The Fairbanks Family and the First Successful Ironworks in the Massachusetts Bay Colony: Part I

Between 1628 and 1638, English people, mostly Puritans, immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony (MBC) for various reasons. See: Why The Fairbanks and Prescott Families Leave New England: Part I and
Why The Fairbanks and Prescott Families Leave New England: Part II

Mines and minerals were already on the Puritan’s minds when they took over the Massachusetts Bay Company, in 1628, even though religion was their main impetus to emigrate. After all, the Spanish found gold and silver in their ventures to the New World. There was already iron mining in Virginia (Hartley, page 33), publications in England reported on the availability of iron in New England (Hartley, page 27). The Massachusetts Bay Company recruited two men who were specialized in metals to accompany their first ship to sail in 1629 (Hartley, page 46-46).

The Fairbanks family knew the first man, Abraham Shaw, who was granted rights to search for mines in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Shaw was a West Yorkshire emigrant, like the Fairbanks family. He was also an early settler of Dedham. The grant was enacted November 2, 1637, shortly after Dedham was settled. It gave Shaw “half the benefit of coals or iron stone, which shall be found in any ground which is in the country’s disposing” (Mass. Record, I, 206.) The next year Shaw died without exercising this grant.
See: The Fairbanks and Prescotts, Friends and Neighbors who came to the New World in the Seventeenth Century

By the time the Fairbanks family had built their home in Dedham in 1637, the Great Migration of settlers to Massachusetts Bay Colony slowed and nearly stopped between 1638 and 1640. During the early part of the migration, the Colony’s needs were well supplied by the many ships arriving from England. Ironware: kettles, skillets, fire backs, nails, barrel hoops, anchors and chains for the ships, wagon wheels, plows, tools, weapons, and household hardware were among these supplies. They were expensive to ship from England and with fewer ships sailing from England later, New England needed to make their own goods.

Up to that time, a major income in the MBC came from outfitting new settlers for farming, building, and living in the New World. When arrival of new settlers slowed, the economy dipped dramatically. This threw the colony into a depression. The Colony needed a new way to bring in money.

In 1641, the MBC General Court enacted the “Encouragement to Discovery of Mines, &c.” (Mass Records, I, 327.) John Winthrop Jr., son of Governor Winthrop, is credited for searching for minerals, organizing, procuring financial backing, building, and managing the first ironworks in MBC. This operation was funded by a group of Englishmen called the Company of Undertakers. However, the local magistrates, seeing the importance of iron production as a public service, made concessions that encouraged and aided development.

Building the First Iron Works in Massachusetts Bay Colony

Three components were vital to producing iron: an ample resource of raw iron ore, timbers for fuel to make charcoal to heat the ore, and running water to power the machinery. Other necessities included specialized skilled workers, a large force of unskilled laborers, a developed infrastructure of a town to provide supplies, housing, and meet the needs of the workers. Transportation was required for bringing in supplies and sending out the finished product.

Winthrop ironworks at Braintree, nineteen miles south of Boston, became operational in the spring of 1645. He thought he had met all the requirements for successful production. By December of 1645, the Company of Undertakers selected a new manager, Richard Leader, who found the flow of running water too low for the furnace, especially during droughts.

By 1646, Leader was developing a new ironworks on the Saugus River, ten miles north of Boston, near the town called Lynn (Hartley, page 126). This facility was called Hammersmith, now known as Saugus Iron Works. It was the first successful integrated ironworks in America (Hartley, page 8) and at that time, was among the top ironworks technologically in the world.

On the land that the original works stood, there is now a working replication of Hammersmith developed and operated by the National Park Service.

Workers at the Iron Works

Specialized Iron Workers

Besides managers and clerks, the ironworks needed men specialized in the operations of producing iron products. There were only a few men with previous knowledge in working with the iron. There was a big demand for iron workers all over Europe. The early ones, recruited by Winthrop, came from England and Wales (Hartley, page 186). Later, deforestation in England prevented them from producing coal. This shut down operations in England and made more specialists available in New England. (Hartley, 140).

Specialized workers at the twenty-one foot tall furnace included a founder, who released the molten iron into sand troughs to make pig iron, and a potter, who made the molds for the cast iron kettles and skillets, at the furnace. At the forge, there were two finers, one chafer, and a hammerman, all considered specialized workers.

The specialized personnel were paid for unskilled prep work, like cutting and hauling wood and digging raw ore and gabro, flux, when they were not occupied by their station of expertise. Likewise, at least in the forge, it was likely to find all worker helping in all areas.

Skilled Workers

There were nine colliers. This was one of the most difficult and highest paid jobs. They processed fallen trees into charcoal to produce the extreme heats, 3000 degree, to melt the iron for purification and molding. With the colliers, there were two sawyers who sawed the wood into pieces to be convert into charcoal.

In the forge, where the iron was further purified and shaped into wrought iron, there were ten workers. Most were highly skilled. Besides the ones listed above, others charged the fineries, or were considered skilled forge hands. There were also less experience forge helpers. Even though Jonas was not specialized in iron making, he had skills sought for the functioning of the process.

The men at the forge also ran the rolling and slitting operations in the next building. There they made the processed iron into sheets, bars, and splits to sell to the local and England blacksmiths to make into tools, weapons, and nails. It is interesting to note; nails were so valuable that if a building burned, men sifted through the ashes to retrieve them for reuse.

Joseph Jenks was an independent contractor who worked as a blacksmith and made tools from the iron produced. He had his own smith shop and is credited for receiving the first patent by the MBC for his tools, for building the first fire engine, and making dies for the Pine Tree shillings. He often worked with apprentices, some remained to work at his shop after their indenture was over.

One man, Francis Perry, was the carpenter. Other skilled craftsmen supplied the needs of the workers. They included tailors, glovers, shoemakers, leather workers, pharmacist, etc. Gloves, aprons, and shoes were in big demand at the works.

Unskilled Workers

Under the unskilled category came men in the neighborhood who were hired to cut wood, haul supplies, bring up bog iron that developed on the roots of trees in the swampy areas, and mine gabro, the flux agent used to separate the iron from impurities. Unskilled company workers carried charcoal, raw ore, and gabro by basket over a bridge to the mouth of the giant furnace, twenty-six feet square at bottom and twenty-one feet high. The furnace was fed twenty-four hours a day for 30-40 weeks continually to smelting the iron (Hartley, 171).

 Two Indigenous people, known as Thomas and the other Anthony,  were cited as cutting and cording wood for the same wages as the other workers. (Hartley, page 165).

 Heavy pig iron bars, about 290 pounds, had to be taken by wheelbarrows or basket from the furnace to the forge for further refining (Harley, page 175). The bar iron was carried from the forge building to the rolling and slitting building for shaping. Then finished products were moved to a storage building down by the Saugus River. Boatmen, also hired by the ironworks, in shallow crafts made their way up the Saugus River to the operations during high tide bringing raw ore to the operations. On their return down the river, they took pig iron to the forge in Braintree, and finished product to Boston.

 Again, all the men employed by the ironworks would help with these activities when not working at their station. Jonas would use what he learned about the whole process of iron production later in Lancaster, Massachusetts when he worked with John Prescott.

General Helpers and Maintenance

The majority of the workers at Hammersmith were considered servants. There were two categories, bonded and hired. They both were under contract to serve the company for a designated period of time.

Bonded servants were transported to the New World to work. Some were from England; many others were Scottish prisoners of war from the Dunbar Battle. The bonded servants received generous clothing, which included shoes, gloves and aprons, food, lodging, healthcare, tobacco, and liquor. If they remained with the company, they were paid like other employees.

Many of these were employed in making charcoal, mowing pastures for thatch and feeding livestock, caring for the company animals, farming, and gardening. There were so many workers that a small town established beside the works for the people who were employed.

Jonas Fairbanks and Robert Crossman were considered hired servants by E. N. Hartley in his book. Hired servants were paid a wage and provided transportation, housing, and food. The hired servants were considered to have a skill that was needed at the works. They are listed as servants because their food allotment was classified under servants (Hartley, page 197).

Jonas, Robert and a clerk, Jonathan Coventry, all lived with William Osborne, the clerk or boss at Hammersmith in the absence of Richard Leader. However, other servants lived with other iron workers or in communal houses. These three men were said to make too much money to be considered servants.

Most of the employees lived in the town just over a ditch from the works. It was also called Hammersmith. In supporting its residents, it was nearly independent of other towns in the area (Hartley, page 10). There were some family homes. Most of the skilled workers were married. There were also communal buildings which housed the bonded Scottish prisoners of war. Many of the single men stayed at other iron workers’ homes.

Jonas Fairbanks at the Iron Works

Jonas Fairbanks is documented as working at Hammersmith in the most prosperous years, 1651 and 1652. The Ironworks Papers, the accounting that remains of Hammersmith, stated Jonas worked in the forge. These papers are now found at Baker Library at Harvard Business School.

After 1652, Hammersmith went into mortgage and bankruptcy. It continued to produce until after 1657, when the twenty-one year monopoly in the MBC was rescinded.

By that time, Jonas Fairbanks was in Lancaster, Massachusetts, helping a friend of the Fairbanks family, John Prescott. In 1657, Lancaster and Concord, Massachusetts were granted permission to erect ironworks within their towns. Along with helping build a grist mill, saw mill, and church, John Prescott probably sought the expertise that Jonas gained at Hammersmith. Prescott was interested in developing an ironworks at Lancaster, Massachusetts.

What’ s Up Next?

The Fairbanks Family and the First Successful Iron Works in Massachusetts Bay Colony: Part II will be the topic of next month’s blog. It will discuss how the Fairbanks family and the town of Dedham influenced Jonas Fairbanks’s decision to work at the ironworks at Hammersmith and details about his time at the ironworks

Resources

Hammersmith (Saugus Iron Works)

Hartley, E. N. Ironworks on the Saugus, University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Notes: Saugus Iron Works Tour, NPS, Saugus Iron Works, Massachusetts, August 2019.

Iron Works Papers: 1651-1652. Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School.

Geni: Braintree Iron Works (1643-1736)

Revolutionary War Journal: Iron Forge in Colonial America by Harry Schenawolf

The ESTABLISHMENT of the IRON INDUSTRY in AMERICA (for “Pre-American Ancestry of Our Leonard Ironwork” )

Shurtleff, Nathaniel B., ed, Records o the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 14 vols. in 6, 1853-54)

Hamilton, Duane. History of Essex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent

Scottish Prisoner of War

http://scottishprisonersofwar.com/2014/02/15/unity-list-updated/

https://www.geni.com/projects/Scots-Prisoners-and-their-Relocation-to-the-Colonies-1650-1654/3465

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/clanmackaysocietyusainc/scots-for-sale-the-fate-of-the-scottish-prisoners--t660.html