Comment by Projectiboga

A lot of colonial iron came from Southern NJ. And this wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron says it was produced at spots along the coast. South Jersey had a very clean water called "cedar water" that is high in tannins from a freshwater seaweed that was well suited to storage and really set the stage for transoceanic voyages at scale. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cedar_water

Most early American ironworks extracted the iron ore from "bog iron" deposits - large nodules of quite pure iron that forms along the roots of plants in boggy areas. Bog iron could be easily scooped up from the mucky bottom with long-handled rakes into flat-bottomed boats and then dried on shore.