In the last post, we saw how the 1787 Brandon Proprietors Meeting voted to lease a mill site on the Neshobe River to promote the development of iron production in Brandon. Initial production of iron was on a relatively small scale, with a few men digging bog iron ore from “beds” on top of the ground in Forest Dale and Penuel Child producing raw iron and shovels at a forge in the village.

Production of iron changed from a cottage industry serving local needs to an interstate industry with strong political connections starting around 1810. The shift came from the discovery of major iron ore deposits in Forest Dale. Although details are unclear, it seems probable that the exploitation of bog iron deposits on the surface led to an awareness of the rich hematite ore underground. Whatever the root of these discoveries, they had significant social and environmental implications for Brandon.

The Conant family, starting with John and later including sons John A. and Chauncy W., played a highly visible role in changes in Brandon around this time. The senior John Conant moved to Brandon from Massachusetts in 1793 at the age of 23 and promptly purchased “half of the mills and waterpower in the village” for the sum of £150, or roughly $22,000 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation. At a time when waterpower was the only real alternative to manpower and horsepower, this immediately positioned him as a man of some considerable importance in town. According to the 1911 “Pilgrimage to the Monuments of the Early Settlers of Brandon,” Conant later “became proprietor of the entire water power in the village.”

I was not able to find what these mills produced or to whom they were leased, but we do know that Conant and his father-in-law Wait Broughton ventured into the iron business between 1793 and 1810. According to Victor Rolando in “200 Years of Soot and Sweat,” Conant and Broughton “built a poorly designed furnace that failed to draw. There is reason to believe they may have planned this to be a blast furnace, but due to the defect, converted it into a melting furnace that cast stoves from iron smelted at Pittsford furnace.” No one could say John Conant wasn’t persistent.

In 1820, Conant was able to develop a successful blast furnace. Based on a mid-century map, this furnace was probably located roughly where The River Pub and Grill is currently at 18 Center Street. By 1821, he was advertising kettles, hollowware, and machinery, in addition to stoves, for sale or trade for produce or horses. Conant later went into partnership with his children, and eventually the business was sold to the Brandon Iron and Car Wheel Company, which produced cast-iron wheels for railroad cars.

With the combination of water power and a successful forge for smelting iron ore, the demand for iron products from Brandon skyrocketed. Upriver in Forest Dale, John Smith built a forge in 1810 using ore from Leicester Hollow. In 1823–24, he replaced his forge with the blast furnace that still stands in Forest Dale, though in some disrepair. By 1845, this furnace produced over 1,200 tons of iron per year and employed 200 men. According to Rolando, this “generally equaled” the output of Conant’s operations in Brandon village, for a combined total of roughly 2,400 tons of iron per year. Conant’s mine shafts exceeded 100 feet underground, using steam-powered elevators and pumps, burning local lignite coal, and paying miners .725¢ per day.

Producing all this iron required vast amounts of charcoal, which in turn required vast amounts of wood. This required vast amounts of trees, which in turn required forests. More specifically, producing a ton of iron using quality ore requires roughly a quarter-acre of forest. So, 2,400 tons per year means 600 acres of forest per year or 6,000 acres of forest per decade. Keep in mind, there were also furnaces in operation in Pittsford, Leicester, and Salisbury, so demand wasn’t limited to Brandon.

To keep their supply secure, Brandon Iron and Car Wheel purchased forestland which they could cut as they pleased. The 1861 Report on the Geology of Vermont states that, “In real estate the company own two thousand five hundred and ten acres of woodlands in the towns of Brandon, Chittenden, Hancock, Ripton, and Goshen…the timber upon which, with its natural increase, will supply charcoal for the furnace for as long as wanted.” But a closer look at the math shows that 2,510 acres would barely last the company 10 years at peak production and the bare land wouldn’t have had much time for “natural increase.”

In five decades, iron production had gone from a small business making shovels on land reserved by the town Proprietors for the public benefit to an industrial enterprise clearing large forests as far away as Hancock.

This view that an abundant natural resource was therefore inexhaustible was not uncommon in the day. However, Vermonters were starting to notice that as forests disappeared and soil eroded, the fish and game also diminished and perhaps even the climate changed. Vermonter George Perkins Marsh was a pioneer thinker on the need to keep some sort of “balance” with nature.

Today, most Vermont woodlands remain privately owned and are managed according to plans approved by the County Forester Program, rather than for intensive charcoal production. If you are interested in joining a conversation about forests and forestry with Mark Raishart, the County Forester serving Brandon, and maybe have a slice or two of pizza, click here.

Len Schmidt and Jennie Masterson live on Wolf Tree Forest, a wild, working woodlot about 3 miles from the Forest Dale blast furnace. They have no plans to produce charcoal for iron production.