ROBERT GILBERT Boot and Shoemaker, BEGS leave to inform the public, that he has removed from Williamsburg, to this city, in order to carry on his business as usual. Those Gentlemen who please to favour him with their custom, may depend upon having their work executed as expeditiously and reasonable, as the times will admit of, for cash only, as it is by that means alone which materials are procured. _N.B._ He has on hand a few boxes of English made SHOES, which he would dispose of on very reasonable terms, for cash, tobacco, or good merchantable flour. Richmond, February 7, 1782 [sic] (_Virginia Gazette and Weekly Advertiser_ (Richmond), February 15, 1783) _WILLIAM PEARSON, TANNER AND CURRIER_ Prominent in the list of known Williamsburg leatherworkers are the names of William Pearson, tanner and currier, Alexander Craig, saddler and harnessmaker, and George Wilson, boot and shoemaker. As usual in colonial Virginia, each of these men—while primarily occupied in his own special phase of the leather trade—did more or less work in other phases. [Illustration: _Corroyeur_ _The shop of a currier and the tools used by his workers. Against the wall at the left a man is scraping a skin with the “moon knife” (figs. 7 and 7 no. 2), holding the skin taut by means of pincers and a thong (fig. 6) around his seat. In the background workers are treading, slicking, and graining skins. In the foreground one man uses the “head knife” to work over the skin on the beam, while another softens a skin with the currier’s mace._ Diderot.] William Pearson first appears in surviving records as the godfather of Alexander Craig’s daughter Lucretia. At about the same time he was Craig’s tenant in a house adjoining the latter’s tanyard, and shortly thereafter he purchased from Craig the land occupied by the tanyard. The two men seem to have been in partnership for a while, but Pearson—under circumstances now unknown—eventually became full owner of the tanyard. This establishment lay just to the east of the town, its location recalled to this day in the name of Tanyard Street. It had been founded in the early 1750s by Craig in partnership with Christopher Ford, carpenter, and Nicholas Sim, tanner. Craig bought out his partners in 1758, and two years later Pearson came on the scene. At that time the tannery consisted of “Tan Vatts ... New and Old Bark Houses, Mill House and Fleshing House ... and all other Houses and Buildings ... used in the Business of Tanning and making Leather.”