Woodruff and Beach Steam Engine
(Page 3 of 4)
March/April 1992
John Bowditch
This digression about the improved valve gear is made chiefly to
illustrate what a leading maker Woodruff and Beach was in the
mid-19th century. 'For several years...among the most extensive
in New England for the manufacture of engines and heavy
machinery.'5This is the quality of machinery that
Robbins and Lawrence would be likely to bring to their ideal
factory.
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Woodruff and Beach evolved from the small iron foundry of
Goodwin, Dodd and Gilbert purchased in 1821 by Alpheus and Truman
Hanks and said to have been the first foundry in
Connecticut6. This of course would be as distinguished
from iron furnaces, where iron was reduced from the ore and where
castings were also made. In 1842 Henry Beach began as agent for
Truman Hanks, and in 1844 bought out Mr. Hanks, his father-in-law,
and was joined by Samuel Woodruff doing business as the Woodruff
and Beach Company. In 1853 the name was changed to Woodruff &
Beach Iron Works at the time of incorporation with Samuel Woodruff
as president. Their engines became noted for the quality of both
design and workmanship. At the beginning of the Civil War they
greatly expanded their works, including an enlarged foundry with a
center and two wings measuring 230 by 63 feet inside and a boiler
shop 125 feet long and 60 feet wide. This growth enabled them to
build some very large marine engines for U.S. war vessels: the
sloops Mohican, Kearsarge, Manitou, Minnetonka and Piscataqua;
the gunboats Cayuga, Pequot and Nipsic; the transports
Dudley Buck and George C. Collins; and the steam ships
America and United States; all for government service7.
They had previously built pumping engines, probably all low
pressure beam engines, for the cities of Brooklyn, New York,
Hartford, Connecticut, and for the U.S. Navy dry docks at
Charlestown, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia. They are known
also for a beam engine built for the U.S. Armory at Springfield,
Massachusetts in 1856 , which saw service as late as the beginning
of World War I, and several engines for Colt's armory, one as
large as 200 horsepower. The number of engines built for private
industry has been lost track of, but the number was large. It has
also been stated that they built the engine for the Hartford,
Admiral Farragut's flag ship at the battle of Mobile Bay,
but this does not appear in the company advertising as engines for
other government vessels do, so is probably
erroneous.9
Following the Civil War, the engine business seems to have
declined, and the corporate name was changed to the Woodruff Iron
Works. 'In 1871 the firm ceased to do business, and the boiler
department passed to H.B. Beach & Son, who have continued to do
a large business. 'In 1870 this firm Woodruff & Beach
Iron Works went out of existence. In 1871 the firm of H.B. Beach
& Son was organized.'10