Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/750

730 "the petitioners improve the art to any good and reasonable perfection within two years from the date of this act." They do not appear to have done this, or to have continued the business of making steel.

In 1740 the Connecticut Legislature granted to Messrs. Fitch, Walker & Wyllys "the sole privilege of making steel for the term of fifteen years upon this condition, that they should in the space of two years make half a ton of steel"; this condition not having been complied with, the privilege was extended to 1744, before which time Aaron Eliot and Ichabod Miller certified that more than half a ton of steel had been made at the furnace in Symsbury.

Some time before 1750 a steel-furnace was in operation at Killingworth, in Middlesex County, Connecticut. This furnace (says Swank) was owned by Aaron Eliot, and in it he succeeded, in 1761, in converting into good steel a bar of iron, made in a blomary fire from magnetic sand, by his father, the Rev. Jared Eliot.

Mr. Swank quotes from Mr. Hoadly a petition presented to the Legislature of Connecticut in May, 1772, by Aaron Eliot, in which the petitioner recites that his capital "has not been large enough to supply himself with a sufficient stock to carry on his business, & has, therefore, hitherto been obliged to procure his stock of iron from New York on credt, and pay for the same in his steel, when made, at the moderate price of £56 per ton [$186.66, the £ being equal to $3.33], from whence it has been again purchased in this Colony at the price of £75 and £80 per ton; and, for several years past, almost the whole supply of steel in this Colony has been from New York, of the manufacture of your memorialist, at the aforesd enormous advance." He accordingly begs for a loan of £500 from the public treasury for three years without interest; this, he says, would "save large sums of money within this Colony, which is annually paid to New York for the steel manufactured in this Colony."

Eliot's prayer was granted, and in 1775 the loan was renewed for two years longer. It appears from returns made by the Colonial Governors in 1750, in conformity with the Act of Parliament, that Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey had each one steel furnace, and Pennsylvania two; both of these were in Philadelphia, owned by William Branson and Stephen Paschal, respectively. Branson stated in regard to his steel that "the sort he made, which was blistered steel, ten tons would be ten years in selling." Paschal's furnace was built in the year 1747, on a lot at the northwest corner of Eighth and Walnut Streets; this furnace in 1787 was owned by Nancarrow & Matlock, when it was visited in that year by General Washington, and said to have