Catharine Furnace
Catharine Furnace is a historic iron furnace in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, near Chancellorsville in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. It was built in 1837 and closed down ten years later. During the American Civil War the furnace came into use again. It had a contract with the Confederate Ordnance Bureau for producing 2,000 tons of pig iron per year. The furnace was destroyed by a Union cavalry raid in 1864 but was rebuilt.
Its owner, Charles C. Wellford, and his son and manager, Charles B. Wellford, gave Stonewall Jackson's cartographer, Jedediah Hotchkiss, the information needed for Jackson's army corps to make an undetected flanking march that determined the Confederate victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
