Neabsco Iron Works
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The Neabsco Iron Works (alternates: Neabsco Company; Neabsco Iron Foundry) was located in Woodbridge, Virginia, US. It was situated on 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) by the Neabsco Creek.[1]
After abandoning the Bristol Iron Works,[2] John Tayloe I established the Neabsco Iron Foundry around 1737. The business became a multifaceted antebellum industrial plantation. Its activities included farming, leatherworking, milling, shipbuilding, shoemaking, and smithing, as well as supplying raw materials used as weaponry during the American Revolution.[3] The business grew and expanded with his son, John Tayloe II, when, in 1756, he bought the Occoquan Ironworks company, eventually running it as one business with the Neabsco.[4]
The Neabsco Iron Works were the first iron works in northern Virginia. Established around 1737, By John Tayloe I, a wealthy Virginia land owner, who owned several iron works. His son, John Tayloe II, became a partner in the nearby Occoquan Iron Works. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his book, Notes on the State of Virginia, of Iron being forged at Neabsco "from pigs imported from Maryland; and Taylor's forge on Neapsco of Patowmac, works in the same way, but to what extent I am not informed."[5]
The site offered 3–5000 acres of trees for firewood mostly to make charcoal to heat the blast furnaces. Charcoal making, in itself, was as dedicated, expert and involved a process, as Iron blasting. The site also offered large deposits of iron ore. A creek with plentiful running water and adequate fall for water works to operate bellows and mills. As the site is at the cusp of the fall line and coastal plain, the creek was deep enough in part, to transfer pig iron (recently blasted raw unworked iron) by boat less than a mile downstream to Neabsco Harbor on the Potomac River. There the iron could be transferred to ocean-going vessels. It was also close to a major road, the Kings Highway. Because much of the ore, on site, turned out to be of low quality, ore was boated in from Tayloe's mines in Maryland. Most of the labor was provided by slaves and indentured servants.
The works shut down around 1820 as it could no longer compete with cheaper iron being produced in the North and had exhausted its supply of abundant, available fire wood. It is estimated that it took one half an acre of firewood to produce one ton of pig iron.[1]
