Edward M. Norton, 1812 – 1883

 

Edward M. Norton was born in Pennsylvania, where he began a long and profitable career in the manufacture of iron. In 1847, Norton and his two brothers, George and Fred, moved to Wheeling and joined with F.W. Stephens in the operation of the Top Mill, one of the predecessors of Wheeling Steel. Displeased with Stephens, Norton acquired some new partners and built the Virginia Mill, the first mill in the West to exclusively manufacture nails. In 1849, he left the Virginia Mill and organized a new partnership called Norton, Bailey & Company.

 

During the next decade, tensions grew between the eastern and western parts of Virginia, eventually resulting in the division of the state. Following the secession vote in the Virginia Legislature in April 1861, Norton joined others in appealing to the federal government for arms to assist in holding western Virginia against Confederate attack. Ever the entrepreneurs, the three Norton brothers saw an opportunity that would not only help save the lives of the men who had left the mills to serve the Union, but could also be a financial boon. Their firm, owning the Belmont Mill, had a lease on the old Top Mill whose puddling furnaces could turn out wrought-iron an inch thick, with the aid of a sheet mill designed to roll nail plate. The Nortons turned out so much of this ‘heavy’ plate during the Civil War that they not only assisted in turning many Confederate cannon balls harmlessly from Union ships, they turned the little Top Mill into an ironmasters’ mint.

 

Norton and Wheeling attorney Alfred Caldwell served as Virginia Delegates-at-Large to the Chicago Convention that nominated Lincoln for president. Afterwards, Norton was appointed as the U.S. Marshal in Wheeling. During his tenure in that position, he vigorously enforced the federal Confiscation Act, seizing the property of several prominent Wheeling citizens who were Confederate sympathizers.