This exhibition tells the remarkable story of Augusta Malquit—known locally as “Charcoal Annie”—a French immigrant who arrived in Sharon at seventeen and built a business that became essential to the region’s iron industry. Through historic photographs, artifacts, and excerpts from Ed Kirby’s Seldom Told Tales of Sharon, visitors can trace the arc of one determined woman’s life—from immigrant to entrepreneur to farmer—and the broader transformation of the Salisbury Iron District.
The exhibition features four monumental murals by acclaimed local artist Eric Forstmann (b. 1962), commissioned in 1998. Forstmann—whose work has been shown at the Butler Institute of American Art, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Norman Rockwell Museum—brings Sharon’s industrial and domestic past to vivid life. The murals depict a grist mill, the iron industry at work, an iron furnace in operation, and the intimate interior of a home, offering visitors an immersive sense of the world Augusta and Emile would have known.
Born in Mignavillers, France in 1870, Augusta sailed to America in 1887, arriving at Ellis Island and making her way to Sharon Mountain to join her cousins. Described as “truly a pioneer”—over six feet tall with merry blue eyes—she worked as a domestic while teaching herself English and devouring books whenever she could. In 1890, she married Emile Peter Jasmine, a young man she had known in France who followed her to America.
Recognizing an opportunity, Augusta donned her gray flannel suit—the costume she reserved for important occasions—and called on Milo B. Richardson, president of the Barnum and Richardson Company. Impressed by her knowledge of timber and charcoal, Richardson gave her an order for one ton. When Emile protested that it would take a lifetime of work, Augusta replied: “Work never killed anybody.” She went to a local banker, negotiated the funding herself, and formed the Jasmine Company. As one account put it: “The crew of men who eventually worked the Jasmine Company knew that the gentle Emile was the Foreman – Augusta was the Boss.” Richardson was so satisfied that he granted her an unrestricted contract for all the charcoal they could produce—a partnership that lasted over twenty years.
