LaBelle Timeline Aug 28, 2007 Red- Wheeling/WV History Blue- World/US History Black- Labelle/Steel History ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1769 Wheeling founded by Col. Ebenezer Zane and his brothers; Jonathan, Andrew and Silas. 1775 Nail machine technology- Wilkinson developed a process to make tacks, by shearing iron slivers from iron plate. This was the basic technology used in most common nail machines and it was adopted very quickly with blacksmiths and other mechanics. 1776 Declaration of Independence 1776 Fort Fincastle renamed as Fort Henry 1777 Sam McColloch takes his leap. 1782 September 11th attack on Fort Henry recognized as the last battle of the Revolutionary War; Betty Zane makes famous run for powder. 1794 Wheeling’s first post office opens. 1803 Louisiana Purchase September 7, 1803 Merriwether Lewis visits wheeling. 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition 1806 The first Police Department established in West Virginia happened in Wheeling. Wheeling is incorporated as a town. 1817 Security National Bank & Trust Company 1818 National Road is completed to Wheeling, opening the Midwest to settlement 1820s Spread of Balloon framing Construction Method- The Balloon framing method created a cheap and easy new construction method that minimized construction time and required enormous amounts of nails. 1824 Charles H. Berry founds a riverboat supply house 1825 Marquis de Lafayette visits Wheeling. 1830 The Guards Volunteer Fire Company organized and located at 27 21st Street. 1831 Wheeling designated as a “Port of Entry” by the government. 1832 Wheeling’s first iron works, “Top Mill”, is founded by Shoenberger & Agnew on the river north of the city. 1834 Wheeling’s first waterworks established. 1835 J. Ludwig Stifel, a skilled fabric dyer, began Stifel Textile Company. 1836 Ott-Heiskell Company, a wholesale and retail hardware business, established. 1840 Centre Foundry & Machine Company established. 1840 Bethany College, West Virginia’s oldest degree-granting college, founded by Alexander Campbell. 1840 M. Marsh & Son and W.A. Wilson Company established. 1842 10-Hour day for children under 12, working in Massachusetts. 1845 Kepner Funeral Homes began conducting services. 1847 Stone & Thomas store originally opened as “Golden Bee Hive”, a dry goods store that also carried carpets. 1847 Edward M. Norton, built the Virginia mill on Wheeling Creek near the Market Street Bridge, the first western mill exclusively devoted to making nails. 1848 Gold discovered in California. 1849 Norton, Bailey, and Company begins producing nails. - Norton, Bailey & Co. built the Belmont Nail Works on two acres of land on the banks of the Ohio River. They installed six puddling furnaces, 2 reheating furnaces, and 18 nail machines with a daily output of 200 kegs of nails. 1849 Wheeling Suspension Bridge completed as the longest in the world till 1853. 1850 Wheeling population is 11,435. 1851 Isaac Singer invents the sewing machine. 1852 Bailey, Woodward, and Company purchases 4 acres in South Wheeling- Two years after the Belmont Nail Works was established; seven of the original 11 board members left the company and began establishing another nail factory. On two of the four acres they built the wooden structure. The “Specifications for building a rolling mill and nail factory by Bailey, Woodward, and Company. Size of Rolling Mill 50 feet wide by 132 long 28 feet high to the square . The Nail factory to be 128 feet long by 40 feet wide . .” The other approximate two acres were worker’s houses. By 1852 there were only three other factories in Wheeling that produced nails; Top Mill, Belmont Mill and Benwood Mill. August 24, 1852 First issue of the Wheeling Intelligencer published. 1853 The B&O Railroad reaches Wheeling. On December 25 1853 Centre Market is built to serve the population increase south of Wheeling Creek; this is a prime example of the use of structural cast iron in the trans-Appalachian area. Hempfield viaduct building began; tracks lain 1855. 1854 Republican Party formed for the abolition of slavery. 1854 Smith and Wesson invented the revolver. 1857 Weimer Packing Company established in Wheeling. 1857-1859- Construction of the Wheeling Custom House, one of the first buildings in the U.S. to use wrought iron beams. 1858 The first labor union in the iron trade is organized in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1859 Labelle purchases the Jefferson Iron Works in Steubenville, Ohio. - The founders were associated equally with the mills in Wheeling and Steubenville. Calvin B. Doty, David Spaulding, and John McClinton left Labelle and moved to Steubenville to oversee the company. 1860 A keg of nails sold for $3.13. 1861 Wheeling native, Rebecca Harding Davis, begins publishing her book “Life in the Iron Mills” in the Atlantic Monthly. 1861 Originally Nail City Brewery, it was taken over by Henry Schmulbach in 1881 and became known as Schmulbach Brewery. 1861 The Civil War begins. West Virginia will contribute 32,000 to the Union and 10,000 to the Confederacy. 1862-1864 The War causes the steel industry to rely heavily on local resources. – Because of this, LaBelle signed a year lease with Cyrus Mendenhall, owner of a blast furnace in Martin’s Ferry. Mendenhall would operate the furnace, then ship the ore down river to the nail works. This agreement continued until Labelle eventually constructed two blast furnaces in Steubenville in 1863. 1863 Siemens-Martin invents the open-hearth process. In conjunction with the Bessemer converter, the open-hearth process makes steel available in bulk. Because of this development, steel begins to replace iron in buildings: steel framing and reinforced concrete makes “curtain wall” architecture possible (i.e. skyscrapers). June 20, 1863- West Virginia becomes 35th state. 1863 Wheeling Daily (News-Register) began publication. 1865 Substantial increase in profit by the end of the War. A keg of nails sells for $7.08. April 1865 Lincoln assassinated. 1866 Wheeling Downs Racetrack opens. 1867 Coal Diggers Strike- Quoted from the Wheeling Intelligencer: “The coal diggers at the Labelle, Belmont, and Benwood Iron mills struck yesterday for higher wages. The Belmont strikers, we understand, threatened to kill anyone who should go to work in their places. This strike, if persisted in, will stop the mills again.” April 23, 1867. 1867 Invention of Barbed wire closes down “open cattle ranges” of the west. Alfred Nobel patents dynamite. 1868 An eight-hour day established for federal employees. 1870s Bessemer process is first used in Wheeling. – Sir Henry Bessemer invented the Bessemer process in 1856 in England. Its purpose was to convert pig iron into steel by blowing hot air through the molten iron, which would oxidize the carbon and impurities. Advantages of this process were many. 1870 West Liberty State College established. 1872 In six months, Wheeling nail mills manufacture 541,745 kegs of nails valued at $1,5 million. 1872 Yellowstone National Park established. 1874 Labelle sees increase in nail production- Labelle’s Wheeling works had increased its nail machines from 25 to 83, added 13 puddling furnaces, and one additional heating furnace. The nail factory had expanded to include warehouses, a coopers shop and a stock shed. At that time Labelle was working two turns or shifts of ten hours each, and employing approximately 400 hands or workers. The Jefferson works employed about 500 men and 84 nail machines. The combined Labelle and Jefferson operations had a total of 167 nail machines, reportedly more machines than any other nail works in the entire United States. 1875 State Capital moves to Wheeling. 1876 National “League” (baseball) founded. The Sioux and Cheyenne beat Custer at Little Big Horn. Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone. 1877 First National Labor strikes in Martinsburg, West Virginia. 1877 Gilchrist-Thomas invents a basic process that uses a wider range of ore for manufacturing steel. 1877 Anton Reymann establishes the Reymann Brewery 1879 Thomas Edison invents incandescent light. 1879 Bloch Brothers (Aaron and Samuel) began to manufacture cigars in their grocery. They would create Mail Pouch tobacco. 1879 First telephone installed in Wheeling by the Beuter Brothers Grocery Company. 1880 West Virginia’s first exchange was installed in the People’s Bank Building in Wheeling. 1882 John D Rockefeller founds Standard Oil Trust 1883 First long distance telephone line installed from Wheeling to Pittsburgh 1884 Clapp-Griffith Converters- Labelle adopted a process based on the Clapp-Griffith’s patent that was similar to the Bessemer process. The Clapp-Griffith converters were problematic: neither cost- efficient nor consistently productive. The later bankruptcy of the Jefferson Works is blamed on these converters. 1885 William le Baron Jenney completes the first steel-girder, 10-story building in Chicago. 1885 Wheeling known as “Nail City.”- The city contains over 1400 nail machines with a yearly capacity of close to 140,000 tons or 2,800,000 kegs of nails. She was known as the Nail City, known the world over for her excellence of her chief product. Also, this year sees the capital moved to Charleston. 1885 Great Nail Strike in Wheeling lasts for 13 months, June 1885-1886. – This strike would end the reign of Wheeling being “Nail City”. Manufacturers discovered that eastern nail cutters were working for 7 cents less than those in the Ohio Valley. Because of this strike, wire nails flooded the market at a time when cut nails were in shortage. Due to the lack of workers, automatic nail feeders were introduced which replaced most need for skill and the number of men to work the machines. 1886 Labelle builds steel plant at Jefferson Works. 1886 Haymarket square Labor riot, Chicago, kills 11 people. General strike in United States for 8-hour workday. 1887 Warwick China incorporated 1890 McKinley Tariff on Tin Plate enacted. – Legislature hoped to promote the growth of the American Tin Plate Industry, which had previously been supplied by mills in Great Britain.