John Crowther, Iron Master

On 7 May 1797 John Crowther was born in Broseley, about 40 miles west by northwest of Birmingham. He was baptised on 4 June 1797 at St. Leonard, a local Anglican church that would subsequently be demolished and rebuilt in 1845.

Broseley lies on the southern edge of the east Shropshire coalfield. It is most known as the site for the first iron bridge in the world, built in 1779 across the Severn River, twenty years prior to John’s birth. At the time of his birth, Broseley is a center of iron mining and plays an important role in the Industrial Revolution. Abraham Darby I, who is buried in the town, had developed a method of producing pig iron in a blast furnace fueled by coke rather than charcoal. This was a major step forward in the production of iron as a raw material for the Industrial Revolution. As we shall see, Darby’s production method directly impacts the Crowther family’s livelihood after they arrive in the U.S.

We learn from John’s baptismal record that he is the son of Edward Crowther (b. c1767 d. 1842) and Sarah Roberts (baptised 3 August 1777 d. 1840), daughter of William and Jane (Unknown) Roberts. Edward and Sarah married on 16 June 1794.

n 1816 John Crowther takes a wife named Elizabeth Cookson (b. 1795). Elizabeth is the second eldest daughter of John Cookson (1771 - ) of Madeley, Shropshire and Mary Cook (1773 - ) of Loppington, Shropshire. Elizabeth, her older sister Sarah (1794 - ) and her brother Mathew (1799 - ) are born in their father’s home village of Madeley, Shropshire, a short distance northeast of Broseley. Elizabeth’s younger brothers William, Mary, and Emmanuel are born after the family of John and Mary (Cook) Cookson apparently relocate to Broseley.

John and Elizabeth (Cookson) Crowther eventually have at least eight children together: Mary (b. 1819) Joshua (b. 1823), Joseph (b. 1824), Benjamin (b. 1828), Thomas (b. 1829), John Jr. (b. 1831), Sarah (b. 1833), and Elizabeth (b. 1839).

Sometime prior to his marriage with Elizabeth Cookson, John Sr. moves from his birth town of Broseley to the Black Country hamlet of Coppice, parish of Sedgley, a town that is now part of Dudley, a larger town to the south. Sedgley is 21 miles to the east of Broseley and six miles south of Wolverhampton. In 1821, the population of Sedgley parish is 17,195, an increase from 9,874 in 1801.

As early as 1785, the 14-mile road between Wolverhampton and Birmingham is described as "one continuous town.” The Black Country name is said to have come from the black soot from heavy industries that cover the area, although a 30-foot-thick coal seam close to the surface is another possible reason offered by historians. We learn from subsequent biographical entries that during this period, John Sr. becomes an iron master, serving as the manager of the blast furnace in the hamlet of Coseley (also a part of Dudley) and multiple other blast furnaces throughout Staffordshire. Crowther’s departure from Broseley for the Black Country is not particularly surprising as local histories note that two centuries of prosperity ends circa 1800 when the Broseley’s coal runs out. By 1831, five of the town’s blast furnaces are closed, resulting in the loss of about 500 workers. By then, Crowther is employed in Wolverhampton by Hanbury, Sparrow and Company’s Stow-heath Iron Works; William Hanbury Sparrow, a prominent Black Country ironmaster and collier, is the proprietor. Sparrow is a tenant – his iron works, which have been in existence since at least 1788, are on land owned by the Duke of Sutherland. We learn from newspaper accounts from the era that Crowther manages the day-to-day operations for Sparrow. He also represents the company in legal proceedings that arise involving matters of theft and employee insubordination.

John Crowther Sr. is apparently an avid reader of mechanical and iron themed magazines. He occasionally fires off letters to their editors, his signature referencing his birth town. He submits a letter to the Mechanic’s Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal & Gazette on 14 March 1843, not long before the family’s departure for America. The historical record also contains a letter from him to the wonkishly named Iron: An Illustrated Weekly Journal for Iron and Steel Manufacturers.

Although both John Crowther Sr. and Elizabeth Cookson are baptized and married in the Church of England, by the time they begin having children of their own the Crowthers are practicing Baptists in both England and subsequently in the United States. We learn from the birth records of sons Joshua and Benjamin that the family are members of the Coppice Strict and Particular Baptist church in Sedgley, a borough within Wolverhampton. Today, the Coppice chapel, which is located on Caddick Street, continues to hold services at 10:30 am on Sundays and Wednesday prayer meetings at 7:15 pm. Built in 1804, the church is referenced by a local historian as “the oldest standing religious building in the Manor that has not undergone change.” The congregation is somewhat older than the sanctuary, having been formed in 1792 as an offshoot of the Bond Street Baptist Church in Warwickshire.

The term “strict” refers to the strict or closed position held with respect to membership and communion. The Particular Baptists, who predominate in England, adhere to the doctrine of a particular atonement – that Christ died only for an elect – and are strongly Calvinist in orientation. General Baptists, who predominate in the United States, contend that Christ died for all.

Relative to their standing in the United States, Baptists in England comprise a small denomination, with membership in 2011 standing at 135,536 spread across 2,386 churches. In comparison, the country hosts 16,247 Anglican churches and 3,656 Roman Catholic churches.

Returning to the Crowthers of Staffordshire, the family of John Sr. and Elizabeth are recorded in the 1841 Census of England and Wales living on Willenhall Road in the Parish of Wolverhampton. Wolverhampton is about 19 miles east of John’s birth town of Broseley and six miles north of Dudley, where the family resided in the mid 1820’s. We discover from subsequent US accounts that during this time frame, John Sr. works in multiple locations in Staffordshire, managing seven blast furnaces in the area – five at Stowe Heath, considered a “manor” of Wolverhampton, and two in Osier Bed.

The census record of 1841 reveals that eldest son Joshua Crowther has departed the family’s Wolverhampton nest. Indeed, he may already be in the United States, as we learn from Earl L. Core’s The Monongalia Story: Discord (University of West Virginia Press, 1979) that Joshua and a Reverend Edward Price, also from England, are in the Morgantown, West Virginia area by 1843, inspecting ore sites. Mary Crowther, the eldest daughter, is missing from the census record. The Staffordshire Advertiser of 8 August 1838 mentions her sudden death on 1 August 1838 at the age of 21. Living with the Crowther family is Elizabeth’s sister Mary (Cookson) French (1807-1886), who will soon accompany the family on their journey to the United States.

In 1842 Edward Crowther, father of John Crowther Sr. dies. The Staffordshire Advertiser of 2 July 1842 reports that his death occurs on June 22nd. The notice describes him as “of Stow-heath Iron Works, aged 74 years old, much respected by all who knew him.” The England and Wales Death Registration Index also records his passing. Neither record references kin or states where Edward was born. While we know he married in Broseley, it is probable that he was born elsewhere in Shropshire as his baptism is not mentioned in parish records.

In 1844 the family of John and Elizabeth (Cookson) Crowther sail to the United States aboard the ship Patrick Henry, a three-masted, squared rigged sailing ship that had been built in 1839. Considered one of the fastest packet ships of its day, the ship routinely sails west from Liverpool to New York in under fourteen days. New York passenger lists reveal the family arrives in New York City on 27 May 1844. The aforementioned advance survey work in West Virginia performed by son Joshua Crowther and the death of Edward Crowther likely impacts the timing of the family’s voyage to the United States.

What inspires the Crowther family to cross the wide Atlantic? By the time of their departure, John Crowther Sr. seemed to have a well-established career managing Staffordshire blast furnaces. We learn from industry sources that other Black Country iron masters precede John Crowther Sr. in migrating to the United States, most notably the accomplished furnace master William Firmstone. Firmstone, like Crowther, was from Shropshire and later became manager of the furnace at the Lay Works, near Dudley, Staffordshire, where the Crowthers also resided in the 1820’s.

Nine years prior to the Crowthers’ 1844 arrival, The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia in 1835 offers a premium of a gold medal “to the person who shall manufacture in the United States the greatest quantify of iron from the ore during the year, using no other fuel than bituminous coal or coke, the quantity not to be less than twenty tons.” The offer of the gold medal by the Franklin Institute doubtlessly assists in stimulating action upon a subject which had attracted much attention – namely that the fledgling United States industrial economy is hobbled by its dependence on antiquated charcoal based furnaces. In the year in which the Institute offers the premium, William Firmstone, successfully makes “good gray forge iron for about one month at the end of a blast at Mary Ann furnace, in Huntington County, Pennsylvania.” Firestone does not claim the medal, which according to one industry historian, he “undoubtedly accomplished.”

Firmstone is originally born in Wellington, Shropshire, and like John Crowther Sr. moves to Dudley, Staffordshire prior to immigrating to the United States in the spring of 1835. While a very young man, Firmstone manages the Lay Works blast furnace in Dudley, which was then owned by his uncles, W & G Firmstone. The U.S. Interior Department’s Report on Manufacturing in the United States, June 1, 1880 credits Firmstone with being “one of the first to introduce the hot-blast in the United States, having successfully adding this improvement to the Vesuvius furnace, in Lawrence County, Ohio, in 1836.” Hot blast refers to the preheating of air blown into a blast furnace. As developed in England, it worked by alternately storing heat from the furnace flue gas in a firebrick lined vessel with multiple chambers, then blowing combustion air through the hot chamber. Firmstone would become associated with the Glendon Iron Company in the Lehigh Valley town of Easton, Pennsylvania, where he became a wealthy industrialist. The Crowthers are likely inspired by the example of Firestone and other “furnace men” from Great Britain who made relatively quick fortunes by parlaying their technical knowledge in a country that lacked native know-how.

Upon arriving in the United States, John Crowther Sr. and his oldest three sons form Crowther & Company. They initially purchase a charcoal furnace property known as the Valley Furnace on Decker’s Creek above Morgantown, West Virginia. Also on the property is a forge knows at the Rock Forge. At the time, Morgantown, not far from the Pennsylvania border, has a population of less than 700 and is comprised about 150 dwellings, several stores and mills, two printing offices, two churches, and an academy. West Virginia University would not be founded for another 23 years. Thomas Condit Miller’s West Virginia and Its People (New York: Lewis Publishing, 1913) does not mention the Crowthers, but notes that the Iron Furnace of Decker’s Creek was working in 1798 and is the second or third oldest furnace in the area. Miller comments:

There were no railroads in the early years of the charcoal furnace and steamboats were few. The iron market did not extend farther from the point of production than the iron could be hauled by wagons, except when a river might help out with boat carriage. No such thing as a general competition in the iron business existed. Every region or locality, if it had its own ore, built its own iron furnace.

In the First American Frontier, Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia 1700-1860 (University of North Carolina press), Wilma Dunaway notes that to provide the 360 bushels of charcoal necessary for one day’s operation of an iron furnace, an acre of virgin oaks and hardwoods was cut. In the antebellum period, Appalachian forests were clear-cut several times to fuel adjacent iron furnaces. A larger blast furnace would swallow forests voraciously. Dunaway recounts that in the 1830’s; some 10,000 acres around Morgantown were burned over to produce charcoal for the iron furnaces.

The West Virginia Geological Survey of 1907 mentions the Crowthers at Deckers Creek:

Crouther [sic] and French operated the Deckers Creek Iron Works sometime after 1840 and were succeeded by James Kinsley sometime between 1852 and 1855, but he operated it but a short time. The works were located three and a half miles from Morgantown and included a furnace and a forge. The latter known as Rock Forge had three fires, one hammer run by water power and made bar iron and was abandoned in 1855.

We note in the aforementioned English census of 1841 that a Mary French age 30-34 is residing in the Crowthers’ Wolverhampton, Staffordshire household. The “French” mentioned in the Geological Survey of 1907 is Mary’s husband, who had left England to accompany Joshua Crowther and Edward Price on their 1843 reconnaissance of the Rock Forge and presumably other sites. The French’s apparently part ways with the Crowthers after their Decker’s Creek venture. George Parsons French dies in Newport, Kentucky on 17 June 1865. His wife Mary (Cookson) French, sister of Elizabeth (Cookson) Crowther, dies in St. Louis, Missouri, on 31 December 1886.

The Reverend Edward Price, who had accompanied Joshua Crowther on his 1843 exploratory expedition, remains in Morgantown long after the Crowthers depart. In 1846, while still in West Virginia, he provides power of attorney to his brother William, instructing him to dispose of a house inherited from their grandfather. In 1847 he deeds his Shropshire cottage to local stone mason. He is again referenced in consort with the Crowthers much later in the historical record. In 1899 Benjamin Crowther is mentioned in the Morgantown Daily New Dominion Vol. IV, No. 138, 22 August because he was there on a visit to see his friend Edward Price. Price eventually dies in Morgantown at the age of 89 in 1907; he is buried with his wife Hannah Prudence (Docker) Price (1817-1882) in the town’s Oak Grove Cemetery. The Price family papers from 1830-1945 are archived at West Virginia University’s Archives and Manuscripts Collection; they may yield additional insights into his lifelong relationship with the Crowthers.

Unlike the Price family, the Crowthers remain in Morgantown for just two years. We learn from the family’s subsequent endeavors that their ultimate reason for being in the United States is to locate a blast furnace property that can be converted from charcoal to coal based usage. Despite the early suppositions of son Benjamin, the West Virginia site proves unsuited to the Crowthers’ objective and they head north to Pennsylvania. Indeed, the Morgantown area iron industry begins declining in 1846 and the subsequent owner of Decker’s Creek abandons the furnace altogether in 1855.

After just two years in Morgantown, the Elizabeth (Cookson) Crowther and John Crowther Sr. family move from Morgantown WV to Brady’s Bend, PA, where John Sr. erects a blast furnace for the Brady’s Bend Iron-works and becomes the manager there. Located in Brady’s Bend Township, Armstrong County, PA the blast furnaces are constructed of stone, with the original blown into production in 1840 and Crowther’s furnace added in 1846. The hot blast furnaces are powered by a 250 horsepower steam engine. The rolling mill is also powered by a 250 horsepower steam engine that went into production in January 1842.

The furnaces and mill had been established by the Great Western Iron Works in August, 1839. The company initially manufactured strip rails and quickly expanded their operation through 1842 however by 1843 their fortunes changed and they had ceased operations while they sought more operating funds. By the time the Crowthers arrive on site, the company had been sold at a sheriff’s sale to a new firm, the Brady’s Bend Iron company.

Brady’s Bend is considered by some to be the "Pittsburgh of the Middle 1800's" and "Cradle of the Iron and Steel Industry in America." The company is credited with manufacturing the first T-Rails west of the Allegheny Mountains. John Crowthers Sr. appears to play a significant role in turning around the furnaces’ operations.

After Crowther’s departure, the Brady’s Bend works would undergo additional turmoil in the 1860’s and eventually close for good in the Panic of 1873.

The same year the Crowthers relocate to Brady’s Bend, John Sr. is credited with what is perhaps his life’s greatest accomplishment, “blowing out” the Mahoning (Lowell) Furnace in the hamlet of Lowellville, about four miles from Poland, Ohio and 62 miles west of Brady’s Bend. Poland had been the site of the 1804 Hopewell Furnace, the first charcoal iron furnace in Ohio; however, by 1846 southern Ohio had already eclipsed Poland and its surrounding area as the primary center of iron production due to the discovery of what was a bonanza of iron ore.

By 1860, southern Ohioans had established sixty-nine iron furnaces, producing more than 100,000 tons of iron annually. The manufacturers sent much of the iron up and down the Ohio River to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, allowing southern Ohioans to prosper. It was in these two cities where most of the iron produced in southern Ohio was fashioned into finished products such as household utensils and tools. Most of the iron producers in the southern part of the state relied on charcoal to fuel their furnaces. As the availability of charcoal and iron ore declined following the American Civil War, the economic prosperity of southern Ohioans also quickly deteriorated. The timing of the Crowther’s move into northern Ohio would prove fortuitous.

Replacing the dormant Hopewell Furnace in Poland, the newer Mahoning furnace is situated on the south bank of the Mahoning River and Canal some 65 miles from Pittsburgh. The Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Association, Volume 28 credits John Wilkeson of Poland Township, Mahoning Ohio, with erecting the Mahoning Furnace “expressly to use coal in its raw state from their mine near Lowell.” (Wilkeson, though born in Ohio, would become more associated with Buffalo, NY where he was the son of third Mayor Samuel Wilkeson.) The story recalls that that “the furnace was successfully blown in with this fuel by John Crowther on the 8th of August, 1846.” It goes on to note that “to these Gentlemen belongs the honor of being the first persons in the United States to put a furnace in blast with raw bituminous coal.”

James Moore Swank’s History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages, second edition (1892) credits John Crowther for adapting many furnaces in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys to the use of block coal and “instructed three of his sons in their management, namely Joshua, Joseph J., and Benjamin.” Swank agrees with other historians in noting that until John Crowther’s achievement, bituminous coal was not used in the heating of furnaces attached to American rolling and slitting-mills. The Annual Report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1881-1882 notes that it was not until about 1830, when rolling-mills became numerous around Pittsburgh that the need for bituminous coal in these establishments assumed critical importance.

As noted previously, prior to the Crowthers’ arrival on the scene, only charcoal furnaces had existed in the US for iron making purposes. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Report on Manufactures of the United States at the Tenth Census, June 1. 1880, notes that by 1796, charcoal furnaces had been almost completely abandoned in Great Britain, one year prior to the birth of John Crowther Sr. Why did a technology invented in 1750’s England take so long to reach the United States?

The Pennsylvania Iron Industry; Furnace and Forge of America offers that when British merchants dumped lower-priced iron products into the American market after the War of 1812, ironmasters sought federal tariff protection. Critics complained that protective tariffs would subsidize American manufacturers' higher costs and inferior technology, a point that tariff supporters conceded. Owners of secondary ironworks opposed protectionism because they wanted cheaper crude iron to process, including British imports. Congress sided with the protectionists, enacting tariffs between 1816 and 1832. Thereafter, Congress gradually reduced tariffs. The tariffs provided a disincentive for iron makers to improve efficiency. As markets expanded in the fledgling United States, ironmasters exploited abundant native forests, building more charcoal furnaces rather than improving furnace technology to increase output or efficiency. Charcoal furnaces were inherently limited in size because loading iron ore into a larger furnace would crush the fragile charcoal fuel layered with the ore, smothering combustion and ore smelting. John Crowther Sr. brought with him knowledge developed in his home town, namely Abraham Darby’s understanding of how charcoal furnaces could be adapted to manufacture pig iron using block coal. Perhaps other English iron masters could have done the same however the Crowthers are particularly enterprising in identifying a location with ample deposits of high quality bituminous coal, a rapidly expanding rail network, and a market ripe with demand.

Crowther’s exact accomplishment in Lowellville is not without controversy. In the Geological Survey he prepares for Ohio’s House of Representatives in 1871, Charles Whitlessey writes:

A sharp correspondence occurred, in 1869, between the partizans (sic) of the Clay Furnace, as to their priority in the use of raw coal. The credit for making the first iron with the raw bituminous coal belongs to one of these firms. An account of the blowing in of the Lowell Furnace, on the 8th day of August, 1846 may be seen in the Trumbull Democrat of Warren, dated August 15, 1846, where it stated “to these gentlemen belongs the honor of being the first persons in the United States who have succeeded in putting a furnace in blast with raw bituminous coal.” According to Mr. Wilkes, writing from Painesville, April 2, 1869, this furnace was run with coke for several months, but at what time he does not state. It is admitted that Mr. David Himrod, now of Youngstown, produced the first metal with raw coal, about the close of the year 1845, and has continued to use it ever since. The friends of Wilkeson and Company claim that it was an accident, and a necessity, while their works were built and intended for raw coal. Without attempting to settle the question of to whom belongs the most merit for this first success, all iron masters, and every one (sic) who takes and interest in the enormous business which has risen from the enterprise and intelligence of these firms, must feel willing to regard them as public benefactors.

As the late nineteenth century unfolds, John Crowther Sr. becomes celebrated as an accomplished engineer. John Barnard Pearse, author of A Concise History of Iron Manufacture of the American Colonies Up to the Revolution, and of Pennsylvania Until the Present Time (1876), credits Crowther with building the first furnace in the United States that “successfully brought the waste gas down to hot-blast ovens and boilers on the ground,” and improvement he deems significant, as it reduced gas waste. Pearse notes that Wilkeson, the owner of the forge (Crowther was engineer and manager) built a large furnace “12 feet bosh and 45 feet, five 3 inch tuyeres, “risking a large amount in the enterprise.” Nearly thirty years following his death, John Crowther and his Mahoning furnace are also profiled in the February, 1891 edition of Popular Science Monthly.

During the 1840s, northeastern U.S. iron producers begin following Crowther’s example by replacing charcoal furnaces with coal ones. Coal furnaces produced iron of a cleaner and finer quality. The population in northeast Ohio grows quickly as a result of increased iron production, as well as because of the discovery of abundant coal resources. Numerous business owners, including John Rockefeller, locate their companies in Akron, Cleveland, Canton, and Youngstown, because of the abundant coal and iron in the region. John Crowther Sr.’s contribution along with the widespread availability of coal in the region would therefore result in Northeastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania regaining their dominance in the iron business by 1860. Cleveland's population skyrockets from seventeen thousand people in 1860 to 160,000 by 1880. Iron production and coal mining allows Ohio to emerge as one of the USA’s most prosperous states by the late 1800s.

Benjamin Crowther takes charge of the Sharon Furnace in Sharon, PA from his father and remains there for three years. The borough of Sandy Lake, near the Sharon furnace, is not far from Poland, OH, Allegheny PA, and New Castle, PA, furnace locations family members would run. The furnace in Sharon would eventually close in 1860, ten years after Benjamin’s departure from the site. In 1965 the furnace site was reportedly still in good condition however today not much remains. It is located in a remote state game lands, the site only accessible by foot.

John Crowther Sr. continues to manage the Mahoning Furnace while ownership changes hands from Wilkeson’s company to a new chartered stock company. Crowther Sr. concurrently manages the Sandy Furnace in Mercer County. By the time he arrives on site, the Sandy Furnace (also known at various times as the Castle Rock Furnace and Lytle Furnace) had been in operation for about 12 years and its operations were not particularly successful.

By 1850, the Crowther family has already spent two years in West Virginia, two in Brady’s Bend, PA and two in Sandy Lake, PA, making what must have been numerous side trips to nearby Poland, OH. By this time, according to the Department of the Interior’s Report on the Manufacturers of the United States at the Tenth Census (Washington DC, Government Printing Office June 1, 1880), there are four furnaces in the Mahoning Valley and seven in the Shenango Valley that are using raw coal to manufacture pig iron.

In 1850 John Crowther Sr. and his wife Elizabeth make their only appearance in a U.S. Census. In the same document, Malinda, Alfred, and Samuel, the couple’s first three grandchildren, surface.

Family of John Crowther and Elizabeth, Sandy Lake, PA 34 20 20 CROWTHER, John 53 M Iron agent England 35 20 20 CROWTHER, Elizabeth 55 F England 36 20 20 CROWTHER, Joseph 26 M Iron agent England 37 20 20 CROWTHER, Thomas 21 M Labourer England 38 20 20 CROWTHER, John 18 M Labourer England 39 20 20 CROWTHER, Sarah 16 F England 40 20 20 CROWTHER, Eliza 11 F England

Family of Joshua and Sarah (Fieldhouse) Crowther, Sandy Lake PA

41 21 21 CROWTHER, Joshua 30 M Iron Master England 42 21 21 CROWTHER, Sarah 29 F (None recorded)

1   21   21  CROWTHER, Malinda         8 F                 England

2   21   21  CROWTHER, Alfred          4 M                 Pa.

Family of Benjamin and Mary Ann (Hill) Crowther, Hickory, Mercer County PA

23 151 153 CROWTHER, Benjamin 23 M Iron founder England 24 151 153 CROWTHER, Mary Ann 23 F England 25 151 153 CROWTHER, Samuel 2 M Pa.

Sometime before February, 1853, John Crowther Sr. returns to England, where he lives out the remainder of his days, approximately another eight years. In his remaining years he returns to fold of his employer of the 1830’s and early 1840’s, again serving as an agent to ironmaster William Hanbury Sparrow. The Staffordshire Advertiser reports that Crowther donates money to the Cotton Hill Lunatic Asylum in July, 1853. Crowther is occasionally featured in the Advertiser in consort with Sparrow and Stow-heath legal matters, but there no mention of his time in the United States or of his three sons who continue to reside there.

The historical record suggests that John Crowther Sr. spent no more than eight years of his life in the United States, achieving great success in jump starting his sons’ careers. In writing about the slow maturation of American industry in the mid nineteenth century, Alan Conway, author of The Welsh in America (University of Wales press, 1961) places John Crowther’s life in context:

"In other industries British Craftsmen were prominent. James Bennett from Derbyshire founded the pottery industry. David Thomas from south Wales introduced in 1839 an anthracite iron-smelting furnace at Catasauqua on the Lehigh River. William Firestone from Worcestershire and John Crowther from Staffordshire introduced coke-smelting and the hot-blast into Pennsylvania and Ohio in the 1840’s. These are but a few examples of the impetus given to American industry by immigrants from key positions in Great Britain. They were followed by others – not mechanical geniuses but skilled mechanics – from the cotton and woolen mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, from the coal mines and foundries of south Wales, from the tin mines of Cornwall, and from the potteries of Staffordshire. Often they were refugees from hard times at home who were attracted by the high wages and better conditions held out to them by American employers. Many were not immigrants in the truest sense of the word but birds of passage who were willing to work on whichever side of the Atlantic had most to offer and would return home when prospects in America became unattractive."

Not long after the 1850 census is completed, son Benjamin leaves his job at the Sharon Furnace in Mercer County PA and heads for Poland, OH to manage the Mahoning (Lowell) Furnace for the next ten years, taking over for his father. Under his leadership, the plant continues as a successful operation, supplying more than ten thousand tons of compound rail to the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railway Company starting in 1856. The 1859 edition of the Iron Manufactures Guide to the Furnaces, Forges, and Rolling Mills of the United States by J.P Lesley (New York: John Wiley) reports that in 1857 under Crowther’s direction the furnace produces “3,311 tons of mill iron out of lower measure coal carbonite ore mixed with Lake Superior magnetic ore and rolling-mill cinder, smelted with Mount Nebo or Briar Hill coal.” The family of Joshua Crowther heads to New Castle, PA where Joshua will later form the Crowther Iron Company.

Also in 1861, John Crowther Sr. appears for the last time in an English census. Residing with him is his 21-year-old daughter Elizabeth of Wolverhampton. Presumably his wife Elizabeth is deceased, which places her death sometime between 1857, when the Staffordshire Advertiser has her discovering the body of her son Thomas, and the 1861 census. John and Elizabeth’s daughter Sarah is married and living elsewhere in Staffordshire while sons Joshua, Benjamin, Joseph and John Jr. remain in the United States.

Shortly after the census of 1861 is taken, John Crowther Sr. dies at age 64 at Longton Potteries, Stoke-on Trent, a Staffordshire village less than eight miles from Burslem, the birthplace of Thirza (Bailey) Crowther and thirty-five miles from the Crowther home in Wolverhampton. In the village of Lane End, since absorbed by Longton, there is a colliery and large blasting furnace owned by William Hanbury Sparrow, his employer. Sparrow, like Crowther, is based in Wolverhampton but owns blast furnaces in both Wolverhampton and Longton. While it is only conjectural, we surmise that Crowther was visiting the Longton furnace or perhaps friends in Longton prior to his death. His 1863 probate notice mentions that he had previously lived in Longton, presumably around the time of John Jr. and Thirsa Bailey’s 1854 marriage in nearby Shelton.

Crowther’s death date is recorded as 15 April 1861 and he is buried on 18 April in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist, Chapelry of Lane-End. The handwritten burial record references Wolverhampton as the deceased’s “abode” and William Ford as the presiding minister.

Lane-End Church, or, as it is now called, St John's, Longton, was founded and endowed by John Bourne, Esq, in 1764, but it was rebuilt in 1792, and enlarged in 1827. It is a neat and spacious brick structure, and has a tower with a peal of eight bells. The benefit is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of trustees, and incumbency of the Rev William Ford, MA.

[History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire, William White, Sheffield, 1851]

St. John the Baptist is eventually demolished in 1979 due to mining subsidence. After demolition of the church the graveyard is cleared and the site is repurposed for retirement housing. Most of the remains are cremated and moved to a combined memorial site now located in the Church of St. James the Less and St. John in Longton. Some of the original headstones have been preserved; it is not known whether John Crowther’s is among them.