Chemistry in the New World

By Carter C. Hudgins

In the summer of 1607, Sir Walter Cope wrote to Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, explaining the promises of the New World and the treasures of Virginia: “In steed of mylke we fynde pearl, & golde inn steade of honye.” Cope’s writings were influenced by a metallurgist named Beale, “an excellent trier of minerals,” who had identified a precious supply of “durt” that was sure to yield a large percentage of gold. A sample of the dirt was sent to England with Captain Christopher Newport in June 1607 to be analyzed by London’s assayers, but, disappointingly, Beale’s precious dirt lacked any sign of gold. During testing “all turned to vapore.”

The records of Jamestown’s first two years are filled with references to the search for gold. The accounts left by men like Cope frequently mention gold mines, but none of the alleged mines are known to have yielded their treasures. These records have led some modern historians to view the colonists as lazy and unproductive settlers who carried out little more in Virginia than a reckless search for gold. But this view does not give the settlers enough credit: they had more practical sights in mind than gold.

The organization responsible for the Jamestown settlement was the Virginia Company of London, which was established in 1606 as a joint stock company. The sponsors’ primary goal was financial gain, which they planned to achieve by discovering a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean and by exploiting Virginia’s natural resources. Not surprisingly, they hoped to find such precious metals as the gold and silver from which the Spanish had profited so handsomely in the New World, but they also sought to discover sources of more mundane materials that England had to import from other countries, including everything from minerals and medicinal herbs to valuable flora. Jamestown was once viewed by scholars as a primitive outpost that hosted North America’s first gold rush, but the site is quickly becoming recognized as having broader importance. As we shall see, the Virgina Company of London had a particular interest in metallurgy.

Uncovering Evidence

Scholars once thought that the site of James Fort, the original fort built by the settlers of the colony, had long ago washed into the James River. Since 1994, however, the Jamestown Rediscovery Project has uncovered much of the original settlement. The project’s archaeological investigations have uncovered over a million artifacts dating from the settlement’s earliest years including a surprising cache of metallurgical tools and metalworking waste. Crucibles, cupels, scorifiers, alembics, slag, and melted metals indicate that Jamestown’s earliest colonists processed, refined, and tested a host of metals and minerals. They seem to have been particularly interested in copper, as evidenced by numerous triangular and beaker-shaped crucibles, several containing copper residue. Archaeologists have also found melted copper masses, including one uniquely shaped piece that fits perfectly into the bottom of a triangular Hessian crucible that was also recovered from the site. Because written accounts of the Virginia settlement make no mention of metallurgical activities other than the search for gold, researchers are turning to artifacts for new insights into the pursuits and motives of the colonists and of the men who invested in the Virginia Company of London.

Among the most plentiful artifacts recovered from James Fort are more than 8,000 pieces of sheet copper. Taking the form of small scraps and trimmings, these finds were at first assumed to be offcuts related to the production of goods used for trade with the local Powhatan Indians. Copper was the preeminent commodity held and desired by the native populations of eastern North America during the early 17th century, and the settlers of Jamestown recorded how they frequently exchanged copper for foodstuffs. On one occasion colonial leader John Smith noted that the Virginia natives were “covetous of coppeer” and “off’red pieces of bread and small handfuls of beans or wheat for a hatchet or a piece of copper.” Undoubtedly some of Jamestown’s scrap copper was associated with the Anglo-Powhatan commodities exchange. Scientific examination of these copper trimmings, however, reveals another story: as well as being used for trade, Jamestown’s scrap copper may have actually been part of a 17th-century industrial research project.

The geographical and commercial origins of Jamestown’s scrap copper offers an important clue about the colonists’ pursuits. Copper retains small but distinctive percentages of natural elements from its ore source. Thus, in theory, comparing the elemental compositions, or “signatures,” of Jamestown’s copper with the composition of contemporary sheet copper artifacts with known origins could reveal the regional provenance of Jamestown’s metal. To unlock this crucial information, researchers subjected 300 pieces of Jamestown’s scrap copper to chemical analysis with inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). ICP-AES is an effective spectroscopic tool that allows investigators to detect the percentages of major, minor, and trace elements in a given artifact. The ICP-AES analysis revealed two surprises. First, the concentrations of lead, silver, zinc, tin, iron, and arsenic found in the samples indicate that the origin of Jamestown’s copper was in Europe rather than North America. More specifically, when compared with European smelted coppers, the Jamestown copper appears to have been primarily derived from the arsenic-rich copper ores of England. This finding was particularly striking given that most commercial copper in 16th- and 17th-century Europe originated from a handful of regions outside of England: the Falun mine in Sweden, the Harz Mountains in Saxony, Mansfield in Thuringia, the Schwaz region of Austria’s Tyrol, and the Neusohl and Zips Mountains in present-day Slovakia.

All English copper mined and processed during the late 16th and early 17th centuries originated from the two English copper monopolies: the Society of Mines Royal and the Society of Mineral and Battery Works. From the 1560s until the English Civil War in the mid-17th century, these two organizations operated to promote English metallurgical self-sufficiency. The Society of Mines Royal was granted the patented right to mine, process, and produce raw copper along with other metals. With equal interests in copper alloys, the Society of Mineral and Battery Works held the rights to create brass, to draw wire, and to use a novel type of water-driven battery hammer to manufacture sheet copper and domestic brass wares. An examination of the Jamestown copper trimmings with the naked eye reveals that a majority of the sample—nearly three-quarters—was created using the Society of Mineral and Battery Works’ techniques. Radiographs of Jamestown’s scrap copper show that much of this metal was battered in a regular pattern, consistent with patterns made by large hammers like those used by England’s copper monopolies. In addition, more than 400 pieces feature a concave angle consistent with offcuts from large circular discs with diameters ranging between 20 and 40 centimeters. These copper pieces were industrial by-products; they had been cut off round sheet metal plates that would have subsequently been worked into finished goods, such as kettles, pans, bowls, and lanterns. Since manufacturing industries capable of forming such waste did not exist in early Virginia, the copper must have been supplied as scraps, not as a manufacturing material.

At first glance it might seem historically insignificant that Jamestown’s copper scraps originated as English industrial waste. But this new archaeological evidence has the potential to reveal what had previously been invisible. The economic and occupational interests of the men who settled Jamestown start to look rather different when viewed next to the English copper monopolies’ industrial pursuits.

Zinc: The Missing Link?

Since their inception the English copper monopolies operated under the assumption that the Society of Mines Royal would mine and process raw copper and the Soci ety of Mineral and Battery Works would then combine the copper with zinc ores in a cementation process to produce brass. In cementation the copper is heated in a closed crucible along with crushed charcoal and zinc ore, such as zinc carbonate calamine stone (ZnCO3). Upon reaching temperatures between 900°C and 1000°C, the zinc held by the calamine stone vaporizes and is absorbed by the surrounding copper to form brass. Producing brass in this manner required immense skill and exceptional ingredients, and English calamine stone proved to have a high lead content, resulting in weak brass. This fault led to production of inadequate brass by the Society of Mineral and Battery Works and to decreased demand for the copper processed by the Society of Mines Royal. Consequently, as of 1605, both copper companies had yet to reach their primary objective and were operating at a dawdling pace.

The evidence increasingly suggests that both men and supplies were sent to Virginia specifically to look for better sources of zinc ore. Many of the men responsible for the formation of the Virginia Company were also directors and shareholders in England’s copper monopolies. Sir John Popham, lord chief justice of England, and Sir Robert Cecil, the newly created Earl of Salisbury, were central to the establishment of the Virginia Company and were also major shareholders in the Society of Mines Royal and the Society of Mineral and Battery Works. Thomas Smythe, the master of customs in London, was responsible for much of the Virginia Company’s financial backing and for recruiting some of the earliest settlers. Smythe’s father was one of the original shareholders in England’s copper monopolies, and Smythe inherited some of his father’s shares. Many of the lesser investors in the Virginia Company were also shareholders in the Society of Mines Royal and the Society of Mineral and Battery Works. Among these individuals were Sir Francis Popham, Richard Martin, and Thomas Middleton. The latter also held rights to the Society of Mines Royal’s smelting works in Wales.

Many of Jamestown’s early settlers also were involved with England’s copper monopolies. A man named Beale, for instance, is identified in Jamestown records as a practicing metallurgist, and the Beale family is known to have played a major role in the Society of Mines Royal. Robert Beale was the deputy governor of the Society of Mines Royal, and his son Francis was a shareholder.

Several settlers at Jamestown—John, George, and Captain John Martin—were sons and grandsons of Sir Richard Martin, an investor in the Society of Mineral and Battery works. The elder Martin was also lord mayor of London, prime warden of the Goldsmiths Company, master of the mint, and leaseholder for the production of brass in England. The Jamestown writer William Strachey referred to Captain John Martin as the “master of battery works.” This description was previously thought to be linked to the settlement’s armament and defenses, but in light of Jamestown’s associations with the Society of Mineral and Battery Works, it seems more likely that the characterization arose from Martin’s metallurgical endeavors in the colony. Martin was also described as “the authori tie consisting in refining” at James Fort, and further accounts from the settlement’s first year mention that he was involved in metal “tryalls.” Walter Cope reported Martin’s desire for some supplies from his father, Sir Martin, that were necessary for furthering his “tryalls.” As Sir Richard Martin held a lease over the production of brass in England from 1587, he may have anticipated his son’s discovery of resources in Virginia, such as calamine stone, which would aid the home industries.

While the documentary accounts of early Jamestown only indirectly refer to metallurgical activities like Martin’s “tryalls,” the crucibles and melted copper waste excavated from James Fort illustrate that settlers conducted metallurgical experiments involving copper during their early years in the colony. Several of these crucibles were subjected to scientific examination using a scanning electron microscope with an attached energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer in hopes of shedding light on the metallurgists’ uses for them. As we might have expected, the resulting data suggest that Jamestown’s colonists were attempting cementation with Virginia mineral ores. One piece examined was a round beaker crucible with an interior black slag and a relatively large corroded copper-alloy prill. The slag present on the interior of the crucible contains high amounts of zinc oxide (ZnO) and iron oxide (FeO) at around 20% weight each, as well as a significant amount of lime (CaO), suggesting an attempt at cementation using a low-quality ore with minor zinc content. Additional analysis confirms that the copper that was melted in this crucible originated in English mines. Identifying the copper as English indicates that rather than simply assaying local native copper as part of a search for gold and silver, Jamestown’s metallurgists were using English scrap copper as a tool in their search for such zinc ores as calamine sand.

For Jamestown’s metallurgists English scrap metal would have been ideal for testing ores and for cementation experiments; it could be easily manipulated, its large surface area could absorb a large amount of zinc, and its known origins ensured the sample’s purity. And since it came in the form of industrial waste, it would have been relatively inexpensive.

Failed Experiment Or Chemical Landmark?

In the end neither Captain Martin nor any other metallurgist at Jamestown discovered a source of zinc in the New World, and copper-based industrial pursuits never brought significant returns to those investing in the Virginia Company. The English colonists’ failure to turn their metallurgical endeavors into profit was likely a result of several factors, including the lack of zinc resources in eastern Virginia, the hazards that came with settling in the New World, and changing priorities of the colony’s leaders. Episodes of sickness, starvation, and Indian attacks plagued the colony during its early years, and Jamestown’s metallurgists fared no better than their neighbors in the face of these hazards. The colonist known as Beale, for instance, is never mentioned in the eye witness accounts from Jamestown beyond the settlement’s early days, and, like so many others, he may have perished in the “starving time” during the winter of 1609–1610. A Swiss metallurgist, William Faldoe, also fell victim to the difficulties of settling in the Virginia frontier: he died from a burning fever. Likewise, accounts refer to Captain Martin as “very sickly and unserviceable.” He returned to England in the summer of 1608. Martin later came back to Virginia, although soon after he was wounded in an Indian attack.

Thus, the desire to find zinc in Virginia may have been short lived, and copper-based metallurgical activities might have vanished along with those who perished soon after the English settled Jamestown. The archaeological excavations of Jamestown support this, as trash deposits from 1610 contain large amounts of discarded scrap copper and related metalworking crucibles. These same trash deposits include other discarded supplies related to such industrial activities as perfumery and glass-making, suggesting that the search for potentially profitable commodities was soon cast aside in favor of more fundamental survival strategies involving agriculture and defense.

Nevertheless, identifying the metallurgical uses of copper within the earliest period of settlement at Jamestown casts a different interpretation on the earliest permanent English settlement in North America and helps us understand the extent to which Old World economic objectives figured into the organization and initial aspirations of the Virginia Company. Uncovering the pursuits at Jamestown reminds us that chemical enterprise has been part of the American story since the earliest days of its settlement.

For Further Reading

Agricola, Georgius. De Re Metallica. Translated by H.C. Hoover and L.H. Hoover. London: Dover Publications, 1950.

Barbour, P., ed. The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609. 2 vols. Cambridge: The Hakluyt Society, 1969.

Haile, E.W., ed. Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998.

Hudgins, Carter C. "Articles of Exchange of Ingredients of New World Metallurgy? An examination of the Industrial Origins and Metallurgical Functions of Scrap Copper at Early Jamestown (c. 1607-17)." Early American Studies 3:1 (2005), 32-64

Kelso, William M.; B. Straube. Jamestown Rediscovery 1994-2004. Richmond, VA: APVA Preservation Virginia, 2004.