April 6, 1862 - Union Gen. Robert H. Milroy briefly occupies Monterey; Gen. Anderson purchases Australia Furnace

April 6, 1862

Union Gen. Robert H. Milroy briefly occupies Monterey 

Monterey, VA

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=257005

Monterey
"I never saw such a sight"

Monterey, the seat of Highland County government, also served as the headquarters for Confederate and Union forces at different times during the Civil War. Confederate Gen. Henry R. Jackson, who led a brigade under Gen. Robert E. Lee during the First Campaign (or Mountain Campaign) of 1861, established his headquarters here. In the winter of 1861-1862, skirmishes occurred across the county as the no-man's-land between the armies shifted from the Allegheny Mountains on today's state line to West View in Augusta County. 

On April 6, 1862, Union Gen. Robert H. Milroy and his forces occupied Monterey, and Milroy used the Osborne Wilson-Fenn House on Main Street as his headquarters. The town remained in Federal hands until after the Battle of McDowell on May 8, 1862, near the beginning of Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

 Many western Virginians were ambivalent about choosing sides. Highland County's government waited until June 1862, after Jackson's success in driving the Federals from the Shenandoah Valley, to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. 

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=16663

Highland County Confederate Monument

(Front):

Erected by

Highland Chapter

United Daughters of

the Confederacy

1918

(Back):

To the

Confederate Soldiers

of

Highland County

A Loving Tribute to

the Past, the Present,

and the Future

And...The Charles Pinckney Jones House

*    *    *

Also on or about this date also in VA

April 1862

Gen. Anderson purchases Australia Furnace

Longdale Furnace, Virginia, in Alleghany County

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=107981

Australia Furnace
Alleghany Iron for the Confederacy

Australia Furnace, located just east of here, produced pig iron for the Tredegar Iron Works—“Ironmaker to the Confederacy”—during the Civil War. Ira and Edwin Jordan had begun constructing Australia Furnace in 1852; two years later, they put it in operation. Australia was a “hot blast” furnace that used preheated air during the process of smelting iron from ore to increase production. The technology to produce the hot blast was relatively simple, and Northern ironmasters began using it before those in the South. Cold-blast furnaces, which generally employed water-powered bellows to pump air without preheating, could not compete, and some closed in the 1850s.

The outbreak of the Civil War cut off trade with Northern iron manufacturers and forced the Confederacy to rely more than usual on Southern suppliers. To ensure a reliable stream of raw materials, Confederate Gen. Joseph R. Anderson, who owned the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, purchased several ironworks, including Australia Furnace (April 1862). The workers used a steam engine to preheat the air and to operate the bellows. The engine gave Australia Furnace an advantage over other furnaces that relied solely on water power, which might not be available during winter or dry summers.

At the Tredegar works, Anderson employed both free white and black slave labor. Here at Australia, slaves filled every furnace occupation from common laborers to skilled engineers. Wagons moved Australia’s pig iron to the James River and Kanawha Canal near Eagle Rock, where boats took it to Tredegar to be cast or forged into cannons, munitions, and railroad equipment.

Well, I've been to Winchester. (That's a lot of furnaces.)

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=107982

Lucy Selina Furnace
Alleghany Iron for the Confederacy

You are standing near the site of the Lucy Selina Furnace, which supplied the Confederacy with pig iron for the production of cannons, munitions, and rails during the Civil War. In 1827, two Scots-Irishmen, Col. John Jordan and John Irvine, built this charcoal-fired, cold-blast furnace on Simpson’s Creek and named it after their wives, Lucy Jordan and Selina Irvine. The furnace remained in operation until 1852, when the new hot-blast furnace technology and the high cost of using charcoal instead of bituminous coal made it uneconomical to operate.

The outbreak of the Civil War changed everything. The supply of iron from Northern furnaces was suspended, and the Confederacy became desperate for iron. Lucy Selina Furnace reopened in 1863 and sold pig iron to the Confederate States Nitre and Mining Bureau. Like nearby Australia Furnace, a hot-blast operation, Lucy Selina’s pig iron supplied Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works—“Ironmaker to the Confederacy.” Union raiders threatened both Alleghany furnaces in 1862 and 1864, but unlike some Virginia ironworks, they escaped destruction. Because many white ironworkers left for the Confederate armed forces, slave labor kept the furnaces operating. Work here was extremely arduous, and food supplies were scarce, which encouraged many slaves to flee. Iron production never lived up to expectations.

After the war, William Firmstone bought Lucy Selina in May 1870 and converted it to a coke (processed bituminous coal) furnace as part of the Longdale Furnace Company. Nothing remains of Lucy Selina Furnace, but the Longdale Furnace ruins are still standing today a few hundred yards west of here.