Thomas James

File contributed to Ohio Biographies Project by:
Linda Isenbarg
22 September 2000

History of Ross and Highland Counties Ohio
Biographical Sketches
Page 210
Williams Bros., Publishers
W. W. Williams, Printer, Cleveland, Ohio
1880

THOMAS JAMES

Almost immediately upon the dissolution of the business connection between Messrs. James and McCoy, the former gentleman returned to a business for which, by his early experience, he had been well qualified. In connection with Duncan McArthur, afterwards governor of Ohio, it is believed that he founded the first establishment, for the manufacture of iron in the State, in the vicinity of Chillicothe. After being for some years connected with iron furnaces in the Scioto valley, about the year 1820, he went to the recesses of the forests of southern Missouri, and in company with a Pennsylvanian named Massey, built a furnace at the "Great Maramec Springs," and opened there ore banks, which, if not superior in quality, are only second to those of Iron Mountain.

These great works were for many years in the possession of William James, a son of the founder, and in the year 1868, furnished employment to two hundred and fifty men. S. W., Ely, esq., who visited the Maramec iron works in that year, saw a trip-hammer that had been bobbing up and down for eighteen years. A town, called St. James has sprung up in the immediate vicinity, where two other sons of Mr. James, Lewis and Anvil, are in business. Mr. Thomas James, though superintending the erection and opening of these works, continued a resident of Chillicothe, where he was proprietor of a large hardware and iron store, and where, for nearly half a century, he carried on an extensive business. His fine brick mansion, now occupied by Scott Cook, esq., on Fifth Street, was one of the best in the early days of the old capital. Mr. James was twice married; first, in 1806, to Miss Charlotte Massie, sister of the founder of Chillicothe; and, after her death, to Miss Claypool, a lineal descendant of the son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, of that name. Of a large family of children, several are still living.

Mr. James came to Chillicothe in the fall of 1798. Mr. McCoy, coming down the Ohio, had arrived several months previous, and had occupied the interval of waiting for the establishment of their business, in teaching school. Mr. James came by the way of Zane's trace, afterwards known as the National and Maysville road. Travelers, at that time, had to supply themselves with all needed supplies for the journey through the wilderness, at Red Stone Old Fort, now Brownsville, Pennsylvania. It was customary also to wait at Indian Chastier, now Wheeling, for company through the territory inhabited by the Wyandots and Shawnees, the most warlike and hostile of the northwestern tribes. It has been asserted that Mr. James was not only the first to manufacture iron in Ohio, but that he also brought, at this time, on pack-horses, the first iron offered in the Chillicothe market. Whether this was brought from the Antietam works, we are not told. It is a pleasure to learn that these two men, entering into a business partnership, the first, perhaps in Chillicothe, entertained for each other a life-long friendship. Of diametrically opposite educational bias, the one reared in the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian faith, and the other a descendant of the cavaliers of Virginia, a mutual esteem, which speaks volumes for both, survived their business connections and its dissolution, and continued through life. Both lived to an advanced age. Mr. James died in 1856, having been born in 1776, at Shepherdstown, Virginia.

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