Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the Saugus Iron
Works, the birth place of the Iron and Steel industries in North America. Saugus
is now a National Park. Several prisoners of war from the Battle of Dunbar
(1650) were indentured to the Iron Works. Many of their descendants still live
in Massachusetts and Maine today.
My genealogy friends will recall that Jon Cryer had an
ancestor that was a prisoner of war from the Battle of Dunbar who was
indentured here.
I first became interested in the Dunbar soldiers when I read
about the discovery of a mass grave during some construction work at Durham
Cathedral. Although I have no known ancestral ties to these men, they have pulled
at my heartstrings every since I learned of their story.
The minerals needed for iron production are found in
abundance in Saugus and as such it soon became the site of the first successful
plant for the integrated production of cast and wrought iron. In addition to the rich supply of bog iron, the
thick forests provided the wood that could be harvested for charcoal for the
fires to melt the bog iron. Gabbro was used
as a “flux” to help remove the impurities in the molten bog iron. The water
from the Saugus River was diverted to power the water wheel.
The bog iron was melted in the blast furnace at temperatures
of 3,000 degrees
Fahrenheit. The molten iron was poured into sand trenches
which cooled it into sow iron. From this iron bars were made and sent to the
forge where they were made into wrought iron. Within a couple of years of production,
the Iron Works at Saugus rivalled any in Europe. The iron produced here was
also shipped throughout Europe from this water terminus.
In In 1650, at the Battle of Dunbar, the English defeated
the Scots. 10,000 Scots were captured. Roughly 4,000 were freed due to age,
illness or injure and the remaining 6,000 were force marched from Dunbar to
Durham Cathedral, some to110 miles south where they were to be imprisoned. Half
of the men died on the journey. Of the 3,000 that were imprisoned at Durham, half
died in captivity. The rest were eventually shipped to the colonies. The first 150
were sent to Massachusetts. Sixty-one of these were sold to the Saugus Iron Works.
The men were provided with housing,
food, clothing, liquor and tobacco in exchange for their labour. Most worked as
wood cutters. Some were more skilled and were employed in the production of the
iron or in smithing the iron. Many of these hard working men went on to be very
successful in their new lives in America.
