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About Bessemer City, NC

Bessemer City is named for Sir Henry Bessemer who created the Bessemer process for smelting iron. Bessemer City was founded on land purchased from the Ormand family, near the Sloan-Washington-Ormand Iron Furnace, but the Bessemer Process made Bessemer City's early iron smelting industry obsolete. The earliest European settlement in the Bessemer City area dates to 1754, when King George II of Great Britain granted about 2,000 acres (8.1 km 2) to James Ormand (1716–1771), who established the Ormand Mining Company to extract iron ore. By 1786, a furnace had been built on the land, called the Washington Furnace after the family of Colonel John C. Washington.