Have You Seen This Woman? She Died Only 138 Years Ago

There are few historic sites in Pittsburgh that speak more to the awe of our industrial heritage than do the colossal remnants of Rankin’s Carrie Blast Furnaces. Hallowed ground for the annual fall Festival of Combustion, post-labor Pittsburgh Irish Festival  and occasional summer rock concerts, the Carrie Furnaces, towering above the Monongahela across from Homestead’s Waterfront, was an early steel mill and now an extant, rusted model of massive stove tanks, tracks, hoppers, and blast furnaces engineered to produce something like 1,200 tons of iron everyday. Carrie Furnaces is owned and managed by Rivers of Steel which regularly offers tours of this historic complex.

But of all the questions posed by visitors to this 35 acre site, the most common and hardest to answer—until recently—is “Who was Carrie?” Of course, Pittsburgh’s industrial heritage had many furnaces which were named for women. Jones and Laughlin’s Eliza Furnace was named after Laughlin’s only daughter. The Lucy Furnace was named after Thomas Carnegie’s wife. And the Isabella Furnace was named after two different women: one, the sister of an owner (Herron) and, the other, the daughter of its chief engineer (Crowther). As might be excused in polite society during the late 19th century, it was common that furnaces were named after women because they could both prove to be temperamental. 

Yet, for years, the name given to Rankin’s indomitable furnace was a mystery. Built by H.C. and W.C. Fownes in 1881 and completed in 1884, the furnace, its offices, ledgers, and archives recorded nothing about the woman whose name has been so honored for more than 140 years. The Fownes brothers shared no relative named Carrie, and of the many who invested in the family’s successful empire, none seemed to share a mother, wife, sister or daughter, (temperamental or not,) with any name that might lend itself to the shortened “Carrie.”

But, then, in 2023, Ron Baraff, Rivers of Steel’s director of historic resources (and a most personable authority on all matters of regional industrial history) came upon a news clipping. From the Pittsburgh Daily Post, dated February 29, 1884, “The new furnace at Rankin station on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, about 10 miles from this city was yesterday morning christened the “Carrie Furnace” in honor of Miss Carrie Clarke (sic) who lit the fires and performed the other baptismal services.” And then, the correct name Clark registered in Baraff’s encyclopedic mind. William Clark was at the time a tough industrialist who had established the Solar Iron Works in Lawrenceville.

Yet, if much was then known about William and why his services might have been engaged by the Fownes family, little would have revealed anything about his daughter Caroline “Carrie” Bell Clark. Her story, now detailed within the rich context of Pittsburgh’s privileged class, tells of her extraordinary education, her family’s assertion to power, Carrie’s own assertion of a woman’s place in industry, her mysterious marriage to the son of a New York Senator, and of her death in a small upstate town at the age of just twenty-five. 

Perhaps, even more remarkable is what happened to her remains. They were discovered just last year by historian and author, Dr. Kirsten L. Paine (also Museum Education & Historic Interpretation Manager for Rivers of Steel). She recently presented much of Carrie’s life story to an audience at the Carrie Furnace in honor of her 163rd birthday, March 19, 1863. Dr. Paine’s narrative story of the life of Carrie Clark can be enjoyed here. Yet, it is hardly a complete biography, and that’s the reason for the presentation and birthday honors.

Rivers of Steel, in pursuit of its great mission to preserve, educate, and interpret the vast and significant history of Pittsburgh’s industrial history, is looking for a single image—a painting or photograph—of Carrie. Rivers of Steel invites you to contact Emily Balawejder, Director of Marketing & Communications, if you have such an image of this remarkable woman. One is likely to exist, but has never been found. Perhaps soon, only a few years after identifying Carrie’s name, someone will help identify her image. 

Illustration courtesy of Rivers of Steel. Photos by Rick Handler.

C. Prentiss Orr is a Pittsburgh-based writer who covers live theater, film, and other topics for Entertainment Central. He is the author of the books The Surveyor and the Silversmith and Pittsburgh Born, Pittsburgh Bred.

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