I 88 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



from Pembroke. But Mordecai Lincoln was a blacksmith, 

 and iron he must have. Furthermore, his familiarity with 

 the moods of iron made him bold to woo it from its 

 native ore. 



For smelting the ore charcoal was necessary, and that 

 made an industry for some more men who went into our 

 woods to make charcoal. The remains of some of these 

 pits or ovens, where maple and birch and other woods 

 were reduced to charcoal, can now be seen west of King 

 Street, a few hundred feet in Robert T. Burbank's pas- 

 ture. At many other places these little circular hollows 

 may be found, containing bits of charcoal where piles of 

 wood were slowly charred.* By the intense heat of this 

 coal mixed into the lumps of bog ore a few drippings of 

 melted iron would ooze out of the ore into the bottom of 

 the furnace pit at Turtle Island. The molten mass was 

 puddled and then hammered by the trip hammer into 

 billets of wrought iron. Some of the slagf from the old 

 furnace can be seen now at Turtle Island, also bits of the 

 charcoal which have lain under the sod for nearly two 

 hundred years. Some old hinges or andirons, or possibly 

 nails, made of this iron are probably still doing service in 

 some old Cohasset houses, especially the house built by 

 Mordecai Lincoln on South Main Street. The original 

 undertakers of this iron enterprise were Thomas An- 

 drews, Daniel Lincoln, Thomas James, Aaron Pratt, Mor- 

 decai Lincoln, Gershom Ewell, and Josiah Litchfield, Jr. 

 The last three resided in Scituate, but the business 

 belonged to Cohasset. 



A few years $ after the forge was started the Turtle 



* Not all of the charcoal pits which may be found in the town were used for 

 the iron works. Indeed, the making of charcoal was no small industry for a 

 whole century after the iron works were abandoned. Foot stoves and parlor 

 heaters used charcoal, and after anthracite coal came into use, charcoal was still 

 found necessary as a kindler for the hard coal. 



tSf>ecimens are upon exhibit in the historical collection at our Town Hall. 



J January 3, 1717, Aaron Pratt made out a deed (unsigned) of his "part of the 

 sawmill, partly in the First and partly in the Third Division of the Conehasset up- 

 lands." 



