Stove History Spreadsheets

(Showing the impact of the completion of the Erie Canal on trade to and from the West)

A lot of the material I've collected (and that underpins most of the Maps post) is organized in spreadsheet form -- or, if it's a flat-file database, easily could and should be -- so I have moved it into Google Sheets format and parked it here in public.  This also serves me as a useful index to my own materials, so it's not an entirely altruistic gesture.

• Stoves in Churches and Meeting Houses, 1722-1835 -- the data underlying this is a non-random sample of recorded instances of the presence or installation of stoves in churches and meeting houses, reported (mostly) in 19th century local histories.  See map.

• Firewood Prices in Philadelphia, 1754-1800 -- from Billy G. Smith's The 'Lower Sort': Philadelphia's Laboring People, 1750-1800 (Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 101 -- a rare, detailed local study, but not demonstrating a very significant or sustained increase in the relative cost of fuel.

• The First Quarter-Century of Stove (Cooking & Heating Appliance) Patents, 1790-1814 -- underlying data most easily accessible from Jim Shaw's “X-Patents with Added Fields,” Historical Patents and Trademark Databases, Patent and Trademark Deposit Library Association, http://www.ptdla.org/history [unfortunately this link doesn't seem to work any longer -- at least, Jim Shaw's stuff is still listed there, but it doesn't seem to be accessible].

• I have extracted the 1790-1836 cooking and heating appliance X-patents from Jim Shaw's spreadsheet, and added a bit more information from my own database, so this file now covers the first half-century, through 1840.

• 1808-1936 Albany & Troy Stove Makers and Sellers -- with annual totals of active firms.  From Grofft, Cast With Style (197#) and Waite and Waite, "Stovemakers of Troy."

• 1808-1936 Albany & Troy Stove Makers and Sellers -- underlying data on individual firms (needs editing).

• Tench Coxe's Report on American Manufacturing Industry at the 1810 Census -- Iron Furnace industry data -- full report available at Google Books.

• The Philadelphia Stove Trade, 1810-1845 -- compiled from Philadelphia city directories (online at the Internet Archive, via the Phila. GeoHistory Network), and tracking individuals and firms associated with the stove business at approximately 5-year intervals through the period of the specialized business's growth and (eventually, with the establishment of the first city stove foundries) transformation.  There's a map of it in 1825.  The later years (post-1830) remain to be completed.

• Traffic Through the Port of Buffalo, 1820-1842 -- graphic illustration of the impact of the opening of the Erie Canal and of the subsequent increase in freight volumes across New York State and onto the Lakes.

• Anthracite Production, 1820-1848 -- includes data on the amount shipped to the Hudson River at Rondout from the Lackawanna field. 

• 1822-1831 Millsboro Blasts -- this is a bit trivial, but I did it to work out how long the "blast" (the period during which a furnace was actually producing iron) was at the Millsboro, Delaware furnace of Philadelphia merchant Samuel G. Wright.  (The answer: a little over seven months, with frequent interruptions.)  Data from his papers at the Hagley Museum & Library, especially the reports from his furnace manager Derrick Barnard, Series 1, Boxes 1-2.

• David Wood's Stove Prices, 1822-1839 -- an attempt to pull together, and make sense of, lots of fragmentary bits of price data scattered throughout the Wood and Wright Papers at the Hagley, Walker's book on Hopewell Village, the Powell Stackhouse records at Winterthur, and to translate current prices into constant prices using Arthur Cole's wholesale price index.  Conclusion: general stability through the period of economic turbulence in the mid- to late- 1830s, then a sharp decline.

• New Jersey and Pennsylvania Iron Furnace Output, 1828-1830 -- data from Committee of Manufactures of Iron (Philadelphia Convention) [1831], reprinted as Appendix E in Scrivenor, A Comprehensive History of the Iron Trade (1841), pp. 374-5.  Price data is from David Wood's Stove Prices, and permits estimation of the value as well as the tonnage of furnace output.  It is also possible (Sheet 2) to work out the approximate number of stoves produced each year.

• New York Iron Furnace & Foundry Output, 1828-1830 -- data from the McLane Report (1833), Vol. 2, pp. 115-8 [Document 10, No. 48 -- "Abstract of the Iron Manufactories in the State of New York"].  Mostly used in order to determine (a) the rapid and extensive takeup of anthracite as the foundry fuel of choice, within five years of its first introduction to New York State, and (b) the location and distribution of iron foundry capacity.

• Powell Stackhouse's Stove Orders and Sales, 1831-1842 -- Philadelphia's leading stove pattern maker, and a significant maker and seller in his own right.

• Powell Stackhouse's Shop Inventories, 1831-1843 -- data from Stackhouse Family Papers and Ledger Book, Winterthur Library.

• New York Stove Dealers' Bankruptcy Schedules, 1832-1843 -- data from Federal Record Center, New York. Charles Postley, Stanley & Co., and James Wilson bankruptcies are particularly interesting.

• Anthracite Consumption by Massachusetts Industries, 1832 -- also from the McLane Report, Vol. 1, pp. 98-576.  Massively detailed and even more useful than the New York data in that it deals with all industries; there's a map available. 

• Massachusetts Industries, 1836-1837 -- data from the Bigelow Report, the first U.S. state manufacturing census.  I've used this for three related enquiries into the size and distribution of (a) the iron foundry and furnace industry, (b) the tinware 'industry' (nearly 200 workshops, some of them sole artisans, others quite large-scale manufacturers), and (c) the consumption of anthracite, to track change (if any) since the McLane Report.  All three are relevant to the history of stove use and manufacture in Massachusetts -- to the potential for local manufacturing; to the distribution and marketing system for stoves; and to the availability of a new fuel, which served domestic as well as industrial markets, especially in the south and east of the state.

• Steam-Powered US Iron Foundries, 1838 -- data from the Woodbury Report on the Steam Engines of the United States.  This report is imperfect in its coverage (the omission of New York City, the Hudson Valley, and in fact all of the state except the extreme west and north from its survey of stationary engines, is probably the largest and worst gap in the national data), but even so it enables us to see how widespread the steam-powered cupola foundry, a crucial innovation permitting the relocation of stove-plate casting from rural, charcoal-fuelled iron furnaces to cities and towns, had already become.

• Stanley & Co.'s New York Stove Factory and Store Inventory, 1842 -- from their bankruptcy schedule.

• Massachusetts Industries, 1844-1845 -- data from the Palfrey Report, a follow-up to Bigelow, and rather more thorough.  Used for the same purposes as Bigelow [anthracite, iron foundries, tinshops], and one other -- Palfrey also records details of the widespread, small-scale industry of "cordwood preparation," which still supplied many Massachusetts homes and some businesses with their fuel.

• Molders' Union Locals, 1859-1870 -- this simply summarizes information about locals contained in Grossman's biography of William Sylvis.

• Reports on Individual Molders' Location and Affiliation, 1859-1870 [very incomplete!] -- this would be the big one, if I had had the heart to complete it...  As it is, it just contains information about small numbers of activists except for 1864 and the first quarter of 1866 (both complete).  The major problem with compiling it was the number of variant forms of members' names, meaning that tracking individuals' moves from local to local was often difficult and relied on a combination of detective work (e.g. a person is reported to have arrived in Local B with a card from Local A, but Local A has no record of having granted a card to a man of that name; but there is one with a similar name who is recorded as having left with a card, and who has not shown up anywhere else).

• Summary of Iron Molders' Journal Reports, 1864 -- probably the most useful of my old Iron Molders spreadsheets, compiled from all of the information about members reported in the monthly reports, and a brief version (mostly just particularly interesting bits) of the local officers' comments on local conditions and events.

• 1866-1922 Stove Foundry Lists -- data from (a) Albany Convention, 1866; (b) Giles Filley's Circular, 1871; (c) NASM membership list, 1873; (d) Dunlap's guide, 1874; (e) NASM membership list, 1884; (f) NASM stove makers' lists, 1892 and 1922.  (See "Coping with Competition" for these.) Contemporary industry directories do not seem to survive, so this is probably the best way of tracking the industry's membership and location.  The 1874 Dunlap guide is also the only comprehensive guide to firms' output (in stoves, tons, and sometimes value).

[to be continued...]