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.But he could takesome comfort from the knowledge that his immediate family was with him.Sam Williams Sr.had been under Weaver s control for a number of years be-fore 1837, and his mother Sally had, of course, come to Weaver in the division,along with young Sam s brothers and sisters.The family had grown substan-tially and now included at least four children: Sam; his older sister, Mary; ayounger sister, Elizabeth, born in 1825; and a younger brother, Washington,born in 1827.The birthplace of Sally s sons was indicated clearly in the BuffaloForge record as they entered Weaver s workforce: they were listed as SamEtna and Washington Etna. 20 Sam, at least, knew who he was and resentedthis place name as his own.It would take him a long time, but he would get hisname back.To be precise, it took sixteen years.On a page in the Buffalo Forge led-gers covering his work for the year 1853, his name appears two ways: as SamuelEtna and as Sam Williams. 21 The most logical explanation for the change isthat Sam himself wanted it made.By the 1850s he was important enough toWeaver s operations to get his way.From this point on, as far as the recordswere concerned, he was Sam Williams at Buffalo Forge; his father was SamWilliams Senior. 22Since the early Etna Furnace records have not survived, there is no wayto trace young Sam Williams s life before his arrival at Buffalo Forge in 1837.If his youth was spent like that of most slave boys who grew up at iron-makingfacilities in the South, he probably had no regular duties until he reached ageeight or so, when he would have been expected to assume some light chores,such as helping to look after the younger slave children during the day.By agetwelve or fourteen, he would have entered the regular workforce, perhaps as afurnace boy doing odd jobs or as a leaf raker at the charcoal pits.23 The elderSam Williams s failing eyesight probably prevented him from training his teen-age son in his iron-working skills, a method of transmitting knowledge andexpertise that occurred frequently at Virginia furnaces and forges in the nine-teenth century.24 He may have been untrained when he arrived at Buffalo Forgeas a sixteen-year-old youth on New Year s Day, 1837, but William Weavercould clearly see that Sam Williams s boy had the potential for forge work.His assets were several.First of all, he came from a family that producedgood mechanics.Intelligent southern iron men looking for slave recruits forcritical furnace and forge jobs paid close attention to things like heredity, andWeaver was certainly no fool when it came to the iron business.He seemed tofeel about black ironworkers the same way he felt about white ironmasters.You had to have the proper head for it, Weaver once instructed his nephew. Training alone will not [do] as nature must do something, in order to make a 80 CHARLES B.DEWgood Iron Master. 25 Nature seemed to have done a great deal for Sam Wil-liams.He had the necessary size and strength; he stood five feet ten inches tallwhen he achieved his full stature, which made him one of the tallest slavehands at Buffalo Forge.And his color suggested to white southerners of thatplace and time that he was likely to possess intelligence and good judgment aswell.A physical description of him drawn up during the Civil War listed hiscolor as yellow. 26 He had, at some point in his ancestry, a strong admixture ofwhite blood.After a year in which the only work recorded for him at Buffalo Forgeconsisted of field labor with the farmhands, Sam entered the forge in 1838 atthe age of eighteen.27 Weaver undoubtedly had Sam go down to the forge andwatch the black refiners and hammermen at their jobs before deciding whetherhe wanted to train as a forgeman, as was Weaver s usual practice with potentialironworker recruits.28 It was far better to have a willing apprentice than a surly,rebellious underhand who would turn out poor-quality work, try to escape, orperhaps sabotage the forge machinery.As Sam walked into the stone forgebuilding that stood alongside Buffalo Creek, he would have seen an impres-sive, even awesome, sight: charcoal fires burning at white heat; slave refinersand their helpers working bars of pig iron in those fires until the iron turnedinto a ball of glowing, pasty metal, then slinging this semimolten mass of irononto their anvils, where they pounded and shaped it under the rhythmic blowsof their huge, water-powered hammers
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