Jamestown glassworks

Parallel American case — a glass furnace built in Virginia for the same reason (forests available, clean fuel for glassmaking).

So they decided to build in the new world some of those things, because over here we had forests still — the Indians had not cut them all down — and so the British came over to cut them all down. They built in New England in the 1630s something called the Saugus Iron Works. Anyone ever been to Saugus to see the ironworks? Go up to Saugus, right up here — you don't want to walk it, but it's only about 20 minutes away — and they have the Saugus Iron Works. They built a blast furnace. Why? Because we had wood. We were solving the energy crisis for Britain. They could make iron and ship it over there, and the foundries over there could make cannons. We had the energy source here, namely wood. Anyone ever been to Jamestown, Virginia? They had an industrial plant there. I haven't been there for 35 years, you've been there more recently than me. But in any case, they built a glass furnace in Jamestown, which 35 years ago you could go and watch them make glass. So again, there were trees in Virginia — they were running out of trees by royal decree in England.

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But in the meantime, they had landed over here in North America, and they found all kinds of forest. This is the Saugus Ironworks. You go up to Saugus, Massachusetts, about forty minutes away — they have a National Historical Park, and this is the Saugus Ironworks. It was around 1619, it operated till about 1632. This is the inside. You can take a tour. And it's here because you didn't have trees you could use in England. Down here — anybody been to Jamestown, Virginia, also one of the first colonies? In Jamestown, they have a glass factory. They have the Jamestown glassworks. This is the recreation of the glassworks, very similar to what we have in the basement of Building 4. They could have come here rather than going to Jamestown, but it was a transportation problem of how to get coal.

Brief reference in the Chesapeake forges context; Tom uses Williamsburg/Jamestown as biographical detour rather than as a developed teaching case here.

But other iron mills grew up in other locations. There's all kinds of forges all up and down the Chesapeake Bay in the early 18th century. There was also Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown. Anyone been to Jamestown or Colonial Williamsburg? I went to high school in Virginia Beach, and whenever someone came to visit, my mother would take them up to see Williamsburg, which is this old colonial town. The Roosevelts — some wealthy family — decided to give lots of money to Colonial Williamsburg and they rebuilt a lot of it. It was the capital of Virginia in the 1600s, early 1700s. It's right there at the College of William and Mary. About 20, 25 miles away is Jamestown, which was the first settlement in Virginia.