Stove History Maps

The U.S. Stove Industry in 1874 

This is another of the things that used to be in my Stove History Stuff website. It's a chronologically-organized list of all of the many Google maps I've created to help me to see, make sense of, and communicate some of my research. I've often wished that I could do proper GIS work, but as I can't Google Maps allows me to produce a serviceable amateur version of something showing historical data in space as well as time.

• Stoves in Churches & Meeting Houses, 1722-1830 -- I'm not sure if this one is entirely worthwhile, because the data underlying it is such a non-random sample -- see this spreadsheet.  As the title suggests, it records instances of the presence or installation of stoves in churches and meeting houses, reported (mostly) in 19th century local histories.

• New Jersey Stove Furnaces, c. 1815-1840 -- the principal sources of supply to the East Coast stove trade before the rise of the stove foundry in the late 1830s.

• The Philadelphia Stove Trade in 1825 -- showing the location of stove makers and allied businesses.  For the data, see spreadsheet.

• Vermont Stove Furnaces, c. 1830 -- a cluster of blast furnaces making stoves in northern New England.

• New York State iron foundry output, 1830 [## add link] -- not a Google map, because the data (from the McLane Report) is aggregated by counties, and the base map is actually helpful in showing the importance of the Hudson River and Erie Canal corridors in an era of water transportation.  For the data, see spreadsheet.

• Places of residence of stove patentees in Maine in the 1830s -- a bit of a doodle, really, but I was interested to check out where they lived and worked, because the usual assumption would be that the extension of patenting activity gave some indication of the development of a market for (wood-fired) stoves in the state.  Location seems to confirm this -- small commercial towns in the relatively populous south of the state, which is also where new steam-powered iron foundries were developing (see below).

• Powell Stackhouse's Stove Plate Suppliers, 1831-1841 -- Stackhouse was Philadelphia's leading stove pattern maker as well as a significant maker and seller in his own right; his sources of supply were widely scattered across Pennsylvania's south-east corner.

• Massachusetts & Rhode Island Anthracite Consumption (by manufacturing industry), 1832 -- interesting evidence for the widespread availability and use of the new fuel across the state, not much more than five years after its introduction.  For the data, see spreadsheet.

• The Massachusetts Tinware Industry, 1836-1837 -- a proxy for the distribution of stove retailers and installers.  For the data, see spreadsheet.

• The Massachusetts Iron Foundry Industry in 1836-1837 -- see comment for 1844-1845 version, below.  For the data, see spreadsheet.

• Steam-Powered Foundries, 1838 -- from the Woodbury Report.  For the data, see spreadsheet.

• Anthracite Consumption by Massachusetts Industries, 1844-1845 -- surprisingly similar to the pattern revealed in the McLane Report a dozen years earlier, though the (reported) amount of fuel consumed had increased markedly (from 10,558 to 74,030 tons).  For the data for this and the following two maps, see spreadsheet.

• Massachusetts Fuel Wood Production, 1844-1845 -- a work in progress (or at least it used to be... -- there has been no such progress for years, alas).

• The Massachusetts Iron Foundry Industry in 1844-1845 -- significant for me because it shows the scale and distribution of foundry capacity across the state, i.e. its ability to turn from an importer and assembler of Pennsylvania and New Jersey stove castings into an increasingly significant producer.  (See below, for Massachusetts stove foundries thirty years later.)

• Distribution of Iron Molders' Union membership, 1864 -- a map derived from this spreadsheet, showing cities in descending order of average reported monthly membership.  The IMU was still mostly a stove molders' union -- the four biggest stove manufacturing centers (Albany, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Troy) made up 40 percent of reported national membership.  The map also shows where the companies represented at the 1866 Albany Convention of N. American foundry operators came from.  Not coincidentally, there is quite a close fit between reported IMU strength and employers' interest in forming an anti-union alliance, though attendance also seems to have been affected by ease of travel to Albany.

• The American Stove Industry in 1874 -- data from this spreadsheet and in particular the 1874 Dunlap guide.

• The American Stove Industry in 1892 -- data from this spreadsheet.  Note ...

[to be continued...]