Jared Ondovchik at the 2022 Festival of Combustion at the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

Profiles in Steel

Rivers of Steel’s Profiles in Steel series shines a spotlight on the talented members of our organization’s community. From staff and volunteers to collaborators and patrons, it takes a dedicated group with many and varied talents to support the community-based initiatives offered through Rivers of Steel.

In this installment, we meet Jared Ondovchik, a local blacksmith who’s been partnering with Rivers of Steel for several years and has recently joined our metal arts team as a staff member.

Introducing Jared Ondovchik

By Carly V. McCoy

If you happen to get Jared Ondovchik talking about his work as a blacksmith, it doesn’t take him long to share that he’s self-taught. He’ll mention it in a self-effacing sort of way. Take the conversation a little bit further, and Jared will be sure to acknowledge some of the artists whose paths dovetailed with his own journey, opening his eyes to possibilities, creating opportunities, and offering suggestions in pursuit of this ancient craft.

A Craftsman’s Journey

Jared Ondovchik got his start working on one of Pittsburgh’s most iconic pieces of public art—The Workers sculpture, which resides on Pittsburgh’s South Side along the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. A piece created by the Industrial Arts Co-op, it is most closely associated with the work of sculptor and arts executive Tim Kaulen. However, the project incorporated twenty-four additional metal artists, including Jared.

For Jared, one of the most appealing elements of his experience participating on The Workers was the industrial scale of the artwork.

“I really liked how permanent and severe metalworking seemed,” said Jared Ondovchik about The Workers. “The other folks working on the project were awesome people and really open about helping me learn my way around the tools. Those first times that I blasted sparks everywhere from a grinder or welder were pretty addicting.”

But it was the Co-op artists’ do-it-yourself ethos that inspired him to make his first forge—crafted from a brake drum and pipes found within the abandoned warehouse in which they were working. Along with the coal to fuel it that was sourced from the ground underfoot, a nearby rail served as an anvil.

“There was also something to the space we were working in,” Jared continued. “I think it’s just condos now, but at the time, it was this abandoned coke mill. The wall facing the river had pretty much eroded away; there were huge holes in the roof so rain and snow would fall in. When I built my first forge I would go out and just pick coal up off the ground for fuel—it felt really special.”

It didn’t take him long to realize how much he enjoyed working with metal, and he applied this DIY approach to learning the craft, searching internet forums for materials, techniques, and the like.

A Damascus chef’s knife forged by Jared Ondovchik, made with eighty-eight layers of two types of steel in a twist pattern, complemented by an ironwood handle with a blackwood ferrule. Image courtesy of the artist.

Bladesmithing

From the start, crafting knives was the real draw for Jared. You can hear the reverence in his voice when he speaks about creating these functional artworks. Whether it is a reference to the process of creating to a Damascus blade, a chef’s knife that is appreciated by an actual chef, or adding handles from local hardwoods, the love for the blacksmithing tradition is plainly evident.

“Weirdly—or maybe not weirdly at all?—what drew me to bladesmithing and what I still love about it are the same things that can drive me nuts about it,” Jared explained. “Knives have to be heat treated to hold an edge and, essentially, withstand abuse. When you harden and temper a piece of steel, you are changing how the metal relates to itself. That metallurgic aspect is kind of missing from forging or fabricating with plain steel.”

“I also love the legacy that tools and weapons have,” Jared continued. “It can be dark, but our history using those items for agriculture, war, or tooling have had massive impacts on human history. Along those historical lines, and on a more personal note, it was always really important to my dad that I had a pocket knife on me. My grandpa—my dad’s dad—died when I was eleven, and he left me a shotgun and a junior buffalo-skinning knife. I never got super into guns, but that knife is in my bedside table. I’ve carried it with me everywhere I’ve moved. It just always felt really special.”

A camp chopper forged from 80CrV2 steel with dyed and stabilized cedar burl, crafted by Jared Ondovchik. Image courtesy of the artist.

In time, Jared Ondovchik began to show and sell his knives at makers’ markets around Pittsburgh, including the Polish Hill Arts Festival, Handmade Arcade, I Made It! Market, and the Neighborhood Flea. The local cottage industry around handmade / artisan-made goods provided a foundation for his own burgeoning business, and about five years into his practice Ondovchik was able to leave his other jobs (which had included bartending and construction work) to focus on his own newly incorporated business, Artifact Metalworks.

During the inaugural Blacksmithing Basics workshop, Jared demonstrates how to add a twist for students working on their hooks and hairpins.

Informal Mentorships

While the other makers provided a creative community for Jared and his practice, it was his experiences with his blacksmithing peers that helped him further his craft. Fellow artist Glen Gardner introduced him to Touchstone Center for Crafts, which is where he met other metalworkers, including Anna Koplik. From tips on how to heat treat his blades to more nuanced approaches on how to hold his hammer, Ondovchik improved his own practice while gaining skills as an educator and teaching assistant.

“I have had a few people who have taken some form of a mentor role,” Jared acknowledged. “Glen Gardner has probably had the biggest impact. He just knows everything about metalwork. He’s been doing it his entire adult life, and he’s just a wealth of knowledge. I didn’t have anyone to talk to when I first started, for probably the first four years or so—but when I was introduced to Glen, right away he offered to answer questions.

“I was having issues with my heat treats. I’d been reading on forums and trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, agonizing over it and heat treating test pieces to try and get the grain structure right—just hours of messing with this stuff. I called Glen and he just said, ‘Oh, you’re getting it too hot.’ And that was it—heat treats were fixed!

“Through Glen I met all the folks at Touchstone, which is where I met Anna Koplik, who really helped me realize how bad my form was from being self-taught. My arm hurt all the time, and I didn’t know why. Anna helped me figure that all out and shared a lot with me about tooling. Both Anna and Glen are incredibly detail oriented, and they don’t let shoddy work slide. They’ve both always been there to help me keep my standards very high.”

Jared also credits Ed Parrish, Rivers of Steel’s furnace master and metal arts coordinator, in helping to shape his view on metalwork overall.

“Ed Parish was huge in turning me onto some really influential blacksmithing work that helped me expand what I thought was possible with metal work. He’s always had this attitude that was kind of like, ‘You can make anything out of metal.’ That didn’t come naturally to me. Being self-taught, sometimes metalwork felt impossible. Ed’s taken a lot of time showing me what tooling and techniques to use to push the limits of what’s possible with blacksmithing.”

As he concluded this thought, Jared acknowledged with a soft laugh, “There are a few more people I could name, but that’s already a lot, it seems.”

Collaborating with Rivers of Steel

Jared practicing his craft on an anvil at the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop.

It was around the time that Jared was connecting with his peers at Touchstone that he also began working in partnership with Rivers of Steel, having been introduced to our metal arts program by Ed Parrish. Showcasing his blacksmithing skills through public demonstrations, Jared participated in Rivers of Steel’s annual Festival of Combustion and at offsite events like Riverfest in Rices Landing and the 2018 Create Festival presented by the Pittsburgh Technology Council in partnership with the Three Rivers Arts Festival.

 With the introduction of several blacksmithing workshops to Rivers of Steel Arts’ offerings this year, we’re happy to share that Jared Ondovchik has joined Rivers of Steel’s staff as a member of our metal arts team.

“We had been discussing the potential of offering blacksmithing classes here at Carrie for quite a while,” said Chris McGinnis, director of Rivers of Steel’s arts programs. “It always seemed like something got in the way and the process kept getting pushed back, but Jared was always the logical choice to be an instructor. He definitely has the type of local story and clear dedication to his craft that’s so important for our program. And it’s matched by an unpretentious confidence that really fits well with the culture we are trying to cultivate here.”

An example hook for the Blacksmithing Basics workshop.

The Blacksmithing Basics series of workshops provides an opportunity to anyone who can lift a hammer to create something to take home by the end of the three-hour workshop. Skills taught include hammer control, how to move the steel, scrollwork, and creating a forged finish. The Hooks & Hairpins session is offered multiple times this season, which creates opportunities for participants to simply have a fun evening while trying out a new skill, or to return more than once to continue practicing the craft. Later in 2023, special Blacksmithing Basics classes will feature holiday themes, from Halloween and autumnal objects to Christmas trees.

A scroll-handled knife with a mustard patina by Jared Ondovchik, similar to what will be made in the Bladesmithing workshop. Image courtesy of the artist.

A three-day Bladesmithing workshop will also be offered a few times this year, in May, July, and September. No experience is required for this workshop, either. At the end of the three days, everyone will leave with a finished, scroll-handled, Iron Age-style knife. This style is also known as a Viking knife or a blacksmith’s knife.

Jared’s next Blacksmithing Basics workshop is on April 20. You can sign up for the first Bladesmithing workshop offered May 8 – 10, 2023.

Interested in reading more Profiles in Steel? Check out the features on John Mahn, Jr. or on Ed Parrish, Jr.

Collegiate women from the 1880s—Pennsylvania Female College, Class of 1888, Chatham University Chronological Photograph Files, Historic Pittsburgh Archives.

The Education of a 19th-Century Factory Owner’s Daughter

This story is the second in a series of articles about Carrie Clark Arkell, the woman who was the namesake of the Carrie Blast Furnaces. In this piece, Dr. Kirsten Paine examines the education of the young Miss Clark and gives context to what may have been expected from her, both from her family and from society.

By Dr. Kirsten L. Paine

Expanding the World of Carrie Clark

In my previous article that reintroduced Carrie Clark—the namesake of the Carrie Furnaces—to Pittsburgh, I compiled newly discovered information about a young woman’s life. Most of this information comes from newspaper articles and census reports, but the tidbits were enough to write a story about a woman born in the middle of the Civil War, who moved with her family to Pittsburgh at the beginning of the big steel boom, received an expensive education at an elite college, aided her father in expanding the family business, married a dashing state senator’s son, had a child, and died unexpectedly at twenty-five. This is a lot of life packed into two and a half decades.

Understandably, people had questions about Carrie Clark. What do we know about her family life? Why did her parents send her away to school? Was her marriage socially advantageous? Do we know what role she played in Pittsburgh’s industrial ownership circles? Why did she die so young? I want to try to answer some of these questions by putting some context around Carrie Clark’s life, even as we are still researching important details in her biography.

The latter half of the nineteenth century was a time of drastic social, cultural, and political changes. The Civil War (1861–1865) redefined every single aspect of American life. The transcontinental railroad (1869) connected east and west coasts, streamlining transportation and communication. The National Parks project (1872) began to set aside pieces of the American landscape to be held in public ownership. The women’s suffrage movement picked up steam even as it sought to expand beyond the issue of suffrage itself. The United States’ wealthy industrialists and venture capitalists of the Gilded Age curated Americans’ tastes in music, theater, and art.

In short, Carrie Clark’s life is both singular in the enduring legacy of her name—Carrie Furnaces—and typically representative of the kind of life led by a woman in a white, upwardly mobile middle class family of the time.

Cover Image from Godey’s Lady’s Book Volume 100 January To June 1880

Ladies’ Reading Material

On June 23, 1877, The Pittsburgh Daily Post printed a small article announcing the sale and rebranding of the most popular American magazine in circulation, Godey’s Lady’s Book. It reads, “The oldest American Monthly, ‘Godey’s Lady’s Book,’ will be transferred to new publishers in August. Mr. Godey has originated and conducted it for over half a century.” Other newspapers noted the new publishers would update the paper and ink, thereby providing a better quality reading experience to a national subscription base of over one hundred thousand households. This small announcement seems unremarkable, but the Philadelphia-based magazine was a household staple for women for over fifty years. The magazine’s editor from 1837 until 1877, Sarah Hale, was an extremely influential figure in the publishing world, especially when it came to shaping the interests and tastes of white, middle-class women all over the United States.

When Sarah Hale retired from her position as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1877, she was almost ninety years old, and she had wielded the power of the press to shape ideas and expectations of American womanhood. During the course of her lifetime, Hale championed many causes on behalf of women’s advancement in the public sphere— particularly when it came to education. In fact, her advocacy on behalf of establishing institutions of higher education for women contributed to the foundation of Vassar College in 1865. She sat on the original board of trustees and frequently corresponded with the founder, Matthew Vassar. In one of her letters to Vassar from 1860, Hale writes: “I am much interested in what I have learned respecting your plans for a new Institution, on a very liberal scale, for the Young Ladies of America […] I feel solicitous to know more of the plan, in order to make it known to the readers of the ‘Lady’s Book.’” Throughout her tenure as editor of the most widely read women’s magazine in the United States, Sarah Hale would continue to advocate for women’s education as central to their intellectual, social, spiritual, and moral development.

Imagine Godey’s Lady’s Book in a sitting room or bedroom in a house in Youngstown, Ohio. Then imagine another volume in a sitting room in a house in Lawrenceville. And then, imagine still yet another volume in a ladies’ parlor in a house in the fashionable East End—perhaps in Jane Clark’s parlor, or maybe tucked in Carrie Clark’s bedroom.

From the Library of Congress, “Vassar female college, egidius,” Ferd, Mayor & Co. lithograph.

An Education

William Clark, owner of Solar Iron Works at the corner of 35th and Railroad Streets in Lawrenceville, was in business with his son, Edward, and his brother-in-law, Charles Fownes. Founded in 1869, the Solar Iron Works manufactured iron hoops, bands, and scrolls and could employ up to two hundred men when operating at full capacity. The company developed a good reputation for producing quality iron products, and their client base stretched as far as New England. The company flourished under Clark’s leadership, and by the late 1870s, he moved his family away from the smoke, grit, and thrashing metal of dingy Lawrenceville into an extremely fashionable East End neighborhood, at the time known as Shady Land.

With all of this success, however, came new responsibilities and expectations for the family. The Clarks were, by all accounts, upwardly mobile middle-class people who aspired to prestige and influence throughout Pittsburgh. Edward Clark, the oldest son, worked with his father and was expected to assume further ownership of the factory. There were two more sons before Carrie, Frank and William, and they, too, would go on to careers at Solar Iron Works. As the oldest daughter, Carrie bore the weight of familial expectation based in advantageous marriage, involvement in appropriate charitable organizations, and maintaining a public image of domestic respectability and upstanding moral character: a guide, a beacon worthy of women’s emulation.

However, William and Jane Clark sought an atypical path for success on behalf of their daughter. In 1877, the Clarks enrolled Carrie at Vassar Preparatory School. Located in Poughkeepsie, New York, and attached to Vassar College, Vassar Preparatory enrolled girls who needed pre-collegiate training, mostly to make up for a deficit in available primary and secondary educational opportunities for women. When a course of study at Vassar Preparatory was completed, a girl could then apply and matriculate to Vassar College. According to extant records of Carrie Clark’s formal education, she completed three years of preparatory school (1877–1879) and an entire year of college (1880) before returning to Pittsburgh.

Nineteenth-century women had two routes to higher education: enroll at either coed institutions (ex. Oberlin) or women’s colleges (ex. Bryn Mawr). Women’s colleges like Vassar modeled campuses not on academic villages with separate dormitories and classrooms, but on seminaries, which were characterized by multipurpose buildings in which students could live and study under one roof. Functionally, a college like Vassar existed to not only educate the middle class’s daughters, but to facilitate their destinies as the mothers and wives who shaped the intellectual, moral, and spiritual character of great American men.

This new system of providing women with higher education equal to that of their male counterparts garnered as much acclaim as it did skepticism and derision. By 1880, 46 percent of colleges and universities in the United States admitted women, and while this statistical percentage grew and more women’s colleges opened, Vassar College in particular gained something of a radical reputation.

On June 1, 1873, the New York Times printed a scathing piece on the dangerous educational environment at Vassar: “One can fancy what sort of young ladies would come forth from a four years’ university course, when they had struggled with, day by day, and often surpassed the best minds among the young men of the country. They certainly would not be the ideals which the world had formed till now, of the most refined womanhood.” In summation, women who took courses equal in rigor to the men’s classes (often taught by the same professors as Vassar’s counterpart, Yale), would grow to be too smart, too ambitious, too worldly, and directly pose a threat to the established social order. Vassar women might do the unthinkable: reject marriage and children entirely in favor of pursuing professions.

By 1893, five years after Carrie Clark’s death, anxieties about just what kind of women went to Vassar reached new heights. The Los Angeles Times published a piece called “College Girls and Marriage: Something Wrong with Higher Education, as Half Become Old Maids,” specifically about the dangers of families sending their daughters to Vassar.

But this rigorous course of study included several semesters of Latin, Greek, German, and French, and two semesters each of mathematics (including algebra), geography, history, and rhetoric. Students could then expand their course of study to cover subjects like chemistry and biology, religious studies, and literature.

Despite the potential for resistance or pushback from others in their social circle who might question the Clarks’ decision for their daughter to receive an education, they still chose to enroll Carrie for several years. Though she did not complete her degree—at the end of the nineteenth century many women who started college never finished—Carrie returned to Pittsburgh armed with a world’s worth of ideas, inevitably and invariably shaped by the books she read, the languages she learned, the professors who taught her, and the people she met.

What was she supposed to do with this education, then? Theoretically, her education would have equipped Carrie Clark to manage a household budget, participate in important dinner conversations, cultivate a stimulating and beautiful home life full of art, music, and literature, and educate the next generation of upstanding citizens.

One very interesting detail to note here is that it does not appear that any of the other Clark children went away to school. At this time, it appears as though William and Jane Clark singled out their eldest daughter, and we do not yet know why. One tantalizing possibility lays in the now-famous Pittsburgh Daily Post article from February 29, 1884: “the new furnace at Rankin Station on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, about [ten] miles from the city was yesterday morning christened the ‘Carrie Furnace’ in honor of Miss Carrie Clark who lit the fires and performed other baptismal services.” Out of all the possible women in the Clark and Fownes families who could assume such a publicly visible role, it was Carrie. There is an as-yet undiscovered relationship between the smart, amiable, and polished young woman equipped with a progressive, modern education and the position she took at her father’s side on the day she changed Pittsburgh’s history.

Next Time on Who Was Carrie Clark?

In the next installment of our investigation into Carrie Clark’s world, I am going to give us a closer look at her marriage to Bartlett Arkell, the birth of their son, William, and her untimely death.

Dr. Kirsten L. Paine is an educator and researcher with more than a decade of experience working in higher education. She started working for Rivers of Steel in 2017 as a tour guide at the Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark and was inspired by the mission to preserve such a national treasure held in public trust. Kirsten is committed to the work of public humanities education in her role as Site Management Coordinator and Interpretive Specialist. By creating and facilitating public programs that make the National Heritage Area’s history come alive for the community, she believes in archival study and teaching from primary sources as vital community resources.

Enjoy Dr. Kirsten L. Paine’s article? Read her description about the discovery of Carrie Clark.

An early image of the Carrie Furnaces #1 and #2. Collection of the Rivers of Steel Archives. The Carrie Furnaces were named in honor of Carrie Clark.

She Who Lit the First Flame

After years of research, we finally know who is the namesake of the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

By Dr. Kirsten L. Paine

Who is Carrie?

“Who is Carrie?” Any tour guide at the Carrie Blast Furnaces will say that this is their most frequently asked question.

Legend had it that Carrie was Carrie Fownes, the daughter, sister, mother, or aunt of one of the Fownes brothers, who were two of the founding owners of the Rankin mill. The problem, however, is that there were very few substantive references to a Carrie—or the more formal Caroline—Fownes linking her to the mill itself. Family histories did not show a woman with that specific name.

A standard answer from tour guides alluded to the speculative Fownes family connection before providing the context behind the historical practice of naming blast furnaces after the wives, daughters, and sisters of the mill owners. Among nineteenth-century blast furnaces like Carrie, there were Dorothy, Eliza, Jane, Isabella, and Bernice, among others.

Furnaces bore women’s names as a means of acknowledging a female member of a prominent family. Simply put, nineteenth-century women were unlikely business owners. They rarely owned property, controlled bank accounts, or held positions of power and influence in public commercial circles. Women in wealthy families, like the Fownes family in Pittsburgh, exerted sociopolitical influence in domestic and home-adjacent spaces. Naming a furnace after a woman gave her both a presence and a stake in the family enterprise. It also created monuments to women’s memory by an industry not remembered for welcoming women’s presence, participation, or investment.

“Who is Carrie?” This is a tantalizing question for any historian. Ron Baraff, director of historic resources and facilities at Rivers of Steel, says, “I have been looking for ‘Carrie, the Person,’ since 1998. While there were many reference clues, they were always incomplete, a historical afterthought.”

Witnessing the magnitude of the two preserved furnaces on the Monongahela mill site makes it hard to think about Carrie as a “historical afterthought.” There she rests in her anthropomorphized glory—tended, cared for, visited, celebrated, and as full of life as she ever was. Her name runs to the heart of Pittsburgh’s living memory for those who worked at the mill when it was operational, lived in the neighboring communities of Swissvale and Rankin, and saw the glow, fire, and soot and heard the metallic rumble and roar. Baraff says, “I feel like I have been looking for Carrie my entire life!”

The Carrie Furnaces in the Carnegie Steel era, a rapid expansion from the first furnace fifteen years before. Collection of the Rivers of Steel Archives.

Carrie Is Revealed

The Carrie Furnace Company began in 1884. Brothers H. C. and W. C. Fownes were founding partners and hands-on managers of the company, which had other investors and interested parties. William Clark, the Fownes brothers’ maternal uncle, was a prominent figure in the Pittsburgh iron industry and known primarily for Solar Iron Works. He became the president and manager of his nephews’ new venture.

When Furnace No. 1 smelted its first tons of iron on February 28, 1884, the whole Monongahela River valley knew about it. All of Pittsburgh knew about it. In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, any time a new mill opened in the Monongahela River valley, area newspaper reporters converged on the site to write stories about opening ceremonies. These ceremonies were not unlike christening new ocean liners. The social, political, and economic elite congregated to celebrate the new venture, which contributed to expanding the global prominence of Pittsburgh’s industrial might.

The Pittsburgh Daily Post covered the excitement. On page four of the February 29, 1884, edition, the staff reporter filed an article called, “The New Rankin Station Furnace.” It reads, “the new furnace at Rankin Station on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, about [ten] miles from the city was yesterday morning christened the ‘Carrie Furnace.’”

Ron Baraff found this article while scouring Pittsburgh newspapers for information on the early days of the Carrie Furnace Company. He continued reading the article and noticed the furnace was named “in honor of Miss Carrie Clarke [sic] who lit the fires and performed other baptismal services.” William Clark’s daughter (and the Fownes’ brothers’ first cousin) had been tucked away in a few lines of local journalism!

Those lines, however, provided “the proof that eluded us for so long,” said Baraff. Those lines “give us not just a name to affix to the narrative, but they opened the door to a life and time in our region’s rich industrial history.”

Ron’s discovery kicked open a door for the rest of Rivers of Steel’s Museum and Archives department, who quickly set to finding as much information as possible about Carrie Clark. They “went on a quest to find out more about our Carrie,” Baraff says. Over the next few days, emails zipped back and forth as Ron, Ryan Henderson, Barney Terrell, and I followed her across the historical record and recovered the identity, life, and legacy of the woman whose name echoes throughout the Monongahela River Valley.

Ron remarked the “longtime assumptions were close to being accurate,” but because of the focus on the Fownes family, the Clark family and their connections to each other went unexplored. Finally, being able to reclaim a person’s entire life story with the simplest premise: “Who was Carrie Clark and what happened to her,” well, “it is a researcher’s dream.”

Ron, Ryan, Barney, and I found census records, marriage license notices, academic files, obituaries, and cemetery records. Her present biography remains short, and at first glance, it may appear sparse. However, remember this biography represents a major breakthrough in a twenty-five-year-long quest.

Carrie Clarke is mentioned as “she who lit the fires” in a notice about the christening of the new “Carrie Furnace” in 1884, and then news of her death is shared in 1888.

Carrie Clark, a Life

Caroline “Carrie” Bell Clark was born on March 19, 1863, in Youngstown, Ohio. Her family moved to Pittsburgh before 1869, when her father, William Clark, started the Solar Iron Works, located in Lawrenceville. In 1877, Mr. and Mrs. Clark sent Carrie away to Vassar Preparatory School in Poughkeepsie, New York. While there, she completed courses in Latin, German, French, Greek, mathematics, rhetoric, geography, and history. In 1880, Carrie Clark began studying at Vassar College, an institution that endeavored to provide wealthy young women educations equal to what their brothers received at other elite universities. Clark left Vassar and returned to Pittsburgh in 1881.

She assumed an extraordinarily public role in February of 1884 when she assisted her father by lighting that first fire in the brand-new mill bearing her name. A flurry of activity befitting a wealthy young woman in the late-nineteenth-century United States ensued. William Clark died in August 1884, a mere six months after the mill’s opening. Less than two years later, Carrie Clark married Bartlett Arkell, the rather dashing son of a New York State senator, in Pittsburgh, likely close to the Clark family home in Point Breeze on the corner of Penn and Dallas Avenues, on November 30, 1886. Clark and her new husband relocated to his hometown of Canajoharie, New York, shortly thereafter. Their son, William Clark Arkell, was born on September 28, 1887.

Carrie Clark died on November 17, 1888. She was twenty-five years old. Her obituary describes her as “charming” and “always amiable and loving” toward her friends. Her body was brought back to Pittsburgh. She rests in the Clark family mausoleum in Homewood Cemetery, Section 14, Lot 111.

Carrie Clark Arkell’s is included in this 1888 Death Index. She is entombed in the Clark family mausoleum in Homewood Cemetery.

Carrie for the Ages

Restoring Carrie Clark’s identity to the record of Carrie Furnace reinforces the fact that the history of industry in Pittsburgh includes, and sometimes even centers, women. Women’s lives and contributions to the mills, regardless of whether or not their sacrifices lay at the base of a blast furnace, open hearth, rolling mill, or in a rail yard or a coal mine, matter.

Clark is a piece of Pittsburgh’s industrial story. When asked if he thought Clark’s identity would change the way people look at the furnaces and what he hopes the public will take away from knowing her name and at least a little bit about her life, Ron Baraff expounded, “We can provide a more complete narrative of the early days of the company and its founding families and of the industry and region.

“Carrie Clark is an important player in the life of the site—her name and her legacy (and that of her family) echoes from the nineteenth century into the twenty-first,” Ron continued. “No longer is she just a name. Now she is a person, a life, a connection to our collective past. History is at its best when it is viewed humanistically and with dimension, taken off the pages of books and brought to life. It becomes relatable and real. It is our job as historians and interpreters to serve as guides for others to understand the past and make it come alive again.”

This is a turning point for Rivers of Steel’s story as well. Not only does the organization steward the National Landmark bearing her name, but Rivers of Steel now stewards the memory of Carrie Clark, the young woman who lit the first flame.

Dr. Kirsten L. Paine is an educator and researcher with more than a decade of experience working in higher education. She started working for Rivers of Steel in 2017 as a tour guide at the Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark and was inspired by the mission to preserve such a national treasure held in public trust. Kirsten is committed to the work of public humanities education in her role as Site Management Coordinator and Interpretive Specialist. By creating and facilitating public programs that make the National Heritage Area’s history come alive for the community, she believes in archival study and teaching from primary sources as vital community resources.

Enjoy Dr. Kirsten L. Paine’s article? Read part two in the series about Carrie Clark.

A CSX train approaches Station Square, August 2020.

Top Five Industrial Transportation Stories

Created over eons, as water carved away layers of the Allegheny Plateau, southwestern Pennsylvania’s hilly topography set the stage for entrepreneurs. Over time, this land and the local economy continued to transform. Agriculture gave way to boatbuilding and river trade. Business shifted from commerce to industry, making use of the region’s natural resources for glassmaking, coal mining, and small scale iron production, which laid the groundwork for the “Big Steel” era of the 20th century. Industries waxed and waned—each innovating and building upon the one that preceded it. Through it all, industrial transporation has been key to our region’s development.

Here are five of the most popular stories we’ve written on the topic:

1. Pittsburgh’s Time as a Steamboat City
2. Mill Marks: A Legacy Stamped in Steel
3. Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Iconic Barges
4. Pittsburgh and the Automobile Industry of the Early 20th Century
5. Exploring the Heritage Area—Trains and Tracks

And a bonus story: The Steamboat Race of the Century, complete with links to the radio broadcast from the time!

Interested in reading more? Check out our transportation-themed driving itineraries.

The Pusher Engine, a highlight on the Industrial Tour of the Carrie Blast Furnaces. Photo by Kevin Scanlon.

Restoring the Pusher Engine—A Volunteer Story

In our recent story on The Historic Preservation of the Carrie Blast Furnaces, we mentioned that much of the early cleanup onsite was done with the help of volunteers. Keith Clouse and Kevin Scanlon are two individuals who have donated their time and expertise with us in many ways, including acting as tour guides, since that time. In recent years, they have led the efforts at Carrie to restore the Pusher Engine, a General Electric 80-ton locomotive . . .

A Familiar Feature, the Pusher Engine

Over the last decade, several hundred thousand people have taken an Industrial Tour of the Carrie Blast Furnaces. The tour follows the iron-making process, sharing behind-the-scenes knowledge of the operations along with stories about the workers and their culture. The #101 Pusher Engine, also known as a switcher engine, is just one of the many assets found within the site that had been left behind at the mill’s closure, an important part of the tour that helps to show how raw materials become iron.

“A vital cog in the movement of raw materials within the Blast Furnace site, the engine served as an intramodal form of transportation,” said Ron Baraff, Rivers of Steel’s director of historic resources and facilities. “It was used to move hopper cars full of iron ore into and out of the stationary car dumper so that they could be unloaded and the ore distributed to the ore yards and blast furnaces.”

Yet for much of that decade of tours, the #101 Pusher Engine sat in disrepair, damaged by the effects of nature and defaced with graffiti—until 2019.

The Pusher Engine as it appeared in the late summer of 2018.

Removing Layers of the Past

Keith Clouse and Kevin Scanlon began volunteering for Rivers of Steel in 2010, but their friendship goes back decades before then. They had bonded over their passion for railroads and the industrial history that goes with them, so volunteering at Carrie was a good fit—and restoring the #101 was the perfect project for them.

“Kevin and I were among the volunteers working to undo almost 30 years of neglect to open the site for visitors,” said Keith Clouse. “Early on, we worked around the car dumper, cutting away the thick foliage, uncovering the 101. Although the idea of restoring her was something we considered, it would have to wait until more pressing work was completed.”

“In the fall of 2019, Ron Baraff and Ryan Henderson [an interpretive specialist for Rivers of Steel] convinced us it was time to move ahead to begin the restoration of #101,” Keith continued. “First, we needed a thorough cleaning of the accumulated debris and leaves; taconite pellets were everywhere inside. Next the big job—remove the rust. The first attempt at sand blasting didn’t work out well. It was going to take more time, but using grinders with abrasive disks proved to be a better choice.”

Kevin Scanlon added: “The restoration stretched over the summers of 2020 and 2021. We stripped it down to bare metal with hand grinders, then had to patch some pretty large rust holes in the corners of the car body. There are reservoirs in each corner that hold moisture and ended up eating away the metal. We also had to contend with a yellowjackets’ nest inside one end. They did not like us fussing around their home and let us know about it.”

Keith Clouse and Kevin Scanlon pose with #101 when it was in red primer.

With the patch welding completed, a layer of primer was applied, stabilizing the engine body. By the fall of 2020, additional repairs were made to the floorboards inside the cab, and the windows were repaired, securing the interior before winter’s arrival.

Keith Clouse painting the base layers of color over the primer. Photo by Kevin Scanlon.

Painting the Pusher Engine

While removing the layers of old paint, the crew uncovered several paint schemes from over the years. However, with input from Ron Baraff and Ryan Henderson, the decision was made to use an orange and black design from the 1960s.

While Kevin Scanlon and Keith Clouse led the project (and did much of the hands-on work), they were not alone in their efforts. Rivers of Steel’s volunteer crew assisted with applying the final coats of paint in 2021. The team included volunteers Tommy Britt, Mike Dietrich, Alex Hiniker, Grant Kenny, Mike Lickert, Laura Lovett, and Shelley Parkerson.

Just a few details remain to complete the project. A sign with the U.S.S. Steel Homestead Works logo will be added to the sides of the cab, along with signage that reads “REMOTE CONTROL,” which is to be hung on both ends of the engine.

“Recognizing that it was an important asset to the story of iron production at the Carrie Blast Furnaces and being great lovers of railroad transportation, Keith, Kevin, and the entire volunteer crew embraced the challenge of restoring and preserving this important piece of history,” said Ron Baraff.

The volunteer crew helping to complete the paintwork in November of 2021. Photo by Kevin Scanlon.

The Impact of Volunteers

The efforts of the volunteers who participated in this project have allowed Rivers of Steel to use the engine as an educational tool and attraction at the site. This and other labors of love by our volunteers allow us to continue to enlarge our narrative, engage the public, and enhance our interpretation of our region’s industrial legacy.

“Without their dedication and enthusiasm, we would not be where we are as an organization, nor would the site be the attraction that it has become,” said Ron Baraff. “From landscape management to historic preservation projects, the Carrie crew has made an immeasurable impact on the National Historic Landmark site.”

“Their efforts have greatly aided our work and made our jobs more enjoyable,” Ron continued. “While every volunteer comes into the organization with different skill sets and perspectives, they all bring a great love of history and a dedicated commitment to excellence with them. They are our friends, our supporters, and among our greatest assets. Their work is historic preservation at its grassroots, hands-on finest!”

The Pusher Engine with the car dumper and ore bridge in the immediate background.
Photo by Adam Piscitelli / Primetime Shots.

Interested in reading more? Check out our recent story on The Historic Preservation of the Carrie Blast Furnaces.