Background
Henry Foxall was born on May 24, 1758 in Monmouthshire, England, the son of an obscure blacksmith. His parents were devout followers of John Wesley and intimate friends of the family of Francis Asbury.
supplier contractor Industrialist iron-founder
Henry Foxall was born on May 24, 1758 in Monmouthshire, England, the son of an obscure blacksmith. His parents were devout followers of John Wesley and intimate friends of the family of Francis Asbury.
Henry Foxall worked as an iron-moulder in Birmingham until 1794 when, restless and dissatisfied with his limited opportunities, he went to Ireland. There he became superintendent of important iron-works near Dublin and later at Carrick-on-Shannon.
In 1797 he emigrated from Ireland to Philadelphia and formed a partnership with Robert Morris, Jr. , the son of the Revolutionary financier, in the Eagle Iron Works. There they did a general foundry and machine business and made cannon for the War Department. Foxall, having severed his connection with Morris, moved to Georgetown, D. C. , in 1800 and established the Columbian Foundry. For the next fifteen years he made cannon, cannon-shot, and gun-carriages for the government. The capacity of his foundry was later (1836) estimated to have been 300 heavy guns and 30, 000 shot a year. Foxall rendered valuable service to the nation in the War of 1812 when the government, having no foundry of its own, was forced to depend upon a few private establishments.
Although he built up a large fortune from his contracts, his dealings with the government were conducted with remarkable honesty and even generosity. When, in 1807, Dearborn, the secretary of war, was considering the establishment of a national foundry, he consulted Foxall whose reply revealed his unusual public spirit.
In 1815 he sold his foundry to General John Mason and the next year went to England. He returned to America and was mayor of Georgetown from 1821 to 1823.
In 1823, he again visited England, where he died on December 11 at the age of 66.
In his religious denomination Henry Foxall was a Methodist. His family became Methodist through their friendship with the Asbury family. Francis Asbury, with whom Foxall had a lifelong friendship, went on to become the driving force of American Methodism. In his later years Foxall continued his many activities in the Methodist Church. He had been a lay preacher for years but was finally ordained an elder in 1814, the same year he retired and sold his foundries.
Quotations: Foxall once replied in a jocular vein to a friend’s criticism: “No doubt you have some reason for thinking I have sinned in turning out these grim instruments of death; but don’t you think therefore, that I should do something to save the souls of those who escape?”
Henry Foxall shared the courage and honesty though not the piety of his parents. In person he was small and compactly built. While his ordinary dress was plain and simple, his dress in the pulpit was of great elegance - rich black velvet, white muslin, silk stockings, and shoes with silver buckles.
Foxall was married twice. The first marriage occurred sometime in 1780s in England. In 1795 Foxall, now with a wife and children, made the daring decision to come to America. When Foxall returned to England for a short while after retiring in 1815, and married a second time – his first wife had died several years before – and then returned to Georgetown.