Tredegar Iron Works

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Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, Virginia, USA, photograph by Alexander Gardener
Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, Virginia, USA, photograph by Alexander Gardener

Tredegar Iron Works is an 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.

Contents

[edit] "Founding" and management under Davies (1833-1838)

The foundry was named in honor of the town of Tredegar, South 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.

[edit] Management under Joseph Reid Anderson (1841-Civil War)

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. 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.

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.[1] By 1860, Crenshaw and Co. had established the Crenshaw Woolen Mill on adjoining land they owned. This enterprise employed more than 50 people.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4][5][6]

Tredegar Iron Works 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.

[edit] Tredegar survives the evacuation of Richmond

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.

[edit] Reconstruction Era

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.

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.

[edit] Post-Industrial uses

[edit] The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar

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 an eminent team of historians including 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.

[edit] Lincoln statue

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.

[edit] Fiction

In Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 alternate history series, in which the South wins the Civil War, the Confederate Army's standard rifle is called Tredegar, presumably after the Iron Works.

[edit] External links

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