I have been reading some in Philip Alexander Bruce's study, " Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century ", which would be from the founding of Virginia to 1700, or slightly later. Mr. Bruce claimed to base his study of more than 640 pages (published in 1896) on original documents. The footnotes seem to justify this claim. I will not repeat these footnotes while I give several excerpts on the history of iron in Seventeenth Century Virginia.
“One of the strongest motives that led to the colonization of Virginia by the English was the expectation that it would supply the mother country with a vast quantity of raw [cast] iron. The demand for manufactured iron was rapidly increasing in England, and yet the ability of the English furnaces to meet this demand was declining on account of the diminishing quantity of fuel furnished by the local forests. The English people could look forward to the day when they might be forced to rely on foreign nations for their supply of a material which was coming rapidly into greater use each year. In 1621, the price of a ton of iron was about ten or twelve Pounds Sterling. Virginia was expected not only to relieve England of its dangerous and uncertain dependence upon foreign nations for its supply of raw iron, but also to furnish that commodity at a cheap rate, owing to the abundance of wood that could be used as fuel in the manufacture. These anticipations were justified y the numerous indications of the presence of iron ore observed by the earliest settlers. Capt. John Smith, whose mind was always directed to the practical and sober aspects of his surroundings, was among the first to call attention to the adaptability of the new country to iron manufacture as one of the most promising of its sources of wealth, and in order to show the substantial ground on which his expectations were based, he forwarded to England during his presidency two barrels of stones rich in tracings of iron ore. In 1609, Captain Newport transported a large quantity of the same kind of ore to the mother country on his return in the course of that year. So excellent was the metal extracted from it, amounting to sixteen or seventeen tons, that it was purchased by the East India Company, according to whose statement it proved more satisfactory than any iron, procured from other countries, which they had as yet used.”
"The earliest attempt to manufacture iron in Virginia, if reliance can be placed on the testimony of Don Maguel, a Spanish witness, was made previous to 1610. In the course of the first three years following the foundation of the settlement at Jamestown, machinery had been erected by the English settlers to work the iron mines."
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.