Nailing Down History: The La Belle Cut Nail Collection at the Ohio County Public Library

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Last year, Wheeling area residents witnessed the loss of one of the oldest and renowned businesses in the region as the Wheeling-La Belle Nail Company plant was demolished to make way for a mixed-income housing development. While the buildings may no longer stand, the legacy of this iconic plant is destined to be preserved now that its records have found a permanent home in the Archives and Special Collections Department at the Ohio County Public Library.

At the time of its closing in 2010, the La Belle plant had been producing its signature cut nail for nearly 160 years. For several years, the building lay empty and idle while nail machines dating to the 19^th century, nail processing equipment, and administrative records all lay collecting dust. In 2015, when much of the interior equipment was up for auction, the Wheeling National Heritage Area Corporation rescued an essential part of Wheeling’s industrial history when it bought the paper records that resided in the building for $5.00.

NAIL CITY

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In 1852, Bailey, Woodward and Company, a newly formed group composed of 22 ironworkers and nailers, opened La Belle Iron Works just south of the Wheeling, West Virginia city limits. The four-acre location (around present-day 31^st and Wood Street) was strategic, as it was near the river and the trunk line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company. The founders of the company named their mill after the French name for the Ohio River, La Belle Riviere, “beautiful river.” In 1859, Bailey, Woodward, and Company purchased the Jefferson Iron Works in Steubenville, Ohio, adding 40 cut nail machines to the original 25 at the Wheeling site.

Until the last decade of the 1700s and the early 1800s, hand-wrought nails were made one by one by a blacksmith or nailer from a square iron rod. After heating the rod in a forge, the nailer would hammer all four sides of the softened end to form a point.  The automatic nail machine was invented in the 1820s. Flat metal strips are fed into a machine, while the first lever cuts a triangular strip of metal, the second lever holds the nail in place while the third lever forms the head of the nail. The strip of metal is then turned through 180 degrees to cut the next equal and opposite nail shape off the strip, hence the phrase “cut nails.” ^[1]

In 1875, the La Belle Iron Works was incorporated, and between the Jefferson works and the La Belle works employed approximately 900 workers and had a total of 167 cut nail machines in operation.  It was during this time period that Wheeling began to be known as the “Nail City,” due to its dominance of the cut nail market. Wheeling’s nail production from 1871-1873 (three million kegs) comprised nearly a quarter of the national nail production (12 million kegs). The dominance of the cut nail was to be short-lived, however, as the “Great Nail Strike” of 1885-1886 severely impacted the industry and allowed the wire nail producers to corner the market. The nailers went on strike to protest the newly adopted Bessemer process, which replaced wrought iron with steel plate as the material used to make the nails. The cut nail market would never quite recover.  By 1914, La Belle was the only company in Wheeling producing cut nails.  ^[2]

WHEELING STEEL CORPORATION AND THE 20^th CENTURY

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In 1920, La Belle Iron Works merged with the Wheeling Steel and Iron Company and the Whitaker-Glessner Company to form the Wheeling Steel Corporation. In 1967, the company merged with the Pittsburgh Steel Corporation to form Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation.  From 1967 on, La Belle was a subsidiary of Wheeling Corrugating Steel, which was a division of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel.

Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel suffered during the decline of the American steel industry in the last decades of the twentieth century and filed bankruptcy twice. In 1996, the corporation sold off La Belle to D-MAC Industries, owned by Denis McMorrow. The plant was renamed Wheeling-La Belle Nail Company and operated until 2010.

RECORDS RECOVERED

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In early 2017, with funds secured by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Science, Wheeling Heritage hired archivist Laura Carroll to process the records of the company.  While some of the material was somewhat organized in decades-old file cabinets or boxes, the majority of the material was haphazardly stored and understandably dirty due to the dust produced as a by-product of the nail production. Carroll cleaned, organized and rehoused the material in acid-free archival boxes that keep the records safe from environmental hazards.  A guide to the collection has also been created to aid historians and other researchers in finding material pertinent to their research interests.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE COLLECTION

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The records consists of material dating from 1897-2010. The bulk of the collection consists of material from the 1950s-1990s when the plant was owned by Wheeling Steel (1920-1967) and the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation (1967-1997). The records include administrative files, production records, financial records, and legal and personnel records.  The collection also includes sales and customer files, United Steelworkers of America records, printed material and records from other departments within Wheeling Steel Corporation and later Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation relating to the La Belle plant. Also included are a small number of photographs and artifacts. The collection is made of up of just over 100 boxes and 40 architectural and engineering drawings.

Wheeling Steel Corporation employee cards

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As mentioned above, La Belle Iron Works merged with the Wheeling Steel and Iron Company and the Whitaker-Glessner Company to form the Wheeling Steel Corporation in 1920.   Included in the files of the La Belle Iron Works are a large cache of cards that appear to be the employee records for Wheeling Steel Corporation from the early 1920s through the 1940s.  Information recorded on the cards includes name, address, physical characteristics, race, date, and place of birth, date of entry into the United States, emergency contacts, other family members employed by the company, previous employment, and employment record at Wheeling Steel.  Only cards for employees with last names beginning with A through R survive.

 

 

La Belle Iron Works

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The printed material series portion of the collection includes early advertising booklets produced by La Belle Iron Works depicting the plant in the first decades of the 20^th century.   Booklets include photographs depicting the inner workings of the plant and various products manufactured by the company.

United Steelworkers of America

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The workers at the La Belle plant belonged to Local Unit 1712, District 23 of the United Steelworkers of America.  The records included in the La Belle collection are notable because they represent the corporation side of many negotiations and grievance procedures.  Material includes local agreements, grievance, and safety committee meeting minutes, notice of job vacancies, contracts, and other labor relations material. Both the grievance and safety committees were composed of union and company representatives and their meeting minutes offer a glimpse into labor relations during many volatile decades for the steel industry. Notices of job vacancies are notable because they include standard hourly wage rates for open positions, and therefore document wage increases over a 40 year period. This series includes records documenting the Labor Management Participation Team (formed as a result of the 1982 strike and subsequent settlement agreement between USWA and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation) and the Cooperative Partnership Agreement group (which was formed as a result of the 1985 strike and subsequent settlement agreement between USWA and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation). Also included in this series are published labor agreements and pension plans, as well as other USWA booklets.

 

Architectural drawings and maps

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Among the oldest material in the collection are a series of 39 architectural drawings dated 1897-1898 for a new building on the La Belle plant site. The architect was Schultz Bridge & Iron Works, of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. The drawings are notable in their details and condition given their age.

Other maps and drawings, including this 1939 insurance map, show in detail the full extent of the Wheeling Steel Corporations’ properties at the La Belle site.  Shown are the row of tenement houses on McColloch Street, owned by the corporation until they were demolished in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

 

 

Buster Braun, Long time La Belle employee

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Edward (Buster) W. Braun worked at the La Belle plant from 1903, starting when he was just 12 years old, until 1959.  In a small ringed binder, Braun documented many details of the early 20^th century nail production at the plant, as well as noting significant events such as labor strikes, the start of the Great Depression, and the historic 1936 Wheeling flood.   He also lists employees of the plant and their date of death.

LA BELLE EXHIBIT AT THE OHIO COUNTY LIBRARY

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On February 13, 2018, the Ohio County Public Library unveiled an exhibit featuring artifacts from the collection.  The accompanying Lunch with Books program included Bekah Karelis, Wheeling Heritage historian and Laura Carroll, Ohio County Public Library Archivist, discussing the La Belle Cut Nail Factory collection.  The program also featured a special guest, former La Belle plant supervisor, Dave DelGuzzo, who spoke about the process of making cut nails. Also present were former La Belle and Wheeling-Pittsburgh employees Jim Baller, Lutz Albrecht, John Osmianski, Bill Weidman, Jerry Hickman, and Dick Strickler.  Dorothy Freese Ward, the great-great-granddaughter of one of the La Belle founders, Isaac Freese, was also in attendance.

Click here to find out more about the collection:  Wheeling-La Belle Nail Company Records, 1897-2010.  To consult the collection, please contact the library to schedule an appointment by using the ‘Ask A Librarian‘ form or call 304-232-0244.

To learn more about the iron and steel industry in Wheeling, visit the Ohio County Public Library’s history site:  http://www.ohiocountylibrary.org/wheeling-history/5196.

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FOOTNOTES

1. “From Hand Forged to Machine Made Cut Nails,” La Belle Cut Nail Factory, accessed June 14, 2017, http://www.wheelingheritage.org/LABELLER/history.html.
2. Maddox, Lee R., “La Belle Iron Works.” Report. Historic American Engineering Record. Washington, DC: National Park Service, Department of the Interior, 1990.