his forge which
produced copious amounts of slag as an industrial waste product. At the end of
each day, each forge hearth was allowed to cool. In the next morning, the
cooled slag lumps called skulls or mossers (so named for their resemblance to
the human skull) were gathered and dumped off-site. This material was dumped on
the floodplain to build up the land from floods and to provide a firm base for
the buildings that Benedict Arnold burned in 1781.
Hatch and Gregory, MacCord and
the W&M investigations all mentioned a charcoal pile. Accepted wisdom was
that it was the charcoal pile for the blast furnace. A radiocarbon date of 1570
was obtained which seemed to validate the proposition.
There is but one large problem
with that hypothesis. It is in the wrong location for a blast furnace. Blast
furnaces are fed (charged) from the top via a charging bridge. Where the
charcoal patch was located was on the floodplain and was at the toe of the
slope. That is decidedly the wrong place to put charcoal which will absorb
moister and become useless.
As the furnace had to be fed from
the top, either the promontory was the “top” or the higher ground where the
apartments are located was the “top”. Bensley in his construction has altered
the back or south end of the promontory such that the original contours cannot
be determined. If the original slope was steep, it is more likely that the
higher elevation by the apartments was used. But, as the height of the stack is
not known, and 17th century furnaces were not as high as later ones
(up to the 25’ limit), it is possible that the promontory was where the
charging bridge was located. Another factor is that the elevation of the base
of the furnace over sea level is not now known. Given eustatic sea level rises
of 4 feet, the possible seat might have been that much lower. The promontory
might have been quite high enough.
The charcoal pile was in the
correct location to feed a set of forge hearths that Cary had set up. But, that
would go against conventional wisdom and was not considered likely until
Hurricane Fran, followed by Hurricane Gaston, cut an “L” shaped channel out of
the floodplain and removed all of the alluvial sands on the upper floodplain.
The Falling Creek Ironworks
Foundation engaged Browning & Associates, Ltd. to do a set of strata cuts
in the bank of the cut to determine the sequence. It was then noted that a
thick layer of clay had been deposited down into the cut and that it contained
20th century debris, notably 3 hole molded bricks.
At first glance, the channel
opened by Fran had the appearance of a major flood event by cutting a channel
in the floodplain, but nothing indicated it was anything other than a single
event. When Gaston came through, water was high enough to cover the promontory,
and in fact nearly demolished the Falling Creek bridge upstream. It also peeled
back the banks, removed Bensley’s retaining walls, removed the floodplain sands
and widened the cut. The cut banks then revealed several tree stumps that were
apparently in situ but at the bottom of the cut at the water level. These
stumps all angled out into the water entirely consistent with trees that had
once grown along the banks of the stream.
Subsequent to that, two storms in
successive weeks in early 2007 dropped 4 inches of rain each into the Falling
Creek drainage and the resultant floodwaters again altered the landscape. Their
chief result was to widen and deepen the cut. The result was that Ralph Lovern
noted that large timbers were protruding from the south bank of the new cut on
the south bank of Falling Creek.
Enough material had been removed
by then to provide information to interpret the sequence of events with some
accuracy. This also necessitated completely revisiting and discarding the
binary idea of settlement between the two separate sequences of iron operations
there. It was abundantly clear that Cary had operated on the south bank and if
subsequent excavations are done, will certainly prove that his forge operated
there. The thick clay layer was shown to be deposited by Bensley in order to
infill the cut channel and tailrace channel for Cary’s forge operation. As
conventional wisdom has also held that the stone mill remnant on the north bank
was William Byrd’s gristmill, the seating of the forge on the opposite side of
the creek would make more sense from a physical spacing viewpoint. Also, low
tides have shown that a wall lining the north bank of the north cut of Falling
Creek east of the mill is in fact the edging for a roadway that is underpinned
by planks and which is oriented to the dam that is largely composed of skulls
and mossers. This road and dam would offer access to the floodplain from the
north bank of the creek. We presume that there was a bridge crossing the cut on
the south bank to allow crossing of that water body.
So rather than having one stream
course hugging the north bank of Falling Creek, it appears that at for part of
the time, there were two watercourses in operation and that Cary’s Chesterfield
Forge was in operation on the south bank while Byrd’s Mill (later Cary’s Mill)
was in operation on the north bank.
What’s Planned At Falling
Creek?
The magnetometer survey (Jones
& Maki 1999) showed a large magnetic anomaly consistent with a blast
furnace under the road to the marina downstream. Once the road was moved, the
plan was for the roadfill to be removed in order to see what physical traces of
the blast furnace site could be identified.
A trackhoe was brought in and the
road fill was removed down to a charcoal layer. As charcoal was a component of
the blast furnace, machine work was stopped. Stratigraphic archaeological
excavation of two trenches showed that the charcoal contained barbed wire
(post-1874) and clear glass (20th century) and was therefore part of
Bensley’s road fill. The charcoal itself had no “structural integrity” and was
in fact smashed into microscopic pieces by Bensley’s work. The charcoal layer
in turn overlay another fill layer.
A mini-excavator was then brought
in to remove the fill and yet another charcoal layer was discerned below the
gravelly fill. Excavation was again done by natural layers and yet more smashed
charcoal and barbed wire was discovered.
The mini-excavator was again
brought in and more material was removed down to what appears to be undisturbed
archaeological layers.
We are now at the stage where the
next step will be to go into the cribwork that Archibald Cary built for his
forge from 1750-1781. To do that, we are going to have to remove the crib
infill and expose the timbers. The timbers are massive, some as large as
36x44x120” while others are just big and long (18”x33’). To let these pieces of
history just decay to nothing is too terrible to contemplate. We will need to
get them up after they’re recorded, then preserve them in chemicals, store them
until we can get a museum built and finally put them into a display of very
large and early timbers. To preserve the timbers, we need to have a storage
space, to build a tank long enough and deep enough to put the timbers in it and
to purchase the chemicals to preserve the timbers. All that takes time and it
is expensive.
Once that part is done, we want
to see how Cary renovated the 17th century Virginia Company cribwork
as the magnetic anomaly the survey showed hasn’t been found yet and is
presumably down under all the Cary built cribwork.
The short terms goals are to
finance the excavation and preservation of the Cary Forge timbers and to
investigate the 17th century ironworks remnants below them.
References Cited
Brock, Robert Alonzo
1885 Early
Iron Manufacture in Virginia – 1619-1776. Proceedings of the United
States National Museum 8:77-80.
Brock, Robert K.
1937 Archibald
Cary of Ampthill: Wheelhorse of the Revolution. Garrett and Massie, Richmond.
Hatch, Charles E., Jr. and
Thurlow Gates Gregory
1962 The
First Iron Blast Furnace, 1619-1622: The Birth of a Mighty Industry on Falling
Creek in Virginia. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 70(3):259-296
Higgins, Thomas F. III and
Charles Downing, Donald W. Linebaugh, Antony Opperman, and Randolph Turner III
1995 Archaeological
Investigations Of Site 44CF7, Falling Creek Iron Works And Vicinity,
Chesterfield County, Virginia. Report on file at Virginia Department of Historic
Resources.
Jones, Geoffrey and David L. Maki
1999 A
Geophysical Investigation At The Falling Creek Iron Works (44CF7), Chesterfield
County, Virginia. Archaeo-Physics Report of Investigation Number 13.
Linebaugh, Donald W. & Dennis
B. Blanton
1995 Archaeological
Investigations Of Site 44CF141, Cary Forge and Ampthill/Watkins Mill,
Chesterfield County, Virginia. Report on file at Virginia Department of Historic
Resources.
MacCord, Howard A.
1964 Exploratory
Excavations at the First Ironworks in America (44CF7). Quarterly Bulletin of
the Archeological Society of Virginia