Artifact: Round head stake
Materials: Steel and Iron
Dimensions: OL: 15 1/2" Diameter of head: 3 1/8"
Date: 1750-1830
Origin: England or America
Collection: Image Courtesy of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
License: All rights reserved
Ledger Entry: Steel
Department: Building
Customer: Mary Janey
Ledger Page: 92
Imported From: As a raw material, steel was not abundant in colonial America, and therefore it was typically imported from England.
Product Description
Although the refinement and mass production of steel around 1850 made it a common and readily available building material in the industrial revolution, steel was produced in smaller batches in the eighteenth century by British masters. The technology of cast steel was popularized in the 1740s by Benjamin Huntsman and was used to make a wide variety of products such as shoe buckles, spurs, and candle snuffers, many of which were sold in the Ramsay store. When steel was sold by weight on its own, it was likely sold as building material.
Citation: Evans, Chris and Alun Withey. "An Enlightenment in Steel? Innovation in the Steel Trades of Eighteenth-Century Britain." Technology and Culture. 53, no. 3 (07, 2012): 533-560.; Gabrielle M. Lanier & Bernard L. Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic: Looking at Buildings and Landscapes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
Historical Price: 5 pence; Modern USD: $4.67
Product Variations
The databases record only three purchases of steel. Surprisingly, two of the three purchases were made by women, Mary and Hannah Janey. Steel was sold by weight and ranged from four to nine pence.
