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The Blacksmith in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg: An Account of His Life & Times and of His CraftGill, Harold B.

History

The Blacksmith in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg: An Account of His Life & Times and of His Craft

Name: The Blacksmith in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg: An Account of His Life & Times and of His Craft
Author: Gill, Harold B.

Gill, Harold B.

Blacksmithing -- History

To making Niles and Shuing one whele                0 12  6
            To making a hoop one Staple and two Rings and       0  5  6
                Rivating the wheles by J. L.
  1759
  January 4
            To Shuing a pr of five foot and a half wheles and   3  0  0
                Rivating them Round A. L.
  9         To making 5 Staples 1 Ring and 3 goosnecks          0  9  0
  12        To making 5 Staples for the yokes & bees            0  4  0
            To making 3 hooks and 6 Rings                       0  5  0
            To making 1 large Ring                              0  1  0
            To making 8 small pins & Cuting a Chane and         0  3  6
                making a traces
  20        To making 4 hooks and 4 Rings                       0  4  0
            To making an ox chane                               0  7  6
            To Lanthing an ox Chane and making a Staple and     0  2  0
                Ring
            To making a ploug Large                             0  6  0
            To making an ax                                     0  2  0
  F.1       To making three axes one of my iron                 0  6  6
  12        To Cuting a plough hoe                              0  3  9
  21        To Laying Eight hilling hoes                        0 12  0
  24        To Laying a fluck hoe of my iron                    0  4  6
            To making a plough of my iron                       0 10  0
            To making 3 hilling hoes                            0  4  6
            To making 5 hilling hoes                            0  7  6
                                                               £8 10  9




                        _THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH_


When the Virginia Assembly first met in 1699 at Middle Plantation (soon
to be renamed Williamsburg), its members listened to speeches delivered
by several students at the brand new College of William and Mary. Urging
that the colony’s capital should be moved thence from Jamestown, one of
the students pointed out that Middle Plantation already contained “as
many substantial housekeepers ... as is to be found again in the whole
County.” He specifically listed a smith’s shop as one of several “great
helps and advances made towards the beginning of a town.”

Despite the young speaker’s effort to make it sound impressive, Middle
Plantation was far from being a town by any stretch of the word. But it
was no accident that a mere scraggle of structures in a landscape of
woods and fields included a smithy. As in the first years at Jamestown,
the presence of a blacksmith to make and mend tools was essential to the
success of the settlement. Unfortunately, nothing is known of the
identity of that first Williamsburg smith—not his name, or the exact
location of his shop, or the kind of work he did.

    [Illustration: _The Brush-Everard House is one of some eighty
    original structures now restored to their colonial appearance in
    Williamsburg._]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Blacksmith in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg: An Account of His Life & Times and of His Craft

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