Thomas James (1776–1856)

Thomas James spent little of his life in Missouri, but he significantly influenced the state. With a strong background in iron making, he largely financed and organized the Maramec Iron Works during the 1820s. He and his partner, Samuel Massey, opened south-central Missouri to increased settlement. The ironworks supplied needed material for the growth of industries in St. Louis and the eastern United States. Historian James D. Norris summarized the importance of James’s contribution: “The Maramec Iron Works, as the first successful large-scale foundry west of the Mississippi River, proved that high profits were to be made from the exploitation of Missouri’s iron and timber resources, and it encouraged other entrepreneurs to invest in the state’s developing economy.”

Born on November 5, 1776, Thomas James came from a family of experienced iron makers. His father died at sea in the winter of 1784–1785, and James went to live with his grandparents in Jefferson County, Virginia. He later lived with an uncle on his mother’s side of the family in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and attended Charlestown Academy. He moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1798 and engaged in a variety of commercial activities. He and John McCoy traded for furs and ginseng and marketed them in Asia through a New Orleans agent. Later, the partners slaughtered, pickled, and packed hogs for resale in the West Indies. James opened a store to sell iron products and invested in the Scioto Salt Works, controlling a readily available supply of the necessity. He sold the works when competition began to cut into profits. He also invested in a number of iron furnaces to secure a certain supply for his iron store. He owned an interest in the Brush Creek Furnace, the Marble Furnace, the Buckhorn Furnace, and Rapid Forge, all in Ohio. James took an active role in managing these facilities and “rapidly accumulated a sizable capital resource base.” By the mid-1820s he had become one of the wealthiest men in Ohio, with a sizable interest in both of Chillicothe’s banks. Norris described James as the embodiment of the entrepreneur: a risk-taker who exploited opportunities for their potential profits.

James and Massey arrived in Missouri in 1826, traveling to Maramec Spring. They immediately grasped the possibilities offered by this impressive source of waterpower, the readily available ore, flux, and timber, plus the stone needed to build the furnace and to make iron. James and Massey formed a partnership that called for James to invest the bulk of the money, with Massey supplying the remainder and providing the day-to-day management of the operation. Massey received $600 per year as salary and one-third of the profits. To build the works, they transported a large community of skilled artisans some six hundred miles from Ohio to the Missouri wilderness in what is now eastern Phelps County. They purchased the initial land at the federal land office in Jackson, Missouri, and within a decade owned more than ten thousand acres. Workmen completed the furnace in 1829. An estimated seven hundred skilled artisans came to the area to work in the ironworks. James and Massey also owned and hired enslaved men to do a variety of tasks. They came from as far away as Columbia, Fulton, and Fayette, Missouri.

Massey managed the works until he sold his interest in 1847 to Thomas. Thomas’s son, William, became the manager in that year and continued to operate Maramec Iron Works until August 1875. He also built the Ozark Iron Works some miles away in Phelps County, but economic difficulties caused the closure of both operations and bankruptcy for William James in December 1877. Thomas James never saw the demise of his Missouri investment. He died on June 14, 1856.