From "History of Wheeling City and Ohio County, West Virginia and 
Representative Citizens," by Hon. Gibson Lamb Cranmer, 1902.

Typed by Carol Taylor Lanza.

Pages 738 thru 743

ORVILLE C. DEWEY, for many years one of Wheeling's most distinguished 
citizens, now resides in his beautiful home at Echo Point, a suburb of 
which he was the founder.  He was born at Cadiz, Ohio, November 12, 
1833.  On his paternal side, he is descended from ancestors who were of 
the old Puritan stock, and were prominently identified with the early 
history of the New England colonies.  The first of the family to settle 
in America was Thomas Dewey, who emigrated from Sandwich, Kent County, 
England, under Governor Winthrop and Rev. John Warham, in 1630, and 
came to Massachusetts.  From him was descended a line of the Dewey 
family, who have ever been distinguished, not only in the New England 
states, but in the Western country, in which many of them subsequently 
made their homes.  The monument erected to Thomas Dewey, Jr., the first 
of the family born in America, who died in 1690, is standing today in 
the cemetery at Westfield, Massachusetts.  From the second son, Josiah 
Dewey, descended the famous Admiral George Dewey, the celebrated 
Congregational preacher, Rev. Orville Dewey, and that noted lawyer and 
banker, Chauncey Dewey, of Cadiz, Ohio, father of Orville C. Dewey. 

Orville C. Dewey was educated in Cadiz, Ohio, and after a year in the 
Ohio University, at Athens, Ohio, went to Cincinnati to learn the 
theory of bookkeeping under John Gundry.  After several years of 
service as bookkeeper in the edge tool manufacturing firm of Seybold & 
Company, and in the great grocery house of William Glenn & Son, both in 
Cincinnati, he went in 1856 to Philadelphia and became a clerk in the 
house of Kilgore, Wilson & Company (wholesale grocers), his father 
being the company.  He received the munificent salary of $40 per month.  
His father sold his interest in the firm in 1860, and our subject came 
to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he has since made his home.

His brother, Eliphalet C. Dewey, who was a wholesale grocer in 
Bridgeport, Ohio, came to Wheeling in 1848, and erected the first wire 
mills west of New England.  Being of a mechanical turn of mind, he 
erected the Eagle Rolling Mill at the head of Twenty-fourth Street, and 
conducted the plant very profitably until the hard times existing from 
1855 to 1857 carried him down.  He turned over his mill to his father 
(who, being his endorser, assumed his liabilities).  And then went to 
Texas, where he became a planter on the Brazos River, and died there in 
1882.  His father rented the mill to Pendleton & Company, and Orville 
C. Dewey became a member of the firm in 1861, having as partners, 
Joseph Pendleton, James Porter, William H. Russell, J. M. Todd and R. 
Watkins.  Within two months after the time when he entered the firm, 
the mill burned down and the firm was dissolved.  The mill having been 
rebuilt in 1861, he formed a new firm consisting of himself, J. N. 
Vance and William H. Russell, under the firm name Dewey, Vance & 
Company, with a capital of $15,000.  At that time the mill contained 
only tree puddling furnaces, one scraping furnace, one crocodile 
squeezer, one set, two high muck rolls, one eight inch guide mill, and 
one twelve inch bar mill.  For two years, until a tariff was placed on 
iron, times were hard, money was scarce, wages were, and profits were 
insignificant, for, England was sending iron via Baltimore and 
delivering it to the stores in Wheeling cheaper than it could be made 
in Center Wheeling and hauled up town.  Puddled muck-iron cost $15 per 
ton in Wheeling, while in England it could be bought for $5 per ton.  
The introduction of the Bessemer process reduced the handicap from $10 
per ton to 50 cents per ton, and then the industry thrived.  Those were 
called good old Democratic times, but the Republican tariff changed all 
that.  In addition to iron, England had been supplying commodities for 
wear, and for use in the arts and sciences.  But while England had only 
a limited amount of iron, the United States had an unfailing supply of 
the ore required for the production of Bessemer steel, and the United 
States has thus secured the markets of the world for this product.  The 
demand for iron increased immensely after the enactment on the tariff 
law, and forced an increase in capacity, so that in 1870 the firm had 
erected 45 puddling furnaces, which were running night and day, and 
increased the output from three tons to 90 tons per day.  It was then 
decided to erect a nail factory at the corner of Water and Twenty-third 
Streets.  Mr. Dewey, after an exhaustive study of the factories of the 
country, erected there the largest, finest and most complete factory in 
the country.  With the improvements introduced by him, the machines 
produced 300,000 more kegs, per annum, that any mill in the country of 
the same size.  The strike of the mill workers was the greatest blow 
the city of Wheeling has ever had.  At that time, of the ten million 
kegs of nails annually produced in the United States, seven and a half 
million or three-fourths of the entire output was made in Wheeling.  By 
the time the strike was settled, the wire nail had been introduced, and 
so completely captured the market that not more than a half million 
kegs per year of the old style are now made in Wheeling.
 
Desiring to obtain iron of better quality, it was decided by the firm 
to build a furnace for that purpose, the second on the Ohio River below 
Pittsburg.  A location was found near Benwood, and there was erected in 
1871 a furnace that was not second to any in the United States.  These 
vast improvements evidently developed the inventive talent that was 
latent in him, for Mr. Dewey made many improvements in mill, factory 
and furnace, all labor saving in their nature.  He contrived a machine 
for breaking up old car wheels, that reduced the necessary working 
force from 12 men to four men on every 12 tons.  He increased the width 
of the nail plate from 12 inches to 15 inches, a great help in the 
output of nails.  He introduced a self-acting plate cropper; a shove-
under, to relieve the labor in passing the heavy, wide plate under the 
rolls (an improvement which he patented).  He made a change in the 
bluing machine that saved many a dollar.  He derived a new method of 
heating large factories.   At the blast furnace, he found that the old 
style of hydraulic hoists was very dirty in operation, and 
unsatisfactory, as well as the pneumatic and steam hoists in use.  One 
day in going up the elevator in the Monongahela House, Pittsburg, he 
wondered what kind of a hoist it was, and returning to the office got 
permission to examine it.  He was soon convinced that just such a hoist 
would answer the purpose.  He at once went to New York, and after a 
short interview with the famous firm of Otis & Company, they agreed to 
make one of the proper size to do the work, and said they had been 
trying to introduce them many times, but had never found anyone with 
courage enough to adopt them.  They promised to send him a gold-headed 
cane as a testimonial to the courage of his convictions.  Mr. Dewey 
says he is still waiting for that cane.  The Otis hoists, or something 
similar, are now used in every furnace throughout the United States.

 
About this time, there came into the firm, mainly through his 
instrumentality, Nathan Wilkinson, John D. Culbertson, Arthur McKee, W. 
L. Hearne, F. J. Hearne, and several of his old workmen, who had 
always, up to that period, been very faithful , and to some of whom he 
loaned money and his credit to enable them to become members of the 
firm.  Today they are in very comfortable circumstances.  To his men he 
was always a friend, and when he meets them now, They are pleased to 
speak of the good old days.  About 1872, he sold out to his partners, 
and the name was changed from Dewey, Vance & Company to that of the 
Riverside Iron & Steel Works.

Mr. Dewey was always very fond of music, and started Wheeling's first 
musical society, called the Philharmonic.  This was afterwards changed 
to the Weisel Institute, in honor of Dr. Weisel who, among his other 
accomplishments, had shown great musical abilities, and had been made 
the leader by Mr. Dewey.  He also established, and was a member of the 
famous quartet of St. Matthew's Protestant Episcopal Church, consisting 
of Mrs. Whitney, Mrs. W. H. Hennegen, Mr. Whipple (all of whom are now 
dead), and himself.  He is also very fond of paintings, and of art 
generally.

After Mr. Dewey's marriage, July 22, 1868 to Elizabeth Good Tingle, a 
daughter of George E. Tingle, and granddaughter of Hon. Andrew P. 
Woods, of Wheeling, he bought and rebuilt the house on the corner of 
Ninth and Main Streets, Wheeling, which he occupied for many years. His 
wife died May 12, 1882, leaving an only son, George Chauncey Dewey, who 
is in the mining business in Denver.  In 1884, he bought part of the 
old Edgington place, east of the city, and has lived ever since on this 
property, which he called Echo Point.  This country life was a wise 
venture, for, where he had hardly a house in sight at first, he now 
counts his neighbors by the hundreds, and the builder of the last house 
vies with his predecessors in following a dainty original design, 
affording every comfort and convenience.  Mr. Dewey is a Republican in 
politics, but selects his candidates for county offices, without regard 
to party.  He was for several years a director of the Bank of the Ohio 
Valley, and for several years, a vestryman of St. Matthew's Protestant 
Episcopal Church.  From it's inception, he has been a director of the 
famous Warwick China Company.  He was one of the originators, and the 
first president, of the Fort Henry Club, and is a member of the 
Wheeling Golf Club.  He belongs to the Phoenix Lodge of Masons, in 
Philadelphia.  Thirty years ago while building the furnace of his 
company, he used every effort to induce the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad 
Company to extend their Hempfield Railroad from Washington to the 
Connelsville coke fields, but without avail, as the railroad company 
was too well satisfied with things as they were.  That situation 
remains unchanged to this day, and Mr. Dewey thinks that until Wheeling 
makes a strong move for it, she will not gain more manufactories than 
she now possesses.