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From: <>
Subject: [NYSUFFOL] Mining The Peconic River For Iron
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 11:19:00 EDT

Dear Suffolk-Rootsers, etc.,


In its (sort of) regularly scheduled Tuesday LI history segment, today's
NEWSDAY (page A29) has a story (the first 5 paragraphs appear after my name)
about how iron form the Peconic River became the source of industries
manufacturing everything from red flannel underwear to 3,000-pound anchors.

Long Island's longest river rises out of mid-Island bogs and swamps and
meanders east 15 miles, forming part of the boundaries of the Towns of
Brookhaven, Riverhead and Southampton in Suffolk County, before it empties
into Peconic Bay.

The large chunks of nearly pure iron were located by poking poles in the
sediment. The iron nodules were retrieved with tongs, loaded onto boats and
drawn to the furnaces. Workers crushed the iron with wooden mallets and
placed it in layers in the furnace with pulverized oyster shells. The iron
was then formed into ingots.

The history of iron from the Peconic River includes: Oliver Cromwell, Isaac
Halsey, Jeremiah Petty, Solomon Townsend and the Civil War ironclad, the
Monitor.

For those who have their copy of the 1998 or 1999 LI Population Survey or
have already downloaded the report from the Suffolk County Cooperative
Library web site (eMail me directly if you need instructions on how to access
and download the report), you'll find the Towns of Brookhaven, Riverhead and
Southampton, Suffolk County on pages 2, 15, 24, 26 & 28 (map) and 25, 27 & 29
(population estimate).

For all those Suffolk-Rootsers who wish to see the entire story but can not
access the web, please eMail me directly and I will then eMail the entire
story to you.


Sincerely,

Walter Greenspan

LONG ISLAND OUR PAST
Mining the Peconic for Iron
LI's longest river supplied metal for Navy anchors and other maritime us
-- by Rhoda Amon/Staff Writer

AT THE SITE of the old Edwards Avenue cranberry bog where the Peconic River
skirts the Riverhead-Brookhaven border, Assemb. Steven Englebright was
explaining the orange tint of the water.

"That's iron," he said, "bog iron." Englebright, who is also a part-time
geology professor at the State University at Stony Brook, was leading a tour
of the pine barrens for the Friends of Science East, who want to build a
science museum. But he took time out for a detour into history. Bog iron,
extracted from the carbon-rich sediment in swampy areas of the river, was
part of an Industrial Revolution in the middle of the pine barrens.

The river became the source of industries manufacturing everything from red
flannel underwear to 3,000-pound anchors.

"It's a heavy iron, resistant to rust, and it had many maritime uses," said
Englebright (D-Setauket). As late as the Civil War, bog iron helped sheath
the Monitor, the Navy's first ironclad vessel. Today, all that's left of the
iron works is this orangy water trickling through Englebright's fingers.

Long Island's longest river rises out of mid-Island bogs and swamps and
meanders east 15 miles, forming part of the boundaries of Brookhaven,
Riverhead and Southampton Towns before it empties into Peconic Bay. Early
English settlers discovered a "fair amount of iron ore in swamps and on the
bottoms of ponds - the problem was how to smelt it," wrote historian Edna
Howell Yeager in her 1965 history, "Peconic River Mills and Industries." The
Plymouth- Taunton Iron Works was established on the river in the 1640s.
Scottish prisoners captured by Oliver Cromwell in the English civil war were
sent to Long Island to set up a "furnance." The ore was poured red hot into
sand molds where it cooled into bars called iron "pigs." More than 100 years
later, workers were still "fishing" for iron in the river, but now they had
more sophisticated forging methods.

This page appears on Tuesdays. Send ideas or queries to Long Island history
writer George DeWan at Newsday, 235 Pinelawn Rd., Melville, N.Y. 11747-4250.
Or send e-mail to dewan @newsday.com.

06/27/2000 - Tuesday - Page A 29

Copyright © Newsday, Inc.

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