It should be repeated that the inventions just mentioned have been of the utmost importance to the iron industry, and through them only has it acquired its consequence of to-day. Without them we would not have the wonderful steel bridges, the skyscrapers, the gigantic steel ships, the all-steel railway trains, etc., and the hundreds of iron products that are to-day so plentiful and so constantly about us that we disregard their presence. It is difficult thus to pass them by, but as most of them will be referred to in later chapters we must do so. Early iron making in America is of interest to us and must be briefly stated. The colonists were aware of some of the iron ore deposits about them and sent samples to England where these yielded very fine iron. In 1619 a company known as the “London Colony” was sent out from England to engage in the manufacture of iron at Falling Creek, near Jamestown, Virginia, but three years later all were massacred by Indians. It was many years before attempt was again made to manufacture iron in Virginia. About 1637 the General Court of Massachusetts granted to Abraham Shaw one-half of the benefit of “any coles or yron stone w^{ch} shall bee found in any comon ground w^{ch} is in the countryes disposing.” Apparently little resulted from this high-sounding grant. Real iron making in America began six years later with John Winthrop, Jr., and his “Company of Undertakers for the Iron Works” which for many years operated in several localities in the New England States. Heaps of cinders left from their furnaces may still be seen and testify to their very extensive operation. One of Winthrop’s men was Joseph Jenks, who became known as the “Tubal-Cain” of New England. What is claimed to have been the first casting made on the Western Continent was made by him. It is a small pot, which was acquired and is said to be still owned by the family of Thomas Hudson, a descendant of Hendryk Hudson. Sand molding as used at present was introduced by an ingenious Englishman, Jeremy Floris, and is vastly superior to the previously used system of molding in clay. Hollowware began to be extensively produced about this time. As the country developed, iron works sprung up here and there and various kinds of articles came to be regularly manufactured. Of the early plants we can only mention the Stirling Iron Works, at Warwick, New York, which made the great 186–ton chain with links weighing 140 pounds each, which spanned the Hudson River near West Point, and where in 1816 was cast the first cannon made in America; the foundry of Sharp & Curtenius, in New York, where was cast the first steam cylinder; and the Trenton Rolling Mills, which first rolled iron as fireproof structural material. Before the Revolutionary War the colonies exported considerable bar and pig iron to Europe, and as early as 1791 England began to foresee that this country would eventually be a serious rival.