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Show Fifty years ago, August 10, 1928, the following article was published in "The Iron County Record", I read it with great interest and would like to share this bit of history of Iron County with my readers WHO FOUNDED THK IRON INDUSTRY IN IRON COUNTY Hy William R. Palmer The Daughters of the Pioneers have undertaken the worthy enterprise of erecting a monument to the honor of those great men who founded the pioneer iron industry in-dustry in Utah. No more deserving tribut to the hardy manhood that settled here can be paid, and I hope the proposition will meet with s hearty response from the people. Since it is proposed to inscribe in imperishable bronze the names of the honored company, their identity becomes at once a matter of first importance. There were many (more than five or six hundred) men, who, during the years of that heroic effort to establish the industry, contributed their time and their property loyally and unselfishly to the enterprise. The proud history of the pioneer iron industry could never be told if this long concourse of workers were omitted. But the purpose of this movement is not to write a history, but rather to commemorate the founding of a pioneer industry. Manifestly a list of all the men who helped in the struggle to manufacture iron, even if it were possible to compile and certify such a list, would be too lengthy to inscribe upon the tablet. Obviously no name that cannot be certified should have place upon it. Who then, were the founders of the iron works in Iron County? The Deseret Iron Company has usually been accorded the honor of making the first iron but a careful checking on history reveals that this is not correct. The larger number of men whose names have come down to us as iron workers, performed their services as employees of the Deseret Iron Company, and this company, as the documentary evidence submitted herein proves, bought out the holdings of an earlier company who had already opened up coal and mill sites, iron mines, built coke ovens, a blast furnace, pattern and moulding shops, etc, and had actually manufactured pig iron in their plant as early as September Sep-tember 30, 1852. The Deseret Iron Company was incorporated in Liverpool, England in the fall of 1852, but its agents did not arrive in Iron County until Nov. 24 of that year, two months after the first furnace run had been made. On November 29, Erastus Snow and Franklin D. Richards, agents for the Deseret Iron Company, negotiated the purchase of the Iron Company's property, and on that, date a bill of sale was executed and signed by the owners of the first plant. This bill of sale was executed and signed by the d. This bill of sale is authoritative evidence of the first personnel of the actual founders of Utah's pioneer iron industry. These in my judgment, are the names that should be inscribed upon the tablet. There may have been two or three interested parties who did not sign the bill of sale, but any additions made now to the list should be done only on the clearest of documentary evidence. The Bill of Sale was signed the 30th day of November, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-Two. The Signatures were - Richard Harrison, George Wood, Alexander Kier, Philip K. Smith, Thos. Bladen, Joseph Clews, David Stoddard, Joseph Chatterly, John White, Win. Adshead, Matthew Carruthers, William Wood, Jonathan Pugmire, Richard Varley, James Easton, Henry Lunt, Thomas Cartwright, William Stones, Joseph Walker, William Slack, Benjamin R. Hulse, Matthew Easton, James Williamson, William Hunter, Samuel Kershaw, Robert Henry, Thomas Machen, Edward Williams, William Bateman, Robert Easton and James Bulloch. By Dorothy Rogers |