Information Sheet

 

 

R         American Iron Mountain Company.

3                      Records, 1849-1855.

                                    Two volumes.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are shipping records of the American Iron Mountain Company at Ste. Genevieve, Mis­souri.  Included are accounts of pig iron received from Iron Mountain and shipments to buy­ers, 1849-1853; and a tally book of ore delivered to the company over the plank road, 1852-1855.

 

The American Iron Mountain Company acquired the Iron Mountain property in St. Fran­cois County in 1845 following the demise of the Missouri Iron Company.  The new firm, headed by James Harrison of Chouteau, Harrison, & Valle of St. Louis, built cold blast fur­naces at Iron Mountain in 1846 and 1850, and added the first hot blast stacks west of the Mis­sissippi River in 1854.  The furnaces produced only pig iron, which was hauled by wagon from Iron Mountain east through Farmington to the shipping point at Ste. Genevieve.  This heavy traffic stimulated con­struction of the Iron Mountain, Pilot Knob, and Ste. Genevieve Plank Road, which opened in 1853, and the Iron Mountain Railroad, completed from St. Louis to Pilot Knob in 1858.  The American Iron Mountain Company operated at Iron Mountain until 1893.

 

Volume 1 is a “Pig Iron Account” containing chronological entries for the amounts of iron de­livered by various haulers at Ste. Genevieve, 10 August 1849--13 June 1853.  Shipments of iron to buyers and commission merchants are also recorded, and include the names of the steam­boats and barges which took the iron from Ste. Genevieve.  Not surprisingly, Chouteau, Harrison & Valle were the primary recipients of Iron Mountain metal, though there were also several ship­ments made to Pittsburgh and Louisville.  The volume begins and ends with several unnumbered pages of miscellaneous records out of proper chronological order, 1849-1852.

 

Volume 2 is a tally book or ledger containing daily entries of the amount of iron ore deliv­ered by haulers for the company.  The organization is chronological, with entries begin­ning on 13 April 1852 and ending on 26 September 1855.  Running totals were kept of the iron ore re­ceived, and after 23 January 1854, payments made to drivers per hundredweight were re­corded and to­taled.

 

 

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