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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.