• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

The Russells: A Dynasty of Birmingham Iron Men.

Dennis Williams

Gone but not forgotten
The Russells: A Dynasty of Birmingham Iron Men.
Part One (1650-1750).

Birmingham has long been known for it's iron manufacture: in about 1538 John Leland passed through, and recorded in his Itinerary:


  • I cam thoroughe a praty strete or evar I enteryd into Bremischam toune. This strete, as I remember, is caullyd Dyrtey [Deritend], in it dwelle smithes and cuttelers, and there is a brooke [Rea] that devydithe this strete from Bremisham. Dyrtey is but an hamlet or membre longynge to [Aston] paroche therby and is clene seperated from Bremischam paroche. There is at the end of Dyrtey a propre chaple [St Johns] and mansion howse of tymbar [Old Crown], hard on the rype [bank] as the brooke cummithe downe, and as I went thrwghe the forde by the bridge, the watar ran downe on the ryght hond, and a fewe miles lowere goithe into Tame rypa dextra [by the right bank]. This broke risethe, as some say, a four or five miles above Bremicham toward the Blake [Clent] hills in Worcestershire. This broke above Dyrtye brekethe into two armes that a litle benethe the bridge close agayne. The bewty of Bremischam, a good market towne in the extreme partes that way of Warwikeshire, is in one strete goynge up alonge almoste from the lefte ripe of the broke up a mene hille by the lengthe of a quartar of a mile. I saw but one paroche churche in the towne. There be many smithes in the towne that use to make knives and all maner of cuttynge tooles, and many lorimars that make byts, and a greate many naylors. So that a great parte of the towne is mayntayned by smithes. The smithes there have yren [iron] out of Staffordshire and Warwikeshire and see coale out of Staffordshire.
We observe that Birmingham was importing iron even in those days, if only from neighbouring counties. As far as I know, iron was never actually made in Birmingham, just made into other things ... and with great success. By the middle of the seventeenth century such was the volume of manufacture that iron was imported from as far away as Sweden and Russia. And naturally the Birmingham iron men began to think of the burgeoning North American colonies as a cheaper source of supply for their forges and mills. Enter the Russells ...

Thomas Russell, always described as a "Birmingham ironmaster", is otherwise unknown. The use of the epithet "ironmaster" is interesting, as that word is usually reserved for those who make iron: with all the crafty and alchemical connotations that practice conjures up. It is a term of great respect. Some unkind historians insist on accuracy, and prefer to call the Russells "ironmongers", a term with a tad less brio. But our Thomas Russell, who flourished in the second half of the seventeenth century, quite probably had a hand (or a quid) in ironmaking in Staffordshire at least. Anyroadup, ironmaster Thomas Russell had a son named William, about whom we know quite a bit more.

William Russell (died 1742) was probably in his fifties when he first invested in the new Principio Company, which was established in about 1722 to make iron in North America. Russell's English partners included William Chetwynd (gentleman of Grindon, Warwickshire), Joshua Gee (Quaker merchant of London) and John England (Quaker ironmaster of Tamworth, Staffordshire). Americans were later invited to invest in the company, including two gentlemen (both named Augustine Washington) who just happened to be the father and brother of George Washington (later the first president of the United States of America).

Now William Russell had a son named Thomas Russell (1696-1760), who was dispatched to the colony of Maryland to help establish the first Principio iron furnaces there in the years 1722-1724. Progress was dogged by difficulties, but eventually the ironworks was a going concern. Thomas Russell returned to England, and after his father's death expanded the Birmingham business, diversifying into threadmaking and skinning. I'm not sure how much Russell ironmongery was going on at this time. In the 1730s, Thomas married Frances Pougher (1713-1767), a local gentlelass. They had many daughters (about whom we are told next to nothing) and three sons: William Russell (1740-1818), Thomas Russell (1741-1786) and George Russell (1744-1825). It is with this generation of Russell iron men that the story gets really interesting ...

[To be continued ...]
 
Re: Some great men of Birmingham..

William Russell (1740-1818).


William Russell (1740-1818) from a miniature

William Russell was the eldest of Thomas Russell's sons. He was only twenty when his father died, but quickly rose to the challenge of running the multinational firm he and his brothers had inherited from their father. Before long he was again diversifying: this time into leathermaking.

He is by far the best known of the three brothers: his Wiki'd biography is informed by good sources, and includes an interesting portrait. He was a pillar of the Birmingham mercantile establishment: very wealthy, successful in business, well educated, philanthropic. He and his family lived at Showell Green House in Yardley parish. He had offices there, so was not obliged to commute to town daily. But when he did, it would have been by coach and four, resplendent with liveried footmen. His home was technically in Worcestershire, for which county he was Justice of the Peace. In 1762 he had married Martha Twamley (1741-1790). They had three daughters: Martha (1766-1807), Mary (1768-1839) and Frances (died aged fifteen in 1785). And one son: Thomas Pougher Russsell (1775-1851).

William Russell was closely involved in Birmingham improvements: better streets, schools, the new General Hospital and so on. His philanthropy was generous but private: he was "more concerned to be good than to appear so". He must have had a certain charisma: he was much sought after to arbitrate disputes and chair meetings of all kinds. He would have been marked out for high civic office, but for two things: his religion and his politics. For by this time the Russells were Protestant dissenters, professing Unitarianism (as opposed to Trinitarianism). William Russell was a leading light in the New Meeting church. His religious affiliation led to political activism: he took a prominent role in the campaign against the Test and Corporation Acts (which required Anglican orthodoxy of state employees and university students). In religion and politics, he was a close and valued colleague of Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), whom he sponsored and helped finance as the minister of New Meeting from 1780.

William Russell's outspoken dissenting religion and reformist politics turned the local clergy and landed gentry against him and his friends, setting the scene for a great tragedy. The French Revolution, beginning in 1789, raised the level of tension significantly. The "Church and King" men were naturally nervous of continental developments, while the Unitarians and their associates saw the early stages of the Revolution as worthy of celebration. The friends of the Revolution felt confident (or foolhardy) enough to organise a "French Revolution Dinner" at The Royal Hotel (commonly known as "The Hotel", Temple Row, Birmingham) on 14 July 1791.

PriestleyRiotDinnerTicket.jpg


Some eighty local men — not including Priestley, who stayed away on William Russell's advice — attended the dinner, which was the immediate cause of the Priestley Riots. The "Church and King" mob, aided by the connivance and inertia (and some say direction) of the local authorities, chose their targets carefully. Demolition usually preceded arson, to prevent the fire spreading to adjacent buildings. The first to go were the New Meeting and Old Meeting churches. Closely followed by Priestley's home at Sparkbrook, including a fully equipped laboratory and his library, which also contained irreplaceable manuscript notes of years of scientific experiments. He had time to save almost nothing, and had to be spirited away by his friend Mr Samuel Ryland, who took him to Showell Green. The demolition party, having destroyed numerous other dissenters' homes in and around Birmingham, was on the march to Yardley. While Priestley was being once more whisked away (to Moseley and on to Dudley and safety), William Russell had time to save most of his possessions. We are told that his "poor, illiterate neighbours" rallied to the defence of his home, but were no match for the mob.


Ruins of Showell Green (by P H Witton Jr 1792)

William Russell's family must have been terrified. His wife had sadly died the previous year in a coaching accident, so at the time of the Riots he was a widower responsible for three youthful children: Martha (aged about twent-five), Mary (two years younger) and Thomas who was sixteen. William Russell represented the victims of the Riots at a meeting with Prime Minister William Pitt (1759-1806), ensuring that compensation was paid by the Birmingham authorities, albeit too little and too late. A few poor wretches were tried and one or two hanged for their part in the drama: one Robert Cooke was capitally convicted at Worcester assizes on 24 August 1791 for burning down William Russell's offices at Showell Green. The ringleaders and the shadowy organisers were never brought to justice. After a few years, William Russell decided that England was "too hot" for his family and his causes. Like his friend Priestley, he decided to take his family to the United States of America in 1794. This led to a spell in captivity by the French authorities, which had the effect of somewhat dampening the family's revolutionary sympathies. After arriving in the US in 1795, they settled in Middletown (Connecticut), where they remained until 1801. He then moved to Normandy, where he lived until he felt able to return to England in 1814. He spent his remaining years devoted to ... er ... devotional works, at the Upton-on-Severn home of his son-in-law, a banker named James Skey (1754-1838) who had married both Martha (1798) and Mary (1810).


Middletown, Connecticut (from a water-colour drawing by Miss M Russell c 1800)

William Russell's son Thomas Pougher Russell married (1817) Mary Skey (1790-1877), a daughter of James Skey by an even earlier wife Eleanor Brockhurst (1760-1794). Their son was William James Russell (1830-1909), a chemist and Fellow of the Royal Society.

icon_reimg_loading.gif
sry_rhu_p0081_large.jpg

[William James Russell FRS by Herbert Arnould Olivier (c 1880).]
 
Last edited:
Re: Some great men of Birmingham..

The Younger Brothers of William Russell (1740-1818).

In 1760, Thomas Russell (1741-1786) inherited half his namesake father's share in the Principio Company. The other half (plus all Thomas Russell Senior's lands in England and America) went to big brother William. A few years later (1764) Thomas Russell went to live in Maryland as Managing Director of Principio, which by this time was operating several furnaces and forges in Maryland and Virginia, and exporting huge amounts of iron to England. Apart from a visit to Birmingham in 1769-1771, Thomas Russell was to spend the rest of his life in North America. In 1774 he married Anne Thomas (born 1751). As the years went by, while maintaining trading ties with the Old Country, Thomas Russell became more and more American in his sympathies and outlook. The Russells had maintained the family friendship with the Washingtons, and Thomas was a firm supporter of George Washington during the period when the United States of America shook itself free of the British Empire. Thomas became a citizen of the State of Maryland in 1778. The Maryland General Assembly compulsorily acquired Principio in 1781, but Thomas Russell and the Washingtons did very well out of the deal. Thomas Russell received compensation including cash, some 6,000 acres of land, and other valuable assets. He was a very wealthy man, and only forty years old. In a touching sign of continuing fraternal affection (and perhaps sibling rivalry), in about 1784 Thomas Russell commissioned formal portraits of himself and his wife, which he sent over to William Russell in Birmingham. He died a couple of years later, still a relatively young man, and many years before his older brother's troubles carried him and his family to the United States.



The youngest brother was George Russell (c 1744-1825), about whom information is scarcer. He married twice: Sarah Grundy (c 1750-1778) and Martha Skey (1760-1840) who was James Skey's sister. He was only about sixteen when his father died, but after Thomas went to America in 1764 he became a partner in the family firm, which was styled "Russell, Russell and Smith". George Russell was a respected member of the Old Meeting church: at the time of the Priestley Riots in 1791 his house was threatened but remained untouched. After William Russell left England in 1794, George took charge of the Birmingham firm, though his older brother was very active in the United States collecting debts for him. George and Martha had at least four children: one of their grandsons was James Russell MD (1818-1885), a surgeon at the General Hospital his great uncle William had helped to establish. I have been unable to find a picture of George Russell, but his and his family's memorial inscriptions from the Old Meeting church have been preserved.

Conclusion and Reading List.

I hope you've enjoyed the story of the Russell dynasty of Birmingham iron men in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I must confess to a romantic fondness for this period of Birmingham history, but perhaps we shouldn't get too starry-eyed about these big Brummies. Admittedly they were well-educated and cultivated, and their business practice was informed by the highest ethical standards and progressive political opinions. But on the other hand our metal magnates were men of the world, capable of tempering their good manners by a ruthless approach to business. Good men all, but heir to the contradictions of their times. Their hero Joseph Priestley was quite capable of lecturing his well-heeled congregation on how to get the most work out of their servants and labourers for the least expense. Their good works were always somewhat patronising, with an air of noblesse oblige. William Russell was a staunch abolitionist, and sponsored Olaudah Equiano's visit to Birmingham. Yet when the Principio Company was taken over by the Maryland government in 1781, the compensation received by Thomas Russell included a number of slaves who had previously been "employed" by the ironworks. Such are the conundrums that make this period so fascinating.

Here are my sources (apart from links already included in the text) and some further reading:

The Monthly Repository (March 1818) "Memoir of the Late William Russell Esq".
The Birmingham Riots of 1791 (Birmingham: Corns and Bartleet, 1867). A reprint (with introduction) of a 1791 pamphlet.
Catherine Hutton Beale's Memorials of the Old Meeting House (Birmingham: the Subscribers, 1882). Illustrated.
James M Swank's History of the Manufacture of Iron (Philadelphia: American Iron and Steel Association, 1892). Especially Chapter XXII "Early Iron Enterprises in Maryland" (pp 240-257).
S H Jeyes's The Russells of Birmingham in the French Revolution and in America 1791-1814 (London: Allen, 1911). Illustrated. Chapter II "A Personal History of the Birmingham Riots" quotes extensively from Martha Russell's contemporary diary: it is a riveting account of those fateful days in July 1791.


With his permission, I presented this story as it was posted elsewhere by an old friend and ex-member of this Forum, whom some of you will remember affectionately as the THYALCINE...from Tasmania, late of Erdington, Sutton and Sheldon...hope you enjoyed it...
 
Re: Some great men of Birmingham..

Dennis, you have put in a lot of work on this project and have not read it all yet but well done. Anyway on the very first posted story...maybe Aston was not considered to be part of Birmingham but surely Aston Furnace smelted iron and the pigs were hammered into wraught iron in the Bromford mill. Also I believe that I read that Mathew Boulton, a bit further up Hockley Brook, had an iron smelting furnace. There must have been others around to achieve the deforestation of the whole area prior to the process using coke instead of charcoal, being developed. The production of charcoal must have been a large industry employing many people. The amount of smelting that went on at Aston Furnace produced a huge high hill of cinders from the top of which the picture of Aston Funace (wire mill in later years) was produced with a view up the uncovered Hockley Brook and flood plain. After smelting ceased the huge mound of cinders was around for quite a while and then all levelled down to form a base under Alma Street and houses and school. If you read Pye's travels the sighting of the mound is reported by him on one of his trips by coach from the Bull Ring.
A lady poster from years back here mentioned that she lived on Inkerman Street by the old funace area. She reported that her abode was built on cinders which was the cause of flea infestations. I don't know why that should be...that is...what cinders have to do with anything. Anyway she and her familly moved to Pype Hayes and a newer house and found out later that this house was also built on cinders from another furnace of some sort...go figure.

The conical building on post 29 is probably the whimsical summer arbour known humorously as the Temple and was in a garden at what would be the corner of Temple Street and Temple Row and was probably the reason for the namings thereof. Temple Street is not shown on the map but would be right at that location. Other possibilities are a dovecote or maybe a conical malting kiln...these latter items could be a fair size but not of such importance to warrent such representation on a map perhaps. This topic was subscribed to here before and it has been said that actors and artists frequented the location. I think it represents exactly that in the absence of better information.
 
Back
Top