An 1825 snapshot of Bellefonte iron

An interesting little exchange regarding early Bellefonte iron production:

William Thomas, the co-owner of the Bellefonte forge sent a letter to Thomas Copeland in Pittsburgh on supplying iron:

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Bellefonte Forge 28 Jan 1825

Dear [Mr Copeland],

  In answer to your enquiry respecting Iron in your late visit to this place we make the following statement—

  Blooms from three to three and a half inches diameter (eight square or the corners hammered) perfectly welded & slag ends cut off, we will deliver at this place at one hundred & twenty dollars pr ton or one hundred & fifty dollars in Pittsb'g.  If taken as they come from the refining process, that is to say without the second heating & welding or cutting off of fag ends, one hundred dollars at this place or one hundred & thirty dollars pr ton in Pittsburgh.

  Gun scalps[1] drawn in the usual manner we will deliver here at one hundred & thirty dollars, or one hundred & sixty dollars pr ton in Pittsb'g.  The roled [sic] gun iron of this form [drawing of a sort of smiley-shaped cross section] is yet a new business to us. I could not fix a permanent price, but are now of opinion we can furnish it at one hundred & twenty dollars pr ton at this place.  The price of carriage from this place to Harpers Ferry, we cannot now ascertain, but five dolls [unclear] the usual price from the Huntington County works will deliver it from this place.
  When a certain portion of iron should be ready for delivery, it must be inspected at this place—particularly the Blooms, as they would be of little value to us if condemned at any other place. The payment would of course be on the delivery of the artcle.

  The quality of our iron, we presume is known to you & its uniformity we will guarantee, as we manufacture all the pig mettle [sic] we use at our Forge & our ore is all of one quality & we have no hesitation in saying, that [it] is of the first quality for Bar iron.

Respectfully yours,

for Valetine & Thomas

Wm A. Thomas

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  On April 16, John Risar[?], the assistant armorer at Harper's Ferry wrote to the Chief of Ordnance at the War Department, saying, "I do here by certify that the Iron latetely brought to this place by Mr. Copeland has been tried in different ways and found to be of an excelllent quality [and] that the barrel which Mr. Copeland carries with him has been made in haste and was not intended to be finished, but which was ery eaily orked by being bored and turned."  It seems, then, that Copeland got the iron from Valentine and Thomas to used for a gun barrel that he was then having tested at harpers Ferry.  The question remains whether this was small or large ordnance. All cannon at this time were cast iron or brass, so the guttered scalps suggest this was a wrought smaller gun, though scalps were typically used for larger pieces and Harpers Ferry only made firearms, not cannon.

  We know that Copeland was an important steam engine maker and all around mechanic in Pittsburgh who improved upon Bolton & Watt's steam engine design and that by 1815 there were three foundries in Pittsburgh capable of casting cannon (one of which also had a large boring engine for those cannon)[2], but the connection between Copeland and the foundries is unclear.  He had come up through the foundry and rolling mill trade, and in 1824, Col. George Bomford of the Ordnance Department had sent him to Harpers Ferry to solve a production problem.  Fundamentally, he decided, it was due to bad Juniata iron being used there and Copeland recommended dropping their usual supplier in Huntington, PA, and getting their bar iron from Valentine & Thomas and also from Gloniger & Anschutz in Tyrone.[3]

  Clearly the Bellefonte iron passed the test with flying colors.

These letters are found at the National Archives, Records of the Office of the Chief of Ordnance, War Dept., Letters Rec'd, 1825-26 [RG 156/21/29/fol. 'T-Jan-Feb 1825 Ord.'].

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• [1] a gun scalp was a trough-shaped hammered or rolled bar of iron.  It is interesting that Valentine and Thomas were on the cutting edge of manufacturing this commodity; see Paul J. Uselding, "Henry Burden and the Question of Anglo-American Technological Transfer in the Nineteenth Century," Journal of Economic History 30.2 (1970): 312-337.  The term seemed to survive in the more remote iron regions as late as 1894; see, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 29.21 (1894): 257.
• [2] Niles Weekly Register, 29 April 1815, p.141 and James Riddle, The Pittsburgh Directory for 1815, pp. 20 and 138.
• [3] Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: the Challenge of Change (MIT pRess, 1976) pp. 165-167ff.