The team scrambled to put together a brief biography over the next four days. Carrie was the daughter of William Clark \u2014 a notorious, union-busting industrialist who was also the Fownes brothers\u2019 uncle.<\/p>\n
Since then, Rivers of Steel has gathered more information on Caroline Clark. Today, March 19, 2026, would be Carrie\u2019s 163rd birthday. Paine recounts her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer story is incredible,\u201d Paine says. \u201cIt\u2019s made more incredible because her identity was missing for so long, and because we\u2019ve been able to restore it to the record.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/carrie-bw.png\")
<\/p>\n
Who is Carrie?<\/p>\n
Carrie\u2019s father, William Clark, is most prominently known as the owner and operator of Lawrenceville\u2019s Solar Iron Works, which primarily made iron hoops for barrels and decorative iron pieces.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aHe had a reputation for being pretty cutthroat as well as being pretty successful,\u201d Paine says.<\/p>\n
Caroline was his third child, but first daughter. For an upwardly mobile middle-class family, she was held to lofty expectations: Learn to manage the family and its wealth; preserve its image among Pittsburgh\u2019s elite; and marry for the family\u2019s social advancement.<\/p>\n
In 1878, she went to Vassar College \u2014 Yale\u2019s sister school. Paine says the move embodies the hopes and expectations the Clarks had for Carrie; they could have sent her to Bryn Mawr College, another traditionally women\u2019s school that is much closer to Pittsburgh, but they opted for the more expensive and preeminent option.<\/p>\n
Carrie would have graduated in 1883 or 1884, but was brought back to Pittsburgh in 1881 to become the Clark family\u2019s public face, so to speak. She arranged appearances at social events, attended and managed the family\u2019s public persona and wealth.<\/p>\n
By 1884, the Clarks were among Pittsburgh\u2019s industrial elites.<\/p>\n
At the same time, local manufacturers from iron to steel production were in pursuit of higher profits for the stronger material. But few, Paine adds, recognized that iron was still integral to steel production.<\/p>\n
Carrie Clark\u2019s cousins, H.C. and W.C. Fownes, took a bet on iron, hoping to profit off the city\u2019s biggest corporations. Homestead did not have blast furnaces, which meant that the Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Co. \u2014 which would later be bought by Andrew Carnegie and become Homestead Steel Works \u2014 would be buying iron from the open market.<\/p>\n
The Fownes\u2019 would be that market.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Kirsten-350x350-1.jpg\")
Kirsten Paine. Photo courtesy of Rivers of Steel.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The Fownes Brothers] understood the socioeconomic condition of Pittsburgh so completely that they, instead of exploiting the working class people by taking all their money, \u2026 took all of the money from the rich people.\u201d<\/p>\n
They found a plot of land along the Monongahela River just outside of Rankin and built their blast furnace. Who better to run the iron operation than their uncle, William Clark?<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200a[Clark] had been in the business for such a long time, and he had an excellent reputation,\u201d Paine says. \u201cHe had all the right friends in all the right places, and he was absolutely the right person to bring in to run the company.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aWe don\u2019t really know exactly the reasons why, but I think it stands to reason that Carrie is their closest female relative with a stake in the company, in that William Clark was coming to run it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But even though a major industrial and historical site bears her name, her less direct attachment to the furnace company\u2019s owners would contribute to her fall into obscurity.<\/p>\n
Marriage surrounded by death<\/p>\n
About six months after the Carrie Furnace Co. opened \u2014 in August of 1884 \u2014 William Clark died suddenly. He had a cancerous growth on his hand, Paine says, and an operation left him with a deadly infection.<\/p>\n
Two years later, in November 1886, Carrie Clark married Bartlett Arkell. The Arkell family made their money off publishing in a town called Canajoharie \u2014 east of Syracuse \u2014 and were entering national politics around the time Carrie married in.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear how the couple met, but Bartlett Arkell\u2019s sisters also attended Vassar at the same time as Carrie, which accounts for one potential connection, Paine says. Arkell was also a Yale student; occasional events allowed Yale and Vassar students to mingle.<\/p>\n
Paine calls it a textbook Gilded Age marriage and incredibly politically advantageous for the Clarks. But Pittsburgh high society didn\u2019t seem to acknowledge it at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no society mention that we can find of this wedding,\u201d she says. \u201cI cannot stress how much this wedding should have been the social event of the season. It should have been splashed around newspapers in the society columns. There should have been press about this marriage \u2014 \u2018The eldest daughter of a Pittsburgh industrial family marries son of a New York state politician\u2019 \u2014 and there\u2019s nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s purely speculation with no historical evidence or any suggestion of evidence to back it up, but I will say that they got married in November of 1886 and almost exactly nine months after, their son was born. It is possible that they got caught and that it was \u2018quick, quick, quick\u2019 to prevent scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/early-Carrie.jpg\")
An early image of Carrie furnaces No. 1 and No. 2 from the the Rivers of Steel Archives. Photo courtesy of Rivers of Steel.<\/p>\n
Carrie moved to Canajoharie with Arkell and lived relatively under the radar, but two years later, in November 1888, she died. She was 25.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not know how she died,\u201d Paine says. \u201cWe have her death certificate \u2014 we got it from New York state \u2026 but we got our money back because there\u2019s no cause of death listed.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t uncommon for information like that to be overlooked or neglected in the 19th century, Paine adds. The only way to learn her cause of death for certain would be through a family letter or diary.<\/p>\n
Her death occurred around the election of President Benjamin Harrison, whom the Arkell family had befriended with hopes of political appointments. Even though the Arkell family appeared publicly throughout the campaign cycle, Clark remained out of the spotlight, leading Paine to believe she was pregnant.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t something that wealthy people tended to let happen \u2014 if you\u2019re pregnant, you kind of stay at home, you stay out of the public eye, you don\u2019t want people to see you,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u2018She\u2019s been here this whole time\u2019<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Carrie was returned to Pittsburgh. Her funeral was held in Pittsburgh and she was buried in the Clark family mausoleum under the name \u201cClark\u201d \u2014 not Arkell. Her gravestone reads, \u201cCaroline Clark, wife of Bartlett Arkell.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat tells me [the Clarks] had real plans for her and that, perhaps, their plans did not go the way they expected,\u201d Paine says. \u201cBut she\u2019s buried right next to her father \u2026 which also tells me that Carrie was her father\u2019s right-hand girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Death-Index-and-Mausoleum-1536x960-1.jpg\")
The Clark family mausoleum at the Homewood Cemetery. Photo courtesy of Rivers of Steel.<\/p>\n
Ironically, Carrie\u2019s burial as a Clark would further serve to strike her from the historical record, even though the Clark mausoleum is within sight of those for the Kaufmans, Benedums, Heinzs and other Pittsburgh dynasties.<\/p>\n
In 1898, the Fownes brothers sold the Carrie Furnace Co. to Andrew Carnegie, severing Carrie Clark\u2019s last familial connection to the eponymous industrial site.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aThey\u2019ve made their money, they\u2019ve proven their point and, quite frankly, they didn\u2019t care about this business anymore,\u201d Paine says.<\/p>\n
But the Fownes brothers weren\u2019t quite done profiting off Pittsburgh\u2019s richest citizens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey went over to Oakmont and they built the Oakmont Country Club,\u201d she continues. \u201cThat\u2019s what they did with the money.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Rivers of Steel has essentially mapped out Carrie\u2019s entire life, there\u2019s still one more piece of the puzzle missing: A picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very, very wealthy white woman at the end of the 19th century \u2014 there is 100% a photograph of her somewhere,\u201d Paine says. \u201cWhen you look at Carrie right now, you look at blast furnaces, and blast furnaces are not a human woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paine says there\u2019s likely a photograph of her in some family record \u2014 whether that\u2019s from the Fownes, Arkells or Clarks, she doesn\u2019t know \u2014 or within some collection of unlabeled candids at Vassar. So far, Rivers of Steel has had no luck, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019ll never be found.<\/p>\n
Finding any information about Carrie Clark has been a practice of fortuitousness, and the fact that her body has been in the Homewood Cemetery \u2014 only about 4 miles from the last remaining furnace in Rankin \u2014 is proof of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s been here this whole time,\u201d Paine says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knows what else she might have been able to do. Who knows who she might have been. But what we have left is a monument to American industry with her name on it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carrie Blast Furnace is both a mausoleum and monument to Pittsburgh\u2019s industrial history, but for the better part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[65353,65354,73,75,9609,74,5996,65355,13471],"class_list":["post-142960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-carrie-furnace","tag-carrie-furnaces","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-history","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-rankin","tag-rivers-of-steel","tag-steel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}