The perils of personal capital in antebellum America: John Spotswood Wellford and Virginia's Catharine Furnace

Sean Patrick Adams

Business History, 2013, vol. 55, issue 8, 1339-1360

Abstract: The Fredericksburg Iron and Steel Manufacturing Company's ironmaking facility, Catharine Furnace, had the look of a prime mover in antebellum Virginia's industrial sector when it opened in 1838. Its manager and principal owner, John Spotswood Wellford, successfully tapped into his social capital to secure military ordnance contracts, but in the process the firm became utterly dependent upon his ability to secure this work through personal connections. By failing to expand the market for its pig iron and castings in local, regional, and national markets, the firm relied upon these ordnance contracts for shot and shell for its existence. When Wellford died in 1846, the Fredericksburg Iron and Steel Manufacturing Company collapsed. A few years later, Catharine Furnace stood cold and abandoned - a severe reminder of the limited prospects of Virginia's industrial economy and the perils of relying on an individual entrepreneur's personal capital during a critical period of American industrialisation.

Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00076791.2012.745067 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:bushst:v:55:y:2013:i:8:p:1339-1360

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FBSH20

DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2012.745067

Access Statistics for this article

Business History is currently edited by Professor John Wilson and Professor Steven Toms

More articles in Business History from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().