Pictured is the Means house as it appears today
(By Stephen Kelley from the Peoples Defender, 1981)
In last week’s column we discussed the various iron furnaces which were built in Adams County these furnaces were among the first constructed in Ohio and therefore were the first to close down as the beds of iron one in the county were exhausted. All five Adams County furnaces were apparently shut down and abounded before the Civil War. New fields of iron ore were developed to the east of the county, however and a total of 46 furnaces were constructed and operate4d as lates as 1916 in the hanging rock region of Ohio. the time period during which these furnace few were in operation is known historically as Ohio’s “Iron Age”.
Although Adams County’s part in Ohio’s Iron Age was brief, the county did continue to play a significant role in the development of the iron industry in the state. Several prominent businessmen including Adnrew Ellison, James Rodgers, John Sparks, David Sinton and John, Hugh and Thomas means all were Adams Countians who played a big part in the manufacturing of iron in the Hanging Rock region.
John Means, father of Hugh and Thomas, was reared in South Carolina. After deciding they could no longer make their home in a slave holding state, means and his wife and family moved to southern Ohio. The means settled on Zane’s Trace in Adams County in 819. Their old family home built a few years later yet stands less than a mile south of Bentonville. John Means was among the very early Iron furnace proprietors. It was he who built and managed the Brush Creek Forge Furnace on Ohio Brush Creek in 1829. He as one of a group of men who built Union Furnace in Lawrence County in 1826. Union Furnace was the first iron furnace to be built in the Hanging Rock region. Means was also politically active, serving Adams County in the Ohio House of Representatives, 1824-1826. John Means’ son, Thomas was also actively engaged in the iron industry. He worked as manager of Union Furnace from 1830 to 1833 and, with David Sinton of West Union, bought it in 1837. By 1864 Thomas owned part interest in nine furnaces in Ohio and Kentucky and had vast holdings of real estate totaling over 68,0900 acres of iron ore, coal and farmland in both states. He helped plan and found the city of Ashland (Coal-ash land), Kentucky and was among the founders and the structure.
One very different feature is the use of plasters or situated columns on the corners of the two-story section of the home. Means also had the carpenters build his home with the top of the limestone foundation let projecting a few inches beyond the brick walls to serve as a watertable. It can only be guessed that John Means apparently modeled his home after those he had left in his native South Carolina. Since most early Adams County settlers came from Virginia and the middle New England states, this type of architecture is almost unknown to this area.
