Parked at Home 2024 | #6 Saugus Iron Works National Historical Park

Last night — April 11, 2024 at 7:00 p.m. — was the sixth and final installment of the webinar series Parked at Home hosted by the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP). Park ranger Allison Horrocks led the session with guest speaker Andrew Donovan, supervisory park ranger at Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site and Salem Maritime National Historic Site, which I most recently visited in October 2022. Sherrolyn K. provided American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation. I had last visited Saugus Iron Works about eight years ago and appreciated the opportunity to refresh my knowledge about post-medieval mills leading up to the Industrial Revolution.

Horrocks explained that Saugus, MA and Pawtucket, RI — one of six sites within BRVNHP — shared a business connection. The founder of Pawtucket in 1671, Joseph Jenks Jr., originally settled in Saugus with his father, iron worker Joseph Jenks Sr. Years earlier while in England, the Jenks Sr. had worked for swordmaker Benjamin Stone and learned how to secure a “privilege” from the king to be recognized for work. Using this knowledge, Jenks Sr. became the first person to apply for a patent in Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was for finishing sharp iron instruments using power from a waterwheel. Unfortunately, the Jenks family ran into legal trouble while living in the colony. Esther Jenks, wife of Jenks Jr., was punished for wearing silver lace, a fashion statement considered above her social class. Jenks Jr. left the colony for Rhode Island after committing treason, allegedly saying that he wanted to make a football of the king’s head. Jenks Jr. survived the devastation of King Philip’s War and built a sawmill and forge on the Blackstone River.

Saugus Iron Works was historically called Hammersmith like the town in England where Jenks Sr. was born. The company ran from 1646 to around 1670. This was not the first time that the area was used as an industrial site. Indigenous people had created stone tools from a special stone called Saugus rhyolite or Saugus jasper for over 9,000 years. So far, over 14,000 artifacts have been collected from the site, and the tools have been found as far as Pennsylvania. When Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1630, Pawtucket Native Americans lived on the site, interacted with colonists, and sometimes were paid to cut wood for the iron works.

The colonists did not want to be dependent on England for manufactured, specialized goods like iron, glass, and cloth, so they raised investor funds from English businesspeople to build their own manufacturing facilities. John Winthrop the Younger, son of the famous governor, tried to establish iron works but had no experience. His blast furnace in the Braintree and Quincy area, were Furnace Brook Parkway now runs, was a terrible choice of location and ended in failure. The investors learned their first lesson in colonial enterprise and recruit non-Puritan iron work expert Richard Leader to build the facility at Saugus. Here was a source of water power, transportation on the ocean, and raw materials like bog iron ore to be processed; a type of rock called gabbro that was used as flux to clean the iron; and charcoal to keep the fires burning for thirty or fourty weeks straight, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day at three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The original footprint of the industrial complex stretched for six hundred acres compared to the nine and a half now part of the park service. This included a farm to provide food for workers, worker housing, and a pond to regulate the flow of water over the water wheels. The site originally had eleven water wheels, and seven fully operational wheels were reconstructed.

Bog iron ore was less than fifty percent iron and required a huge amount of processing. After heating, the liquid iron pooled at the bottom of the furnace. Slag or waste floated to the top of the iron, was scooped off by employees, who definitely did not have OSHA standard PPE, and then dumped into a slag pile near the water. These slag piles allowed archaeologist Roland Robbins to rediscover the site in the late 1940s, since the waterwheels and building foundations were gone. Molten iron flowed into channels carved into the sand floor and cooled into “pig bars”. Pig iron was melted and beaten with sledgehammers to become a wrought iron brick. Next, the brick was beaten by a five hundred pound trip hammer run by waterpower, with a worker keeping the iron in place “with basically glorified tongs” until it became a merchant bar. A rolling and slitting mill was added, advanced technology in the 1600s, to create shapes more usable for blacksmiths. Workers passed iron through a series of cutting rods “like making long lasagna noodles in a pasta maker”.

Meanwhile, Jenks Sr. had a unique relationship with the company. He worked as an employee, independent contractor, and investor while maintaining his own shop. Despite his remarkable inventions like a wire-pulling machines for making pins and fish hooks, which caused Robbins to call him “the most exciting pioneer in America’s industrial history”. However, the project was bankrolled by the American Iron and Steel Industry, which wanted to “get back to their roots” after financial prosperity from World War II production. The industry chose not to reconstruct his shop, as it did not support their narrative. Well-paid and skilled workers like Jenks still lived at the edge of the colony, as they did not conform to Puritan ideals. Also present were about thirty-five Scottish prisoners of war who were sold as indentured servants after their loss at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650. They were not given the opportunity to return home after their seven-year sentence.

The company did not last long due to constant mismanagement and lawsuits. One early manager stole materials and starved the Scottish prisoners. Jenks Sr. tried to find new investors, but the business soon failed, and skilled laborers moved to other colonies, spreading their knowledge of iron working. Besides the Jenks Jr. mill in Pawtucket, the Leonard family of iron workers spread throughout Massachusetts and New Jersey, while John Winthrop the Younger tried another enterprise in New Haven, CT. As for the reconstructed historical site, the American Iron and Steel Industry operated the enterprise for about fifteen years before gifting the property to the National Park Service in 1968.

Just as during the previous two years, the Parked at Home webinar series was a fun way to learn about national parks and history from around the country. Replays of these webinars will be available on the Parked at Home 2024 playlist of the BlackstoneNPS YouTube channel. I look forward to someday visiting or revisiting these parks, along with the 2025 season next year.

Read the summaries from Parked at Home 2024:

Read the summaries from Parked at Home 2023:

Search Abby Epplett, Historian

Abby Epplett, Historian

Parked at Home 2024 | #6 Saugus Iron Works National Historical Park