Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands.
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands.
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1840
The tale that I have been relating in these pages cannot go any further without talking about the various craftsmen who were the heart and soul of the pioneer community’s development. As these frontier outposts grew and more and more families moved into them, the need for goods and services that were beyond the settlers’ abilities to create grew. And — just like happens in today’s modern communities — various craftsmen began migrating to these settlements where they foresaw customers.
These craftsmen provided products that not only made the settlers’ lives better but also enhanced the overall image — and thus the potential — of the settlement to grow, prosper and subsequently attract even more residents and businesses.
The importance of blacksmiths
Without doubt, the single most important craftsman that was needed to get a town going and make it thrive was a blacksmith. Plain and simple, an early community could not survive and progress unless it had the services of a blacksmith. Period. If a blacksmith did not find his way into a developing community on his own, then the residents had to take the initiative to entice the services of one in any way they could. It was not unusual for developing rural communities across the Ohio Country to form committees to locate a blacksmith willing to set up shop in their town. Often these committees had to travel back East with attractive offers to lure the needed talent. Incentives often included the offer of free housing, a free business location, provision of needed tools and various accommodations for other family members. A good blacksmith could pretty much name his own price.
So, why was it so important for a town to have a blacksmith? The reasons are far too many to enumerate, but the blacksmith was regarded as the person who could make and do darn near everything — and usually do it perfectly.
The blacksmith’s job centered around the shaping of iron for countless purposes. The icon of his shop was the large anvil on which he pounded and shaped the heated iron. Anvils evolved in their shape and function over the centuries and the size and configuration a smith needed varied with the scope of the work he intended to do. Next to the anvil the most important piece of equipment used by the blacksmith was his bellows and forge. The heavy wooden and leather bellows, which could range in size up to six feet or more, was used to blow a stream of air into the forge to superheat the coal therein, which in turn brought the metal being worked to a cherry red glow as it became malleable.
Another vital piece of equipment was the swage block, an anvil-like block of iron, the edges of which were scalloped with a wide array of shapes over which iron could be formed. The faces of the swage block contained numerous indentations and perforations which were similarly helpful in working iron. Other needed equipment included a leg vise for holding material, large cone-shaped mandrels for making curved pieces, numerous styles of hardies which fit into a recess of the anvil and were used to shape and cut small items, and a myriad of tongs used to handle red hot metal pieces of all sizes and configurations.
The tongs were made by the blacksmith to serve his specific need, grip and method of working. The blacksmith was one of the few craftsmen who had to manufacture his own tools before he could do his work.
The blacksmith’s work encompassed a vast array of items, one of the largest categories of which was building hardware. He made hinges for doors, barns and gates, latches, hooks and locks, boot scrapers, nails by the thousands, pulleys, hasps and on and on. He crafted iron parts for wagons, all manner of tools for working the farms and gardens, and every kind of furnishing for a cooking fireplace including broilers, gridirons, trammels, roasters, spiders, trivets, toasters, dough scrapers, meat forks, peels, ladles, strainers, spatulas, spoons, skewers, tongs, pie crimpers, sugar nippers and the list goes on and on.
In addition, the blacksmith made tools for other craftsmen to be able to ply their trades. These included tinsmiths’ forming tools, carpentry and woodworking tools from hammers, saws and screwdrivers to drawknives, squares and calipers. He crafted gardening tools, logging tools, seamstress tools, mattocks and axes, cultivators, scrapers, silage choppers, eel gigs, ice chippers and tongs, masons’ trowels, wheelwrights’ tire pullers, well hooks, corn husking pins, plow blades, flax combs, lighting devices of innumerable types, animal traps, balance scales and the list continues ad infinitum. In addition to making new items, he repaired those that became damaged.
Because metal was never wasted on the frontier, tools that were broken or became worn out were taken to the blacksmith to be reshaped into something else useful. Files and rasps, which were always made of the finest quality iron, were never discarded but were always taken to a smith to be recycled. Today, many early tools can still be found that clearly started out their lives as files before being reshaped into something else.
With all of these jobs to do, one might suspect that the blacksmith’s life was one of endless drudgery, laboriously crafting one item after another. Surprisingly, however, many blacksmiths had fun with their jobs and often combined art with their ingenuity. Vast numbers of blacksmith-made items incorporate motifs of snakes, hearts, tulips, lilies and many other motifs. Smiths did decorative metal twisting, stamping, perforations and openwork to introduce elements into their work which today are revered by collectors as outstanding examples of folk art. If you are lucky enough to own a piece of iron crafted by an early blacksmith, treasure it as a true link to America’s great craft tradition.
