50. The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association deviated from prior artisan organizations by ignoring the hierarchy and divisions between separate trades, instead treating its members as individual and independent businessmen. This was a gradual process, however: even as individual artisans moved away from craft identification in their day-to-day lives they still fell into traditional craft groups for public events such as parades. Peskin, Manufacturing Revolution, pp. 140–144; Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association (Boston: Press of Rockwell and Churchill, 1892), pp. 1–2; Quimby, “Some Observations on the Craftsman in Early America,” pp. 7–9; Oscar Handlin and Mary Flug Handlin, Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947), p. 132.
51. Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association, p. 291.
52. The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association enrolled approximately 146 of Boston’s 1,259 master craftsmen (11 percent), and its members were relatively well off for the group—80 percent of the assembly had more than $500 in taxable property, which is double the rate of nonmembers. In keeping with his love of profitable networking, Revere recorded large sales of silver to the officers and membership roster of this group. Ian Quimby, “Some Observations on the Craftsman in Early America,” in The Craftsman in Early America, ed. Ian Quimby (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), pp. 9, 13; Oscar and Mary Handlin, Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1969), p. 132; Falino, “The Customers of Paul Revere,” pp. 162–163.
CHAPTER FOUR: To Run a “Furnass”: The Iron Years (1788–1792)
1. Paul Revere to Messrs. Brown and Benson, November 3, 1788, “Letterbook 1783–1800,” Revere Family Papers (hereafter RFP), microfilm edition, 15 reels (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1979), reel 14, vol. 53.1.
2. Robert Raymond, Out of the Fiery Furnace: The Impact of Metals on the History of Mankind (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986), pp. 9–10; Stephen Sass, The Substance of Civilization: Materials and Human History from the Stone Age to the Age of Silicon (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1999), p. 83.
3. Iron ores might have entered copper-smelting furnaces in different ways. Some iron-rich ores could have been used as pigments. In addition, coppersmiths added “flux” materials to aid the production of copper: a flux combines with impurities in the copper ore to make them easier to remove. Hematite, one of the most frequently used fluxes, is rich in iron.
4. Raymond, Out of the Fiery Furnace, pp. 55–63; Sass, Substance of Civilization, pp. 90–93. The term iron age generally applies to the earliest widespread use of iron in a specific region, and therefore takes place at different times depending on the technological proficiency of its inhabitants. Many historians approximate the starting date of the Near East’s iron age in 1200 BC, with the caveat that this is a major generalization. The iron age started several centuries later in Europe and India. The iron age does not have a definitive ending point tied to any subsequent technological developments: as the final stage of prehistory it ends in each region whenever historical recordkeeping begins.
5. This analysis regrettably focuses upon the transfer of iron technology in the direction of Paul Revere, which excludes the fascinating story of Eastern ironworking, such as Chinese iron casting. Although China initially borrowed iron technology from Europe in the seventh century BC, it quickly adapted its own ironworking traditions directed toward advanced blast furnace technology. Chinese furnaces were far superior to European ones, making use of horizontal and box bellows capable of delivering a rapid and continuous stream of air to the fire, and could directly convert iron ore into cast iron by reaching temperatures above 1530 degrees C. In contrast, Europeans did not manage to cast iron until the fifteenth century. Chinese technicians learned to stir molten iron with steel rods, thereby removing carbon from the entire mass of iron and forming solid, pure steel. Steelmaking advances also took place in India around 600 BC, with the discovery of crucible steel. Workers filled small crucibles with wrought iron, wood, and plant leaves, and fired them in a charcoal pit for hours. Carbon from the plants and wood infused the iron, forming steel. This process was later borrowed by the Arabs to make the legendary Damascus steel. Raymond, Out of the Fiery Furnace, pp. 73–80.
6. Raymond, Out of the Fiery Furnace, pp. 63–67; James M. Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in all Ages and Particularly in the United States From Colonial Times to 1891 (Philadelphia: Allen, Lane, & Scott, 1892), pp. 11–18, 33–44, 113.
7. David Lewis, Iron and Steel in America (Wilmington, Del.: Hagley Museum, 1976), p. 10; Robert B. Gordon, American Iron, 1607–1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 7, 12–14.
8. Gordon, American Iron, pp. 4–5, 10–11, 14; Peter Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth-Century America, an Economic Inquiry (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964), p. 10.
9. Most fineries contained between two and four hearths, each requiring the full attention of a skilled laborer and a waterpower-driven hammer. In some cases a blast furnace would operate an on-site finery to produce bar iron from freshly made pig iron. Gordon, American Iron, pp. 14, 125; Robert B. Gordon and Patrick M. Malone, The Texture of Industry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 79–80.
10. Gordon and Malone, Texture of Industry, pp. 227, 242; Gordon, American Iron, 1607–1900, p. 1; James B. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantation: The Colonial Years (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1952), p. 129.
11. Eminent historian of technology Thomas Hughes describes his theory of technological systems in the essay “The Evolution of Large Technological Systems,” in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).
12. Lewis, Iron and Steel in America, pp. 17–18; Gordon, American Iron, 1607–1900, pp. 55–57, 62.
13. James A. Mulholland, History of Metals in Colonial America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 59–61; Brooke Hindle, Emulation and Invention (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1981), pp. 6–8.
14. Gordon and Malone, The Texture of Industry, p. 77; Mulholland, History of Metals in Colonial America, pp. 104–109; Lewis, Iron and Steel in America, p. 22; Margaret H. Hazen and Robert M. Hazen, Wealth Inexhaustible (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985), pp. 196–197; Gordon, American Iron, 1607–1900, pp. 1, 57; Gary M. Walton and James F. Shepherd, The Economic Rise of Early America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 160; Joseph E. Walker, Hopewell Village; a Social and Economic History of an Iron-Making Community (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), p. 414.
15. Hindle, Emulation and Invention, p. 11.
16. Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth-Century America, p. 22; Mulholland, A History of Metals in Colonial America, p. 146; Gordon, American Iron, p. 3.
17. Mulholland, A History of Metals in Colonial America, pp. 64–66, 70–72; Charles B. Dew, Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994); Gordon, American Iron, p. 1.
18. By relying upon charcoal for so long, American ironworkers avoided the difficult transition to coal fuel and missed several developments of England’s industrial revolution. England’s mechanization greatly accelerated after the reverberatory furnace and other innovations enabled the use of coal as a power source in lime burning, textiles, gunpowder, soap, sugar, and iron production. By the early nineteenth century, American ironworkers experimented with new technologies at both small and large works, everywhere except the South. By the mid-nineteenth century, America’s ironworks had arrived at a point of technological sophistication, incorporating more efficient furnace and forge heating methods as well as the use of anthracite and bituminous coal. Hindle, Emulation and Invention, pp. 9–10; Gordon, American Iron, pp. 2–3.
19. Mulholland, A History of Metals in Colonial America, pp. 145–148.
20. Samuel Slater personifies the traditional, immigration-centered technology transfer process
. Slater began an apprenticeship in 1782 in a British textile factory, where he received training in both the technological and managerial aspects of cloth production. In 1789 he tricked customs officials into allowing him to emigrate, a direct violation of British law. Within a few years he found a firm of merchants willing to fund his spinning mill, America’s first successful textile factory. For an introduction to the subject of technology transfer, see Nathan Rosenberg, Perspectives on Technology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Svante Lindqvist, Technology on Trial (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1984); David Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981); David Jeremy, Artists, Entrepreneurs, and Machines (Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing, 1991); J. R. Harris, Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer (Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing, 1998); Neil York, Mechanical Metamorphosis: Technological Change in Revolutionary America (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 39, 158, 172; Hindle, Emulation and Invention, p. 6; Doron S. Ben-Atar, Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 8–10, 29–31. America followed a long European tradition of encouraging the immigration of skilled foreigners in possession of technological secrets. Britain owed some of its eighteenth-century technological dominance to its ability to lure foreign artisans, and often used royal cash rewards or promises of patent monopolies to do so.
21. George Washington quote from Hindle, Emulation and Invention, pp. 19–20. Historian of technology David Jeremy proposes this four-step model for technology diffusion in Artists, Entrepreneurs, and Machines, p. 5. Early Americans interested in carrying out this technology transfer process benefited from some of America’s social and economic assets, including an economic mindset geared at improvement, relatively high rates of education, a perception of social and economic mobility that inspired entrepreneurship, and the absence of institutions that inhibited technical change in other nations. These national assets aided both the invention process and the practical application of invention. Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and American Economic Growth (New York: M. E. Sharpe Inc., 1972), pp. 32–35.
22. Paul Revere to Messrs. Brown and Benson, November 3, 1788, “Letterbook 1783–1800,” reel 14, vol. 53.1, RFP; Renee Lynn Ernay, “The Revere Furnace” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1989), p. 12; Gordon, American Iron, 1607–1900, pp. 2, 19–21.
23. Revere started his own correspondence with one of these British experts in 1791, to prepare for his bell-making career. Esther Forbes, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. 392.
24. Mulholland, A History of Metals in Colonial America, p. 148; York, Mechanical Metamorphosis, p. 172.
25. Gordon, American Iron, p. 2. America’s comparatively open technical exchange policy is also discussed in Merritt Roe Smith, “Eli Whitney and the American System of Manufacturing,” in Technology in America, ed. Carroll W. Pursell Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 57–59.
26. June 22, 1795 letter from Stephen Rochefontaine, “Loose Manuscripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP.
27. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantation, pp. 122–136, 140–145; Edwin J. Perkins, The Economy of Colonial America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 128. Revere made four furnace-related business trips between April 11, 1787, and March 20, 1788. His first trip to Menotomy (now Arlington, Massachusetts) almost certainly concerned the search for reliable raw material supplies, as he specified in several later records that he purchased sand from there. He traveled to Providence on July 28 to visit the Hope furnace and to speak to Brown in person. The purpose of his third trip to Halifax on August 9 is unknown, and his fourth trip to Marblehead in March 1788 involved the purchase of cannon since he included a bill for weighing cannon on the same day. Marblehead was also the port used by Brown and Benson for their iron shipments. Ledger titled “1787 The Iron Furnace D. to Stock,” reel 6, vol. 9, part 2, RFP.
28. Deed, June 28, 1792, “Loose Manuscripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP. Please note that Revere’s cousin refers to him as “Esquire.”
29. Revere’s terminology offers several clues about the nature of these monetary relationships. His notations of Samuel’s payments always contain numerous details, such as “By Cash from Sam’l Hichborn to pay Wm Little for Iron.” These comments could imply that Samuel’s payments were loans to help defray expenses and that Samuel might have cared about the purpose of each loan. In contrast, whenever Revere recorded a transaction with Benjamin, it simply read “By Cash from Benj. Hichborn Esq.” Because the use of Benjamin’s money is not recorded, this could be a straightforward payment of money, perhaps to repay an old debt. But on one November 28, 1787 receipt, Revere instructed Benjamin to pay a carting expense and charge it to the furnace, implying a working partnership between the two. Ledger titled “1787 The Iron Furnace D. to Stock,” reel 6, vol. 9, part 2, RFP; “Boston Wastebook 1783–1797,” reel 5, vol. 2, RFP; November 28, 1787 note/receipt from Revere to Benjamin Hitchborn, “Loose Manuscripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP.
30. Ledger titled “1787 The Iron Furnace D. to Stock,” reel 6, vol. 9, part 2, RFP. This ledger is summarized in Appendix 6. This ledger is a four-page subsection of Revere’s “Account Book, Boston, 1783–1804,” and contains many unrelated entries. This section refers to the list of expenses charged to his furnace account. Revere probably incurred additional expenses not recorded on this list, particularly if he purchased items for his silver shop or hardware store and then used them for the furnace. But in general he thought of his different business endeavors as independent entities, and recorded many transfers of cash and goods between his shops in his account books. He was also very meticulous about the smallest expenses, often recording charges of 1 shilling or less. The only items from Revere’s ledger not included in the above table are cash receipts from Benjamin Hitchborn, since these may represent payments to Revere, or payments from Revere to others that happened to be reimbursed by Hitchborn.
31. The following analysis is limited by gaps in his records: Revere made one list of expenses from 1787 to 1788, and the next ledger details his sales and expenses from 1792 to 1794.
32. Technically, what Revere called a furnass should be called a foundry, although many contemporaries used furnace and forge interchangeably to describe any large heating oven. More common usage throughout the eighteenth century referred to blast furnaces as “furnaces” and foundries as “air furnaces.”
33. Many bellows were water powered, but this would not be an option in downtown Boston. Steam-powered bellows were not used in America until almost the mid-nineteenth century. Some of the information used to describe the foundry is taken from the 1751 edition of the London-published Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, cited in Henry Kauffman, American Copper and Brass (Camden, N.J.: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1968), p. 57.
34. Gordon, American Iron, p. 195; Gordon and Malone, Texture of Industry, p. 38.
35. Gordon, American Iron, p. 195.
36. Gordon, American Iron, pp. 2, 195.
37. Ledger titled “1787 The Iron Furnace D. to Stock,” 1792–1794 furnace records, reel 6, vol. 9, part 2, RFP.
38. Gordon, American Iron, pp. 4–5, 10, 195.
39. This entire section is derived from an analysis of Revere’s untitled 1792–1794 wastebook, contained in reel 6, vol. 8, part 2, RFP.
40. Ledger titled “1787 The Iron Furnace D. to Stock,” 1792–1794 furnace records, reel 6, vol. 9, part 2, RFP. Also see November 14, 1793 receipt from Zebulon White, “Loose Manuscripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP.
41. Revere to Thomas Wadsworth, July 28, 1785, in “Loose Manuscripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP.
42. Walter Licht, Industrializing America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 4.
43. September 13, 1792 and December 2, 1793 receipts from Nelson Miller, September 13, 1792 receipt to William Story, and September 13, 1792 receipt to Stanley Caster, “Loose Manus
cripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP.
44. May 23 entry in “1793 Memoranda Book,” reel 14, vol. 15.11, RFP.
45. According to Revere scholar Deborah Federhen, Mathew Metcalf might have been one of Revere’s prewar silvershop apprentices or journeymen. Deborah A. Federhen, “From Artisan to Entrepreneur: Paul Revere’s Silver Shop Operations,” in Paul Revere—Artisan, Businessman, and Patriot (Boston: Paul Revere Memorial Association, 1988), p. 73.
46. The 1792–1794 furnace records are in a ledger titled “1787 The Iron Furnace D. to Stock,” reel 6, vol. 9, part 2, RFP. Drinking study taken from Howard B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic (New York: New York University Press, 1984), p. 298; Howard B. Rock, The New York City Artisan 1789–1825 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), p. 47.
47. May 23 entry in “1793 Memoranda Book,” reel 14, vol. 15.11, RFP.
48. 1792–1794 furnace records in ledger titled “1787 The Iron Furnace D. to Stock,” reel 6, vol. 9, part 2, RFP, and March 8, 1788 receipt from Mr. Little, “Loose Manuscripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP. The iron ambiguity is caused by vague charges to merchants that fail to explain the type of product bought or sold.
49. November 1, 1787 letter from J. Blagge, April 11, 1788 letter from Brown and Benson, “Loose Manuscripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP.
50. November 3, 1788 letter to Messrs. Brown and Benson, “Letterbook 1783–1800,” reel 14, vol. 53.1, RFP.
51. September 3, 1789 letter to Messrs. Brown and Benson, “Letterbook 1783–1800,” reel 14, vol. 53.1, RFP.
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