Henry Burden (1791-1871) [Section 61, Lot 4]
Owner of Burden Iron Works, Troy, NY
Henry Burden was born on April 20, 1791, in Dunblane, Scotland. He was the son of Peter Burden, a sheepherder, and Elizabeth Abercrombie. He attended the University of Edinburg studying engineering, mathematics, and drawing which became beneficial for the family farm as he modernized it by implementing a water wheel. A couple of years later in 1819, he immigrated to New York in part due to Stephen Van Rensselaer who sent a letter of introduction to the American Minister in London.
He married Helen McQuat whom he had known back in Scotland before she immigrated to Quebec. The couple were married in Montreal and celebrated 39 years together with eight children.
Burden started his career Townsend & Corning Foundry which dealt with the manufacturing of cast iron plows and other agricultural products. In 1822 he became the superintendent of the Troy Iron and Nail Factory located near the Troy-Menands Bridge on the north side of the Wynantskill Creek, an ideal location for water power.
An avid inventor he garnered many patents throughout his lifetime. In 1825, he patented a machine for making horseshoes, which could only be made by hand previously. He continued to work on his patent over the next three decades and increased productivity of his machine that allowed for a horseshoe to be made at the speed of one per second. During the Civil War, he was the main source of horseshoes for the Union Army
He got embroiled in a 28-year dispute with Erastus Corning and John Flack Winslow regarding the patent of railroad ties. In what became one of the longest patent battles ever, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Burden did not patent the process, but a machine in which they were made.
Burden continued to make the Troy Iron and Nail Factory profitable, and by 1835 he owned half of the company. By 1848 he became sole owner and renamed it Burden Iron Works. This metal foundry helped set the course for the future creation of the Albany Iron Foundry, Bessemer Steel Works and Rensselaer Iron Works. The later merged to become the Troy Steel and Iron Company.
Burden helped alter the eastern side of the Hudson River by creating reservoirs along the Wynantskill Creek to help increase water supply to the factories. He dredged the Hudson River to allow for larger vessels to come up to Troy. Railroad tracks connected the factory with materials, such as limestone coming up from Hudson, and for iron ore from Port Henry in the Lake Champlain region.
With the creation of the Troy Boston Railroad in 1852, Burden Iron Works was able to source iron ore closer to home in southern Vermont. The company bought, leased or came to agreements with several small operations. One of the earliest was in the Town of Shaftsbury, located on the New York / Vermont border.
Some say that Burden’s water-wheel was once referred to as “the Niagara of Water Wheels” by poet Louis Gaylor Clark. It has also been said it was used as a blueprint for a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate, George Ferris. Ferris built the Ferris Wheel which was the premiere exhibit in the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago.
Being at the helm of what has been called the “Silicon Valley of the 19th-century,” Burden had the first all-woman labor union, the largest textile mill building in 19th-century, and helped coin the term “Collar City” due to his detachable collars and cuff in his factory. Additionally, his factory constructed the hull for the USS Monitor, the first ironclad warship commissioned by the Navy during the Civil War. The remains of his company are visible along the Hudson River at the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway in downtown Troy. Burden is said to have employed an eighth of the population of the City of Troy.
Burden died in 1871 and is interred in Albany Rural Cemetery. The Burden Mausoleum is extravagant in design and includes carvings of family dogs as well as his wife, Helen, who is said to have designed the structure. In total, there are 22 members of the family inside.