The Catoctin Furnace Friends Group (CFFG) shares the stories of those who passed through Catoctin Furnace—enslaved individuals, immigrants, and free workers alike. We honor their resilience and contributions, whether they were forced into unpaid labor under unimaginable oppression or chose to work and make the Catoctin Mountains their home.
These often-overlooked patriots played a vital role in shaping the industrial and military foundations that helped forge a great nation.
CFFG researches, documents, and preserves this history through the lens of descendants and the local community, fosters kinship through genealogy and common bonds, and educates the public about these ancestors’ significant cultural and historical contributions.
The Friends Group was formed to engage the descendant communities and families of Catoctin ironworkers in an exciting and groundbreaking effort to reclaim, rescue, and share the overlooked story of Catoctin’s ironworkers and their families, especially the heretofore unknown African American workers. Our intent is to create a place to empower and equip a new descendant-led and family-led organization to preserve and manage the cemetery and create a new community of descendants.
The Friends Group are full partners and leaders in the physical preservation, interpretive programming, management, and governance of Catoctin Furnace, with particular emphasis on the cemetery.
The goal of the Friends Group is to emphasize the vital importance of descendants and families in the stewardship, preservation, and interpretation of this key heritage site while acknowledging the unique perspectives, profound historical ties, and newly discovered community relationships of descendants.
The Friends Group will be a strategically empowered organization led by the newly identified descendants and families to spearhead culturally authentic and sustainable preservation efforts at Catoctin Furnace while serving as the primary caretakers of their ancestral burial site.
For more information about the history of Catoctin Furnace, please visit www.catoctinfurnace.org