James Callaway (25 December 1735–1 November 1809), iron manufacturer, was born in Orange County, the son of William Callaway and his first wife, Elizabeth Tilley Callaway. Some accounts may confuse episodes in his life with facts pertaining to his uncle of the same name. Richard Callaway, another uncle, played an important role in the settlement of Kentucky. By 1746 Callaway's family had moved to the section of Lunenburg County that in 1753 became Bedford County. His father owned extensive property there, provided the land for the new courthouse (later the town of New London), was one of the first justices of the peace and a colonel of the militia during the French and Indian War, and represented Bedford County in the House of Burgesses from 1755 to 1758 and from 1761 to 1765.

James Callaway secured a marriage bond on 24 November 1756 and on that date or soon thereafter married Sarah Tate. They had five sons and seven daughters. Sarah Tate Callaway died sometime after the birth of her last child in 1773. Callaway won election in July 1765 to succeed his father in the House of Burgesses that assembled in 1766, but he either did not seek reelection in 1768 or was defeated. In 1770 he opened a store in Bedford County in partnership with Alexander Trent and Peterfield Trent, of Rocky Ridge in Chesterfield County. Callaway shipped tobacco to the Trents, who sold it to English merchants, from whom they acquired dry goods and other merchandise that Callaway in turn sold to the planters. He enjoyed a near monopoly in his region of Virginia when the American Revolution interrupted commerce.

Callaway served on the Bedford County Committee of Safety in 1775, and by early in 1776 he had become one of the supervisors of the public lead mines in southern Fincastle County (in what later became Wythe County). He directed the mines until Charles Lynch succeeded him on 5 December 1777. Callaway may have then collaborated with David Ross in operating the Oxford Iron Works in Bedford County.

On 22 September 1777 Callaway received a marriage bond and on that date or soon afterward married Elizabeth Early. They had ten children, of whom six sons and one daughter survived to adulthood. In June 1779 Callaway and his new father-in-law, Jeremiah Early, purchased a bloomery forge in nearby Henry County. They almost immediately built a blast furnace, which still stands in Rocky Mount, and a new forge, which does not. Enhanced demand for iron during the Revolutionary War accelerated the growth of the new company, named the Washington Iron Works. By July 1779 its products were advertised as far away as South Carolina. Jeremiah Early died in 1779, and within two years Callaway owned two-thirds of the company. Thomas Jefferson estimated in his Notes on the State of Virginia (written in 1781–1782) that 25 percent of the bar iron and 14 percent of the pig iron produced in Virginia came from the Washington Iron Works.

Callaway became county lieutenant, or commander of the Bedford County militia, on 28 December 1778. During the Revolution he occasionally took part in measures to defend the southwestern part of the state. In several incidents in 1780 Callaway and other militia officers, including Lynch, broke up a suspected Loyalist conspiracy at the lead mine. They or others operating with their permission intimidated, jailed, or whipped suspected Loyalists, or forced them to join the American army. The incidents were most likely the origin of the term lynch law, which initially referred to organized extralegal punishment of suspects. In 1782 the General Assembly passed a bill that retroactively legalized the acts of Callaway, Lynch, and two other men.

After the war Callaway built a business office, a gristmill, a sawmill, a store, a tavern, and new quarters for the enslaved workers who labored at his ironworks and the related blacksmith's shop, stables, and storage sheds. By 1809 the company had acquired 18,908 acres of land in order to supply the insatiable demand of the furnace for charcoal. When the county of Franklin was formed from Bedford and Henry Counties, the first court met on 2 January 1786 at one of Callaway's four houses at the ironworks. From a small beginning as a bloomery forge, the Washington Iron Works grew into a significant frontier industry and remained the principal manufacturer in Franklin County until a flood destroyed the furnace on 22 August 1851. Callaway also purchased Carron Iron Works, a nearby competitor, about 1801 or 1802, thus securing his domination of the local iron industry.

Callaway was a justice of the peace in Bedford County from at least 3 April 1767 until 26 November 1780, when he became sheriff of the county until Campbell County was organized in 1782. From 7 February 1782 until at least December 1787 he was a justice of the peace for Campbell County, and he was county lieutenant from February 1782 until at least 1 December 1786. Callaway moved back to Bedford County in 1789 and was presiding judge of the county court from that year until 14 May 1804, when he became sheriff, a post he held until 5 July 1806. In December 1795 he became a founding trustee of the New London Academy for boys.

Callaway's second wife died sometime after the birth of her last child in 1796. By 15 October 1800 Callaway had married the twice-widowed Mary Langhorne Calland Turpin. They had no children. James Callaway died on 1 November 1809 and was buried in the Callaway-Steptoe family cemetery near his home, not far from New London in Bedford County. His estate included approximately 114,000 acres in five counties, including the courthouse town in Franklin County, and a personal estate valued in the inventory at £17,694.

Sources Consulted:
Birth date in nineteenth-century Callaway-Early-Anderson Bible records, Misc. Bible Records Collection, no. 2, Accession 21403, Library of Virginia (LVA); undocumented variant birth dates of 21 Dec. 1736 in Mary Denham Ackerly and Lula Eastman Jeter Parker, "Our Kin": The Genealogies of Some of the Early Families Who Made History in the Founding and Development of Bedford County, Virginia (1930; repr. 1976), 296, of 25 Dec. 1736 (with erroneous death date of 11 Jan. 1809) in Ancestors of the Patrick Henry Chapter, NSDAR Members, 1981, Martinsville, Virginia (1981), and of 31 Dec. 1736 in Campbell County, Virginia, Family Cemeteries (1998), 5:18; Bedford Co. Marriage Bonds, 1756, 1777; date of third marriage estimated from Cumberland Co. Deed Book, 8:408; business records in Callaway v. Dobson's Administrators (1811), U.S. Circuit Court, Fifth Circuit, Virginia District, Ended Cases (unrestored, oversize file 2), Box 221, LVA; John S. Salmon, The Washington Iron Works of Franklin County, Virginia, 1773–1850 (1986), 19–42; John S. Salmon and Emily J. Salmon, Franklin County, Virginia, 1786–1986: A Bicentennial History (1993), esp. 106–112; William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 … (1809–1823), 11:134–135; Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden (1954), 27–28; United States Census Schedules, Franklin Co., Industry Schedule, 1820, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; will and estate inventory in Bedford Co. Will Book, 3:214–217, 228–233; obituary in Richmond Virginia Argus, 14 Nov. 1809, reprinted from Lynchburg Press.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John S. Salmon and Emily J. Salmon.

How to cite this page:
John S. Salmon and Emily J. Salmon, "James Callaway (1735–1809)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Callaway_James, accessed [today's date]).

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