and a bar of iron.[1] To such a point of perfection, however, had the works been brought by this expenditure of money, that in 1622, it was confidently anticipated by those in charge that in three months they would be in a position to forward large quantities of raw iron to England. Very soon, however, the massacre by the Indians brought destruction to the little settlement on Falling Creek. The tools were destroyed or thrown into the river by the savages,[2] and the workmen, with the exception of a boy and girl, were killed.
The attack upon the iron works at Falling Creek and its results, disheartening as they were, did not at the moment diminish the interest in that undertaking felt both by the Company in England and by the colonial authorities. But for the revocation of the charter of the former, it is highly probable that the works would have been restored and the manufacture of iron resumed. After receiving information of the massacre, the Company instructed the Governor and Council in Virginia to place the men surviving, who had been connected with the iron works, in charge of Mr. Maurice Berkeley, to be employed by him elsewhere until the works could be set in operation. In the meanwhile, a note of what tools would be needed when the manufacture began the second time was to be transmitted to England. The Company declared that it would know no quiet until the works were again perfected, since they regarded them as abso-
- ↑ Randolph MSS., p. 212.
- ↑ Letter of General Assembly in Reply to the Ring, March 26, 1628, British State Papers, Colonial Papers, vol. IV, No. 45; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1628, p. 178, Va. State Library. Among the most interesting relics preserved in the building of the Virginia Historical Society at Richmond is some of the slag produced in the Falling Creek furnace. It was picked up on the ground nearly two and a half centuries after the destruction of the works.
