The First Iron Furnace in America

In sixteen forty-four, in a section of Braintree that is now part of Quincy, a group of investors and ironworkers from England set up the first iron smelting furnace in Massachusetts. The man behind it was John Winthrop the Younger, son of the famous Massachusetts Bay governor, who had sailed to England specifically to recruit ironworkers and raise money for the venture.

Winthrop had a practical problem. The Massachusetts colony depended on England for iron goods, nails, tools, hardware, and the supply was unreliable and expensive. If New England could smelt its own iron, it could build its own ships, make its own hardware, and begin to stand on its own. He pitched the idea to English investors, formed a company, and came back with skilled workers from England.

They built the furnace on a brook that still runs through Quincy, using the water to power a wheel that drove the bellows. The furnace was finished in sixteen forty-five. The men were working with a colonial version of the blast furnace technology that was already well established in Europe, but in North America this was the beginning of something.

It also failed. The ore deposits near Braintree were thin, and there was never quite enough water in Furnace Brook to keep the machinery running reliably. The furnace soon failed. The company moved its operations to a second ironworks at Saugus, north of Boston, which ran more successfully and now survives as a National Historic Site.

The Braintree furnace site is gone today, built over by the streets of West Quincy. What remains is its significance: the first attempt, the proof that iron could be made in the New World, arrived at right here.