The Kelly converter, now on display at the National Museum of American History, is associated with one of the enduring legends of invention. A roadside marker in Kentucky presents it succinctly: "Here William Kelly, 1811-1888, discovered a steel making method later known as the Bessemer process which made it possible for civilization to pass from the iron age to the steel age."' William Kelly was born in Pittsburgh and educated in the public schools there. He was in the dry-goods business when he met Mildred Gracy of Eddyville, Kentucky, and, to be better able to court her, searched for a business opportunity in Eddyville. He found it in an ironworks that had substantial landholdings, a blast furnace, and a finery forge, which he purchased with his brother in 1846.2 The Kelly Iron Works that they developed out of this property consisted of Suwanee Furnace and Union Forge. Union Forge, on the right bank of the Cumberland River two miles below Eddyville, had been built in 1840. After rebuilding in 1854, it had eight knobbling (i.e., finery) fires and one hammer driven by steam; with this equipment, the forgemen could make about 1,000 tons of blooms per year from pig iron.3 Years later, Kelly described the forge as having "ten forge fires and two large finery, or run-out, fires."4 The pig iron for the forge was