F. W. Chesson ROXBURY.HTM
144 Fiske Street,
Waterbury, CT 06710 Rev: 5-21-00
YANKEE STEEL
or
The Rise and Fall of the American Silver Steel Company
by
Frederick W. Chesson
ROXBURY FURNACE LIVES!
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Although its once fiery hearth has long chilled, the blast furnace
at the foot of Mine Hill in Roxbury, Connecticut remains as a living monument
to both the engineers and masons of 1865, and to the energies of Yankee
entrepreneurs of the foot-loose and free-wheeling Post-Civil War economic era.
The story of the American Silver Steel Company and the personages behind
is a microcosm of native skills, naive technological expectations, and the
All-American ambition to make a buck, preferably really BIG bucks.
On the following pages are outlined the dreams and realizations of such
Hartford wheeler-dealers as typified by the scheme's founder, Samuel Coit.
If the name is at first mistaken for that other Hartford industrial prodigy,
Samuel COLT, the error is justifiable, as both were dreamers, promoters, and
shirt-sleeve doers in the Old School tradition. Colt died young at the height
of his arms-making career. Coit was dealt other hands by a capricious fate,
as will be seen....
*
The American Silver Steel Company was a product of the Civil War and
its immediate aftermath, when the demand for quality steel in quantity became
a crisis issue in America's Industrial Revolution. Much of the better grades
of steel were still being imported and native steel-making was still largely
an art, than anything resembling today's exact, computerized technology.
Good steel-making iron ores were much in demand, for many local ore
beds produced a variable product, whose sulfur and phosphorous contaminants
could wreak havoc when it came to steel refining operations. Siderite, a
fairly rare iron-carbonate from Roxbury's Mine Hill, high above the Shepaug
River, was one key to the problem. The Hill had long attracted a succession
of entrepreneurs and land speculators, but their quest was mainly for silver,
present in minute quantities in the galena and sphalerite minerals, ores of
lead and zinc.
Although Yale University's leading geologic savants had long praised
siderite's steel-making properties, not until nearly the middle of the
Nineteenth Century was iron recognized as the true treasure of Mine Hill.
Mining and smelting began on a sporadic basis, but due to a Gordian Knot of
conflicting property claims and imperfect refining techniques, nothing
seriously was accomplished until 1864.
With the Civil War raging full that year, and with the demand for
quality steel reaching exhilarating heights, Roxbury's potentials came to
the attention of Hartford's investment community in the personality of a
consummate Yankee wheeler-dealer by the name of Samuel Coit. Born in
Plainfield in 1819, he had come to Hartford as a young man and was soon
ascending the corporate ladder of the growing Aetna Insurance Company.
Mineral industries were familiar territory to him, as he was already
president of the Mason County Coal and Salt Company, on the banks of the
Ohio River in the new state of West Virginia.
Coit also had the confidence of Aetna's directors, as most would soon
become shareholders in the new steel-making venture. Soon, a consortium was
put together under the name of the Shepaug Steel Mining Company, with its
offices on lower Broadway in New York City. This seems to have been a mainly
promotional organization, mining capital in place of ore. The company's
brochure contained lavish descriptions of the ore's suitability for quality
steel from both Yale savants and practical-minded metallurgical engineers.
Ample supplies of wood for charcoal were at hand, and the ore's carbonate
nature was claimed to make it virtually self-fluxing. This assumption was
to cause considerable trouble in actual operations, however.
Having obtained both theoretical and practical assurances that Mine
Hill siderite could be converted into splendid surgical-quality steel...
Silver Steel, as the product was known in Prussia and Styria...an operating
entity, the Shepaug Spathic Iron Company, was founded in late 1864 to obtain
possession of the New Eldorado. Meanwhile, another shrewd Yankee businessman,
one David Stiles, of Southbury, had been securing title to the hill's multi-
divided land parcels. He drove a stiff bargain with the new proprietors,
parting with his hard-earned property for $100,000 on New year's Day of 1865.
The Hartford men consoled themselves with a fully clear title to the
Mother Load and immediately commenced operations. Land was cleared for
building timber and charcoal-making, old tunnels were cleaned out and new
prospects made, while ore samples sent abroad for testing in the actual
steel-making processes then in vogue. Searching for local talent, the company
engaged one Henry Kolbe, a Prussian steel-master, then residing in Hartford,
to supervise the building of a blast furnace and associated steel works.
He was later dispatched on a mission to his native land to recruit skilled
steel makers.
To insure corporate legitimacy, the company petitioned the Connecticut
State Legislature in its May Session, for a Private Act of Incorporation.
The War was now over, the nation mourned its slain president, but the demand
for quality steel was undiminished. On July 21st, 1865, the Resolution of
Incorporation was formally passed, with the new entity's capital set at
$35,000.
Elected as Directors were the following Hartford businessmen. Coit,
Leonard Homes Bacon, Samuel J. Day, Erastus A. Bulkeley, Erastus Collins
and William Collins. Also elected were Samuel G. Blackman of Waterbury
and Wilson Clark of new Haven. Samuel Coit was elected president and Bacon
was named Secretary-Treasurer.
A list of charter stock subscribers was found attached to the Resolution
of Incorporation, at the Connecticut State Library. (Rox D G25 Res Pam) and
is appended below. The roster of names reads like a Who's Who of Hartford's
Civil War Era business elite.
Eliphalet Adams Bulkeley, for example, was founder and president of
prestigious Aetna Insurance Company, while Austin Dunham was vice-president.
Lawson C. Ives was a partner in Ives, Hooker & Co., wool dealers, while
Newton Case was a well-known printer.
Charter Shareholders of the Shepaug Spathic Iron and Steel Company, June, 1865:
Stockholder's Name Shares Remarks
______________________________________________________________________________
Bacon, Leonard Homes 7O Original Incorporator
Barbour, Lucius 2OO
Bulkeley, Eliphalet A. 3OO Original Incorporator
Campbell, James 4O
Case, Newton 2OO
Coit, George 2O
Coit, Samuel 3,71O Founder and first President
Collins, Erastus 7O Original Incorporator
Collins, William Lyman 7O Original Incorporator
Cone and Day (Company) 2OO
Day, Albert 1OO
Day, Calvin 1OO
Day, Horatio E. 14O
Dunham, Austin 2OO
French, Henry 11O
Hawley, George B., MD 1OO
Hawley, Joseph R. 2O (Governor, 1866-67)
Healy, William A. 2OO
Ives, Lawson C. 4OO
Kent, Henry P. 12O
Kimball, Charles C. 12O
Loomis, Byron 5O
Norton, D. W. 12O
Phillips, Daniel 2OO
Smith, Thomas 2OO
Starr, H.(?) R. 7O
Swift, Rowland 6O
Terry, O. G. 1OO
Tyler, C. C. 2O
Watkinson, J. H. 2O
Welch, George M. 4O
Wilson, Eban 2O
As majority shareholder with 3,710 shares, at $50 per-share par, Coit
was involved to at least $185,000 in paper value, a considerable sum in
those days, when $1000 a year was considered a comfortable income for the
average worker.
Interestingly, of the Incorporators, neither Blackman, Clark, nor Day
were listed on the stockholder's roster, though they could well have become
share-holders shortly thereafter. Bacon and the two Collins brothers were
relatively modest participants at 70 shares apiece and five parties were in
for as few as 20 shares. One of these frugal, or cautious, investors was
General Joseph R. Hawley, still on active service in North Carolina, and
destined to be governor of Connecticut in 1866-67.
It is also interesting to note the Aetna Connection of Charter Shareholders:
Eliphalet A. Bulkeley. President and Director, 1855-1872
Austin Dunham. Director, 1853-1877 & Vice-President, 1864-1877
Lawson C. Ives. Director, 1853-1858
William R. Cone (Cone & Day) Director, 1856-1858
Samuel Coit. Director, 1856-1858 & Secretary, 1855-1858
D. W. Norton. Director, 1860-1874
Austin Dunham also served as President and Director of the Hartford
Electric Light Company from 1882 to 1918; Henry French was a Director from
1883 to 1889.
There were also connections with the prestigious Society for Savings,
Hartford's premier bank since 1818. Except as noted, all of the following
names were Charter Shareholders.
Lucius Barbour. Trustee, 1904
Erastus Collins. Trustee, 1878
Elisha Colt. Treasurer, 1819-1827 Trustee, 1846 (1.)
Joseph Cone. Trustee, 1858
William Cone. Trustee, 1873
Albert Day. Trustee, 1829
Calvin Day. Secretary, 1842-1847 Trustee, 1838
Joseph R. Hawley. Trustee, 1873
Nathaniel Shipman Trustee, 1879 (2.)
Thomas Smith Trustee, 1837
Rowland Swift Trustee, 1855
(1.) Secretary and Treasurer of the Spathic Iron Co., of which little is
known. It may have been no more than a holding company.
(2.) Majority stockholder in the surviving Shepaug Iron Co. and Bridgeport
Steel Co., c 1872.
The first entry of the Shepaug Spathic Iron and Steel Company appeared
in the Hartford City Directory's 1866-67 edition. It was also its only
entry, as the incorporators sought both to shorten the firm's name and add
to its image for potential investors. They accordingly petitioned the
Legislature for "relief," and on May 30th, 1866, the American Silver Steel
Company emerged, complete with an enlarged Capitalization of one million
dollars. The company's address was at what was then 247 Main Street, where
both Samuel Coit and the Aetna had their respective and interlinked offices.
The annual company meeting was ordered to be the first Tuesday in July.
This first meeting fell on July third, by which time the blast furnace and
steel mill were well under way and ore was being mined, though the first
smelting still lay nearly a year away.
President Coit could announce the addition of an important personage
to the company's roster, as July first saw the arrival of Albert L. Hodge,
a 44-year-old Roxbury farmer and small businessman. Hodge was given charge
of all non-mining and smelting operations, and it is through his surviving
diaries that the rise and fall of this "Pittsburgh on the Shepaug" is most
graphically seen.
The year of 1867 was ushered in with high hopes amid sub-zero cold.
Samuel Coit made arduous trips nearly every week to the site, traveling by
train from Hartford to Bridgeport and thence to New Milford, where a wagon
or sleigh ride awaited for the final leg to Roxbury. Agitation for a Shepaug
Valley Railroad, from Hawleyville up to Litchfield, already a hot topic in
the county, was given a heady incentive by the promised business to be
generated by the new steel mill in Roxbury.
Furnace builder Isaac Newton Bartram of Sharon finished the ore car
tramway between mine and furnace and the first car came down in January.
Their immediate destination was the twin-roaster complex up above the
furnace proper. Here, the freshly-mined ore was charcoal-roasted in a
necessary, and expensive, preliminary step to smelting. Next came grinding
and sifting so that optimal-sized ore chunks were ready for charging.
By mid-February the furnace was ready for its first cast. But alas,
something went very wrong! Perhaps it was low wind pressure from the new-
style Mckenzie rotary blowers, or insufficient limestone flux in the charge.
The outcome, at any rate, was a dreaded "frozen hearth," which Super-
intendent Hodge recorded in his diary as something he would have given his
month's salary of $100 to have avoided.
A lengthy repair job followed, much to the distress of the stockholders.
But, finally, on June 13th, 1867, an anxious delegation was present to see
the first iron cast at Roxbury Furnace.
There followed a period of sporadic operations, due to weather-induced
and mechanical problems. Freak rains in late June almost caused another
frozen hearth, as did a breakdown of the steam engine driving the blowers,
events dutifully recorded in Albert Hodge's diaries.
From mid-September to the end of the year, the furnace's production of
pig iron was lower, and at a higher intake of charcoal, than its many
contemporaries in the state's north-west Iron Triangle. To add to these
disappointments, the long-awaited steel production did not materialize.
Despite all their native skills and techniques, the imported Prussian
"stahl-meisters" could not deliver the goods, even after the puddling
furnaces and hearths were first modified and then rebuilt. In December,
1867, Mr. Kolbe departed and was replaced by one Benjamin Franklin Durffee,
a pioneer in American metallurgical technology.
Manager Hodge reported frequent labor difficulties with the miners.
These were organized into "mini-union" teams of around seven or eight men,
whose elected leaders bargained for terms of employment. Names like Coad
and Salmon indicate Cornish-Welch origins. Records show that they were
paid literally by the inch for their "drifting," "shafting" and "stopeing"
operations. In return, they had to pay the "company store" for such staples
of the trade as powder, fuze, candles and tools, plus drill-sharpening and
other black-smith services.
This unhappy situation carried on into 1868, probably well past the
time when company stock was selling for the princely sum of $250 a share.
For at the annual meeting on July 7th, Samuel Coit found himself removed
as President.
In his place, the directors chose Nathaniel Wheeler of Bridgeport.
Born in Watertown in 1820, he headed the immense firm of Wheeler and Wilson,
sewing machine makers to the world. His corporate position seems to have
been rather nominal with Silver Steel, as he hardly visited Roxbury, according
to the Hodge's diary entries.
Nevertheless, a definitive "Bridgeport Connection" was now established.
On Mather's Point, in Bridgeport Harbor, a complete steel-making plant,
using the new Siemens Regenerative System, soon arose on the former mud flats.
This reverberatory furnace method used coal, rather than charcoal, which could
be easily brought by ship to the factory site. More difficult was the removal
of the forging hammers, roll-trains and other heavy equipment from Roxbury,
over the hills by ox-cart or sledge to New Milford and thence by rail to
Bridgeport.
The disturbed east side of the steel mill foundation walls show that
extraction of the massive machinery required drastic measures.
Had the long-promoted rail line up the Shepaug to Litchfield been a
reality, the removal would have been far faster and easier, and a steady
flow of pig-iron from Mine Hill to the new works assured, but this was not
to be.
1869 and 1870 passed in relative calm, though dangerous financial
eddies and whirlpools always seemed to lie in wait for the struggling
company. Its treasurer, Frederic L. Gleason, recorded innumerable dawn
train rides from Hartford to Bridgeport, there to re-negotiate old promissory
notes and other IOUs. He would then do a stint as traveling salesman,
toting hefty slabs of steel samples up north to Colt's, Roper Arms, Pratt
and Whitney, Landers Frary and Clark, plus several railroad repair shops
in the Hartford-Springfield area.
But by 1871, it was painfully clear that the expenses of mining the
rock-hard siderite had vastly outweighed its low-sulfur, low-phosphorus
advantages for steel-making. That fall, the Directors decide to convert
the relatively inefficient furnace to hot-blast. In this process, the
furnace exhaust gasses warm the incoming forced air via a heat-exchanger.
While nearly universal, even in Connecticut's conservatively operated iron
furnaces, steel-making was still such an "art" that adherents of cold-blast
were not to be easily refuted.
Iron-master Durffee held to this opinion so much so that, when hot-
blast was ordered, he tendered his resignation. He may have had a sound
basis for his stubbornness as the already languid rotary blowers could
not cope with additional friction caused by the new heat-exchangers.
Iron production fell and operational problems multiplied.
A secession of new ironmasters were unable to get the furnace back
up to even marginal output, and so on Wednesday, May 15th, 1872, Roxbury
Furnace was "blown out" for the last time.
The chilling of the furnace was followed by a drastic reorganization.
The American Silver Steel Company vanished into corporate limbo, to be
replaced by two orphan (or bastard) off-spring, the Shepaug Iron Company
and the Bridgeport Steel Company.
Hartford attorney and insurance specialist Robert E. Day became
president of the Shepaug Iron Company. Despite its name, there is no
record of Roxbury Furnace ever going back in blast again. Its extensive
charcoal storage sheds were shingled that fall, but perhaps only so that
existing stocks could be sold off.
Hopeful rumors appeared in the Litchfield Enquirer that William
Barnum, "Iron King of the North West," would use Roxbury ore for his own
family of Canaan Valley furnaces. This would have been technically feasible, as
the Shepaug Valley Railroad had opened for business on the first of the year.
But nothing came of it, perhaps because of the high costs of siderite mining
and roasting operations.
The Bridgeport Steel Company, under Clapp Spooner, a local business
man, operated for a short time, probably on a stockpile of Roxbury pig iron.
It was then sold to Joel Farist, who relocated his already successful steel
mill in Windsor down to Bridgeport. The Farist Steel Company was a fixture
on what was now Steel Point for many years. In the 1920s, it became the site
of United Illuminating's new Harbor Generating Station and the last vestige
of the American Silver Steel Company's only successful operation vanished
utterly.
Mine Hill enjoyed a granite quarrying renaissance, thanks to the new
railroad, and its two quarry sites probably earned any persistent investors
far more than the brief and unhappy adventure into spathic iron. From the
quarry above the Furnace, hefty slabs were lowered on a double-tracked
tramway (the loaded cars bringing the empties back up) to a rail siding.
From Rockside Quarry, south of Judd's Bridge, even bigger slabs, one over
forty feet long, were sent south to New York by rail. But by 1910, the
rise of reinforced concrete had stilled the sounds of steam drills and
hammers on the heights above the Shepaug.
The Shepaug Iron Company itself seems to have existed until about
1895, when former manager Albert Hodge then acquired its 365-odd acres.
Between 1915 and 1925 the Columbia School of Mines used the tunnels for
on-the-job mining instruction, in connection with its Camp Columbia summer
school at Morris. The youthful engineers put in a wide variety of concrete
reinforcing walls, tunnel arches and 18" gauge tramway, which are often
mistaken for the original late-1860s works.
After this, Mine Hill slumbered, as bats roosted in its tunnels and
the once-activity-pulsing buildings crumbled away, until finally only the
furnace, ore-roasters and the gaping shafts and adits stood in silent
witness to the vanished enterprise.
Finally, in 1980, the Roxbury Land Trust secured title, thereby
preserving an area unique in biology, geology, and industrial archeology
against the growing perils of land development and vandalism.
All told, the failure of the enterprise was not due to lack of
enthusiasm or substantial investment, but included the following factors:
1. Assumptions by Yale professors that siderite, despite difficulties
in its extraction and preparation, would yield a superior steel.
2. Lack of technical expertise in on-site conversion of pig iron to steel.
3. Inefficient furnace design and/or operation.
4. Lack of rail transport until virtually too-late.
5. Falling prices for steel along with the end of the post-war railroad
expansion and the approaching Panic of 1873.
In conclusion, where it not for the presently preserved structures and
tunnel complex on Mine Hill, the American Silver Steel Company, like most of
the personalities behind it, would have totally vanished from our sight,
along with the once dynamic dream of an empire of..."Yankee Steel."
Roxbury References:
YANKEE MEN OF STEEL
(Those Connected with Roxbury Furnace or its Era)
Bacon, Leonard Homes 1818-189O Incorporator of SSISCo. Hfd. Business man.
Barbour, Lucius 18O5-1873 Charter (major) share holder.
Barnum, William H. 1818-1889 "Iron King" of NW Conn. US Senator, 1876-9.
Bartram, Isaac Newton 1838-1913 Builder of Roxbury Furnace & Democrat
Politician
Blackman, Samuel 18O6-1886 Incorporator of SSISCo. Waterbury inventor.
Bulkeley, Eliphalet A. 18O3-1872 Charter (major) share holder. Pres Aetna
Insurance Co.
Bulkeley, Morgan G. 1837-1922 Share holder. Hfd Mayor, Governor, 1889-93.
Case, Newton 18O7-189O Charter (major) share holder. Printing Co.
Clark, Wilson Hart 1819-1887 SSISCo incorporator. New Haven lawyer.
Coit, Samuel 1819-1896 SSISCo founder, 1st president, and a
majority shareholder. Hartford entrepreneur in other enterprises ranging
from coal, salt and quarrying to a Hartford lawn-mower company.
Coit, Joseph S. G. 1849-1899 Son of SC. Married into Roxbury clergy.
Collins, Erastus 1815-188O SSISCo incorporator. Major shareholder.
Collins, William Lyman 1812-1865 " " " "
Colt, Harris Director of Spathic Iron Co.
Colt, Elisha 1804-1874 Sec-Tres. of Spathic Iron Co.
Cone, William R. 181O-189O Shareholder of SICo and BSCo. Cone & Day.
Day, Albert 1821-1876 SSISCO shareholder. Lt. Gov. 1856-57.
Day, Calvin 18O3-1884 SSISCO shareholder.
Day, Horatio E. 1814-1886 SSISCO shareholder. Director of ASSCo.
Day, Robert E. 1828-1894 Director of ASSCO. President of SICo.
Day, Samuel J. Incorporator of SSISCo.
Dunham, Austin 18O6-1877 Shareholder SSISCo. Director of ASSCo.
Durfee, William F. 1833-1899 ASSCo. iron-master, 1868-1871.
Farist, Joel 1832-19O4 Bridgeport steel-maker. Bought up BSCo.
French, Henry 1816-1899 SSISCO shareholder. Hfd. businessman.
Gleason, Frederic(k) L. 182O-1884 Sec-Tres. of ASSCo. and SICo. Associated
with Samuel Coit in other ventures.
Gleason, Frederic G. 1848-19O3 Composer son of F.L.G. Lived in Chicago.
Goodwin, James, Jr. 1835-1915 President, Spathic Iron Co.
Hawley, George B., MD 1812-1883 Shareholder SSISCo. Director of ASSCo.
Hawley, Joseph R. 1826-19O5 Shareholder SSISCo. Governor, 1866-67.
Healy, William A. 1815-1885 Major shareholder in SSISCo.
Hodge, Albert L. 1822-192O ASSCo superintendent at Mine Hill, Roxbury.
Ives, Lawson C. 18O4-1867 Major shareholder in SSISCo.
Kent, Henry P. Major shareholder in SSISCo.
Kimball, Charles C. Major shareholder in SSISCo.
Kolbe,(Colby), Henry Born in Prussia. ASSCo ironmaster 1866-68.
Loomis, Byron Major shareholder in SSISCCo.
Norton, D. W. Major shareholder in SSISCo.
Phillips, Daniel 18O9-19O3 SSISCo shareholder. Director of ASSCo.
Perry, William H. 182O-1899 Director of ASSCo. Supt at W & W in Bpt.
Shipman, Nathaniel 1828-19O6 Majority shareholder in SICo and BSCo.
Smith, Thomas Major shareholder in SSISCo.
Spooner, Clapp 1824-1899 President BSCo. Mayor of Bridgeport l863.
Terry, O. G. Major shareholder in SSISCo.
Wheeler, Nathaniel 182O-1893 President of ASSCo, 1868-1872. President
Wheeler-Wilson sewing-machines, Bridgeport
A MINE HILL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Michael, and Diane Mayerfeld
1982 Time and the Land: The Story of Mine Hill. Roxbury, CT.
Roxbury Land Trust (two editions)
Chesson, Frederick W. Drawings, maps, manuscripts, typescripts & databases,
relating to history and physical details of iron mine, quarries and furnace
complex at Mine Hill; persons associated with American Silver Steel Company,
(1866-72) of Hartford and Bridgeport, Conn., and successors.
1989 Yankee Steel: The Rise and Fall of the American Silver Steel Company
"My Country" Magazine. Vol. 24, No. 1 Litchfield, CT.
Cothren, William 1854, 1872 History of Ancient Woodbury, 2 vols.
Gleason, Frederic L. (182O-1884) Several diaries c 1865-1875. Conn. Hist.
Soc. Archives, Hartford, CT. Abstracts on Gleason's connections with the
American Silver Steel Company compiled by F. W. Chesson, c 1986.
Gordon, Robert B. 1982. Yale College Metallurgical Museum.... Journal of
Metals 34, 7: 26-33. 1983. Materials for Manufacturing.... Technology
and Culture. 24: 6O2-34.
Gordon, Robert B. and Michael S. Raber
1983 Mine Hill Archaeological Study. Cobalt, CT. Raber Asso.
1984 An Early American Integrated Steel Works. Journal of the
Society of Industrial Archeology 1O: 17-34.
Harte, Charles R. & Herbert C. Keith 1935. Early Iron Industry in Conn.
Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers, 51st Annual Report. New Haven.
1944 Connecticut's Iron and Copper. ibid., 6Oth Year Annual Rpt.
Hodge, A. L. (1822-192O) Diaries and Day Books, c 1865-75. Hodge Memorial
Library, Roxbury, CT. Transcripts by F. W. Chesson, c 1985-6
Hull, Daniel R. 1966. Bewitched Mine Hill. Stonington, CT. Pequot Press.
Pynchon, W.H.C. 1899. Iron Mining in Connecticut, 3 pts. Connecticut Magazine,
Vol. 5: Issues for March, April & May, 1899.
Wickstrand, Norman N. 1986. Notes and Sketches of Connecticut Blast Furnaces.
The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 51, No. 3
The Litchfield ENQUIRER Weekly (Republican) paper of Litchfield, CT. George
Hickox, Editor. Selected articles on Roxbury and Mine Hill. 1865-ff.
Transcribed by F. W. Chesson, 1984 -. See, in particular: 1865; August
17, Sept. 26. 1866; Jan. 25. 1867; Apr. 25, June 2O and Oct.31. Also items
on other area mines and railroads.
The Litchfield SENTINEL Weekly (Democrat) paper. John B. Champlin, Editor.
Selected articles on Roxbury and Mine Hill. 1865-1875. Transcribed by
F. W. Chesson, 1984 -. See especially Sept. 14, 1866 for "A County Tour."
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