Section 18:  Furnaces & Failures

Judge Myers had erected the brick house and store, now occupied and owned by C. A. Rankin, and moved there, I think, in the spring of 1842, opened out a large store and I became his lawyer in most of his business and we became intimate friends and associates. We had quarrelled over politics and predestination till we got to like each other. In 1843 his son, Amos Myers, became a student of law in my office and was admitted in 1845, and although the old Judge afterwards failed in business and subsequently removed to Philadelphia, we remained firm friends to the day of his death at the age of about 82 years.

He was a Lancaster County Dutchman, had moved out across the Clarion River in 1825 to 1827 and built Clarion Furnace, lived there till he moved to town; was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1838, was one of the proprietors of the site of the town of Clarion. He always attributed his business disaster to the Tariff of 1846 and with Patrick Kerr and a number more of our iron masters, left the Democratic party and ever after acted with the Whig and Republican parties.

From 1840 till 1845 or six there was a boom in the iron business of the county. Myers, Shippen and Black, Long and Blackstone, Lyon Shorb and Company (Madison Furnace) Lucinda were in operation before I came to the county. In the next five years new furnaces started up all over the county, among which were Kerr and Hasson beyond Shippensville; Wm. B. Fetzer a mile further north; Hemlock in Washington Township; Clinton was in operation before I was here; Highland (Barber and Packer) Corsica Furnace; Washington and Monroe in Monroe; John and Jacob B. Lyon erected a furnace in Limestone Township; Judge Myers erected Polk and afterwards changed the name to Martha. Lyon Shorb and Company built Stigs, Lawson Duff and son built Pitre furnace in Porter Township, Jo Flick and others built Wildcat. Quite a number of others were started in various parts of the county till there were at one time, I think, twenty-nine furnaces in blast in this county, a good many of them by new men with small capital and little experience. To these the Tariff of 1846 was a disaster of the most deadly character. By 1847 a dark cloud had gathered over these men and in the next two or three years all these men were wiped out and their property sold by the sheriff and passed into other hands. Most of the furnace fires went out, never to be rekindled, and some of the best business talent in the county was turned loose without a dollar.

In those days I have seen men of stalwart frame and manly courage, after working and striving for years, when they were compelled to look bankruptcy and poverty straight in the face, sit down and cry like children, and they were men not given to tears; some past the middle of life with large families, had labored and saved and lived poor and accumulated something, to find themselves overwhelmed and shattered -- then property sold by the sheriff and thousands of dollars of debt still unpaid. It was no wonder they sat down and wept.

Having a large amount of the collections on furnace firms, I passed through some painful scenes during the panic of 1847. At that time I had become the attorney of many of the iron men through the county, and not infrequently they had stipulated with creditors if their debts had to be put into the hands of an attorney, they were to be sent to me. When that was done, when I had an opportunity, I always stipulated that I would be bound by the instructions of the creditors however hard it might be on the debtor, and though many were sold out in whole or in part on claims in my hands, I never lost the confidence and friendship of the poor fellows that were sold out on writs that were controlled by me. While they were breaking up and going to pieces financially, I was making money out of their misfortunes, although it did not come off then.

At that time such a thing as five per cent attorneys' commission in a note was unknown, but I charged the creditor, the plaintiff in the writ, five per cent out of the money made by sheriffs sales, unless the amount was large and then about three, and I have had as much as five hundred dollars collection fees at a single count.

Of all the 29 furnaces, not one is in blast today, and all that is left is an unsightly pile of stone, and some have disappeared and most of the original owners are dead. There was, I think about 1852, a short revival of the iron business in this county but it has gradually declined as an industry and now the fires are all out.

Red Bank Furnace was built after the panic of 1847 by Thomas McCulloch and Alex Reynolds -- after most of the others were broken up and blown out. McCulloch had been a partner and manager for Lyon Shorb and Company at Madison Furnace for a good many years, was a man of strong common sense and unusually good judgment in business -- I thought one of the best in the county. He would sometimes get on a spree and at such times was a rough stick, but harmless to everyone but himself. He would make as much noise as a whole menagerie, but I never heard of fighting only with the tongue, and at other times he was so honorable and just that he was a popular man. He sold out his interest in the firm of Lyon Shorb and Company to the company for forty thousand dollars. After building Red Bank he managed it and made money for a good many years and then sold his interest there and removed back to Juniata County in which he had been born and raised. He died, I think, in Huntington some ten years ago.

I was his lawyer while managing at both places, and I never met a man that I liked better to do business for, and I do not think I ever had a more intelligent or liberal client. When he got to be an old man he used to tell me the great mistake of his life was that he had not married when he was young, and I have heard him tell more than one young fellow to not make a fool of himself as he had done by leading a bachelor life.