6______________________

Colonial iron exports equalled about three-and-one-half tons in 1718. By 1761, the year
the Northampton Company was established, exports had reached 2500 tons of pig iron
and 600 tons of bar iron, shipped to England as ballast.

The Revolutionary War created an expanding market for iron products and the
Northampton operation provided camp kettles, round shot varying in size from two pounds
to eighteen pounds, and cannon, also in various sizes. The Northampton ironworks
produced guns "allowed, by the best judges, to be equal in quality to any yet made on
the continent, and as the best workmen are now employed, and ready at the Furnace,
they shall be as neat," according to an advertisement in the Maryland Journal and Balti-
more Advertiser, July 1781.

In 1782, pig iron brought seventeen pounds per ton, a considerable jump from the
five dollars per ton indicated in Ridgely papers dated 1766. The large profits from the
military contracts enabled CAPTAIN RIDGELY to buy up confiscated British lands,
including part ownership of the former Nottingham Company ironworks, and Principio
Company lands. During the 1780s, the Captain also bought up other iron concerns in
Maryland and Pennsylvania.

CAPTAIN CHARLES RIDGELY's participation in the Revolutionary War was mainly
political and industrial, although he did send out some of his schooners as priva-
teers. After the War, the demand for iron products slowed and prices declined, but
CAPTAIN RIDGELY's iron concerns continued to prosper. From 1783 until the time of
his death, his activities centered around his life as an ironmaster and his role as a
local politician.

CAPTAIN CHARLES RIDGELY's various economic activities and expanding wealth
were natural incentives to political activitism. He served in the Maryland House of
Delegates as a representative of Baltimore County almost continuously from his first elec-
tion in 1773 until his death. Supporting a democratic, pro-debtor, and Anti-Federalist
stance on behalf of his constituents in the commercially developing Northern Chesapeake
area, CAPTAIN RIDGELY's position was not only very popular in his district, but was
personally rewarding to his business interests. A forerunner of the "Jeffersonian Demo-
crat," Ridgely espoused the cause of the common man, was in favor of cheap paper
currency, promoted an expanded franchise of voters, and wanted a weak central govern-
ment where taxation and government spending were rigidly controlled. He was consid-
ered politically shrewd and the acknowledged political boss of Baltimore County.

As a member of the radical minority party, CAPTAIN RIDGELY did not participate in
the major statewide decisions made by Maryland's leading conservatives such as Charles
Carroll of Carrollton. Nevertheless, he was appointed to the Committee of Correspon-
dence of 1774, a series of Provincial Conventions, the Baltimore Committee of Observa-
tion for the Council of Safety, the State Constitutional Convention of 1776, and the
Constitutional Convention of 1788.

Although the expansion of the family capital was paramount, not all the Ridgely money-
making pursuits were strictly mercantile. They began racing and breeding horses at an
early period. COLONEL CHARLES RIDGELY was a leader in establishing a Baltimore
County Jockey Club, and surviving accounts show CAPTAIN CHARLES RIDGELY's horse
breeding activities to have been a profitable occupation. Reputed to be of fiery tempera-
ment, CAPTAIN RIDGELY also enjoyed amateur boxing and wrestling. His father is
recorded as having been a judge at fighting events.