Mountains on the Market: Industry, the Environment, and the South

Images

(Right) William Byrd III, scion of one of Virginia’s most prominent families, joined fellow notables John Chiswell and John Robinson in forming the lead-mining company along the New River in 1760. From Bulletin of the Virginia State Library 13 (January–April 1920). (Below) “A Map of the Indian Nations in the Southern Department, 1766” shows the lead mines surrounded largely by blank space, reflecting the company’s drive to bring extractive industry to the western edge of British settlement. Courtesy Clements Library, University of Michigan. (Left) In the 1790s, Francis Preston, son of revolutionary-era official William Preston, operated a charcoal iron furnace and forge along Cripple Creek in Wythe County. He served as a congressman and later had a prominent role in the salt industry in the Holston River valley. From William C. Preston, The Reminiscences of William C. Preston, ed. Minnie Clare Yarborough (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933). (Right) One of the New River valley’s most successful entrepreneurs of the first half of the nineteenth century, David Graham operated iron furnaces as well as a foundry. From Anne Ingles, ed., Journal of Bettie Ann Graham, October 18, 1860–June 21, 1862 (New York: n.p., 1978). As this account book from 1800 documents, much of the lead mined along the New River in the early nineteenth century was hauled to Baltimore for use in producing shot. From Zinc 15 (May 1930). David Graham and other furnace owners often rented slaves from the Piedmont area of the state, but he and his peers sometimes faced a tight market because so many slaves were sold south. This coffle of slaves preparing to cross the New River was described by George William Featherstonhaugh in the early 1840s. From G. W. Featherstonhaugh, Excursion Through the Slave States, from Washington on the Potomac to the Frontier of Mexico; with Sketches of Popular Manners and Geological Notices, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1844). This 1859 sketch by Pennsylvania artist Lewis Miller depicts a Wythe County foundry, almost certainly the one owned by David Graham alongside Reed Creek. Courtesy Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Va. “Dipping Out.—Ike.” David Graham’s workers molded many of the kettles used for boiling salt at the works in Saltville. As at the iron furnaces and forges, slaves did much of the labor in the antebellum salt industry. In this 1857 image, a slave in Saltville dips salt from a kettle and places it in a basket to drain and dry. From Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (September 1857). Incorporated in 1835, the Grayson Sulphur Springs resort on the New River subsequently took advantage of the transportation improvements brought about by turnpikes and railroads. From Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Virginia. . . . (Charleston, S.C.: Babcock, 1845; reprint, Baltimore: Regional Publishing, 1969). Montroville Wilson Dickeson, a Philadelphia physician and polymath, analyzed coppermining possibilities in Carroll County for potential investors. The endorsement of a scientific observer helped mining companies raise the capital they needed. From Montroville Wilson Dickeson, The American Numismatic Manual, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865). The Tazewell Courthouse and Fancy Gap Turnpike allowed New River industrialists easier access to markets in North Carolina and to the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad in Wythe County. Courtesy the Library of Virginia, Richmond. Richard Owen Currey, a geologist from Tennessee, charted Carroll County’s copper mines in great detail in 1859. The map is from Currey’s A Geological Visit to the Virginia Copper Region (Knoxville, Tenn.: Beckett, Haws, 1859). Samuel McCamant, a mine owner, attorney, and public official, had a prominent role in squelching dissent on slavery in Carroll and Grayson counties. From Benjamin Floyd Nuckolls, Pioneer Settlers of Grayson County, Virginia (1914; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1975). This stock certificate from the 1880s captures northern financiers’ growing interest in the minerals of the New River valley. The New River Mineral Company developed the furnace in Ivanhoe. From the author’s collection. John W. Robinson, son-in-law of antebellum iron maker David Graham, contributed to the consolidation of the region’s iron industry in the late 1800s. From Anne Ingles, ed., Journal of Bettie Ann Graham, October 18, 1860–June 21, 1862 (New York: n.p., 1978). Mining operations, beginning in the eighteenth century, had exhausted surrounding forests for charcoal and timbering. In...