The Paducah Sun from Paducah, Kentucky • 19

1 .1 Mfc JIMMi Spirts-News Society-Features Section 18 Pages 7 -V October 71962' a ww, Ii Jielky Wrote 'History in JS, 3. Aged Traces game a jTI f5 lltHsUI JJrafi -it, i 1. Drama In A New Process By CORINNE WHITEHEAD Sun-Democrat Special Writer 7 1 1 TZ- 'H V't im -r-? j- -1 i OLD EDDYVILLE FURNACE This picture made sev-eral years ago by Howell Wiseman of Kuttawa shows what then remained of the Old Eddyville furnace of William Kelley. Traces of the historic furnace still may be seen near Kuttawa Mineral Springs alongside High IN SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE This drawing is of an original Kelley converter for making steel. The converter itself is on display at the Smithsonian Institute.

2. Conflicts Mar. A Great Project way 641. the "echo song" which was possibly the Swedish "Herdsman's Song" or an aria from Lucia di Iammermoor, which Miss Lind sang many times to her American audience. William Kelly probably was in the crowd who heard Jenny Lind sing in Eddyville that' night.

Within a short time after the Kelly process was heard of in London iron manufacturing circles, two Englishmen appeared at the Suwannee Furnace and asked for employment. One of the men was described as being very intelligent and personable. He was extremely interested in William Kelly's experiments which he was con- ducting in secret because of his father in law's opposition. Unlike others in Kelly's employment, he did not look upon Kelly's ideas as ridiculous notions and was allowed to help with the experiments. The Englishmen stayed around Suwannee Furnace for several months and became more intimate with Kelly than most other employes.

One night both Englishmen disappeared without asking for' the wages due them." Help arounds the furnace was paid by the month or every few months for the company furnished food, clothing and lodg-in in most instances. The fact that the men left with the company substan- -tially in debt to them, mediately aroused Kelly's suspicion. Bloodhounds were kept around all furnaces for the purpose of tracking down runaway slaves, so the hounds were put on the trail, of the Englishmen. The trail ended at the river Kelly later traced them to Pittsburgh and from there by rati to New York where they booked passage on a steamer for England. 4.

Carnegie Rh The Real Story ficulties and filled with man's cruelty to man. In an- effort to discover the truth about William Kelly, his feelings and personality, I relied heavily on the Circuit Court records in Lyon County. John Kelly, father of William Kelly, was born in Ireland in 1782. He and his father had taken part in fighting in the rebellion against the British. For two years prior to his coming to Kelly had been hidden from the British by friends and relatives.

Seventeen in his family were executed by the British before he came to America. John Kelly reached Pittsburgh in 1801. He purchased real estate on Front Street and is credited with being the first person to build a brick residence in Pittsburgh. March 25, 1805 he married Elizabeth Fitzsimmons also a native of Ireland. The William Kelly of our story was born August 21, 1811.

He attended Western Pennsylvania University, now known as the University of Pittsburgh. William Kelly was of a scientific bent and studied metallurgy. He hoped to be-' come an ironmaster some day when his financial circumstances woultLapermit. His first attempt at business was made with his brother, John E. Kelly and his brothe r-in-law, Mc Shane.

They were wholesale dry goods and commission merchants in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It was William Kelly's job once each year to call on customers in Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Kelly took orders for goods and collected accounts due their firm. In the summer of 1846 William Kelly was in Nashville, Tenn. He attended the commencement exercises of a women's school and there he met Mildred Gra-cey, 16-year-old daughter of James N.

Gracey of Eddyville. James N. Gracey was a wealthy tobacco merchant who was the owner of some of the boats on which Kelly traveled. Gracey had large tobacco warehouses in New Orleans and at ANDREW Carnegie, founder of the vast steel empire that Tbrought him America's greatest fortune, made a trip to Louisville many years ago to pay homage to a frail, sick old man who lay near death. Even then, perhaps, few people knew who William Kelly was.

Today he is scarcely remembered at all. But Andrew Carnegie knew. Carnegie's great fortune was founded in a way on Kelly's work, though Kelly him-self never became famous or wealthy. Kelly, a Lyon Countian, developed a dramatic new process for the economical manufacture of steel which 'cut the cost of iron and steel products more than half and put the United States far out in front of every competing nation, including Great Britain, When Kelly began his experiments, iron rails were being imported from England at fantastic cost. The more inexpensive method introduced by Kelly contributed to the development of the great railroad era which began just before the Civil War and extended the practical boundaries of the nation to the Pacific after it.

Today Kelly's process doesn't even bear his name Even the historical marker to his memory in Lyon County has been placed a furnace which Kelly bought from another man, not at his own Suwanee furnace where he perfected his converter and steel-making process. There is on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., an original Kelly converter for makjng steel. Many who view the converter are no doubt astonished when they read the inscription regarding this work of a Ken-tuckian. After describing Kelly's experiments at his iron works near the inscription ends by saying: "This is a Kelly converter which was used experimentally at the Camberia Iron Works in Johnstown, In 1861-1862. Here the first steel railroad rails were rolled commercially in the United States in 1867." The story of William Kelly's life is beset with dif Kelly's process worked, however and their blooms were used almost entirely for making boiler plate.

Steamboats that plied the Ohio, Mississippi and Cumberland were using boilers made of iron treated by the Kelly process years before it was brought out in England and river men swore by them. During the middle 1800s there was a close working relationship between American manufacturers and purchasers of iron goods and the English manufacturers and exporters. Many skilled men of the iron trade came from England and Wales and settled in Lyon County. They included the Shropshire family which had been associated with the iron business in England since the year 1400. Word reached London in due time that Kelly had perfected a new process of treating iron and one of Kelly's best customers, Shreve Steel and Cincinnati, wrote to Kelly, declaring that they did not want him to send them any more iron manufactured by his "new fangled" process.

They were also extensive purchasers of steel in the English market. William Kelly's father-in-law and financial mentor, James Gracey, demanded that he stop his experiments and pay more attention to the regular iron business. In fact, Gracey became so upset with William Kelly that he decided Kelly was mentally deranged. The family physician, Dr. Hug-gins, was called in to minister' to Kelly's alleged fail-, ing mind.

The good doctor became one of William Kelly's most avid fans and a believer in the "air boiling process" after" talking with his patient. History doesn't record what James Gracey thought about Dr. Huggins after he pronounced William Kelly absolutely sane. Business was good the next few years and the Kelly company made a very substantial profit. It was during the good years -for-Kelly that Eddyville and the LaClede Hotel, which was next door to the Kelly home, was graced by a notable visitor.

Jenny Lind had taken Europe by storm. She was acclaimed by Mendelssohn, Chopin and Wagner, even the venerable Queen Victoria had thrown her bouquet at Jenny's feet after hearing her sing. In America the renowned p. T. Barnum had signed Miss Lind for a concert tour offering her the unheard of figure of $1,000 dollars for each performances, plus a portion of the gate receipts.

Tickets sold for as much as $225 each for a Lind concert grossing the sirig-. er the sum of $178,675 during her tour with Barnum. Mildred Kelly's great niece, the late Mrs. Lula Locker of HopkinsVille, told me of her mother's memory of Jenny Lind singing in Eddyville in 1851. She said that Miss Lind stood in the doorway of the LaClede Hotel next to the Kelly residence and sang to the huge crowd assembled in the street.

No admission was charged for the concert. She remembered one of the songs as being Chinese are buried between the rivers in a little cemetery near the Kentucky Woodlands Wildlife Refuge office. They in all probability went to work for the Hillman Land and Iron Co. which operated Center Furnace, after Kelly was forced to go out of business at Suwannee. In spite of the torture the law suits and fights in court must have caused William Kelly personally, we are indebted to the' depositions and court records for the detailed history of his iron business.

For the names of his employes and their capacity with the company the activities of the businessmen of the day are documented in the record. More valuable is the record of the Suwannee business and the day to day iron furnace operation. It-appears thaLeveryone who had a grudge or com- plaint against Kelly, legitimate or otherwise, teamed up and filed suits in court in 1858. They included- William H. Edmonds, Mary Cook, N.

Braswelt, S. N. Arnold and David Faust and Co. Kelly was represented by the law firm of Wake and Wil msmMmm iew son, Russell Wake's office was situated on the top of an Indian mound overlooking the Cumberland, between the rivers. The fancy legal talent arrayed in opposition to the Kelly Co.

may have thought that Russell Wake was Just another country lawyer. "But Wake is reputed to have never lost a case in court and he did not fail with Kelly and Co. He 1 iiniuy auu luiisisiumiy piuvru all though the trials that John and William Kelly were honest men, and in some cases he proved that the plaintiffs were attempting to collect on debts which had already been paid. The principal suit was that of William H. Edmonds against Kelly.

Edmonds was a large slave owner and hired the slaves out by the year to work for other people. About 30 of the slaves worked at the Kelly furnace and forge. The hire charged for the men. by Edmonds was $11,194.11 for the year 1857. Edmonds tried to prove in court that Kelly was trying to defraud him and play favorites with other creditors.

Early on the morning of April 20, 1858, William and John F. Kelly made an assignment of See KELLEY, Page 8-B i 7 of $18,078. Alt financial aspects of the company were handled by John F. Kelly including the Suwanee Furnace store which served the needs of the workmen and residents that lived in the area near the furnace. The brick remains of the store can be seen off Highway 641 between Kuttawa and Eddyville Dam.) The Kelly Company of necessity had financial backers for their involved business.

The firms were Gracey and O'Hara and Cobb and Wood who underwrote the loans obtained from banks. Banks involved in the Kelly enterprise were the Farmers Bank of Princeton and banks in Smithland, Paducah, Louisville and Cincinnati. By using his revolutionary new method Kelly found that he could cut the refining time of the metal from over one hour to about five or ten minutes. This tremendous sasing-Of time and labor was put into practice, while Kelly continued to work on his original "idea of obtaining steel of a uniform quality. He wrote: "After trying it a few days we entirely dispensed with the old and troublesome run-out fires." He did not get successively uniform batches of steel, however, because of the varying chemical content of the ore mined.

Later the ore was analyzed and found to contain manganese in varying amounts and the ore was of an inferior quality in many instances. Iron furnaces had operated in the Cumberland Valley since the turn of the century and word spread rapidly about the "Kelly air boiling" In country jargon that- was the only way the local people could describe what William Kelly was doing. Old forgemen and astute ironmasters of the valley came to scoff and went away shaking their heads at the "crazy Irishman." si A 1 Account From Reliable, Unchangeable Old Records The story of William Kelley, the genhis of the iron world who really invented the famous Bessemer Process, has been touched on many times, but this story, written mainly from court records probably is the most thorough one ever written on the subject. It is by Mrs. Corinne Whitehead of Lyon County, a native of the "Between-The-Rivers" section.

kelley has been an elusive subject: even Mrs. Whitehead never tried to say how much money he made out of his invention. Some historians think he drew a half-million lump sum in royalties and other payments. Some also say he was "robbed" of the big money. The evidence seems to Indicate that he did quite well financially.

When William Kelly went to Eddyville to meet Mildred's family he also met relatives of the Gracey 's who were in the iron business. They were the Stackers. While in Eddyville, William Kelly found an iron property for sale that had been owned and operated by the Cobb family for almost 5ft years. He wrote to his brother, John F. Kelly, and asked him to transfer their interest in the dry goods buisness to a brother-in-law named McShane and to come to Eddyville.

The Kelly brothers invested the proceeds from their sale in 4,000 acres of iron property including the old Eddyville Furnace and forge owned by the Cobbs for a sum of $30,000. The remains of the Eddyville Furnace can be seen on Highway 641 near Kuttawa Springs. It was split in two when the highway was constructed. William Kelly and Mildred Gracey were married in 1846 and. lived at the old Gracey "Mansion House" in JMdyville.

Kelly wrote in 1857 in a review of his invention: "The beginning of 1847 found the firm of Kelly and Co. fairly under way, making pig metal and charcoal blooms. Our forge contained two forge fires and two large finery or run-out fires." He continued: 'To the process of manufacture I gave my first and most serious attention, and after close observation and study I conceived the idea that after the metal was melted, the use of fire would be unnecessary that the heat generated by the union of oxygen of the air with the carbon of the metal would be sufficient to accomplish the decarbonizing of the iron. I devised, several plans for testing this idea of forcing into the fluid metal powerful blasts of air." Kelly made drawings of his ideas and showed them to his forgemen. They thought the idea was ridiculous and were very critical, declaring that the blast of air would "chill the metal.

Kelly began experimenting with his newly designed furnace in October, 1847:, He described it as being a little furnace about 12 feet high. He also started construction of Suwanee Furnace on their property and found little time to experiment with his new process until 1851 when Suwanee was completed. Taking up his experiments again at the Suwanee site-he designed a which worked to his satisfaction. William Kelly wrote: "I found that the iron forged well and it was pronounced as good as any charcoal forge iron. I had a piece of this iron forged into a bar four feet long and three-eighths of an inch square.

I kept this bar for exhibition and was frequently asked for a small piece i which readily gave until it was. reduced to a length of a few inches. This piece I still have in my possession. It is the first piece of malleable iron or steel made by the pheumatic process." Kelly and Co. found that the iron mined from the surface of the lands they had purchased was of good quality; however, the ore taken from below the surface contained large amounts of flint, which clogged the furnace.

The good surface ore had mostly been depleted by the previous owners and William Kelly was sorely pressed make their new investment pay off. The new Suwanee Furnace had cost $41,779 and the new Union forge was built at a cost fort 'f 1 It "'tT'J William Kelly had not patented his converter or process and had freely given information about it to the ironmasters of the Cumberland Valley. This in- formation included a public demonstration at which the two Englishmen were present. Later, official records show, William and Mildred Kelly positively identified one of the Englishmen as Henry Bessemer. Anyway, within a short time after the two took flight, Henry Bessemer applied for a patent in Britain and the United States on a converter for making steel.

Bessemer's patent called for a process abnormally identical to that of William Kelly's James Gracey and other Kelly creditors were extremely critical of Kelly then, for allowing Just "any and everyone" in on his experiments. The iron business had suffered to depression in prices and Kelly was hard pressed to meet expenses. Kelly wrote: "In 1857 I applied for a patent, as soon as I heard that other men were following the same line of experiments in England; and although Mr. Bessemer was a few days before me in obtaining a patent, I was granted an interference and the case was heard by the commissioner of patents, who. decided that I was the first inventor of the process, now known as the Bessemer Process, and a patent was granted to me over Mr.

Bessemer." A friend of William Kelly, Z. S. Durfee, an ironmaster of Detroit, insisted on lending Kelly the money necessary for him to go to England and prove that Bessemer was one of the men who had worked for Kelly and duplicated the process for making steel. Kelly did not go. Perhaps he realized the futility of opposing the wily Bessemer and the entire British government.

Bessemer was knighted and made Sir Henry and collected over 85 million in royalties from the British patent. In Lyon County William Kelly was swamped with an avalanche of law suits and court battles for months to the exclusion of most other activity. A heavy undercurrent was brewing in 1857-58, just prior to the eruption of the Civil War. William Kelly had been opposed to the use of slaves for labor He even went to the trouble and expense of importing several Chinese to work at his furnace. They were the first Chinese to come" to the United States.

They were brought by a friend of Kelly's who was a tea merchant, Reference Is made to the Chinese several times in the court records in Lyon County. They were paid $6 a month, plus their food, clothing and lodging by tfia Kelly Co. The A fit Si i jL.ll'j'.lL rinritrrHT-nmiiii)iiTr-r tifSiZ --ii. NAMESAKE Suwanee Furnace Church in Lyon Counv ty bears name of an iron works established by William Kelley. i it-t It.

i KELLEY KETTLE Charles Anderson, founder of Kuttawa, realized long ago the historic value of William Kelley's iron projects and had this giant kettle mount- ed on the bank of the Cumberland- where people passing on boats could see it The kettle was made for use in the sugar cane industry. REMAINS OF, STORE Remains of old Suwanee Fur. nace Store which served a William Kelley enterprise in the mid-1800s stand by the side of Highway 641 in Lyon County. REMINDER OF A BIG BUSINESS This tall stack once towered over Tennessee Rolling Mills on the Cumberland River, one of the giants that' came in the wake of William Kelley's Lyon County adventures, in iron..