It seems that Crowe Lake knew it had something to crow about — a huge marble rock. Marmora is a town and a township, named to commemorate that rock. Marmora is the latin plural for “marble.”
Thirty miles north of the city of Belleville is the site of Ontario’s first mining operation. It was Charles Hayes, along with his wife, who set sail from Ireland in 1820 to follow a dream. The dream was to establish the first ironworks in Upper Canada and become the first industrialist in this new land.
Hayes and his wife docked in New York before travelling up the Hudson River and the Mohawk Valley to Sacketts Harbour. From there they voyaged to Montreal to meet with Peter McGill, a financier, and then went on to Kingston, Ontario. The Hayes left Kingston and proceeded northwest until they came to a narrows in the Crowe River, about 160 kilometres (100 miles) hence. It was here that this entrepreneur eventually built the first company town in Upper Canada. It was a formidable task when you consider that Hayes had been a linen merchant back home, albeit a successful one. He was to start the first wave of industrialism, but not the last. Hayes had obtained an order-in-council to give him the authority to establish the colony’s first industrial location, and Marmora had all the right ingredients for the making of iron ore.
Marmora Township was surveyed in 1821 and attached to Hastings County. A 24-kilometre (15 mile) road was constructed from Sidney Township to Marmora, and by 1824 the population of the township had reached 400.
Marmora, not to mention the surrounding area, was laden with iron ore. This mineral is the fourth-most plentiful element in the earth. The quality of iron is dependent on the concentration of hematite and magnetite and on the ability of the iron-master to separate them from the waste rock in which they are found. The smelting of this ore has been done for more than 3,000 years. Early smelting involved charcoal fires and bellows in the production of a spongy mass called a bloom. Then it was discovered that greater heat resulted in the extraction of higher quality iron. Ironmasters created narrow, truncated, pyramid furnaces for the purpose of heating the rock.
Hayes knew that Marmora was the right place, because iron ore was present 4 kilometres (.25 miles) to the north, on the surface of the banks of the Crowe River. Another site, now Blairton, revealed a mountain of ore available for the process. Limestone, also to be found in the area, could be used as a flux. The endless forest there would fuel the blast furnaces, and the river itself would provide the power to drive the water wheels that pumped the bellows to intensify the blast.
In less than two years, Hayes had the first blast furnace in operation. A road had been built, and the firebricks, furnace equipment, and workers arrived to settle the village of Marmora and begin work at the new ironworks. Andre Philpot, author of A Species of Adventure, highlights this spectacular accomplishment. He writes:
The completed works presented one solid mass of building of limestone, constructed on the face of a bank of the same material, 40 feet high [12 metres] to the level of the bank. The fires were blasted by bellows driven by six enormous water wheels, harnessed to the river. At the heart of the community was the furnace complex. All day the villagers would tend and feed its needs. At night, the flames would shoot up from the chimney heads lighting up the valley. All the time, the grinding of the water wheels and the pumping of the bellows reminded the Village of why it was there.
Hayes completed the construction of a second furnace in 1825. The interior diameter of the structure was approximately three metres (8.5 to 9 feet), and its height was nine metres (30 feet). A pair of German bellows, each 8.5 metres (28 feet) long and 4.5 metres (15 feet) wide, were used in the operation. Philpot adds:
For each furnace, the whole mechanism was connected to a water wheel, the larger of which was reported to be 8.1 metres [27 feet] in diameter and 1.8 metres [6 feet] wide. The wheels drove shafts and the shafts pumped the bellows to intensity the fires. These furnaces faced onto a common casting house built of limestone. Here, the molten iron would be led off into channels dug into the sand floor guttermen. For the main channel, bar-shaped moulds would branch off, and the whole shape reminded the workers of piglets feeding on a sow. Hence the basic produce was labeled “pig iron.”
Three charcoal houses were situated on a ledge to the east of the works. These buildings had a total capacity of 200,000 bushels. One ton of iron required 300 bushels of charcoal for fire.
The ironworks was a major source of iron ballast. In those days ships still required ballast weight in order to keep things on an even keel.
By 1824, a gristmill, a sawmill, a brake mill, a carpenter’s shop, a bake house, a counting house, three charcoal houses, two ore kilns, and a potashery were established in this ironworks community.
Charles Hayes was a man willing to spend his own money to attain success; the government of the time was not so committed. Hayes knew, by the end of 1822, that he was spending most of his fortune in operation costs and roadwork to get his product to market. Water transportation was the answer. He knew that although the Crowe River was impassable to the south of the village, a canal was feasible. Hayes could envision a canal from Crowe Lake to the Trent River. It was a 19-kilometre (12 mile) stretch through the bush, and he was willing to spend some of his own money on the canal project if the government would approve and assist in the idea. The Trent River canal system did not get started for two more decades, but Hayes could see where things were going. The government, unfortunately, had no intention of assisting Hayes to build a canal. His debts overcame his dream, and in September 1824 he ceded his property and industry to the trustees. In the end the creditors even possessed his household furniture. Hayes returned to Ireland a broken man, and in April 1830 he wrote, “Thus you see it is not always the person who had done the most service [who] is most likely to be rewarded, for I cannot help saying that I think I have done more good to Upper Canada than any other individual that was in it ...”
It was his associate and financier Peter McGill who took over the operations of the ironworks. He, too, was riddled with problems of transportation, and he attempted to sell the ironworks in 1826 and 1827, but found no buyers. In 1831 the ironworks closed its doors. The first wave was over.
By 1837 a commission was appointed by the government to investigate the possibility of moving the penitentiary from Kingston to Marmora. Although consideration was given to running the ironworks with convict labour, the idea was abandoned once again due to transportation difficulties.
In 1847 Van Norman purchased the ironworks. An experienced ironmaster himself, he, too, was defeated by the expense of shipping his product and abandoned the operation in 1854 with his resources depleted. Another wave in Marmora’s history.
The subsequent closing of the ironworks stunted the growth of the village for many years, and farming and lumbering took over as the mainstay of the economy. When gold was discovered in the vicinity in the 1860s, it was an entirely new enterprise and a big relief to the populace. From 1873 to 1880, gold mining was carried out by the Gatling Gold and Silver Mining Company, but was later sold when the operations proved once again to be too expensive.
By 1878 the population of Marmora stood at 400. A sawmill, a carding and woollen factory, and a gristmill provided some employment for the villagers. B.C. Hubbell operated a dry goods, a grocery, a footwear and a furniture store, as well as the undertaking service for the area in 1888.
A terrible fire in Marmora in 1900 destroyed the main business district and forced the relocation of many businesses. The following year Marmora was incorporated as a village.
It was the 20th century that saw the mining of iron ore regain its importance, when the Marmoraton Mines (part of the American Bethlehem Steel Corporation) went into operation nearby. Millions of tons of limestone were stripped from the top of large magnetic beds to permit open-pit mining. A sintering plant was set up at
