Catharine Furnace

Catharine Furnace is a historic iron furnace in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, near Chancellorsville in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. It was built in 1837 and closed down ten years later. During the American Civil War the furnace came into use again. It had a contract with the Confederate Ordnance Bureau for producing 2,000 tons of pig iron per year. The furnace was destroyed by a Union cavalry raid in 1864 but was rebuilt.[1][2][3]

An artist's reconstruction of how Catharine Furnace might have looked like during the Civil War.
Ruins of the blast furnace at Catharine Furnace.The object in center of the above reconstruction.

Its owner, Charles C. Wellford, and his son and manager, Charles B. Wellford, gave Stonewall Jackson's cartographer, Jedediah Hotchkiss, the information needed for Jackson's army corps to make an undetected flanking march that determined the Confederate victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville.[4]

References
  1. Catharine Furnace Ruins 2014-10-23.
  2. Catharine Furnace 2014-10-23.
  3. Find a grave: Pvt Charles Beverly Wellford 2014-10-23.
  4. S.C. Gwynne (2014), Rebel Yell (New York: Scribner), pp. 528-531.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.