AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 729 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES 



SINCE COLUMBUS. 



VIII. THE MANUFACTURE OF STEEL. 

 Br WILLIAM F. DUKFEE, Engineer. 



IT is now two hundred and thirty -six years since the first 

 American steel maker of which we have any record, Mr. 

 John Tucker, of Southold, Long Island, informed the General 

 Court of Connecticut of his "abilitie and intendment to make 

 Steele there or in some other plantation in this jurisdiction, if he 

 may have some things granted." The court (says Bishop) acqui- 

 esced in a grant of privileges, and, in the following May, Tucker 

 obtained from the Assembly a declaration "that if he doe laye 

 out his estate in such a manner about this publique worke, and 

 that God shall cross him therein so that he be impoverished 

 thereby, they are willing that that small remaining part shall be 

 free from rates for ten years."* Possibly Tucker thought that 

 the " protection " guaranteed by the colony was not sufficient, as 

 we have no evidence that he ever availed himself of it, or was 

 ever " impoverished thereby." 



In 1728 Samuel Higley, of Simsbury, and Joseph Dewey, of 

 Hebron, in Hartford County, Connecticut, represented to the 

 Legislature that the said Higley had, "with great pains and 

 cost, found out and obtained a curious art by w r hich to convert, 

 change, or transmute common iron into good steel sufficient for 

 any use, and was the first that ever performed such an operation 

 in America." \ Swank gives on the authority of Mr. Charles J. 

 Hoadly, Librarian of the Connecticut State Library, a certificate, 

 signed by Timothy Phelps and John Drake, blacksmiths, which 

 states that, in June, 1725, Mr. Higley obtained from the sub- 

 scribers several pieces of iron, so shaped that they could be known 

 again, and that a few days later "he brought the same pieces 

 which we let him have, and we proved them and found them good 

 steel, which was the first steel that ever was made in this country 

 that we ever saw or heard of." 



A patent was granted Higley and Dewey for ten years, pro- 



* New Haven Colonial Records, vol. ii, p. 1*73. 



f Bishop tells us that " the first patent granted in England for the manufacture of steel 

 was to Richard Lord Dacre, Thomas Letsome, and Nicholas Page, on 8th April, 1626, 

 for apparatus for making steel, according to the inventure of Letsome." In 1655 "there 

 was but little steel made in England, and that very imperfectly and all of foreign Iron." 

 Forty years after (in 1695) English writers speak of steeling articles by " boiling them in 

 raw metal," and steel was made by a similar process, and was " made by cementation by 

 John Heydon, at Bromley, in 1697." 



