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Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech
Special Collections and University Archives, University Libraries (0434)Kimberly Staub
Permission to publish material from New Jersey Zinc Corporation (Austinville, VA) Records II must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.
Collection is open for research.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: New Jersey Zinc Corporation (Austinville, VA) Records II, Ms2011-037, Special Collections, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va.
The collection was donated to Special Collections in 1999.
The processing, arrangement, and description of the New Jersey Zinc Corporation (Austinville, VA) Records II was completed in March 2011.
The lead mines of southwest Virginia were first discovered by Colonel John Chiswell in 1756. Chiswell mined lead ore on the New River in Augusta County (now Wythe County) from 1760 to 1766, and furnished large supplies of lead to Virginia during the French and Indian War. A fort and trading post were sut up at this time near the mines. Chiswell died in 1766, and ownership of the mines was trasnferred to William Byrd. The mines were leased to the state during the Revolutionary War.
In 1789 Moses and Stephen Austin contacted for the lead mines and bought them from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Due to mismanagement, the lead mines reverted back to the state in 1802. In 1806, Thomas Jackson bought the proerty, now in the town of Austinville, in Wythe County, at a public auction in Richmond. He constructed a shot-tower on the New River, which operated from 1812 to 1830 and still stands today.
From 1830 to 1898, the property was mined by Daniel Sheffey and David Pierce or their descendants. From 1838 to the 1850s, the firm was called the Wythe Lead Mines Company. The Union Lead Mine Company, as it was called in 1860, contributed more than 2,000 tons of lead to Confederate troops in the Civil War. After the discovery of zinc in the 1860s, the Union Lead Company formed the Wythe Lead and Zinc Company.
The Wythe Lead and Zinc Company sold all of its ore in 1898 to the Bertha Mineral Company, which operated in Pulaski, six miles northeast of Austinville. In 1902, the New Jersey Zinc Corporation purchased Bertha holdings and the Austinville property.
For more information on the early history of the Austinville lead and zinc mines, see: Austin, Vera Lee. 1977. The Southwest Virginia Lead Works, 1756-1802 . Thesis (M.A.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1977.
The New Jersey Zinc Corporation Records contains maps, surveys, memoranda, and reports by and about the company. Maps and surveys range from the mines in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia and often relate the mineral deposits found there. The collection also houses weekly reports that detail the accomplishments of the week and worker hours. The General Instruction Memorandums show how the New Jersey Zinc Company complied with federal regulation and how the owners in New York shared this information with their supervisors and workers in the mine areas.
The collection in arranged in chronological order, with the exception of two binders of material and oversized maps and surveys, which appear at the end of the collection, each in their own separate boxes.
Special Collections contains another collection related to the New Jersey Zinc Corporation. See New Jersey Zinc Corporation [Austinville, Virginia] Records. Preliminary inventory available on the Virginia Heritage database. Ms1991-032.