Tredegar Iron Works
Tredegar Iron Works
Tredegar Iron Works is a historic iron foundry in Richmond, Virginia, United States of America. The site is now the location of a museum called The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar.
The foundry was named in honor of the town of Tredegar, Wales, United Kingdom,
where iron works of the same name were constructed in the early 1800s, and which
was also the hometown of Rhys Davies, the man originally in charge of
constructing the facility. In 1833, a group of Richmond businessmen and
industrialists hired Davies, then a young engineer, along with a number of
fellow iron workers from the Welsh valley town, to construct the furnaces and
rolling mills that later became the Tredegar Iron Works and Belle Isle Iron
Works.
Rhys Davies died in Richmond in September 1838 as a result of stab wounds
received in a fight with a workman and was buried on Belle Isle in the James
River.
In 1841, the owners turned management over to a 28-year-old civil engineer named
Joseph Reid Anderson who proved to be an able manager. Anderson acquired
ownership of the foundry 1848 and was soon doing work for the United States
government, and began introducing slave labor to cut production costs — by the
beginning of the Civil War in 1861, half of the 900 workers were slaves,
including many in skilled positions.[3] The commissioning of 900 miles of
railroad track in Virginia, largely financed by the Virginia Board of Public
Works between 1846 and 1853, offered a market in steam locomotives and rail
stock.
One of those attributed with starting the Tredegar Locomotive Works with John
Souther was Zerah Colburn, the well-known locomotive engineer and journalist. By
1860, Anderson's father-in-law Dr. Robert Archer had joined the business and
Tredegar became a leading iron producer in the country. The company produced
about 70 steam locomotives between 1850 and 1860. From 1852 to 1854, John
Souther also managed the locomotive shop at Tredegar. Its locomotive production
work is sometimes listed with combinations of the names Anderson, Souther,
Delaney, and Pickering.
Bulldozer Press
Prior to the Civil War, industry expanded at the Tredegar site under Anderson's
direction to include a new flour mill on land leased to Lewis D. Crenshaw and a
stove works on land leased to A.J. Bowers and Asa Snyder. By 1860, Crenshaw and
Co. had established the Crenshaw Woolen Mill on adjoining land they owned. This
enterprise employed more than 50 people. The Crenshaw Woolen Mill became "the
principal source of supply for the [Confederate] Army's requirements of uniform
material" during the first half of the Civil War. A May 16, 1863 fire on the
Tredegar/Crenshaw site damaged the mill, which was not rebuilt, and Tredegar
purchased the land from Crenshaw and Co. by 1863.
By 1860, the Tredegar Iron Works was the largest of its kind in the South, a
fact that played a significant role in the decision to relocate the capital of
the Confederacy from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond in May 1961.Tredegar
supplied high-quality munitions to the South during the war. The company also
manufactured railroad steam locomotives in the same period.
* Tredegar Iron Works made the iron plating for the first Confederate ironclad
warship, the CSS Virginia which fought in the historic Battle of Hampton Roads
in March 1862.
* Tredegar is also credited with the production of approximately 1,100 artillery
pieces during the war which was about half of the South's total domestic
production of artillery between the war years of 1861-1865.
* Tredegar also produced a giant rail-mounted siege cannon during the conflict.
As the war continued with more and more men conscripted into the Confederate
armies, Tredegar experienced a lack of skilled laborers. Scarce supplies of
metal also hurt the company's manufacturing abilities during the war and as the
conflict progressed it was noticed that Tredegar's products were beginning to
lose quality as well as quantity. In the summer of 1861, after the beginning of
the Civil War, the initial quantity of metal was so scarce that the iron works
failed to produce a single piece of artillery for an entire month.
Anderson was a strong supporter of southern secession and became a Brigadier
General in the Confederate Army as the American Civil War broke out. He was
wounded at Glendale during the Seven Days Battles of the Peninsula Campaign in
1862 and served in the Ordnance Department for the duration of the Civil War.
During the evacuation of Richmond by the Confederates on the night of April 2-3,
1865, the retreating troops were under orders to burn many of the munitions
dumps and industrial warehouses that would have been valuable to the North.
Joseph Anderson, the owner of the Tredegar Iron Works, reportedly paid over 50
armed guards to protect the facility from arsonists. As a result, the Tredegar
Iron Works is one of few Civil War-era buildings that survived the burning of
Richmond.
At the outset of hostilities, Anderson had wisely secured Tredegar assets
overseas for the duration of the Civil War and, therefore, was able to restore
his business when the Confederate currency collapsed. He petitioned U.S.
President Andrew Johnson for a pardon for himself and Tredegar and was back in
business before the end of 1865, regaining full ownership in 1867.
By 1873, Tredegar Iron Works was employing 1,200 workers and was a profitable business. The neighborhood of Oregon Hill cropped up as a company town-like development.
early clan costume
When Joseph Anderson died on a vacation in New Hampshire in 1892, he was succeeded by his son Colonel Archer Anderson. The Tredegar company remained in business throughout the first half of the 20th century, and supplied requirements of the armed forces of the United States during World War I and World War II. It was destroyed by fire in 1952.
In the 1990s, the Tredegar Iron works was host to the short lived "Valentine on
the James" extension of the Valentine Richmond History Center. The idea of a
museum on the site was later revived and on Saturday, October 7, 2006,The
American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar opened to the public. James M.
McPherson described the museum as "a truly comprehensive exhibit and education
center weaving together Union, Confederate, and African-American threads ...
much needed for future generations to understand how the Civil War shaped the
nation." The Center contains interactive theaters, plasma-screen maps, and
artifacts. The museum's exhibits were put together by a team of historians that
included James M. McPherson of Princeton, Bill Cooper of Louisiana State
University, John Fleming of the Cincinnati Museum Center, Charles Dew of
Williams College, David W. Blight of Yale and Emory Thomas at the University of
Georgia.
to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's historic 1865 tour of the burnt-out city 10 days before his assassination
In 2000, the former Tredegar Iron Works facility overlooking the James River near downtown Richmond became the site of the main Visitor's Center of the Richmond National Battlefield Park. In April 2003, a statue was dedicated there to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's historic 1865 tour of the burnt-out city 10 days before his assassination. Dignitaries at the installation ceremony included Douglas Wilder, former Mayor and Lt. Governor Tim Kaine, Mayor Rudy McCollum, and former governor Gerald L. Baliles.
Protesting the event were Sons of Confederate Veterans including Brag Bowling,
Virginia SCV Commander; Fred Tayor, president of the Heritage Preservation
Association; and Elliott Germain, chairman Virginia League of the South.
Text from Wikipedia
a pontoon
model of a pontoon bridge
his photo and his bible
Richmond neighborhoods, capitals and prisons
