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DavidHRoss and the
Oxford Iron Works
A Study of Industrial Slavery in the Early Nineteenth-Century South
Hearth opening of Oxford Furnace #2
the operations of southern blast furnaces and forges during these years has prevented scholars from learning very much about the day-to-day functioning of this important phase of the South’s industrial slave system. The recent uncovering of a substantial portion of a letterbook kept by David Ross, a prominent Virginia merchant, planter, and the principal owner and developer of one of the largest iron works in the Revolutionary and post- Revolutionary South, provides a rare opportunity to examine the life of the black iron worker in the early nineteenth century.
BY CHARLES B. DEW
Originally published in the William and Mary Quarterly, April 1974.
 LYNCH’S FERRY
Historians have documented the extensive use of slave labor in southern iron manufacturing during the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods, but a lack of detailed information on
Photo from the collection of T. Gibson Hobbs, Jr.