Taking on the role as Hancock County administrator has certainly been a good transition for me. I enjoy working in a position that provides me with an opportunity to learn about many different things and, especially, the important role that county government plays in the life of our people.

Leaving the museum world and transitioning to government really wasn’t as big a step as one may think. Being the administrator of the county gives me the opportunity to use my history training every day, particularly in the care of historic properties. Among the sites that the county oversees, The Peter Tarr Furnace is one that I am particularly fond of. The site is extremely important to our local community and one that is nationally historically significant as well.

The land in which the furnace is located was originally owned by pioneer James Campbell, who has a very interesting story. James was born most likely in Scotland in 1719 and immigrated to the colonies as a young man, according to family lore.

About 1750, he married Patience Hogue in Western Pennsylvania, and they went on to have seven children. James was known as “Packsaddle” because he chose the profession of an overland merchant. He would sell and deliver needed supplies, notably to settlers on the frontier, risking attack and danger from Native Americans.

Through his dangerous profession, he became a moderately wealthy man and eventually obtained land on Chartiers Creek in Washington County, Pa. Later, as family lore recalls, James and his children moved farther west and settled on what is today Kings Creek, called Indian Creek in the 1770s and 1780s. James made what was known as a Tomahawk Claim on his land. This type of claim involved girdling a tree, which is to say removing a band of bark around a tree to kill it, typically near a creek or other prominent feature. Then the claimant would cut their initials on that, and on other trees around a piece of property to “claim” it.

According to family tradition, it was during this claiming process that one of his sons, John, was drowned in Harmon’s Creek while fleeing waring Native Americans. His other son, James, just escaped capture. James went on to purchase other pieces of property in what is today the Weirton area, amassing what was reported as “several thousand” acres at one time, one including a land grant of 400 acres signed by Patrick Henry in 1785. In 1792, he along with three others from the Holliday’s Cove area petitioned the government to provide protection from Native Americans tribes which were devastating the local settlers. His home served as a “fort” or blockhouse to protect residents against war parties of Native Americans, especially along Kings Creek.

James built his home across Kings Creek opposite the current site of the Peter Tarr Furnace. He owned most, if not all, that land along the creek, and as the story goes, he allowed an iron furnace to be built there sometime between 1790 and 1794. Records are sketchy regarding who built it in the first place. Most records from the 20th century say it was a man named Mr. Grant, but I haven’t found any evidence that suggests that he was or wasn’t the first.

What is known is that on May 1, 1799, James Campbell sold 577 acres on Indian Creek to Peter Tarr and others for $4,616 and that land included the iron furnace. Peter, a Prussian immigrant came to the new world in 1790 and made his way to our area for a better life. There are no records of the construction of the furnace, but in a 1923 article written by R.C. Heaslett, chief chemist for the Wheeling Mold and Foundry Co, dimensions of the ruins of the furnace made it possible to deduce the size of various aspects of it. The inside diameter of the furnace was 10 to 12 feet, while the outside diameter was more like 25 feet. The height of the structure was more than 20 feet or higher.

The refractory, that is the lining that protects the outer shell from deterioration from high heat, was made of high-quality local limestone and as of 1923, still had the coating of fluid slag from the very last firing. The refractory appeared to be at least 15 inches thick, and the outer wall was at least 5 or 6 feet thick and held together with mud which was still there in 1923. Behind the furnace was a runway, some of it can be seen today, which allowed workers and mules to load the great furnace from the top with local iron ore, local limestone, and charcoal. The charcoal was made by felling local trees and loading them into earthen furnaces that burn with low oxygen. The resulting fuel burns hotter and steadier than lumber. Not many trees were left in the valley. There was also a water race that diverted water from Kings Creek to power a water wheel which operated bellows to heat the furnace.

The furnace was built to fill an important gap in the market on the frontier. Settlers needed skillets, pots, kettles, cooking implements, grates, axes, plows, carts and wagon parts, and the like. Products were made at the foundry connected to the furnace by pouring molten iron from the furnace into molds onto the foundry floor. Products were sold there at the site and transported as far away as Pittsburgh and to Wellsburg, where there was a store connected to the firm that sold their wares.

The furnace gained fame during the war of 1812 when Oliver Hazard Perry was commissioned to build a fleet of ships at Erie, Pennsylvania to fight the British. He needed iron parts for the fleet including casting for the construction of the ships and, more important, the iron shot and shell for the cannons. Agents for Perry moved through the wilderness down to Pittsburgh to supply these parts, and a contract came to Peter Tarr’s furnace. The iron parts and cannon balls were carried to Erie by mules.

At the battle of Lake Erie on Sept. 13, 1813, Perry defeated the British in a remarkable victory and helped win the war in the West.

Not long after the war, the furnace was offered for sale. In the Sept. 19 edition of the Fredrick Town Herald of Fredrick, Md., John Connell, one of the partners of Peter Tarr, advertised the sale. He said, “Brooke Furnace for sale. 570 acres of land. It is situated on Kings Creek, in the county of Brooke, in the State of Virginia, about two miles from the Ohio River. The metal made at this furnace is of superior quality. Timber, ore, stone coal convenient and in abundance on the premises. The works are nearly new, of strong and perfect construction, the stack and hearth good, and may be put into blast in a few weeks. There are not more than two or three furnaces within sixty miles of it. Kings Creek is a desirable stream and sufficiently large; the settlement around, rich and populus.”

The firm did sell and eventually was owned by a gentleman by the name of Alexander Grant. Perhaps this is the person that is regarded as the original owner. In 1820, the furnace was advertised again for sale. “Iron Master and owner of Brooke Furnace, making use of 400 tons of iron bar and 1,000 bushels of charcoal for yearly cost of $4,000, employing sixteen men and three boys, with one water wheel and two bellows tubs, an investment of $10,000 payroll of $1,400 and $500 other yearly expenses, to make castings and machinery to the amount of $12,500 per year.”

The furnace lasted until around 1840 or so. John Purdy Campbell, great-grandson of pioneer James Campbell, wrote in the 1930s when he was nearing his 100th birthday, that he worked at the furnace when he was around 9 years old around 1840. What ended the industry here was the availability of much better iron, and later steel objects from out east.

The furnace fell in disrepair and eventually was allowed to collapse. In 1961 when the Steuben Realty Co., headed by Sam Kusic, developed Cove Valley Estates, the land that the ruin was located on, part of the farm of Ernest and Robert Tarr, was deeded over to the Hancock County Commission.

W.C. Graham president of the commission singed the deed on behalf of the other commissioners, Lyle Virden and James Finley. In the late 1960s a group representing the Hancock County Historical Society worked to reconstruct the furnace with Weirton Steel to take care of the property. On Nov.16, 1968, the furnace as we know it today was completed.

Commissioners included Alexander McIntosh, Mrs. John Village, Raymond Stevens, Wallace Herron, Mrs. Daniel Jones, Frank Maus, Cecil Jones, Mrs. John Brand, Frank Bowman, Thomas Donovan, Edward Nogay, Mrs. Campbell Chambers, O. William Lauttamus, Mrs. Frank Bowman, and Mr. Daniel Jones.

I had the pleasure to know Dan Jones and spoke to him on numerous occasions about his work on the furnace. The stonework was completed by Osvaldo DiBartolomeo.

After nearly 230 years of history, I am proud to be the current caretaker of this important historic site. And I am committed to keeping that history alive.

(Zuros is the Hancock County administrator.)