On a Sunday afternoon in early September, the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center will host a conversation about fire, iron, and the stubborn persistence of an American craft tradition. "Forged in Fire: The History of the Clarksville Foundry with Charlie Foust" brings the current owner of Tennessee's oldest foundry to the Turner Auditorium on September 6, 2026, at 3 p.m., for a free public program about a family business that has been shaping metal in Clarksville since 1847.
The talk is timed to coincide with something the museum has never attempted before: its first-ever branded cast-iron skillet, a limited-edition #5 pan cast by Clarksville Foundry and embossed on its underside with the museum's iconic 1898 roofline. "We are honored to produce this iron skillet with the iconic 1898 roofline for the Customs House Museum," Charles Foust Jr., the foundry's owner, said in announcing the partnership. "The Foundry's long legacy in Clarksville, combined with the new capability of 3D printing the tooling, made this project a perfect fit with the mission of Customs House."
The pairing of the two institutions is fitting on multiple levels. The limited-edition #5 skillet celebrates two important pieces of Clarksville history: the Museum's iconic 1898 building and the city's longstanding tradition of craftsmanship and manufacturing. That building is the one embossed on the new skillet, a literal imprint of architecture onto cast iron.
The foundry's story reaches back even deeper into the nineteenth century. In 1847, H.P. Dorris opened the first foundry in Montgomery County on Commerce Street near downtown Clarksville, at the site of the original town spring, operating under the name Clarksville Foundry & Machine Shop. Over the following decades the business passed through a succession of owners and names—Whitfield & Co., Whitfield Bradley & Co., Drane & Co., and others—each era adding new products and new chapters to its story. During the Civil War, Whitfield, Bradley & Co. was used as a munitions factory for the Confederacy, and operations ceased entirely when Union troops captured Clarksville in 1862 before resuming in 1867.
The modern Foust era began in 1907, when a young chemist named Thomas (T.B.) Foust left the employ of R.J. Reynolds in North Carolina and relocated to Clarksville to work for the Red River Furnace Company, eventually rising to superintendent. In 1912, he leased the foundry and machine shop from the Red River Furnace Company and began operating as Clarksville Foundry & Machine Works on the Red River Street site. The firm incorporated in March 1917. Over the next decade T.B. Foust expanded his holdings, buying Drane Foundry & Supply Company's stock of material and supplies and leasing their land and buildings, and, at auction in 1922, the original Commerce Street site Dorris had founded in 1847—bringing the enterprise full circle to its birthplace.
By the 1930s, T.B. Foust's sons had joined the business: George T. Foust, Charles E. Foust, and Tom Foust Jr. It was in the 1940s that the company developed what would become a trademark product line for four decades: mass-produced municipal castings—manhole covers, drainage grates, and the like—sold nationally and still visible in cities across the United States. During World War II, the two foundry locations operated in response to the war effort, at times employing more than a hundred men.
The 1970s tested the company's famously durable constitution. The collapse of markets for municipal castings, the rise of plastic and concrete competitors, and sweeping new federal air pollution regulations seemed to spell the end in January 1974, when the casting operation closed for five months—the first time since 1847, apart from the Civil War era, that a foundry had not operated in Clarksville. Where many competitors permanently shut their doors, Clarksville Foundry chose instead to make bold moves to comply with the new EPA guidelines, reopening in June 1974 with permission to use its old cupola furnace until a replacement could be installed. A new oil-fired rotary furnace went operational in March 1975.
Leadership passed through the family in turn: George Foust retired in 1977, succeeded as president by Charles Foust Sr.; in 1978 his son, Charles Foust Jr., graduated at the top of his class in mechanical engineering at the University of Tennessee and returned to Clarksville to join the family business. He became vice president in 1980 and president in 1981, initiating programs to modernize processes, upgrade aging equipment, and seek out new markets. In 1984 a 250-kilowatt induction electric furnace allowed the company to engage in small-batch processing, and in 1987 the foundry was entered on the National Register of Historic Places.
Today the foundry continues to operate as Tennessee's oldest foundry, with more than 165 years of experience. As the company's own history notes, "No two foundries are alike. Through the years, Clarksville Foundry has proven to be as durable as its castings."
The foundry's products are woven into the city's fabric. For decades it has produced the manhole covers and drainage grates residents walk over every day, and it cast fifty life-sized mockingbird statues for the downtown Tennessee Discovery Trails, a joint public-art project featuring the state bird.
The talk with Charlie Foust—described as "owner and descendant" of the multigenerational family business—will explore the wide range of products created by the foundry over the years, the people and craftsmanship behind them, and the foundry's place in Clarksville today, including its embrace of the 3D printing technology that made the museum skillet possible. The program is free and open to the public, though museum admission is not included.
The limited-edition #5 skillet carries a deeper symmetry as well: pre-seasoned and "cornbread-ready," it nods both to the museum's history and to a city tradition of manufacturing and craftsmanship, while all proceeds from its sale benefit the museum's exhibitions, educational programs, and community outreach. Priced at $125, with a $10 savings for those who pre-order, the skillets are available on a first-come, first-served basis, with pickup at the museum or shipping in time for Christmas 2026.
The skillet that bears the museum's roofline is a small, tactile artifact of a larger story: two institutions, one nearly 128 years old and the other approaching 180, built on persistence, craftsmanship, and a refusal to give up when the world around them changed. On a September Sunday, audiences will get the chance to hear that story told by the man who has inherited its latest chapter.