INDUSTRIAL BEGINNINGS IN OHIO*
By WILLIAM
ALEXANDER MABRY
The abundance of fertile land was
unquestionably the lode-
stone which attracted most of the early
settlers to the Ohio
Country. But along with the pioneer
farmers came numbers of
skilled mechanics to build the boats and
erect the little mills and
shops that were so much needed to
furnish those necessities that
could not be profitably brought from the
East. No tariff was
necessary to protect the infant
industries of the western country.
Sheer distance and the difficulties and
costs of transportation
afforded ample protection in the early
years of development.
Those enterprising individuals who
planned the first settle-
ments in Ohio were quite aware of the
fact that they would have
to provide for grinding their grain,
sawing the lumber for their
buildings, making the iron for their
tools and farming implements,
and the salt for their food. Captain
Jonathan Devol, best remem-
bered for his skill as a shipbuilder,
rendered a real service to his
pioneer neighbors of Washington County
when he constructed a
floating gristmill, the wheels of which
were turned by the current
of the Ohio River. The boats to which
the machinery was attached
were fastened to trees on the shore.1
The ingenious Captain also
invented a mill to grind and press out
the juice of cornstalks to
make molasses.2
Soon after the founding of Marietta, men
were sent out to
examine the streams for mill sites.
Among the best located was
one on Wolf Creek, about a mile above
the junction with the
Muskingum River. The channel of the
creek was cut out of lime-
stone rock, and there was a fall of
several feet in a few rods.
Colonel Robert Oliver, Major Haffield
White, and Captain John
Dodge formed an association in the
summer of 1789 for the erec-
tion of mills at this place which was
sixteen miles from Marietta.
* Read at the afternoon session of the Annual Meeting of the Ohio Academy
of
History, at the Deshler-Wallick Hotel,
April 5, 1946.
1 Warren Jenkins, The Ohio
Gazetteer and Traveler's Guide (Columbus, 1837),
440.
2 Julia Perkins Cutler, The Founders of Ohio; Brief Sketches of the
Forty-eight
Pioneers, Who under the Command of
General Rufus Putnam, . . . Commenced the
First White Settlement in the
Northwest Territory (Cincinnati,
1888), 25.
242
INDUSTRIAL BEGINNINGS IN OHIO 243
The land was donated by the Ohio
Company. During the course
of the year a dam was thrown across the
creek and a sawmill
erected. The wrought-iron crank for the
mill, weighing one hun-
dred and eighty pounds, had been made in
New Haven, Connecti-
cut, and brought to Ohio by packhorse
and river boat. In 1790
a one-story log structure sixteen feet
by twenty-four feet was
erected for a gristmill a short distance
below the sawmill. The
running gear was made by two mechanics
named Applegate and
Potts who came from Monongahela County,
Pennsylvania, and
millstones were brought from Laurel
Hill.3
The mill was soon doing a thriving
business. Judge Joseph
Barker of Washington County recorded in
his notes: "In March
following [1790] in company
with a number of neighbors from
Marietta, I went to Wolf Creek mills,
which had been in operation
a few days; we had a perogue and sixty
bushels, principally corn.
We landed within half a mile of the mill
at ten o'clock, A.M.; a
four ox team took our grain to the mill
and returned the meal, and
we had all ground and started for
Marietta at two o'clock, P.M.,
and arrived there before sundown. I saw
a bushel of corn ground
at that mill in two minutes by a
watch."4
Millsburgh, the little settlement which
developed around the
mills, had to be abandoned in 1791
because of the Indian menace.
Yet the mills remained relatively
unharmed during five years of
Indian wars. Only once the Indians
hoisted the gate and set the
millstones running; the stones were worn
smooth and had to be
re-faced. Armed companies of twenty or
thirty men from the
garrison at Plainfield (later called
Waterford) would visit the
mills, grind their grain, and return to
the fort.5 Such experiences
were common in the frontier communities.
The first mill in the vicinity of
Youngstown was one erected
by John and Phineas Hill in 1798 or
1799. Abraham Powers, one
of the first settlers and a practical
millwright, put in machinery
for both grinding and sawing. There were
not enough men at the
3 S. P. Hildreth, "The First Mill
in Ohio," The American Pioneer, a monthly
periodical devoted to the objects of the
Logan Historical Society . . . John S. Williams,
ed. (Cincinnati), II (1843), 99-100.
4 Ibid., 100.
5 Ibid., 101.
244
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
time in the neighborhood to raise the
mill, so extra hands were
secured from Greersburgh (now
Darlington), Pennsylvania. A
keg of whiskey and fresh bear meat
served as added inducements.6
One of the most urgent needs of the
pioneers was for salt.
The supply from the East was inadequate
and the price was pro-
hibitively high. Rev. Joseph Badger, a
New England clergyman
who settled in the Connecticut Reserve
in 1802, mentioned in his
memoirs that salt brought in open boats
from Buffalo sold at from
twelve to twenty dollars a barrel.7
Fortunately salt was found in
solution in numerous locations in Ohio.
Paths beaten by animals
led to salt springs or salt
"licks." Thaddeus Mason Harris of
Boston, visiting Ohio in 1803,
commented: "The salt licks are
among the natural curiosities of this
country. I tasted of several
which I thought much stronger than sea
water."8 The salt water
had to be boiled in large kettles or
vats to secure the saline crystals.
The Scioto Salt Works, located on a
reserved tract of land near
the center of Jackson County, about
twenty-eight miles southeast
of Chillicothe, produced considerable
quantities of salt in the early
years of the nineteenth century but were
abandoned when more
abundant salt springs were located
elsewhere. First the Federal
Government and then the State followed
the practice of reserving
the lands where salt was found in order
to prevent individuals
from getting a salt monopoly. Some
24,320 acres had been set
apart for this purpose by 1803.9 There
were countless little
springs producing weak salt water which
supplied localities not
near the larger works on the Scioto and
Muskingum rivers. For
instance, works were erected about 1802
at a spring five miles
south of Warren, in the Connecticut
Reserve, which produced
some two bushels of salt a day. One man
tended the furnace and
another with a team cut and hauled the
wood used for fuel. On
this slender business depended nearly
the entire population of the
southern part of the Reserve for their
salt at a price of three or
four dollars a bushel.10
6 Wiggins and McKillop, eds. and pubs., Youngstown,
Past and Present . . .
(Cleveland and Pittsburgh, 1875), 11.
7 Joseph Badger, A Memoir of Rev.
Joseph Badger (Hudson, O., 1851), 131.
8 Thaddeus Mason Harris, The Journal
of a Tour into the Territory Northwest of
the Alleghany Mountains; Made in the
Spring of the Year 1803 (Boston,
1805), 181.
9 Ibid., 110.
10 Badger, Memoir, 131.
INDUSTRIAL BEGINNINGS IN OHIO 245
For a number of years salt production in
the State continued
to go up. John Kilbourn's Ohio
Gazetteer of 1833 states that
Morgan County, one of the richer salt
counties, had thirty fur-
naces making 351,000 bushels of salt
annually which was worth
$87,750 wholesale. At that time two new
wells were ready to go
into operation as soon as the furnaces
could be completed and six
others were being bored. The wells were
from six hundred to
eight hundred feet deep.11 By
the 1830's the salt scarcity had
passed. Pioneer ingenuity and enterprise
had solved a basic
problem.
Accustomed to the small neighborhood
blast furnaces in the
East which had supplied iron for their
farming and household
needs, the early settlers of Ohio sought
to reproduce them in their
new homes. Fortunately, eastern Ohio was
possessed of abundant
iron ore. According to one authority,
the first furnace in the State
was erected by Daniel Eaton in the
Mahoning River Valley near
Poland in 1804. Its two-ton per day
output was used mainly for
cooking utensils. Soon others were built
in Columbiana, Adams,
and Licking counties. Isaac Heaton
initiated the iron industry in
Youngstown with his Mill Creek Furnace
about 1835.12
The region which soon became the
foremost in iron produc-
tion was the Hanging Rock Region on the
Ohio River. The name
is derived from a cliff on the north
side of the Ohio River about
three miles below Ironton, and the
district embraces the Ohio
counties of Jackson, Gallia, Vinton,
Scioto, and Lawrence and the
counties of Greenup, Boyd, Lawrence, and
Carter in Kentucky.13
The first furnace on the Ohio side of
the river in this district was
one known as "The Union,"
erected in 1826 by John Means, an
abolitionist who had moved to Ohio from
Spartansburg, South
Carolina. It was located in Elizabeth
Township, Lawrence County.
In the early days its production rate
was three or four tons a day;
thirty tons a week was considered a
record achievement.14 John
11 John Kilbourn, The Ohio Gazetteer,
or Topographical Dictionary . . . (Columbus,
1833), 325.
12 American Iron and Steel Institute, Steel
Facts (New York), No. 73 (Aug.,
1945), 7.
13 Ibid., 6.
14 Eugene B. Willard, A Standard
History of the Hanging Rock Iron Region of
Ohio (Chicago, 1916), I, 53-5.
246
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Campbell, called the "father and
founder of Ironton," moved to
the Hanging Rock Region in 1834 and, with
Robert Hamilton,
built the Mount Vernon Furnace.15 In
1837 William Firmstone
put up Vesuvius Furnace, credited with
being the first hot-blast
furnace in America. Lawrence County
alone boasted eight fur-
naces by 1837.16 Located near the
furnaces were forges to work
the metal. Eleven of these were erected
in eastern Ohio between
1809 and 1826.17
Local blacksmiths or small foundries
supplied the tools and
household articles so much needed.
Thomas Piper ran the follow-
ing advertisement in the Ohio State
Journal and Columbus Gazette
of January 12, 1826: "I
am doing business in my new Shop, near
the Cotton factory, in Columbus, where
every description of work
in my line can be had at the shortest
notice and on the most
reasonable terms.... I have a workman at
Edge Tools, from the
city of New York, and will furnish Axes,
and all kinds of Edge
Tools, of the very best quality; also,
all kinds of Mill-irons."18
Similarly, the Columbus Foundry, managed
by Joseph Ridge-
way, offered for sale J. Wood's Patent
Ploughs and "a large
quantity of shares, extra, on hand to
supply the place of those
worn out." An additional item was
B. Crooker's Patent Corn
Sheller, "capable of shelling 400
bushels in ten hours, by the power
of a boy to turn and another to
feed." Grist, saw, and fulling
mill castings, plate and box stoves,
andirons, and wagon boxes,
too, might be secured at the foundry.
Hogs, corn, and other
country produce were acceptable in
payment, but the foundry
offered "a liberal discount made
when cash is paid in hand."19
The Eagle Foundry of Steubenville in
January, 1830, assured
its customers that it had on hand a
sufficient quantity of pig metal
and could make "castings of all
kinds, to order, at short notice."
An assortment of stoves and grates was
available for immediate
delivery.20
15 Ibid., 57.
l6 Jenkins, Ohio Gazetteer, 254.
17 William T. Utter, The Frontier State, 1803-1825,
The History of the State of
Ohio, ed. by Carl Wittke, Vol. II (Columbus, 1942), 256.
18 Ohio State Journal and Columbus
Gazette, Jan. 12, 1826.
19 Ibid., March 23, 1826.
20 Western Herald and Steubenville Gazette, Jan. 2, 1830.
INDUSTRIAL BEGINNINGS IN OHIO 247
Since the early settlers were so very
dependent on the rivers
and lakes, and later on the canals, as
avenues of transportation, it
was inevitable that the building of
boats and ships should become
an important industry. Captain Jonathan Devol, a native of
Rhode Island and an associate of the
Ohio Company, directed the
building of the Union Galley, or Mayflower,
the boat in which
General Putnam's party descended the
Ohio River to Marietta.
He continued to practice his trade in
Ohio and, in 1792, built
for General Putnam a twelve-oared barge
entirely of red cedar.
The timbers he had procured up the
Little Kanawha at the risk
of his life. Five years later he
purchased land on the Muskingum
River, some five miles above Marietta,
built a home, erected mills
for carding wool and dressing and
fulling cloth, and engaged in
shipbuilding on a more extensive scale.21
Of river craft built along the Ohio
there was a wide variety.
There were barges and keelboats, but the
most common type used
for the heavy down-river traffic was the
Kentucky boat or "ark."
These large flat-bottomed boats were
made with planks fastened
upon ribs by wooden bolts to form a
parallelogram from twelve
to eighteen feet wide and from forty to
fifty feet long. A shed or
cabin was sometimes erected to protect
the crew and cargo from
the weather. A boat of this type could
carry from sixty to eighty
tons and was simply permitted to float
downstream with the cur-
rent; oars or poles were not used save
to direct it or propel it
to the shore.22
During the early years of the nineteenth
century a number of
fully rigged sailing vessels were
constructed at Marietta. The first
was the 110-ton brig, St. Clair, built
by Stephen Devol for
C. Green and Company in 1800. Soon
followed the Muskingum
and the Eliza Green. With a view
to avoiding trans-shipment at
New Orleans, these were loaded with the
produce of the country
and dispatched directly to the Atlantic
seaboard or foreign ports.23
Christian Schultz who visited Marietta
in September, 1807, noted
21 Cutler, Founders of Ohio, 23-5.
22 William Alexander Mabry,
"Ante-Bellum Cincinnati and Its Southern Trade,"
American Studies in Honor of William
Kenneth Boyd, by members of the
Americana
Club, Duke University, David Kelly Jackson, ed.
(Durham, N. C., 1940), 62-3.
23 Marietta Board of Trade, Century
Review of Marietta, Ohio (Marietta, 1900), 84.
248
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
in his journal: "Shipbuilding is
carried on [at Marietta] with
more spirit than at any other town on
the Ohio.... Lost two fine
ships on the falls last year but now on
the stocks three ships of
about 300 tons burthen each, and two
large brigs, besides smaller
craft. The former will be ready to
descend the river with the
earliest spring freshes, when they will
be loaded with the produce
of the country, and ready to convey it
to the most distant part of
the globe." He adds the interesting
note that the price of ship-
building was fifty dollars a ton rigged
and equipped completely
for the sea.24
The difficulty of getting the vessels
down the rivers and out
to open water plus the general
depression which shipping suffered
during the time of the Embargo Act and
the War of 1812 caused
a temporary abandonment of the building
of sailing vessels. But
between 1800 and 1812 there were built
in Marietta alone twenty-
six vessels, including brigs, schooners,
ships, and two gunboats for
the Federal Government.25
Other towns on the Ohio River, notably
Cincinnati and Steu-
benville, shared with Marietta the
boatbuilding and shipbuilding
industry. On Lake Erie, Cleveland and
Sandusky had their ship
yards and rope walks. John Kilbourn's Ohio
Gazetteer for 1816,
in its sketch of Cleveland, stated:
". . . during the late war, it
[Cleveland] was a considerable depot for
provisions and muni-
tions of war, as also a place for building
various kinds of boats
and other water craft, for military
service on the lake."26
Six years before Fulton and Livingston's
Clermont made its
famous trip up the Hudson River, the
possibility of steam naviga-
tion on the western waters was being
discussed in Cincinnati. In
1801 two promoters, Samuel Heighway and
John Pool, were seek-
ing subscriptions in Cincinnati
"for the bringing into effect a
mechanical project, constructed for the
propelling of boats against
the stream of rivers, tides and currents
by the power of steam or
24 Christian Schultz, Travels on an
Inland Voyage through the States of New York,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio,
Kentucky, and Tennessee, and through the Territories of
Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
New Orleans; Performed in the Years 1807 and
1808 (New York, 1810), 1, 142.
25 Charles Cist, Cincinnati
Miscellany (Cincinnati, 1845), 1, 205.
26 John Kilbourn, The Ohio Gazetteer:
or Topographical Dictionary (Columbus,
1816), 36.
INDUSTRIAL BEGINNINGS IN OHIO 249
elastic vapor."27 Their efforts came to naught, probably because
of lack of financial support.
The first steamboat actually to descend
the Ohio River was
the New Orleans built at Pittsburgh under the direction of
Nicholas Roosevelt and launched in the
autumn of 1811. The
boat yards in the Ohio River towns soon
began construction of
steamboats. Cincinnati's first
steamboat, the Vesta, was built in
1816, and steamboat building rapidly
became one of Cincinnati's
major industries.
The boatyard of Elijah Murray, Thomas
Thompson, and
William Murray-in Steubenville
advertised in the Western Herald
and Steubenville Gazette of January 9, 1830: "Steam boats, keel,
flat, and all other kind of boats built
at short notice and on reason-
able terms." It was stated that
boats would be built of any wood
desired but that locust or oak frames
were considered best for
steamboats. Also, the advertisers
offered to buy oak, pine, cherry,
poplar, and walnut saw logs.
By the 1830's steamboat building was
flourishing in Marietta
and Harmar, across the Muskingum River.
In 1836 a steamboat
company was incorporated in Marietta
with a capital of $300,000,
and a steam engine company was
established in Harmar the same
year. Steamboats built in that area
earlier had been equipped
generally with engines built in Wheeling
or Pittsburgh.28
Ohio's farm families, with the
resourcefulness characteristic
of pioneer peoples, provided at home
many of the items which
today would be made in factories and
sold in stores. They pro-
duced wool and made homespun clothing,
slaughtered and cured
their meat, made maple syrup and sugar.
Cheese and wine were
commonly made on the farms. Potash and
pearlash were pro-
duced from the abundant timber, much of
which was cut to clear
the land for farming. Some of the
"asheries" were commercial
ventures of considerable size, but farm
wives used these alkalies
in preparing their hominy, making soap,
and in bleaching cloth.29
Wool hats were made principally by the
hatters in town, but
27 Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette, March 4, 1801 (quoted in Charles Cist,
Cincinnati in 1841; Its Early Annals
and Future Prospects (Cincinnati,
1841), 177).
28 Jenkins, Ohio Gazetteer, 366.
29 Utter, Frontier State, 235-6.
250
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
farmers sometimes made their own summer
hats out of rye straw.
They soaked the straw, plaited it, and
sewed the plaits into shape.
Another material used for summer work
hats was shavings planed
from a buckeye limb and cut into strips
about an eighth of an inch
wide. These were plaited in the same
manner as the straw and
reputedly made hats of great durability.30
One can imagine, how-
ever, that these hats lacked much in
artistry.
Even in the frontier period the towns
with their multiple
industries, most of which employed fewer
than ten men, were
tremendously important in the life of
the State. In 1820 Ohio
had 578 factories which were capitalized
at $3,955,829 and which
produced goods valued at $3,134,772. The
State had already
become one of the foremost manufacturing
areas of the Union.31
John Kilbourn's Ohio Gazetteer of
1833 lists as the principal
towns of the State: Cincinnati,
Portsmouth, Gallipolis, Marietta,
and Steubenville on the Ohio River;
Zanesville, Lancaster, Chilli-
cothe, Columbus, Dayton, and Hamilton in
the interior; and
Painesville, Cleveland, and Sandusky
City on Lake Erie. In a
paper of this scope it is manifestly
impossible to attempt a detailed
survey of the early industrial
development of each of these towns
and of the numerous smaller ones in the
State. A few sidelights
on their industrial history, however,
may serve to illustrate the
nature and diversity of work done in
enterprises other than those
already treated.
Cincinnati, which was in time to become
the Queen City of
the West, in 1810 was a little unpaved
river town noted chiefly
for the eight brickyards "in the
Western part of the Bottom," the
tanneries, and the shambles of the
butchers.32 The factory sys-
tem in Cincinnati dates from the
construction of the "Steam
Mill" in 1814. It was a nine-story
building designed to house
wool and cotton machinery, a fulling
mill, four pairs of stones for
the manufacture of flour, and several
other machines-all driven
by a single seventy-horsepower steam
engine.33
30 J. F. Edgar, Pioneer Life in
Dayton and Vicinity (Dayton, 1896), 194.
31 Utter, Frontier State, 229.
32Daniel Drake, Notices Concerning
Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1810), 29.
33 Mabry, "Ante-Bellum
Cincinnati," 65.
INDUSTRIAL BEGINNINGS IN OHIO 251
Judging from Daniel Drake's description,
Cincinnati was a
veritable hive of industry in 1815. In
addition to the compara-
tively large-scale operations carried on
by the Steam Mill Com-
pany and the Cincinnati Manufacturing
Company, there were
dozens of shops and small establishments
which fabricated a wide
variety of wares. There was no iron
foundry as yet, but black-
smiths made nails, stills, kettles,
tinware, rifles, dirks, etc. Though
Cincinnati never became a great textile
center, it had in operation
in 1815 for cotton work 3,300
spindles, 14 cotton and 91 wool
carding machines, 130 spindles for wool,
and a number of "twist-
ing machines" and cotton gins.
Horse power was commonly used
in the smaller spinning plants. Among
the. Cincinnati manufac-
tured goods of 1815 may be named: trunks
"covered with deer
skin," blank books and binding
work, white lead, tobacco and
snuff, pot and pearl ashes, soap,
candles, and various types of
cordage. The two local breweries, one of
which had been erected
four years earlier, consumed about
thirty thousand bushels of
barley annually in the making of beer,
porter, and ale. These
beverages were exported to the
Mississippi Valley, as far south as
New Orleans. Furniture of all sorts was
made from native cherry
or walnut or mahogany "freighted up
the Mississippi." The latter
was doubtless imported by way of New
Orleans. Cincinnati
coopers were using a machine, recently
invented by William
Bailey of Kentucky, which, powered by
one or two horses, en-
abled a man and boy to dress and joint,
"in a superior manner,"
staves necessary for a hundred barrels,
hogsheads, or pipes in
twelve hours. Arrangements were being
made to export dressed
staves to New Orleans.34 Capitalizing
on the nationalism of the
period, J. B. Robinson, "an
American," advertised in the Liberty
Hall and Cincinnati Gazette of June 9, 1818, that he would card
wool "better than any person that
ever was imported, exported, or
transported from Britain."35
No sketch of Cincinnati, however brief,
should fail to include
some consideration of its pork-packing
industry. Exactly when
34 Daniel Drake, Natural and
Statistical View, or Picture of Cincinnati and the
Miami Country (Cincinnati, 1815), 143-7.
35 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati
Gazette, June 9, 1818.
252
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
pork was first packed for market in
Cincinnati it is difficult to
say with certainty. One authority
credits Richard Fosdick with
initiating the business in 1810.36 James
Flint, one of the numerous
foreign travelers who visited
Cincinnati, observed in January,
1819, that dealers in pork were
"busy cutting up and salting" and
that "boats were loading pork and
drays carrying it down to the
river."37
By 1826 the industry had undoubtedly
assumed large pro-
portions, and the city had earned its
nickname, "Porkopolis."
Benjamin Drake and Edward Deering
Mansfield, writing of Cin-
cinnati in that year, state that its
pork business was greater than
that of Baltimore and "perhaps not
exceeded by that of any place
in the world."38 During
the season from November 15, 1826, to
February 15, 1827, forty thousand hogs
were packed in Cincin-
nati; thirty thousand of these were
slaughtered in the city, and
ten thousand, already killed, were
brought in wagons from the
surrounding country. In 1826 Cincinnati
exported 17,000 bar-
rels of pork, valued at $102,000;
1,280,000 pounds of lard, worth
$64,000; and 1,425,000 pounds of hams
and bacon, which brought
$57,000. In the early days there was
little attempt to sell those
parts of the hog that could not be
readily salted or smoked and
packed. For example, spare ribs in large
quantities were dumped
into the Ohio River. Not until about
1830, when there was a
large influx of Germans and a general
increase in population,
was there a market for ribs.39
Andrew Miller visited Ohio and other
western states and
prepared a handbook which was published
in 1819 "for the benefit
of Emigrants and others, intending to
visit the Western Country."
His observations supply some details
about the industrial develop-
ment to that time. He noted particularly
the iron furnaces and
forges, factories for the making of
glass, woolen and cotton cloth,
paper, nails, and "an almost
infinite number of grist, merchant,
and saw mills." Quarrying was
carried on in all parts of the
36 Henry A. and Kate B. Ford, History
of Cincinnati, Ohio (Cleveland, 1881), 328.
37 James Flint, Letters from America,
Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, ed. by
R. G. Thwaites, Vol. IX (Cleveland,
1904), 150-1.
38 Benjamin Drake and Edward D.
Mansfield, Cincinnati in 1826 (Cincinnati,
1827), 78.
39 Cist, Cincinnati Miscellany, I,
20.
INDUSTRIAL BEGINNINGS IN 0HIO 253
State, limestone being the most common
type of stone found.
Grind, whet, and millstones were made in
the Connecticut Reserve,
and on Raccoon Creek in Athens County
were made burr mill-
stones "equal to the best English
burrs." In Chillicothe, he ob-
served a cotton and woolen factory, rope
walks, breweries, dis-
tilleries, and tanneries. As he
descended the Ohio River approach-
ing Steubenville in April, 1816, he
heard "the music of its pon-
derous steam engines" several miles
before he had a view of the
town. Among the factories which he saw
there was one making
soap and candles. Zanesville, with
excellent water power, boasted
three glass factories, a paper mill, a
book bindery, a nail factory,
and numerous mechanics' shops.40
There were other industries that soon
developed. Dayton,
for instance, had a thriving silk
industry in the 1830's.41
Akron with a population of only 1600 in
1836 had a clock and
looking-glass manufactory, an engraver
and map manufactory,
two chair factories, an extensive
manufactory of carding and
shearing machines, in addition to the
common types of manufac-
tories mentioned.42
Further enumeration, however, would add
little to the pic-
ture. The industrial revolution in Ohio
was to go on, but the
foundations were securely laid. Before
1840, Ohio manufac-
turers were already fabricating by steam
and water power articles
ranging alphabetically from agricultural
implements to wrought-
iron nails. What Charles Cist wrote of
Cincinnati in 1845 might
well have been written of the entire
State of Ohio: "There seems
to exist a general conspiracy . . . to
put down the sale of eastern
articles . . . and a systematic effort
to introduce article by article
into our manufacture here by machinery
what has heretofore
been fabricated merely by hand. . .
."43
40 Andrew
Miller, New States and Territories, or the Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi-
gan, North-Western, Missouri,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in Their Real
Characters in 1818 (n. p., 1819), 9-47 (located in Rare Book Division,
Library of
Congress).
41 Kilbourn,
The Ohio Gazetteer (Columbus, 1833), 173.
42 Jenkins, Ohio Gazetteer, 55.
43 Cist, Cincinnati Miscellany, II,
174.
INDUSTRIAL BEGINNINGS IN OHIO*
By WILLIAM
ALEXANDER MABRY
The abundance of fertile land was
unquestionably the lode-
stone which attracted most of the early
settlers to the Ohio
Country. But along with the pioneer
farmers came numbers of
skilled mechanics to build the boats and
erect the little mills and
shops that were so much needed to
furnish those necessities that
could not be profitably brought from the
East. No tariff was
necessary to protect the infant
industries of the western country.
Sheer distance and the difficulties and
costs of transportation
afforded ample protection in the early
years of development.
Those enterprising individuals who
planned the first settle-
ments in Ohio were quite aware of the
fact that they would have
to provide for grinding their grain,
sawing the lumber for their
buildings, making the iron for their
tools and farming implements,
and the salt for their food. Captain
Jonathan Devol, best remem-
bered for his skill as a shipbuilder,
rendered a real service to his
pioneer neighbors of Washington County
when he constructed a
floating gristmill, the wheels of which
were turned by the current
of the Ohio River. The boats to which
the machinery was attached
were fastened to trees on the shore.1
The ingenious Captain also
invented a mill to grind and press out
the juice of cornstalks to
make molasses.2
Soon after the founding of Marietta, men
were sent out to
examine the streams for mill sites.
Among the best located was
one on Wolf Creek, about a mile above
the junction with the
Muskingum River. The channel of the
creek was cut out of lime-
stone rock, and there was a fall of
several feet in a few rods.
Colonel Robert Oliver, Major Haffield
White, and Captain John
Dodge formed an association in the
summer of 1789 for the erec-
tion of mills at this place which was
sixteen miles from Marietta.
* Read at the afternoon session of the Annual Meeting of the Ohio Academy
of
History, at the Deshler-Wallick Hotel,
April 5, 1946.
1 Warren Jenkins, The Ohio
Gazetteer and Traveler's Guide (Columbus, 1837),
440.
2 Julia Perkins Cutler, The Founders of Ohio; Brief Sketches of the
Forty-eight
Pioneers, Who under the Command of
General Rufus Putnam, . . . Commenced the
First White Settlement in the
Northwest Territory (Cincinnati,
1888), 25.
242