An icon of Richmond industrial history, Tredegar Iron Works played a vital role throughout Virginia’s and America’s history, supplying armaments for conflicts ranging from the Civil War to the Korean War. From the origins of its eighteenth-century Welsh namesake through its closure and legacy, historian Nathan Vernon Madison will present a talk based on his book, Tredegar Iron Works – Richmond’s Foundry on the James (2015), which utilizes a wealth of primary sources and firsthand accounts to chronicle, for the first time, the full history of the site.

With Nathan Madison

Nathan Vernon Madison is a graduate of the University of Mary Washington (B.A.) and Virginia Commonwealth University (M.A.). His works on Richmond industry include Tredegar Iron Works – Richmond’s Foundry on the James (2015); a chronicle of industrial Richmond written for the Society for Industrial Archaeology (2018); and The Richmond Locomotive and Machine Works – Engine of the Old Dominion (2023). He has participated in or co-produced documentaries airing on PBS, C-SPAN, AMC, and the BBC. He also writes and lectures on the history of popular literature, his books and articles regarding this topic published by Routledge, ABC/CLIO, and McFarland; he also serves on the Editorial Board of the Pulp Magazines Project, an academic, digital repository dedicated to preserving late nineteenth and early twentieth century popular literature. He is a member of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, and the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.