Alice Furnace, Lawrence County, Ohio
Built: 1875
By: ETNA IRON WORKS
Researched by Sharon M. Kouns
Did you Know?
BIG ETNA INCLUDES THE “ALICE” AND “BLANCHE” TWIN STACKS.
“Alice” went into blast in 1875 — “Blanche” went into blast in 1888.
Alice Furnace was named the daughter of George Willard. Blanche Furnace was named for Blanche McGovney. In the Spring of 1873, the company erected on the riverbank, just above the city of Ironton, two hot blast coke furnaces, the “Alice” and the “Blanche.”
These furnaces are what is known as the Ferrie Patent Self-coking Furnace. The number of fire bricks used in their construction was one million five hundred thousand, and of red brick, three million. Each of these furnaces has a capacity of 75 tons of iron per day when confined to the ores of the Hanging Rock district, but if they were fed with the Lake Superior or Iron Mountain ore, they would each turn out 100 tons each day. They are among the very largest establishments of the kind in the United States.
Ironton Register, February 28, 1878 – Etna’s Alice is cold. Between the financial embarrassment of the Etna Company and the proposed reduction in the tariff, the prospects for an early resumption of iron making in that quarter are anything but encouraging. Ironton Register, February 28, 1878.
The Alice has made over 30,000 tons pig, on the present hearth – 20,000 tons being made after it had been supposed the hearth was practically gone, and in fact, after the iron had been breaking out through the walls. Ironton Register, October 27, 1887 – Cam Peters fell about 30 feet from a scaffold at Alice Furnace yesterday. No bones were broken, but he is laid up.
Ironton Register, November 4, 1886 – Burned Down – The Etna house near Alice Furnace was destroyed by fire last Friday night at about ten o’clock. The fire caught from a stove. Seven families lived in the house but managed to get out all their property. The blaze made by the fire was terrific. It reddened the entire southern sky. The Etna house was built when Big Etna Furnace was erected and was used as a boarding house at first and afterward as a tenement house. It was insured for $3,000. The company’s purpose is to put up some smaller houses to accommodate their employees.
Ironton Register, June 9, 1887 – At Alice furnace, the new engine is running finely, and one of the old engines has been dismantled to be overhauled. The remaining engine will be treated in a like manner. The outer walls of the stock house are being rebuilt of wood, and iron roofs to cover the stock house and boiler house have been ordered from Pittsburgh.
Ironton Register, December 6, 1888 – BIG ETNA – BLANCHE STACK IN BLAST, AND OTHER NOTES. – When the mammoth furnace of the Etna Iron Works at the upper end of town was erected in 1872, only one of the twin stacks was completed. The Alice stacks were finished, but Blanche was left unlined and incomplete – a mere iron tube of ponderous size, with the bridge constructed at the top and the connections, arranged for.
Blanche has now been lined, and workmen are filling the new furnace with stock preparatory to putting on the blast today or tomorrow. The work of lining has been going on for months. It has cost about $23,000, including all necessary changes and additions, and over 400,000 bricks, including red and fire bricks, have been used.
Meanwhile, Alice has been blown out, and the engines and Whitwell ovens used for that furnace have been connected with Blanche. These changes were practically made some weeks ago, but the starting of the furnace was delayed by the river water rising in the good hole, so it was impossible to reach the pumps until last week.
Mr. Pleumer, the President of the Company, whom the REGISTER has interviewed, says he hopes to make 100 tons of iron a day in the new stack when she gets fairly started. Alice, with the same outer dimensions as Blanche, made on an average about 74 or 5 tons in the last year of her run, but Blanche is new throughout and has been lined after the most approved pattern, hence the expected large increase. The most iron Alice ever made was a very exceptional day’s run, several years ago, of 104 tons of mill iron.
Mr. Pleumer also said that it is possible in the coming year that the other stack will be blown in. He has just returned from the East, where he spent several weeks among his associates in the Etna enterprise, and states that if he gets the assurance of Pres. F. J. Kimball, of the Norfolk & Western road, that his projected line to Ironton will be built to Ironton next Summer, and the rates of freight will be such as there is every reason to expect, there is no doubt that the Alice stack will be got in readiness to start at that time.
He is now communicating with Mr. Kimball and may learn his purpose in a month. If the Alice is started, it will involve an expenditure of $50,000 or $60,000, as the stack must be re-lined, and to run both stacks at once, additional hot blast ovens would have to be built, and two more blowing engines added. The operation of both stacks is simply a possibility of the future, and an event that Mr. Pleumer thinks is sure to follow the advent of the new road that will furnish us such valuable access to the coking and ore regions of Virginia.
Ironton Register Jan. 23, 1896 – Etna. – The ovens are about half tore away, and work was begun yesterday tearing out the lining of Alice’s stack. Mr. Bird calculates having all the old structures cleared away and ready for the contractor by the first of February. The ovens have been removed carefully to be put up again at the Iron & Steel furnace if it is desirable.
0 Comments