In 1820, the route of the Nashville-Natchez mail was shifted to run from Columbia to Florence.  This must have greatly reduced the traffic on the Trace and surely must have greatly affected the business of dispensing food, liquor and shelter to travelers.  At any rate, in April 1822, McLish was so involved in debt that attachments were secured on his property and the court ordered the sheriff to sell enough to recover a total of $258.49.

John McLish apparently became bankrupt shortly thereafter and on May 27,  1827, conveyed title to the Southwest quarter of the section reserved to him by the treaty of 1816, including "Hed's old works."  The wording suggests that the works had been in operation for a considerable length of time.  There is a slag heap on the south bank of the Buffalo River, near the Natchez Trace, which according to local tradition, marks the site of the oldest forge in the vicinity.  It is suggested that it marks the site of "Heds Old Works."

As we shall see in a moment, the Buffalo iron works was organized in 1822 to exploit the nearby ore deposits.  We cannot be sure, but it seems likely that McLish, hard-pressed by the decline of his tavern business, sought to recoup by becoming a silent partner in the iron business.  Perhaps a man by the name of Hed built a forge and operated it as an associate of John Jones, David Steele and Thomas Steele who, in 1822 organized the Buffalo Iron Works, and who in April of the same year petitioned for and were granted "3000 acres of land timbered and unfit for cultivation and condemned for the use of the Buffalo Iron Works."  This tract apparently was located on the ridge south of the Buffalo River and seems to have included what was subsequently Napier Mine No 1.

There is no indication that the Buffalo Iron Works prospered during the years 1822-1827.  Others became interested, however, and in  1826 one George Davidson was granted 165 acres on Chief Creek and described as an "ore bank" the site where the Napier "hillside furnace" was built, around 1834

More vigorous management, however, was soon forthcoming.  On June 25, 1827, John Catron, Lucius J. Polk, and George H. Catron entered into a partnership to operate the Buffalo Iron Works.  The latter, a brother of John Catron and a recent immigrant from Virginia, was familiar with iron production and became manager of the firm.

The man who furnished the capital and was guiding spirit, and probably the real organizer of the venture, was John Catron.  Born in Grayson County, Virginia, he migrated to Tennessee in 1812, settling in Sparta where he studied law.  He joined the 2nd Tennessee Infantry and fought in the Creek Campaign under Andrew Jackson.  After the war he soon built up a successful practice, first at Sparta and after 1818 in Nashville.  He served on the Tennessee bench from 1822 until 1826 and, in 1837, became an associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, a position which he held until his death in 1865.

By a series of transactions the partners acquired the southwest quarter section of McLish property, the 3000 acres previously condemned for the use of the Buffalo Iron Works, and the 165 acre "ore bank" of George Davidson.  The property of the firm extended from a line about one-half mile north of Buffalo River to a similar distance south of Chief Creek, and perhaps a mile and half  both east and west from the Natchez Trace, which ran from metal Ford where the Natchez Trace crossed the Buffalo River, to Napier.

A few years before this partnership was formed, the Tennessee General Assembly had passed two laws which encouraged the establishing of ironworks.  One law freed the sale of iron and salt from any tax whatsoever.  The second enabled owners of any iron works to receive grants to as much as 3,000 acres of any land not fit for cultivation for their use of said iron works.  This act was later amended to provide that one-half cent per acre should be paid for such lands.

It was by the second act mentioned above that Catron, Polk, and Catron acquired the 3,000 acres that had been condemned for the use of the Buffalo Iron works at the April, 1822 term of the Lawrence County Court.

These Virgin forest served as materials to erect the necessary buildings and wood which was burned into light charcoal, fuel for the furnaces.  Charcoal was burned in the furnaces of America for a full half a century after England depleted her forest and was forced to resort to the burning of coke.  The process the timber into charcoal, the wood was first chopped into approximately four foot pieces.  A large tract of ground was leveled off and about twelve to fifteen cords of wood were stacked on end and sealed with dirt and leaves.  A small opening was left at the bottom where a fire was started with kindling.  Burning slowly, it took from ten to fifteen days for the wood to char properly.  The charcoal was then delivered to the furnace.  This work was contracted out by the iron works and it was estimated in 1880 that the charcoal cost the iron works about five cents a bushel.

On October 26, 1827, Lucius J. Polk dissolved this three-way partnership by selling all his right, title, and interest in the firm to John Catron.  George Catron died the next year, and from his heirs, John Catron purchased his interest.  By these transactions John Catron became the sole owner of the Buffalo Iron Works.  At the April, 1828, session of the Lewis County Court, the Buffalo Iron Works was granted an additional 6,000 acres of land, increasing to approximately 10,000 acres the holdings of the firm.

For the next five years, Catron continued in possession of the property which was managed by Felix, his nephew, the son of George H. Catron.  Only the forge at Metal Ford was in operation during this period, which indicated that only small amounts of iron were produced.

In 1833, John Catron sold the buffalo Iron works, including Hed's Old Works and about 10,000 acres of land to Felix Catron and George F. Napier.  For this land, tenements, and appurtenances, George Napier and Felix Catron agreed to pay John Catron the sum of $18,000.00.  However, by paying interest, it was also agreed that the payments could be postponed for the space of two years.  This was done in order that Felix Catron and Napier could use what capital they had, and could raise, for improvements.  They entered into an elaborate contract which contained detailed specifications for the proposed plant, and a minute description of the process to be used.

Roughly, this contract called for a well-built blast furnace to be erected on Chief creek "for the making of pig iron, hollow-ware, and castings."  Also, either on the old forge site on Big Buffalo or at McLish's old mill seat on Chief Creek, there was to be erected a refining forge for the making of blooms and bar iron.  Both the furnace and forge were to have a "tub blast of sufficient power," and the necessary buildings, shops erections, machines and tools.

In the event that George Napier and Felix Catron found it impossible to pay John Catron the purchase price of $18,000 at the appointed time, it was understood that John Catron would foreclose the mortgage he held and reimburse Napier and Catron the total sum they had expended for improvements.

The year 1833 is also noteworthy in the history of the Buffalo Iron Works as it was then that a member of the Napier family first became associated with it.  George F. Napier was a member of a family which had settled in Dickson County, Tennessee, about 1790.  they  had operated a mine and forge there, and before settling, in Tennessee had been actively engaged in the production of iron in North Carolina.

George F. Napier and Felix Catron then entered into their own partnership under the name and style of "Napier and Catron," for the purpose of carrying on the iron business for a term of three years and eleven months.  they erected, in 1834, the facilities, mentioned above, known as the "hillside furnace," which were operated with charcoal as fuel.

On July 1, 1838, at the agreed expiration date of the partnership, the firm of Napier and Catron was indebted to the Union Bank of Tennessee for the sum of $6828.00 for which John Catron was responsible as endorser.  Certainly this money could have been borrowed and used for no other purpose than to defray the cost of erecting the forge, furnace, and other buildings called for in the contract between the partnership of Napier and Catron and John Catron.

On July 6,1838, Felix Catron and George Napier entered into another agreement, "for the purpose of winding up the business of Napier and Catron their partnership is hereby continued...".

They were to continue in this partnership until all debts were paid.  George Napier by deed of trust conveyed his half of the property to Dr. Elias W. Napier, his uncle, who, in return, endorsed the firm's load at the Union Bank of Tennessee, thereby relieving John as first endorser of any responsibility.  John Catron agreed to relinquish the unpaid purchase money due him to further secure E. W. Napier as endorser of the loan.

The partnership did not prosper.  When the note fell due on February 9, 1839, Napier and Catron were wholly insolvent.  E.W. Napier was compelled to pay the bank, and afterwards sought to sell so much of the land and iron works as to reimburse him in the amount he had forfeited as endorser of the note.  However, John and Felix Catron joined together and questioned Napier's right to do this.  John Catron claimed his lien for the unpaid purchase money was still valid and Felix Catron denied that he was bound by the deed of trust executed to E.W. Napier by his partner, George Napier.

This disagreement led to a suit, heard in Chancery Court at Franklin, Tennessee, in 1840, which was appealed to the supreme Court in 1841.  Dr. E.W. Napier was adjudged to be the owner of a half interest in the Buffalo Iron Works and JoWe will use our available outdoor scenes and you may bring your own props, boyfriend/girlfriend, brother/sister, mother/father, car,
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hn Catron of the other half interest.  This most likely came about when Felix Catron without court action, voluntarily relinquished his half interest in the iron works to his uncle.

After the litigation had ended May 29, 1844, Dr. Napier purchased John Catron's half interest thereby becoming sole owner of the iron works.  The following year, he conveyed by deed of gift, a half interest to his nephew, W. C. Napier, and agreed to furnish the funds to make the necessary repairs and put the furnace "in blast."  He was to be reimbursed from the profits of the operation.  When these disbursements were liquidated, the net proceeds of the iron works were to be equally divided between the partners.

Dr. Napier died August 7, 1848, and willed his half interest in the iron works to W. C. Napier, thus vesting in him sole ownership.  Hereafter, the enterprise was known as the Napier Furnace.

W. C. Napier operated the iron works until 1873.  At that time, he leased the property to Ward Rains Company, who operated it intermittently until 1890.  However, in 1886 the furnace again changed hands when W. C. Napier sold the iron works to R. B. Napier, John Hill Eakin, and J.C. Houston for the sum of $40,150.00.  The Ward Rains company continued to lease it from the new owners until it was resold in 1890.

Napier mine no. 1 became so deep as to make further operations unprofitable.  However, new machinery consisting of a modern steel log washer with crusher and jigs of the manufacture of McLanahan and Stone was installed a few years later and operations were recommenced.  Ore could again be recovered at a reasonable cost.

In 1890, the Napier Furnace was sold to a group of Nashville capitalists, who reorganized it as the Napier Iron Works, the name under which it was operated until 1923.  The old hillside furnace was abandoned and a new furnace was built, as was a railway from Summertown to the newly established village of Napier.  This furnace also operated with charcoal until it was remodeled in 1897 and henceforth used coke from the Virginia fields.

The iron works continued "in blast" until 1923, when the furnace was "blown out" for the last time.  On November 12, 1927, W. E. Cole, Trustee, purchased the property for $110,000 and on December 30, 1927, formed a corporation with 2,435 shares.  As promoter he retained 2,430 shares, one share each going to five other stockholders.  Cole certainly must had plans for putting the furnace back in production.  Probably due to the depression that struck soon after the corporation was formed, these plans never materialized.  At any rate, the furnace was dismantled sometime in 1930 and sold for junk.

This corporation remained in possession of the ironworks until 1936.  On May 27 of that year, at an annual meeting of the stockholders, a resolution was adopted surrendering the charter and dissolving the corporation.  The Napier Iron works company conveyed to the Nashville Trust Company, Liquidating Trustee, full power and authority to dispose of the ironworks or any part thereof at a fair and equitable price.  After about six months the property was sold, on January 4, 1937, to J. H. Stribling, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, for a cash consideration of $10,000, who immediately thereafter conveyed it to the Christian Home, an orphanage which he had founded.

The methods of mining and smelting of iron ore went through various changes from the time of Hed's old works until the Napier ironworks company ceased to operate in 1923.  Although no records are in existence to prove what methods were used to forge iron at Hed's old Works, it is known that at the the time of the existence of this old forge, primitive methods, as compared to later day processing, were used to mine and smelt the iron ore.

These primitive furnaces were blown through only one tuyere, a short pipe, from a wooden tub.  No stoves were used to supply extra heat.  Cold air sucked into the tub from the outside by a plunger operated by hand was forced into the furnace through this tuyere to keep the coal burning.  Since this air was not heated, this was a "cold blast" furnace.  A ton of iron per day was considered a good yield.

These early ironmasters were pioneers and frontiersmen in every sense.  "They were shut out from the world of invention and progress by mountains, streams, and hundreds of miles of unsubdued forests."  They simply utilized the resources they found under their feet.

The ore that was mined for the forge at Hed's old works was recovered with pick and shovel and hauled out in wagons pulled by mules.  Steam shovels were not introduced into iron ore mining until after 1892, subsequent to the abandonment of the Napier hillside furnace and about the same time the new Napier Ironworks changed over their furnace to operate on coke in place of charcoal.  The ore delivered to Hed's old works was probably separated from the dirt and other debris by the crude method fire and dry screening by hand.

Although the method of mining and smelting of iron ore at Hed's old works is mostly supposition, there are innumerable records available describing the methods of the Napier Ironworks, operating from 1890 until 1923.

The Napier mines and furnace were located in the western iron belt lying mainly upon the Highland Rim west of the Central Basin and extending to the Tennessee River.  The most abundant iron ore found here was brown hematite, or limonite.  when pure this iron ore yields nearly 60 percent iron, other ingredients being oxygen and water.  There are three classes of iron products obtainable from iron ore: cast or pig iron, which is the immediate product of the furnace, hard and readily broken; wrought or soft iron; and steel.  The furnaces located at Napier never produced any other than the pig iron, which for the most part was sold and shipped to foundries, mills, and pipe works.

The iron ore deposits were located on or near the crests of the ridges.  The ore in most places was covered by an overburden of clay and chert debris, the latter disintegrated in place to gravel and  sand, the thickness ranging from only la few feet to fifteen or more.  Outcrops occurred only in such favorable situations as around the head of the gullies and near streams where the overburden had been removed by erosion.

Mining operations were comparatively simple, owing to the shallow nature of these deposits.  The ground was loosened by picking and blasting.  The ore was loaded into tram cars by men with shovels.  In the earlier days of mining, these tram cars, mounted on rails were pulled out of the pits by mules; but, by 1892, small steam engines, called "dinkies" were put into operation.  From the pits, the ore and dirt was hauled to the washer.  Here the ore was separated from the dirt, sand, and gravel.  The ratio of these impurities to the ore varied from about one to three in the richer deposits to about one to ten or twelve in the poorer deposits.

Upon arrival at the washer, the tram cars were emptied onto a tipple, a device which turned the tram over to empty the ore, where the large fragments and boulders were broken up by two men, one right-handed, the other left-handed, with fifty-pound sledge hammers, one on each side of the tipple.  This operation was later replaced by a modern crusher, which consisted of a large wheel with steel blades attached.  As the wheel revolved, the blades reduced the large boulders to manageable sizes.

From the tipple, the ore was emptied into an inclined wooden chute (replaced later by one of steel) in which a stream of water was constantly flowing.  It would have been impossible to operate an iron furnace without a tremendous supply of water.  The washer at Napier was generously supplied with water from Chief Creek which was pumped into a reservoir from which it ran into the washer.  After the water passed through the plants, it was red in color and contained much clay, sand, and fine ore.  From the washer the water passed into settling ponds, part of which could be reused after the residue had settled.

The water forced the ore down the chute into a steel log washer that revolved in a mild current of water separating the dirt from the ore.  The washer was about 20 feet long, six feet in diameter, with mesh openings approximately one and a half inches square.  The coarse ore stayed inside the screen and was pushed out onto a  conveyor belt where young boys sorted the rocks from the ore.  The conveyor belt carried the coarse ore on to storage bins.  The rocks were thrown into another bin and later hauled away and dumped.

The fine ore, which was sifted through the first log washer along with the dirt, was carried by water into a smaller screen (log washer) that sifted off the dirt but retained the fine ore and pushed it onto pulsating jigs which separated the ore from the rock by taking advantage of the difference in specific gravity of the brown iron ore and the chert and sand.  From the jigs, the fine ore was dumped into the same bin with the coarser ore.  The fine ore required this extra washing since it was harder to clean than was the coarse.  All ore put into the blast furnace had to be as free from dirt and debris as possible.

The ore was then ready for the furnace.  To put the furnace "in blast", it was first partly filled with wood, the ore placed on top, and allowed to burn for approximately 12 hours, or until it fell to the bottom.  When the Napier iron Works operated on charcoal, the following proportions were used to make pig iron: 800 pounds of ore; 80 pounds of limestone; and 20 bushels of charcoal.  The combination of these ingredients was called "charge" and would make about 350 to 400 pounds of pig iron.  The charges were put into the furnace from the top.  The top swung inward dumping the charge into the fire.  A charge was added to the furnace three times an hour, 24 hours a day.  when coke, which is coal with the bituminous or oily matter burnt out, was substituted for charcoal, the proportion used to charge was 80 bushels.

After the first charge was added to the furnace, the steam blowing engine was started.  It was connected to the furnace by two three-inch pipes called tuyeres through which the heat, generated by four stoves at the side of the furnace was driven.  The blast from the blowing engine produced enough heat to melt the ore.  The temperature sometimes ran as high as 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

As the ore melted, the limestone was soon converted into lime which united with the sand clay, and other impurities of the ore, forming a fusible impure glass.  This, being lighter than the melted iron, floated on top and was drawn off as slag.  The white-hot charcoal took the oxygen from the ore, and set free the iron, which settling to the bottom of the furnace as a liquid mass was drawn off through the iron notch at the bottom.  A cinder notch located three feet higher than the iron notch, carried the slag into a steel container lined with bricks and called a "hot pot."  When full, the  "hot pot" was carried into a field and emptied.  This operation was repeated every thirty minutes and was called flushing.

The iron notch was opened every six hours to allow the melted iron ore to run off into small gutters or channels made in the sand.  These channels formed squares and about 22 squares formed a "pig bed."  Running the iron from the furnace into a pig bed was called a cast.  Each pig bed held about two tons of iron.  As each square in the pig bed filled with molten iron, an iron "cutter" coated with mud was placed in front of the opening permitting the iron to flow into the other squares.  Cutters were flat rectangular iron rods coated with mud before using to prevent the hot iron from melting them.

After a pig bed was filled, the iron was cooled with water.  Tow men with hammers broke the iron into pieces about 18 inches long and the finished iron was loaded into railroad cars.

The pig iron produced before 1890 was hauled in wagons to Mt. Pleasant, Tennessee, the nearest shipping point.  Some years later, the railroad was extended to Carpenter's Station, and the iron was hauled to that point.  Still later a railroad, the Columbia, Florence, and Sheffield branch of the Louisville and Nashville, was built from Summertown, Tennessee to Napier.