Ashes of industry: Couple unearths charcoal’s forgotten footprints

FALLS VILLAGE — Barbara and Peter Rzasa love to travel around the countryside as many do, but their purpose is a bit different from others. They are in search of remnants of charcoal pits and mounds.

The couple were the guest speakers at the August session of “First Tuesdays at 7” put on by the Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society at the South Canaan Meetinghouse.

Introduced to the subject by a forester friend, Peter Rzasa said he was drawn to it because of his love of colonial history. Giving a bit of background, he explained colonists coming to New England found a wealth of trees and chopped them down to use as fuel and to build their homes. Farmers eventually went west when they realized the struggles to successful agriculture and the trees started to grow back. Around 1830, another growth began giving way to the advent of the charcoal iron industry in eastern United States.

Hundreds of small furnaces dotted the landscape in which local iron ore was combined with charcoal and limestone. Charcoal, he said, has been around for 5,000 years. Among its uses was the fueling of waterwheel-powered forges that turned the iron into bars for tools, nails and other articles. People also turned to charcoal for curing tobacco, packing and preserving meat, a remedy for stomach ailments and poison treatment. He then passed out samples of the material for audience members to take with them.

It was preferred over soft coal because it burned hotter and longer and was easier to transport, he said. The downside was the ever-increasing scarcity of trees, the risk of colliers (charcoal burners) getting burned after it was exposed to air, limited availability only during the warmer seasons and it was more expensive.

Peter Rzasa described the lives of colliers, which could be challenging. Often living in primitive huts, they worked from April through October preparing the hearths by leveling areas about 40 feet in diameter. They stacked piles of wood and tended to the pits. In advance, woodchoppers cut trees into billets to be used in the process.

According to literature from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, “Charcoal making vanished with the modernization of the iron and steel industry, but the vestiges of the process can be found in abandoned hearths throughout the forested mountains of Pennsylvania and other ironmaking states,” including Connecticut.

As they travel around the area, including the Naugatauck Valley and parts of the tri-state area of northwest Connecticut, eastern Dutchess County, New York, southern Berkshire County in Massachusetts, the Rzasas, who live in Seymour, hunt for the presence of charcoal dust and charcoal pieces below the topsoil to find the mounds, or hearths. They are mostly on sandy dry soil in small valleys, at the base of long steep hills or rocky outcrops. They are always near a road and plants are found on top of them. There are 21,000 hearths in Litchfield County.

Barbara Rzasa concluded the program talking about Charcoal Annie, a Sharon legend from the late 1800s who knew all about making charcoal and eventually hired a crew to oversee her business for 20 years. A woman ahead of her time, she was able to secure a bank loan to start her company, which was almost unheard of for a female at that time. “She was a tough, smart woman,” said Rzasa.

The couple run Nature & Historical Presentations with programs on a wide variety of topics. They can be reached at 203-888-0358.

Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society’s “First Tuesdays at 7” summer talk series returns Sept. 2 with a presentation by Billy Segalla titled “Stunt Pilot Stanley Segalla & the History of the Canaan Airport.”