Texas Iron Works

Previously known as Nash’s Iron Foundry in Mims Chapel, Marion County, the Texas Iron Works (or Texas Iron Company) was renamed during the Civil War after receiving charters from the Confederate Government to produce ammunitions.¹ See note about its incorporation in 1864 Texas Almanac.

According to kerby1972, it was “the only factory in the Confederate Southwest capable of mass-producing a respectable amount of good-quality pig iron. By 1863, most of Nash’s output was shipped to Houston, Austin, Shreveport, and Camden, and four towns in which the Department’s five large foundries were located. These foundries supplied processed bar and sheet iron to Confederate army arsenals at Little Rock, Camden, Arkadelphia, Shreveport, Marshall, Tyler, and San Antonio, to state arsenals at New Iberia and Austin,” and elsewhere (70). But even so, the works was unable to meet the Department’s demand, especially civilian demand. “Whenever an arsenal’s iron stocks approached exhaustion, military authorities could usually be persuaded to impress a few old steamboat engines, to tear up a few miles of relatively idle railroad track, or to impound a consignment of iron goods en route to some unlucky civilian” (71).

An advertisement of a missing horse from “the Superintendent of the Texas Iron Works, Marion County,” appeared in the Marshall Texas Republican as late as November 1864.

Could this be the same Iron Works mentioned in the diary of Sarah Wadley as a place where slaves from Louisiana were taken to work during the war?

A resolution was passed by the Tenth Legislature “requesting the commanding general of this military district to detail men to carry on the Texas Iron Works.”