In 1835 or earlier, Nathaniel S. Blasdell opened and operated the Victoria Foundry and Machine Shops in what is now the Bytown part of Ottawa. The shop was powered by a wheel at the Chaudière Falls. They manufactured axes and mill machinery, including sawmills. One early grist-mill installation still survives, in the form of Watson's Mill in Manotick, about 30 km South of the Victory Foundry.

By 1871 the operation had grown to employ 32 workers. During 1873 and 1874 a stone manufactory was built to house two cupola furnaces with a capacity of pouring 15 tons per day. New machine tools were also purchases, and a new shaft from the water wheel ran through a tunnel under a street to the factory. A new planer with a 35-foot base and 20-foot stroke was reported to be the largest in the Dominion at that time.

Ottawa's Great Fire of 1900 destroyed Blasdell's operations, but local lumber-mill owners regarded them as indispensable and assisted in rebuilding them at a new location on LeBreton Flats. As the Ottawa Valley logging operations exhausted the supply of virgin timber, Ottawa manufacturing evolved towards paper products, and the Blasdell product line evolved accordingly. For example, they supplied machinery for the E. B. Eddy match-making operations. During World War I they also produced machinery for making munitions.

In 1965 the National Capital Commission expropriated the entire LeBreton Flats area for future development (as of 2023 the area remains undeveloped although, as ever, plans are underway). The newly dislocated Victoria Foundry merged with two other dislocated companies—foundry Thomas Lawson & Sons and machine shop McMullen Perkins—to create Lawson-McMullen Victoria, Ltd., and moved to the east side of Ottawa. The company survived until 1967 but probably not for much longer than that.

We currently have no solid information on what woodworking machinery they made and for what years of their operation.

Do you have more information?

I am especially interested in woodworking machinery manufacturers from Ontario, so if you have any information on relevant woodworking machinery companies and products, I strongly urge you to contact Jeff Joslin.

Information Sources

• 1964 book, Hurling Down the Pine, by John W. Hughson and Courtney C. J. Bond, "The story of the Wright, Gilmour and Hughson families, timber and lumber manufacturers in the Hull and Ottawa region and on the Gatineau River, 1800-1920.
• 1982 book Bytown: The Early Days of Ottawa, by Nick and Helma Mika, page 213 describing an 1847 election.

  ...the West Ward elected lawyer John B. Lewis, influential landowner Nicholas Sparks, and prosperous foundry operator Nathaniel S. Blasdell...

• 2011 book, Bytown at Your Fingertips, a publication of the Bytown Museum in Ottawa. Pages 84-5.

  Blasdell, Nathaniel S.—Born in Vermont in 1801, Nathaliel Sherrold Blassdell was the second son of Ezra Blasdell and Lydia Ramsdell. He became a foundry operator in Bytown, and one of the owners of the Victoria foundry at the Chaudière falls. On 16 January 1854, he married Margaret, eldest daughter of John Wilson and Margret French, in Cumberland, east of Bytown. Margaret was his second wife; his first wife had been Harriet Cobb. He died in 1870 [Newton 1990, Serré 2008]. N.S. Blasdell represented Upper Town as a councillor on the first town council [Mika 1982]. The first of Blasdell, Currier & Co. operated a log mill and attached foundry on the mainland at the Chaudière falls in the early 1850s. Blasdell gave up on milling and returns to his smithy and foundry works [Taylor 1986].

• The Tool Group of Canada website has some reference material that includes a document by Canada Museum of Science and Technology history Robert Tremblay, "Canadian Tool Manufacturers 1820-1914". The documention was an appendix to "Histoire Des Outils Manuels Au Canada". It lists N. S. Blasdell as active 1835 to 1871; he had eight employees in 1851 and 32 employees in 1871; Blasdell came from Shoreham, VT; in 1840 they had a trip hammer; the product line was "axes and sawmill machinery"; he made 10,000 axes in 1851; production value was $44,000 in 1871; that the works had 60 HP of water power in 1871.
• According to a posting on RootsWeb, the 1845 "Bytown" Gazette reported, "Died: Apr 16 or 19, Marian Louisa, infant daughter of N.S. BLASDELL of Bytown."
• A page on the University of Western Ontario library website gives the following company history:

  The Blasdell family were active in the lumber industry, as makers of axe-heads and as millwrights, in the area of Bytown in the 1840's.

  Some time before 1854 N. S. Blasdell opened the Victoria Foundry and Machine Shops, with machinery driven by water power from the Chaudierre Falls. Its early success is recorded in the Ottawa Citizen of February 14, 1860, where an account of the opening of a new mill at Manotick states "the machinery of the mill, which is very light and elegant in design, was all manufactured at the Victoria Foundry in this city". This old mill, now known as Watson's Mill, has been preserved and the original machinery can still be seen.

  In 1873-74 the business was considerably expanded and a stone building was erected to house two cupola furnaces capable of running 15 tons of metal per day. At this time a number of new and very large machine tools were installed and to drive these a shaft from the water wheel had to be taken through a tunnel under a street. One of the machines, a planer with a base 35 ft. long and a stroke of 20 ft. was reported to be the largest in the Dominion at that time.

  Among the products listed in advertisements of that date are steam engines and boilers; factory, grist, and sawmill machinery; printing presses; hydraulic pumps; water wheels.

  Buildings and equipment were destroyed in the great fire which swept through Ottawa in 1900, but the Victoria Foundry was regarded as an indispensable support to the large lumber mills of the district and, with their assistance, it was quickly rebuilt and re-equipped at a site on LeBreton Flats. During the first World War the company built special purpose machine tools for the production of munitions.

  As the local sawn lumber industry gave place to papermaking and wood products, and rivers and streams were harnessed for power, The Victoria Foundry moved with the times and produced match-making machines, paper cup making machines, and a wide variety of stop-log and sluice-gate control equipment. In 1927 it cast and machined the four 16 ft. diameter bronze faces for the clock in the Peace Tower.

  In 1965 the whole LeBreton Flats area was expropriated by the N.C.C. and the Victoria Foundry was forced to move again; so also was the foundry business of Thomas Lawson & Sons, active in Ottawa since 1885, and located in the same area. At that time these two companies, and a third one, McMullen Perkins, which had operated a machine shop in Ottawa since 1912, merged to form Lawson-McMullen-Victoria Limited and moved to two new buildings, one housing machining facilities and the other a foundry, on the east side of Ottawa.

  The new company, in addition to continuing the line of "Lawco" water-works products, serves the industries of the Ottawa Valley with a wide range of facilities and also produces printing presses. The modern L.M.V. has behind it the tradition and good-will of m

• An online archive of city council meetings for the City of Hull (now Gatineau), QC, mentions an 1877 payment of $10 to "N. S. Blasdell & Co."
• The 1874 book, Recollections of Bytown and its Old Inhabitants written in verse by William Pittman Lett, and available online at Project Gutenberg, has the following stanzas:

  Nathaniel Sherrold Blasdell, too,
  Who once a blacksmith's bellows blew
  In the old forge, which in the shade
  Of the Russell House still undecayed,
  Stands firm a landmark of the past,
  How long will such old memories last?
  He, too, was one of those who's hand
  Built up the bulwarks of the land,
  I say unto such men as he,
  Requiescat in pace.

  and

  Thomas M. Blasdell, step this way,
  And tell me how you feel to-day?
  You thought I'd pass and let you go,
  Old twisted groove! but 'tis not so,
  Like charcoal, brimstone and salpetre.
  I'll touch you off now in short metre.
  'Tis long since first your eye, my man,
  Along the rifle barrel ran;
  The "crotch" or "globe" was all the same,
  If you could only see the game.
  Or the "bulls-eye," the missile flew
  Into its centre straight and true,
  In the old days when practiced eye
  Was light, shade and trajectory.
  Does your keen eye obey your will,
  Is your hand quite as steady still
  As when you knocked the turkey's o'er,
  At twenty rods in days of yore?
  My blessing day and night upon
  The memory of the time that's gone.

• According to a posting at Bytown.net, "N. S. Blaisdell" was among the first group of city councillors following the city's incorporation in 1854. At that time Ottawa was a lumber town with a rather rough reputation. A few years later it was the unlikely compromise choice (by Queen Victoria) to be the new capital of Canada. The leading contenders had been Toronto and Montréal.
• An online biography of Moss Kent Dickinson includes the following snipper: "By early 1861 Dickinson, then a widower, had moved to Ottawa. [Joseph Merrill] Currier had brought into the Long Island operation two Ottawa machinists, Horace Merrill and Nathaniel Sherrald Blasdell. Around the 'Long Island Milling Enterprises' the village of Manotick developed, and in 1863 Dickinson became sole owner of this saw- and grist-mill complex, to which a wool-carding and cloth-dressing mill was added that year."