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In grateful
appreciation to:
Bob Grigg
Curator:
Colebrook Historical
Society
Municipal Historian:
Town of Colebrook,
County of Litchfield,
State of Connecticut, USA
"Walt
and I had conducted primary test bores to see if we could determine the
dimensions and exact locations of the buildings depicted on the 1771 map..."
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It doesn’t seem possible, but it has been
nine years since we began to unravel the shroud of mystery that
surrounded the Revolutionary War forge site located in Colebrook’s
southeastern corner.
For as many years as the oldest resident can
remember, tales of a forge having been in operation in Robertsville during
the War of Independence abounded, but when asked specific questions such as
exactly where it was located or what products were produced there, answers
became vague, or as we now know, wildly inaccurate.
Richard Smith, a Boston merchant who had
cornered the iron industry in New England during the late 1760s, had
purchased approximately 280 acres of land in the southeastern corner of
Colebrook in 1769 and 1770 and had caused to be constructed 11 structures
based around a large four-fired forge. This little community, built in
complete isolation in an undeveloped corner of a township that was not to be
incorporated for another ten years, was to produce vital iron products for
the upcoming War of Independence. By the twentieth century however, the
whole complex was all but forgotten.
We can thank one person for the resurgence of
interest in the forge and the
gathering of information that brought both it and the man responsible for
its creation and operation to the fore. Walt Landgraf had been central to
the reconstruction of the Beckley furnace in Canaan, undertaken in the
1990s. During his research on the iron industry in Litchfield County, he
came upon a research librarian in the Baker Library of the Harvard
University Business College who offhandedly remarked during a lunch break
one day that they had much more material than what pertained to Salisbury
and Canaan; would he be interested in seeing what they had on the town of
Colebrook? That was the end of Walt’s lunch for that day, and what we now
know of the subject can be dated from that moment.
Back in Colebrook, the first order of the day
was to locate the exact location of the forge building. This proved to be
more complicated than one might expect, as local lore mentioned three
possible locations; one was immediately upstream from the bridge on Old
Creamery Road, another was immediately downstream from that same bridge and
the third was near the confluence of Sandy Brook and Still River, another
few hundred yards downstream from the aforementioned bridge. Land records
may mention when a building was erected on a piece of property, but when you
are dealing with a 280-acre plot of land, it seldom if ever gives the exact
location. What finally gave us the break we were looking for was a land
transaction conducted around 1820 that stated that its southeast corner was
66 feet from the northwest corner of the old forge. The site was the one
just upstream from the Old Creamery Bridge. One factor in the difficulty in
determining that this was indeed the spot was that the entire floor area had
been filled with large boulders from the reconstruction of the Old Creamery
Bridge after the 1955 flood. This may ultimately prove to be a blessing in
disguise, as it is an effective means to discourage scavengers who might
remove artifacts, thus decreasing the scientific value of the site.
Once we knew where the forge had been located,
we set out to determine what exactly had been made there. We were
immediately confronted with a bit of misinformation appearing in the text on
the official historical marker sign in front of the historical society in
Colebrook Center. It states that one of the commodities manufactured in town
during the Revolution was cannon. Not so, cannon could only be poured into a
mold constructed directly in front of a blast furnace, such as the one in
Salisbury, near the source of the iron ore. Colebrook never had a blast
furnace, but did have Smith’s Forge. A forge takes the product of the blast
furnace (pig iron) and by reheating and pounding out impurities, creates a
marketable product. It didn’t take us long to realize that we were dealing
with no ordinary forge. To begin with, the building was physically larger
than most forges; it contained four water wheels, each enclosed and supplied
with a stove so as to ensure continuous operation during the coldest periods
of winter.
 Our oral
histories tell of ore being transported to Colebrook from Salisbury in
saddlebags by horses. Initially we treated this skeptically, as the
transportation costs for ore over the 23 miles separating Ore Hill in
Salisbury from Colebrook were deemed to have been prohibitive. However, in
May 2000, evidence was unearthed in the State Library in Hartford by Walt
Landgraf that the manager of the Robertsville Forge, Jacob Ogden, had
petitioned the state legislature to aid in the rebuilding of the facility
after it burned in 1781. One of his arguments was that he had 50 tons of
Salisbury ore on hand, and that it was common knowledge how important the
forge was to the war effort. The legislature did come to his aid, and the
forge was rebuilt. This amount of ore does not seem likely to have been
transported by saddlebags; certainly some form of wagon must have been
employed, either two-wheeled or four-wheeled, and drawn by oxen, not horses.
The old newspapers, now on microfilm in the
library, have proven to be invaluable, as on several occasions Smith sought
to sell the forge, never with much success. The ads were quite specific in
their descriptions, thus our detailed knowledge of not only what the
physical plant looked like, but what and how much was being produced.
The most important product manufactured for
the war effort had to have been the forge’s ability to produce small
quantities of steel. We know that Smith (or his managing partner, Jared
Lane) imported a man from “the low countries” who had the knowledge of steel
manufacturing in his head. The British government had specifically denied
the colonies the right to manufacture many commodities, one of which was
steel, but without the ability to produce steel, cannon could not be
produced. As stated earlier, pouring white-hot molten iron into a mold in
front of the blast furnace made cannon. After it cools, a centering rod is
extracted and the cannon blank must then be bored out to whatever
specifications are required. This can only be done by the use of a steel
bit. The colonists’ inability to manufacture steel was one of the
considerations taken into account by the British military planners, leading
them, at least early on, to believe that the colonists would never be able
to confront the might of the British military forces on the battlefields of
North America. The forge in Colebrook may well have produced the first steel
ever to be made in the Americas. We have not been able to find any accounts
of earlier manufacturers, although one of the professors at Yale University,
who is involved with our research, cautioned against making a claim for
being the first.
Robertsville Forge Update Continued
While steel bits may have been the most
militarily important product produced there, it was an insignificant amount
of the overall production. By bulk and weight, anchors destined for merchant
vessels probably accounted for the majority, but this operation took place
in the mid-1780s, after the war had ended. One entry in October 1785
mentions 14,702 lbs. of anchors, which were transported six to a cart to
Hartford, where they were sold.
During the war, steel appears to have been
produced around the beginning of 1777, the year Burgoyne’s army surrendered
at Saratoga. An advertisement in the Hartford newspaper that year states
that they have steel “made in the German way, to be sold at this place, by
the subscriber, who has procured workmen that understand the business, and
warrant the steel to be good for edge tools.”
The following year this ad appeared, also in
the Hartford paper: “Steel for plough iron and edge tools, manufactured in
the German method, full drawn out neat and small, to be sold for cash by the
subscriber. I with pleasure inform my customers that I have improved in the
skill from what was made here last year, although that was good steel.” It
is signed by the manager, Jacob Ogden.
Not only did we discover what was made there,
we also found out what wasn’t made there; all of our legends had the
forge making canon balls during the Revolution. Why did this story get
started? A large pile of three-pounders were uncovered at the site by school
children from the Forge School on a scrap drive around 1944. The ball on
display at the historical society is one of them; proof positive, right? One
of the documents Walt turned up was an item stating that a quantity of scrap
canon balls had been purchased for melting down. This was after the peace
treaty ending the war had been signed; it was probably one of the first
examples of military war surplus!
When we knew all that we needed to know about
the forge itself, our attention turned to the men who made the facility
work, from the owner Smith, to the workers themselves. Smith, and his
partner, John Atkinson, have emerged from the mists of time to become very
real persons, and we will deal with them separately. Walt Landgraf felt that
there exists enough information on these two men for a graduate student to
write a doctorial thesis on them.
Our investigations led us to many locations;
Cambridge, Mass.; Rutgers, New Jersey; Hartford, Conn. and we have a
researcher in England on our payroll who has come up with an amazing amount
of documentation on both Smith and Atkinson. It was during a session at
Rutgers that a 1771 map showing the layout for the 11-building complex
turned up. This was an amazing find, as it not only showed the location and
relationship of all the features in Robertsville, it named the occupants of
the four dwelling houses. One name was Morgan, and we know that Morgan was a
competent forge manager, as after he left Robertsville, he removed to
Barkhamsted, where he established his own forge near the mouth of what is
today referred to as Morgan Brook, next to the Century Woodworking Company.
Another name (although not one mentioned on
the map) was Cahoon. Both Jacob Ogden and Jared Lane held Cahoon in very
high esteem. He probably was the builder of the water wheels and other more
complicated features at the forge. We also know that he constructed the
bridge next to the forge crossing Still River so that they could access
their property on the east bank of the river. The eastern abutments of this
first bridge can still be seen near the water line, looking much like a
section of stone wall, while standing on the present Old Creamery Road
Bridge. We have seen a letter bemoaning the fact that Cahoon was leaving to
pursue his future “in the north country”, and that his loss would deal a
severe blow to the operation at the forge.
A year or so ago, while on a trip back to my
high school alma matter, Lyndon Institute, located in the town of Lyndon,
Vermont, the subject of the town’s history came up, and it turns out that
the same man who had been so valuable to Colebrook is now remembered as the
founder of the Town of Lyndon, Vermont. It is indeed a small world.
The recent loss of Walt Landgraf has had a
profound effect on many aspects of life as we knew it in not only on his
home town of Barkhamsted, but also on all of the surrounding communities,
the research on the forge site being only one example. But he was a great
organizer, and he left a plan that was being implemented when he passed
away, and that was to have a professional archaeologist perform a dig at the
forge site. He had arranged for a grant from the Farmington River Waterways
for this purpose, and with other funds raised primarily by the Barkhamsted
Historical Society, had enough to secure the services of Marc Banks, an
archaeologist from Simsbury to conduct the project. Work began on October 8,
2007 and will continue probably until about the first of December unless he
is chased out by severe weather.
Walt and I had conducted primary test bores to
see if we could determine the dimensions and exact locations of the
buildings depicted on the 1771 map, and were somewhat successful in that we
identified the coalhouse (charcoal), the blacksmith shop, store and possibly
another outbuilding, but we drew a blank when it came to any of the four
houses. The scale of the old map is off, and the present road alignment
wasn’t established until the year following their construction, although it
stands to reason that the houses would have been in close proximity to the
road alignments.
So far Mark has established a 10-meter grid
across much of the large field that we hope holds some of the answers that
we seek. A marker flag is then placed at each intersection, and selectively
holes equaling one-quarter of a meter are dug, always keeping the flag at
the southwest corner of the hole. With every 10-centimeter layer (about 4
inches) the contents are carefully sifted through a fine wire mesh and any
cultural objects are carefully placed in a zip-lock bag and identified.
After the sub soil layer is reached, one more 10-centimeter layer is
searched and if nothing is found, the hole is filled back in and another
location is chosen. If by chance a significant find is unearthed, then the
adjacent squares would be excavated.
Although Northwest Regional and the local
grammar schools have been notified about this dig, no one has come around to
either check out the site or to help with the digging and sifting. I can
only speak for myself, but from a very young age I would have just about
lived at the site of an archaeological dig – heck, even now Mark has to
throw me out at the end of nearly every day that weather permits work there;
I’m having the time of my life!
- Bob Grigg
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