Catoctin Mountain Park Historic Resource Study

The Arrival of Iron

Security having been restored after the end of the French and Indian War, settlers returned to their homes. At the same time, easterners began looking anew at western Maryland with an eye toward investment opportunities. Just as eastern Maryland's Native Americans had mined the mountains for rhyolite, white easterners sought to extract their own bounty from the region in the form of iron.

Iron was, in fact, an increasingly important colonial commodity. England, the mother country, had developed a strong metalworking industry by the mid-eighteenth century. But the forests of Britain quickly became severely depleted, depriving English iron makers of necessary fuel for iron furnaces. By 1720, England was importing over 20,000 ton of iron, mostly from Sweden. To the English, committed to the mercantile economic ideals of the times, dependent colonies--and certainly not profiteering outside countries--should provide raw material and ready markets for finished products. Great Britain thus set about to encourage iron making in the North American colonies. In 1719, the Maryland General Assembly passed "An Act for the Encouragement of an Iron Manufacture within this Province." The far-reaching act allowed an entrepreneur interested in iron manufacturing to obtain a "writ ad quod damnum" or a special condemnation to acquire a water-powered site capable of producing iron. An unfortunate owner of a targeted site would lose his land unless he or she produced proof of an intention to build an iron works. If no proof was forthcoming, the land would go to an entrepreneur, who was required to begin furnace construction within six months. [69]

Iron manufacturing in the colonies presented challenges. English colonial officials, while eager to encourage the colonists to produce pig and bar iron, were less enthusiastic about the colonial manufacturing of finished products from iron. Parliamentary acts pertaining to iron in 1750 and 1757 allowed for the duty-free shipping of the metal but prohibited manufacturing of finished products and declared all "machines for hammering or drawing metal" as "common nuisances" to be destroyed within thirty days. Nevertheless, some colonial manufacturing of iron did continue in defiance of British authorities and money still was to be made from the production and exporting raw iron. [70]

Inspired by colonial incentives, a nascent iron industry in Maryland sprang to life. The Principio Company in Cecil County became the colony's first iron furnace in 1720. [71] The erection of several other furnaces for the manufacture of pig iron quickly followed. By 1762, eight iron factories existed in Maryland. [72] With greater security on the western frontier following the French and Indian War, investors targeted the western portions of the colony for development. Entrepreneurs from the lower Tidewater area erected the Hampton Furnace, one mile west of Emmitsburg in 1764. [73] The furnace boasted 3,000 acres of land. African-American slaves provided the bulk of labor. But operations at the furnace lasted only a few years before it went broke. [74]

Undeterred by the apparently risky nature of the venture, other wealthy Marylanders also began investing in western enterprises. [75] As early as the 1750s, prominent investor Charles Carroll, eventually planning to construct an iron-making plant, purchased a large tract of land in western Maryland. [76] By the 1760s, another wealthy easterner, Thomas Johnson, a prominent lawyer, entrepreneur, and future governor of Maryland, also took an active interest in western Maryland. Johnson's grandfather had come from Yarmouth, England in 1660 to settle in Calvert County. The family, already aristocracy, further prospered in Calvert County. Grandson Thomas was one of twelve children born to Thomas and Dorcas Johnson. Quickly proving himself adroit in both politics and business, Johnson moved to the forefront of colonial leadership. Among his close friends he counted George Washington. [77]

Seeking economic opportunity on the Maryland frontier, Johnson formed a partnership with Launcelot Jacques, a fifth-generation descendent of French Huguenot refugees. In 1768, taking advantage of the Maryland Assembly offer of ad quod damnum, Johnson and Jacques purchased a 9,860-acre tract known as Green Springs, roughly two miles south of Fort Frederick, on the Potomac River, in what is present-day Washington County. Accounts from the time referred to the furnace constructed on the site as the "Fort Frederick Iron Mill." [78] Their investment proved not particularly successful, and the two began to look for a better furnace location somewhat to the east.

A tract south of the Hampton Furnace--land which may well have provided some of the iron ore for the Hampton furnace--caught the attention of Thomas Johnson. Situated near a an iron ore bank, a ready supply of lime, and a plentiful water source (Hunting Creek), the tract known as "John's Mountain" owned by John Valentine Verdries and his wife Elizabeth appeared ideal for iron exaction and manufacture. The Verdries, like most in the area, were refugees from Germany and had been among the early members of the Lutheran Monacacy Log Church Congregation. [79]

Although ad quod damnum would have certainly been at Johnson's disposal, he and his partners do not appear to have used condemnation to obtain Verdries' land. In 1770, the Verdries sold the land, now called "Mountain Tract," to Thomas Johnson and his partner Benedict Calvert, also a partner in the Hampton enterprise to the north. [80] Johnson then set about to acquire other land in the area with the help of his brothers, Roger, Baker, and James, all of whom had already moved to Frederick County. Among their acquisitions was a tract known as "Good Will" and a tract originally granted to Charles Carroll known as "Stoney Park." [81]

The Johnson brothers, having secured several thousand acres in the area for mining and timber harvesting, then moved to construct their furnace. The Johnson family owned a sizable number of slaves and it is most probable that unfree labor constructed the original furnace. The exact site of the original furnace remains a point of some controversy. Archeological surveys have failed to yield any definite conclusions, although it appears that the first furnace was built within a mile of the current ruin. [82] An 1842 letter from the son of James Johnson identified the location of the first furnace as where "the Auburn house now stands" (see Map 1) [83] The original furnace stack stood 32 feet high and 8.5 feet in diameter. Although small compared to stacks later constructed at Catoctin, nothing like it had ever been seen in the Catoctin area before.

The Road to Revolution

While the Johnson brothers were introducing the Catoctin Mountain area to industry, tensions between Great Britain and her North American colonies were heating up. The friction grew out of an attempt by Great Britain to tighten colonial control after years of loose administration. Although essentially a frontier only a decade before, Frederick was the third largest county in Maryland by the 1770s, and western Maryland, along with new resident Thomas Johnson, were active players as the colonies edged toward independence.

Western Marylanders had little reason to feel any great affection for the mother country. General Braddock during the French and Indian War had proven callous and contemptuous of Americans trying to aid his cause. English incompetence was a bitter memory for many in Frederick County. In addition, roughly half the population was German and had little affinity for the imperial British and their authoritarian ways. Maryland authorities still forbade Germans from voting. There also existed fears that the British eventually would seek to impose their Church of England on the sectarian Germans. [84]

The local population was ripe then to support the growing resistance to the new imperial edicts. When colonial authorities attempted to impose the Stamp Act, requiring all printed materials to carry a stamp for which a payment was required, Frederick County joined in the upheavals that shot across the colonies. Protestors burned a tax collector in effigy during a mass demonstration in Fredericktown. [85] Meanwhile, despite the prosperity of some, others, especially commercial farmers were going into debt. They blamed imperial authorities and petitioned the General Assembly to protest a shortage of currency. Some Marylanders even resorted to using Pennsylvania currency. [86]

Meanwhile in 1767, the long-standing Pennsylvania-Maryland dispute came to an end with the establishment of the Mason-Dixon Line. This resolution paved the way for greater cooperation between the two colonies, as each faced the growing crisis with Great Britain.

Reacting to the growing tensions, the Governor of Maryland blamed Thomas Cresap for stirring up the people. In fact, Cresap, now rather elderly, again threatened to march on Annapolis when the colonial government appeared hesitant to recompense members of the western militia. [87] When tensions heated up again around the time of the Boston Massacre in 1770, a group of angry western Marylanders, primarily concerned with threats to religious liberty, met at Tom's Creek near Emmitsburg and issued the following statement:

Resolved by the Inhabitants of Tom's Creek Frederick County, in the Province of Maryland, loyal to their king and country that we reaffirm the Great Magna Carter of Civic and Religious Rights, as granted by Charles of England to Lord Baltimore and the Inhabitants of this colony, as reaffirmed on the first landing of the Pilgrim Fathers of Maryland. That there shall be a perfect freedom of conscience and every person be allowed to enjoy his religious political privileges and immunities unmolested. [88]

By 1774, a dysfunctional relationship between the colonies and motherland had disintegrated into open hostilities when the British forcibly closed Boston Harbor in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party. Although far way, Marylanders, especially in the west, identified with the struggles of the Bostonians. In July of 1774, 800 gathered in Elizabethtown (Hagerstown) to protest the blockade of Boston Harbor. [89] Similar protests were held in every district of the county. Proclamations of sympathy for Boston poured out of the meetings. [90]

Jonathan Hager, a German immigrant and founder of the future Hagerstown, was a great supporter of the colonial cause, as were the Johnson brothers. [91] When open hostilities developed in early 1775, Frederick County immediately organized two companies of volunteers, one under Michael Cresap, son of Thomas. With their faces painted like Indians, armed with tomahawks and rifles, and dressed in deerskins and moccasins, the volunteers headed north to aid the battling minutemen in the summer of 1775. [92] The war began just as construction completed on the Johnson Furnace at Catoctin. Both events signaled a new era for the mountain.