Maramec Iron Works

The Maramec Iron Works was founded by a Virginian named Thomas James, who represented the third generation of his family to establish an iron industry in the frontier portions of the United States.[1] At the age of twenty-one, James began his industrial career not in the iron mining business as his grandfather and father before him had done, but in salt mining as the partner of John McCoy at the Scioto Salt Works in Chillicothe, Ohio in 1796. By 1810, James had dissolved his partnership with McCoy to take advantage of Ohio’s growing population and the need for a specialized iron industry. This recognition of the need for a specialized ironworks helped to catapult his career as an ironmonger in the state of Ohio and later in his iron manufacturing endeavors in Missouri. James used his earnings from the salt works to establish various ironworks in the region surrounding Chillicothe. One of these ironworks, the Marble Furnace, was established through a partnership with James’ brother-in-law and business associate Samuel Massey. It would be this partnership with Massey that enabled James to undertake the establishment of an ironworks in southeast Missouri.

[1] James D. Norris, Frontier Iron: The Story of the Maramec Iron Works, 1826-1876 (State Historical Society of

Wisconsin, 1972), 14.