No rust on this man of iron

SHARON — It’s not news that Sharon’s Ed Kirby has a new book. He’s chronicled the geological and industrial industry of the Northwest Corner since 1995 (“Exploring the Berkshire Hills”) and 1998 (“Echoes of Iron in Connecticut’s Northwest Corner”). 

Those surveys plus Victor C. Rolando’s “200 Years of Soot and Sweat” (1993) were foundation works in my local history library as I began my own investigations into the still little-recognized influence of the three-state Salisbury Iron District on the region’s economy and growth.

I first met Kirby when he gave a talk in Lenox, Mass., probably in 1996, on our underlying geology. I attended the Iron Masters Conference at Housatonic Valley Regional High School in 1998, where he described the ascent of the iron men.

And he’s not abandoned the topic. In a presentation on Saturday, Nov. 23, at the Sharon Historical Society & Museum, to introduce his latest book, “The Making of the Iron Industrial Age,” Kirby said it’s his last. And it will be, until the next one.

The book traces the origins of iron ore here — starting 1.2 billion years ago, give or take a few centuries — and of its discovery— at Ore Hill in Salisbury in 1731 — and its exploitation — the first forge was fired in 1735 on the Salmon Kill in Lakeville. The last blast at the Beckley Furnace in East Canaan was in 1919.

A good deal of the history of ironmaking here has emerged in the last few decades, enlarging on the pioneering work of Herbert C. Keith and Charles Rufus Harte, “The Early Iron Industry of Connecticut” (1935) — for a copy of which I paid a pretty penny years ago at Johnnycake Books in Salisbury.

Financial scandal

Kirby’s book is in two parts. It starts with a timeline of what was going on in Sharon and Salisbury, Cornwall, Kent and North Canaan — oh, and of course Horatio Ames on the river privilege across from Falls Village — and the rest of the Salisbury Iron District through this year. 

“It includes many associations of local ironmakers with the building of the Transcontinental Railroad,” Kirby told the audience in Sharon. “Does anyone know what the Credit Mobilier Scandal was about?”

Few in the room raised their hands, awaiting his explanation of how financial manipulators in 1872-1873 formed a fake construction company, purportedly to funnel funds to the various contractors working on the road. 

Credit Mobilier of America accepted funds from the federal government but distributed only some of them to builders. The rest went to the board of directors and influential national politicians, who were given stock at below-exchange cost, allowing them to pocket profits from resale. Some big Connecticut names at the time were involved.

Kirby’s timeline offers a different angle on history, combining seeming disparate goings-on in the many towns in the Housatonic River watershed — there were ultimately 43 furnaces in operation in Connecticut, southern Massachusetts and central eastern New York —  but interesting patterns emerge. Barnums and Richardsons and Pettees and others show up all over the place.

Salisbury’s cannons

The historian explained how Salisbury became the center of cannon manufacture during the American Revolution, and the fascinating way the weapons were tested: They were cast in solid form. Then the barrel bores were drilled by waterpower from Factory Pond. 

Each cannon was taken to the hill near the Church of Saint Mary and fired into the hill, over the ball field. 

“If the cannon fired to the right, a tag was tied to the barrel indicating it needed to be aimed 3 degrees in that direction, or 2 degrees to the left. The bore was not always straight.”

Kirby took advisory roles in the preservation of the lime kiln in Sharon, the truncated furnace stack in Kent and Beckley Furnace in East Canaan — the latter where he, Dick Paddock, Walt Michaels, Geoff Brown and other Friends of Beckley Furnace kept the story of the now all-but-invisible history of the iron industry alive. 

The stack at Copake Ironworks in Copake Falls has an active friends group. The Richmond iron furnace, the last standing in Massachusetts, is on private property and neglected, Kirby said. He was a consultant when Society for Industrial Archaelogy volunteers and others surveyed the property years ago.

Before I forget, the second part of the Kirby volume offers biographies of key players in the iron trade here, from John Adam Jr. to John Winthrop the Younger.

The book is an invaluable addition to the Salisbury Iron District bookshelf and a solid starting place for the next local historian to take an interest.

The columnist’s 18th and 19th Century Water-Powered Industry in the Upper Housatonic River Valley was published in 2014.