Calhoun-Shelby County AlArchives Biographies.....Ware, Horace April 11 1812 - July 1890
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Ann Anderson alabammygrammy@aol.com May 15, 2004, 3:53 pm

Author: Brant & Fuller (1893)
    HORACE WARE, who died in Birmingham July, 1890, was a pioneer in the
manufacture of iron in Alabama. He was born in Lynn, Mass., April 11th, 1812,
and was the only son of Jonathan and Roxana (Howe) Ware. He was reared in
Boston, and New York state until about thirteen years of age, when his parents
moved to North Carolina. In that state his father was engaged, in a primitive
way, in the manufacture and working of iron. After about five years thus
employed, they came to Alabama, and located first in Bibb county, where Jonathan
Ware erected one of the old-fashion forges, run by water power, and began the
work of making wrought iron - called forge blooms. He operated this forge for
several years, when his son, Horace Ware, purchased the property and continued
the business. In 1840 he bought the iron ore beds, where the Shelby Iron Co.,
now have in operation two of the best equipped charcoal furnaces in the south.
This property was wholly unimproved when he bought. A few years after he
purchased the Shelby ores, he erected a cold blast furnace for the manufacture
of pig iron. This was one of the first furnace plants built in Alabama -
probably one in Calhoun county antedated this a short while. He operated the
Shelby works as sole proprietor until March, 1862, when he organized a stock
company and sold six-sevenths interest, and retired from the active management.
The early operation of this furnace was prior to railroad facilities in Shelby
county, and he got his product to market by wagoning to Coosa river six miles
and boating the iron in flats to Montgomery, Prattville and Mobile. In 1859 he
began, and in 1860 he completed the first rolling mill established in Alabama.
This mill was of large capacity, manufacturing all sizes of merchantable bar
iron, and turning out the first cotton ties from iron ever made in Alabama. The
product of this mill was from the Shelby pig iron, and at once took the highest
rank in the market for strength and malleability. Ever since, the Shelby iron
has maintained, in every market, the superiority accorded it by Mr. Ware when he
first examined and smelted the raw ore. In 1865 this property was destroyed by
Federal troops under General Wilson. They were rebuilt by northern capitalists
two or three years after the war, and have been in operation ever since. Mr.
Ware sold his interest in the property in 1881, after a connection of more than
forty years. In 1858 Mr. Ware sent some of his pig iron to Sheffield, England,
and had it converted into steel, and then manufactured into pocket knives and
razors. The cutlery was pronounced most excellent, and the manufacturer
presented one of the knives to Mr. Ware, with name engraved on same. This knife
was taken from him by a federal soldier in 1865. Early after the war, he became
owner of iron properties in Talladega county, and in 1872, he formed a
partnership with Col. S. S. Glidden, of Ohio, and organized the Alabama Iron
Co., which was operated under Col. Glidden's management until 1881, when Mr.
Ware associated with himself Messrs. A. L. Tyler and Samuel Noble, of Anniston,
who purchased the Alabama Iron Co. property, and other iron properties, and
organized the Clifton Iron Co. This company now has two well-appointed charcoal
furnaces at Ironaton. Mr. Ware was not actively connected with Clifton, but was
a large stockholder until 1888, when he sold. In 1884, he became largely
interested in Sheffield, Ala. - a stockholder in the first furnace there, and,
for a short while, president of the furnace company. In 1881, he bought the
Kelly furnace near Jefferson, Texas, giving it his personal attention and
management, making first class car wheel iron, until he sold it in 1883. In
connection with his production of pig iron at Shelby, years before the war, he
manufactured all kinds of hollowware, cooking utensils, heating and cooking
stoves, etc., and marketed them throughout the surrounding counties. No man at
that early day, or even up to the time of his death, was more familiar with the
mineral resources of Alabama, and no one prophesied more clearly and strongly of
our great mineral wealth that would some day place the state in the lead as a
coal and iron producer. He was early and late an enthusiast on the subject of
enterprise and development, and it was satisfaction unbounded to see the full
fruition of his early foresight, hopes and energies, in the successful blast of
fifty furnaces operated in his adopted state, by the great developers of her
hidden stores. Alabama today is ripening into a grand mining and manufacturing
development, just what Horace Ware saw for her, and labored and planned for her
from his early manhood. Through changing fortunes, with varying success,
undazzled by prosperity, undaunted by adversity, he calmly and diligently
persevered in his chosen line of work, and his final triumph was a positive
illustration of what may be achieved by concentrating steady effort on a single
purpose. Mr. Ware was married June 24th, 1840, to Martha A. Woodruff, a member
of an old, influential family of South Carolina. By this marriage, he had seven
children, four of whom are now living. Mrs. Ware was born in Spartanburgh, S.
C., in 1822, and died at Shelby Iron Works in 1862. She was a devoted member of
the Baptist church, and she left an indelible impress for the highest good to
all those who came in touch with her gentle influence. In September, 1863, he
was married again; this time to Miss Mary Harris, of Columbiana. She still lives
and occupies his late home on the North Highlands, in Birmingham. Aside from the
sterner faculties which made him a leader in the world of progress, he possessed
and gave evidence of those softer traits which irradiate the heartstone and make
the home-circle happy. And all through his long and busy life, he was the friend
of the poor and needy, and many are those who were the recipients of his
beneficence. His character was strong, noble and symmetrical. He was modest and
reserved in his bearing towards his fellow-men, yet brave as a hero in standing
for a principle, or contending for a right. He was firm as the granite mountains
of his native New England, yet gentle as the breezes that fan the magnolia
groves of his adopted southern home. He was a broad-minded, clear-sighted
philanthropist, wide-awake on all the vital issues of the day. He was a stanch
advocate of temperance, an examplary member of the Methodist church, and,
withal, his was a well-rounded character in all that makes life useful and
beautiful. He left his impress for great good, and the influence of his
life-work will abide with those who knew him. Industrial Alabama is his monument.



Additional Comments:
from "Memorial Record of Alabama", Vol. I, p. 618-620

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