Henry Burden - Burden Iron

Burden Iron

The little wooden mill, which he entered as a superintendent, long ago disappeared to give place to his larger works, which today, were they to stand in one alignment, would occupy a tract of land a mile in length. This immense establishment comprises two works - the 'upper works,' or water mills, on the Wynantskill, a short distance east of the Hudson River, and the new works, called the 'lower works,' or steam mills, located on the 'farm company' property and the Hoyle farm, embracing about forty-five acres of land between the Hudson River Railroad and the river, extending from the Wynantskill to the Clinton Foundry. In 1848, Henry Burden became obsessed to the company's entire interest in the iron-works, since which time it has been wholly controlled by him or (since his death, Jan. 19, 1871) his sons, James A. and L. T. Burden, under the Title of Henry Burden & Sons. These works, embracing several score of buildings, comprise sixty puddling furnaces, twenty heating furnaces, fourteen trams of rolls, nine horseshoe machines, twenty-five engines, seventy boilers, etc. - acres of machinery; while about the buildings is a network of railroad tracks, upon which daily are moved train loads of iron ore, kaolin, sand, etc., for shifting which the firm's own locomotive is ever ready. The ground upon which these buildings stand was formerly low and overflowed by freshets, while the water in the river adjacent to their works was shallow and full or bars. At great expense the grounds have been filled up, and the river dredged, so that the company's docks are accessible to the largest vessels of the Upper Hudson. Their steam derricks, used for unloading coal, are the ingenious contrivance of the late William Burden. Each is composed of two lofty frames, placed on at the dock and the other at the rear of the coal heap, three hundred feet distant; a strong wire cable is stretched over these frames, on which an iron carriage travels to and fro, carrying a self-dumping bucket, of the capacity of a ton of coal. A team engine hoists the filled bucket to the cable, along which it travels to the point where the tilting apparatus overturns its contents upon the pile. Alongside the coal heaps are vast deposits of iron ore, mostly the brown hematite and magnetic varieties of Lake Champlain. There are also piles of the Hudson, New York, limestone, used as "flux" to help in the fusion of the ores.

Looking upon the trains of rolls, the rotary-squeezers, the furnace-blowers, the horseshoe-, rivet-, and punching-machines, and the other appliances in motion for manufacturing iron, one sees more appreciatively the immense power furnished by this huge wheel constructed by the master-mind of Henry Burden." One of his greatest accomplishments, however, was the huge water-wheel, characterized by the poet, Louis Gaylor Clark, as the "Niagara of Water-Wheels," built in 1851, devised to enhance the power for his nail factory, for which the five separate wheels had been inadequate. It is an overshot wheel of twelve hundred horse-power, sixty feet in diameter and twenty-two in width, containing thirty-six buckets, each of over six feet depth. The axis comprise six hollow cast-iron tubes, keyed into flanges, from which diverge iron rods of two inches thickness, to the number of two hundred and sixty-four, which terminate at the outer edge of the wheel. By a lever its revolution may be controlled to a nicety, and its power adjusted to any required degree.

It is no little fame for Troy that at these works, now in possession of the sons of Henry Burden, were manufactured the first ship spikes, the first hook-headed spikes, and the first horseshoes made by machinery in the world. Scant space have we to even list the many valuable inventions of this son of genius, so many of whose achievements have directly and so greatly benefited the home of his adoption. By his persistent efforts the water-supply of the Wynantskill was largely increased; by his "rotary concentric squeezer," patented in 1840, may be found in all the leading iron manufactories of both continents; and in 1835 he contrived the "Horseshoe Machine", to which in subsequent years he added valuable improvements. Inasmuch as Trojan skill and wonders-working machinery were important factors in outfitting our armies during the late civil war, so Henry Burden's lightning-made horseshoes were instrumental in conferring important political benefits upon the nation. Scarcely a civilized country on the glove but has availed itself of the benefit of this invention.

The capacity of these works in the line of horseshoes alone is 60 shoes a minute, or 51,000,000 annually. In boiler bolts, 80 per minute are the work of the twelve rivet machines. In the spacious rolling mill (421 by 96 feet), devoted to merchant iron manufacture, is a splendid Corliss engine. 1400 workmen are employed, to whom $500,000 are annually paid in wages. The fruits of their labor are 600,000 kegs of horseshoes and 42,000 tons of iron, exclusive of pig, annually. Their yearly sales of horseshoes average about $2,000,000. Fifty horses are used, and 90,000 tons of coal expended annually by this establishment.

A memorable case in the history of American jurisprudence was the twenty years' litigation to secure the Burden patent on the spike machine, engaging the talents of Chancellor Walworth, Governor Seward, David L. Seymour, Nicholas Hill, and others of equal note.

The Burden Iron Works is a now a historical site and museum.