| Stewart County |
Bear Spring
Furnace
The
Bear Spring Furnace and Forge was put into blast in 1832 by Woods, Yeatman
& Co. Located near large deposits of
ore, the Bear Spring Furnace became one of the most important charcoal iron
producers in
After the death of one of the principals, Thomas Yeatman,
in 1834, the company reorganized and John and Samuel Stacker became partners in
the firm. The following year, Woods, Stacker,
& Co. held over 12,000 acres of land and owned over 100 slave workers. In 1842, the company’s engineers fitted the
furnace with an innovative device that utilized the waste heat in order to
generate considerably more blast. This
improvement provided enough additional power to drive another run-out fire and
also to run the associated grist mill.
In the years following the death of the other founding
partner, Joseph Woods in 1847, several new investors bought into the thriving
company. In 1850, the 110 person
workforce at the furnace produced over 2000 tons of metal. Four years later the machinery was removed
and installed at the newly-improved Dover Furnace at
After
the Civil War, the furnace was rebuilt and was operated for a time by Woods,
Yeatman & Company, but financial difficulties soon overtook them.
Successively owned by various companies, the enterprise was strapped by
financial problems in the postwar years. In 1928, the furnace closed. The limestone stack and a bridge support
pillar are all that remain of what was once a busy and integral part of an
antebellum industrial complex.
Bellwood
Furnace was an important part of the Cumberland Iron Works, once considered to
be the best charcoal iron property in the
Built around 1840, Bellwood and its sister furnaces at
Carlisle and Bear Spring primarily provided pig iron for Cumberland Iron Works’
rolling mill, located right on the river.
They also produced castings for domestic purposes, such as sugar
kettles. In 1850, the steam-powered
facility (which included a forge) employed over 120 workers and produced 1,200
tons of pig metal and 130 tons of iron blooms.
Two years later, 130 furnace hands increased the output to 1700 tons,
while the 85 men at the forge turned out 1500 tons of blooms. After discontinuing operations at the forge,
the company ran the furnace at a capacity of approximately 2,000 tons per year.
Cumberland Iron Works was a vertically integrated
business which controlled all aspects of iron production from mining to the
finished products. One of the company’s
main stakeholders was John Bell, a
Immediately
following the surrender of
Although the rolling mill was totally wiped out and
the remaining iron equipment sold as scrap to a firm in
Great
Western Furnace
In the early 1850s, both the Great Western and the
The
pyramidal limestone stack of the Great Western Furnace was ten feet wide inside
and forty feet high. Miners obtained the
brown limonite ore locally from shallow pits dug into the banks on the hills that
surrounded the small
Due
to increasing financial difficulties, the owners tried to market the property
after a year or so of operation. In
addition to the physical plant, they offered to sell the equipment, work stock,
and 80 experienced black furnace hands.
After they failed to find a buyer for the facility, an agent of the
Planters bank, John M. Dye, held a foreclosure sale at the site in 1857, but
still found no takers. Two years later,
the sale of the furnace and 12,000 acres of land was announced, and again no serious
bidders stepped forward.
During
the Civil War, the roads around the Great Western Furnace saw considerable
traffic by men from both armies, and skirmishes between the two hostile forces
occurred often. One of these actions
happened on 20 August 1864, when a squad of men from Company B, Eighty-Third
Illinois Volunteer Infantry attempted to capture a half dozen Confederates
reported to be in the neighborhood of the furnace. Their effort proved to be unsuccessful, and
on their return to camp the Federals encountered over 100 men from Colonel
Thomas G. Woodward’s command. After a
brief firefight, Union Captain William W. Turnbull and seven of his men were
killed and two captured; only two of his soldiers returned to
After
the Civil War, the question of the ownership of the furnace was still
unresolved. The assessor of
The remains of the Great Western Furnace are now located in the Land Between the Lakes. As a designated national recreation area under the management of the USDA Forest Service, LBL is maintained for the public's enjoyment and safety. The 150-year-old limestone furnace stack can be viewed when traveling along the Trace within LBL.
Saline Furnace
Saline
Furnace was built on Saline Creek about one mile from the
In
March of 1860, the company offered Saline Furnace and 7,000 acres of land for
sale. Included in the deal were seven different small farms, complete with
springs and orchards. In addition to the main furnace building were numerous
others used for iron manufacturing, such as a 55’ by 100’ moulding room, a 32’
by 100’ storage building and another 40’ by 110’ structure, as well as the
ironmaster’s residence, slave houses, corncribs, stables, smokehouse, and
company offices. 500 acres of the plantation’s land had been cleared and was
open for either grazing or raising field crops like wheat or tobacco.
Although
the company could not sell the property, it maintained ownership throughout the
Civil War. The valuable land contained undetermined quantities of various other
minerals, such as coal, lead and zinc, but Saline Furnace was never lit again.
The hewn rocks that form the base of the stack are all that remain today.