In Colonial times, these were well-known names for natural materials that provided good use as well as profits from small industries.
POTASH
Potash – (“black salts”), a substance that was the first cash crop and export product for the early settlers, was also known by the names potassium chloride or lye. It was a strong base used throughout history to make soap, glass, gunpowder, and bleach. The early settlers would first chop their hardwood into logs, and the greatest profit came through burning them.
After harvesting the timber, oxen would pull the logs together and into a big pile. When the logs were dry, they would burn them to ashes. Two hundred bushels of ashes made one hundred pounds of potash. In addition, ashes from fireplaces were also.
Using lumber, they made a leach in the shape of a “V”; filled the leach with ashes and poured water on top of the ashes. The lye, which ran from the ashes, was caught in potash kettles and boiled into potash. As the water evaporated out of the kettles, a great cake of dirty-brown matter, called “potash,” remained as residue.
Pearlash: The cakes and lumps were broken up, re-leached, again evaporated, and dried in brick ovens. This created a whiter, purer grade of potash called “pearlash.” This was a concentrated form.
In this way, for a period, the great forests of northern New Hampshire were turned into money by the hardy settlers. In the winter, pearlash was sent off to local markets by sleds and traded for the necessaries of life. Almost the only products having a cash value even as late as 1830 or 1840 were potash and grass seed.
On July 31, 1790, President George Washington signed the first patent ever issued in the United States. It was granted to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a new process and apparatus for making Potash, America’s first industrial chemical. This sparked the potash industry in New England. Samuel Hopkins’ innovation was straightforward: instead of just dumping ash into water to be dissolved, one cooked it first in a furnace, effectively burning it again. It got rid of free carbon in the ash by increasing its carbonite load; the resulting ashes had a much greater potash yield. This new technology—available from the inventor for a $50 down-payment and $150 later on—coupled with the woodland loss in New England, had the effect of centralizing potash production in village “asheries.”
There were 3 known asheries in Salisbury:
Andrew Bowers had the first potash factory in town. He later sold it to John White, and it is thought to have been located opposite Academy Hall near Bog Road.
John C. Gale made Potash at the North Road.
Jonathan P. Webster had a Potash Works on the Center Road about 1820, and as of 1890, an old pump was still in existence to mark the location. More research is needed to determine the exact location.
According to The History of Norwich, Vermont, published in 1905,
“There was a welcome source of extra income in sending the straightest, largest logs by water to Hartford. But the greatest profit came through burning them. By a process of leaching and boiling, large hardwood logs were manufactured into potash and “pearlash.” The ashes were mixed with hot water, and the resultant caustic lye (which could be used as bleach) was drained off. The lye was boiled down, resulting in a black residue known as black salts. The black salts were heated until they fused into a molten mass: potash.
Potash, a crude potassium carbonate, was used in the manufacture of soap, glass, and gunpowder, and for cleaning wool. When Great Britain needed potash for their Industrial Revolution, the new colonies were a great resource.
TRIPOLI
Wilder Pond is in West Salisbury on the lower slopes of Mt. Kearsarge and was named after the resident Captain Luke Wilder, an early town resident involved in town affairs and commercial ventures in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Tripoli was found in large quantities near the surface of the ground, not far from the pond. This was of economic value at the time. The material was cleansed of foreign material and dried, creating an excellent polishing powder for metals. It is still used today by jewelers in a gummy compound for polishing and is still called Tripoli.
Pressed against a rotating polishing wheel, the wheel is charged with the tripoli compound and ready to polish many types of metals.
Different colors of tripoli bars indicate which materials it’s best to use for. For example, brown is used to polish aluminum, and gray is preferred for silver.
“Tripoli, porous, friable, microcrystalline siliceous rock of sedimentary origin that is composed chiefly of chalcedony and microcrystalline quartz. … Tripoli is used mainly as a filler for paints, plastics, and rubber. It is also used as an abrasive in polishing or buffing compounds and hand soaps.”-courtesy Britannica.com.
PLUMBAGO
Plumbago is an old term for Graphite, and graphite has been confused with lead.
The “lead” in lead pencils is graphite.
Graphite conducts heat and electricity, and is currently used in Nuclear power rods.
Mechanical equipment is lubricated with graphite.
It has been used in paints and waterproofing wood.
Plumbago exists in various parts of town, and a large vein was found on past Scribner’s on the eastern slope of Mt. Kearsarge off Scribner Corners and the Buckhorn. Boston Lead Mine worked it, but it was not a financially successful enterprise and closed before 1890. It is abandoned and only partially visible, but was well known to locals several decades ago.
Another vein is found on the southern slope of Searle’s Hill on the Parsonage lot.
For more information about this topic:
Nodular and Botryoidal graphite from Boston Lead Mine, Little Mountain, Mt. Kearsarge, New Hampshire
Boston Lead Mine, Salisbury, Merrimack County, New Hampshire, USA
Why would graphite have been confused with lead? – History Stack Exchange
OIL MILLS
In the late 1700’s Andrew Bowers and Capt. Luke Wilder erected the first mill on Stirrup Iron Brook to press the oil from flaxseed into oil (flaxseed oil/linseed oil).
The earliest date for this mill is unknown; however, according to John Dearborn in the History of Salisbury, Mr. Bowers arrived in town sometime around 1789. Lieut. Benjamin Pettengill built the house somewhat across from the mill in 1788 and at some point purchased the mill. This house is described on page. 174 of Historic Salisbury Houses by Paul S. Shaw.
This existed for a few decades, but the cultivation of flax ceased, and the business was closed and washed away in a freshet in 1826. This was the first mill of several operating mills for over a century on Stirrup Iron Brook, including a grist mill, a tannery, and the Holmes sawmill in the early 1900s.