Chapter I: Front Matter

THE
LEATHERWORKER
in Eighteenth-Century
_WILLIAMSBURG_

Being an Account of the Nature of Leather, & of the Crafts commonly
engaged in the Making & Using of it.

_Williamsburg Craft Series_

_WILLIAMSBURG_
Published by _Colonial Williamsburg_
MCMLXXVIII

_The Leatherworker
in Eighteenth-Century_ Williamsburg

Once upon a time there lived in France a poet-bureaucrat by the name of Charles Perrault, who wrote fairy tales. He called one of them _Cendrillon ou la Petite Pantoufle de Verre_, and ever since 1697, for that was the date of Cinderella’s appearance in modern literature, her glass slippers have been a puzzle.

Not to children, of course. Generations of youngsters have matter-of-factly accepted as the most natural thing in the world that magic slippers should be of glass (_verre_). Their elders, however, being less sophisticated about such things, have learnedly quibbled over whether the slippers weren’t really supposed to be of _vair_, the costly white squirrel fur once worn only by royalty.

After all, logic and reason and custom and tradition say that footwear has been made of leather since time unknown. And who ever heard of making shoes out of glass?

Well, who ever heard of making bottles out of leather, for that matter? Or of fire hose made of leather? Or of leather cannons?

Yet leather has been put to these and many other uses over the centuries of recorded history. A list of them would be almost endless, and so would a list of the sources of leather. The following compilation, doubtless far from complete, could have been (it was not) drawn up by an English eighteenth-century or colonial American leatherworker:

_SOURCES_

cow
ox
calf
horse
sheep
lamb
goat
kid
pig
dog
wolf
deer
elk
antelope
moose
buffalo
bear
wildcat
rabbit
muskrat
beaver
alligator
rattlesnake

_USES_

Clothing
shoes, boots, moccasins, galoshes
leggings, breeches, aprons
shirts, coats, caps, hats, gloves
belts, suspenders, points and laces
fur items, fur trim
Shelter and furnishings
tents, tepees
wall hangings, door curtains
chair seats and backs, beds
upholstery, cushion covers
fur rugs, fur bedding
Transportation
saddles, bridles, harness (including that for human porters)
carriage upholstery, wagon covers
scupper leathers, antichafing binding on sailing gear
Containers, liquid
wineskins, waterbags, bottles
jugs, mugs, buckets
inkwells and inkhorns
hoses, pipes
Containers, dry
bags, purses, food pouches
trunks, boxes, caskets, coffers
snuff boxes, dice cups
Military items
shields, scabbards, sheaths
bowcases, quivers, gun buckets
helmets, cartridge boxes
powder horns and buckets
Other
bookbinding, parchment, vellum
hornbooks, bellows, hinges
pump washers, airtight floats
spinning-wheel belts
cricket balls, drumheads, banjos
surgical trusses

Leather differs not only according to the species of creature it comes from but according to the age and sometimes the sex of the animal, and also the part of the animal’s body it once covered. Its characteristics vary depending on the type of processing it undergoes—whether by liming, tanning, tawing (mineral tanning), or shamoying (oil tanning)—and depending on how these processes are varied and combined.

Leather can be stiff as bone or supple as silk, nearly as waterproof as rubber or capable of sopping up water like a sponge, tough and unyielding or resilient and stretchy, smooth and translucent as paper, deeply grained in many patterns, or softly napped. It may be snowwhite or range through hues of tan and red to dark brown. It may be molded, carved, and colored in endless array. As leatherworkers for many centuries have been fond of reminding the world, “There’s nothing like leather.”

_THERE’S NOTHING LIKE TANNING_

Homer’s _Iliad_ contains what may be the earliest surviving literary reference to leathermaking. Describing the swaying fight for possession of Patroclus’s corpse, the author (in Pope’s translation) wrote:

As when the slaughter’d bull’s yet reeking hide,
Strain’d with full force, and tugged from side to side
The brawny curriers stretch; and labour o’er
The extended surface, drunk with fat and gore....

The untidy process here alluded to as currying was doubtless one of man’s first methods of making leather. It consisted of laboriously working into a hide or skin such greasy and albuminous substances as animal fats, brains, blood, milk, and so forth. The product, although technically not “leather,” had many of leather’s characteristics; this is a paradox that calls for some definitions. In the terminology of the trade:

Hides are the pelts of the larger animals—cattle, horses, buffalo,
elephants, and so on;
Skins come from smaller animals—calves, sheep, goats, pigs, deer,
beaver, etc.—and from birds, fish, and reptiles;
Leather is any hide or skin _after it has been tanned_.

As the legislature of colonial Virginia put it in 1691 (in an act that will shortly engage our attention again):

And for the avoyding of all ambiguities and doubts, which may and doe
grow and arise upon the difinition and interpretation of this word
leather, _Be it enacted and declared_, that hydes and skinns of oxe,
steer, bull, cow, calfe, deer, goats and sheep being tann’d shall be,
and ever hath been reputed and taken leather.

The key word is “tanned.” Like any organic matter, skins and hides will soon begin to decay unless they receive some kind of preservative treatment. They may be simply scraped and sundried—or salted or smoked or soaked in brine or in slaked lime. From some of these processes may come extremely tough and durable products—rawhide, parchment, and vellum are limed—but they are not leather because they have not been _tanned_.

Tanning brings about within the fibrous structure of a pelt certain chemical and physical rearrangements that are still imperfectly understood. Their effect, however, is to render the pelt permanently imputrescible, pliable when dry, and capable of sustaining repeated wetting without hurt. The agents responsible for the transformation, known as “tannins,” are found in almost all plants, in certain minerals, and in various readily oxidizing oils.

_TANNING AND CURRYING_

The ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, central Asians, and Chinese all knew tanned leather and used it. But who first discovered how to tan it, when that happened, and where, must remain forever unanswered, since the invention of tanning came before the invention of written records. Primitive leatherworkers probably stumbled on different processes at different times and places, and quite possibly a number of widely separated workers discovered the same processes independently.

Until the invention of chrome tanning in the second half of the nineteenth century, little change had taken place in the three basic tanning methods for at least two thousand years. The most widely practiced method involved the use of vegetable tannins. Occidental tanners employed oak bark, gallnuts, and sumac leaves among their chief sources; other plants rich in tannins are found in every continent.

Mineral tanning with alum, called “tawing,” has been in use since earliest time in Babylonia, Egypt, and probably China. Because the leather so made is snow white, workers in this specialty gained the name of “whitetawyers.” Tawed leather, although soft and stretchy, is very strong; quite appropriately, one of his eighteenth-century contemporaries described Richard Bland, the Williamsburg lawyer and political pamphleteer, as “staunch & tough as whitleather.”

Currying—whatever it may have meant to Homer (or to Alexander Pope)—is not a method of preparing hides and skins from fresh-slaughtered animals, but a complex of processes for treating leather already tanned. These processes include smoothing the leather, paring it down to even thickness overall, especially working fatty matter into it for pliancy and water resistance, and giving it whatever surface dressing, color, and finish its intended use calls for. Prominent among such uses in the eighteenth century were shoe uppers, harness and saddlery, upholstery, trunkmaking, and bookbinding.

_CHIEF LEATHER CRAFTS_

A list compiled in London in 1422 recorded 111 groups or guilds of merchants and craftsmen then active in that city. Fourteen of these concerned themselves with leather or with articles made of it in large part:

cofferers
cordwainers
curriers
girdlers
glovers
leather dyers
leathersellers
loriners (or lorimers)
malemakers
pouchmakers
saddlers
skinners
tanners
whitetawyers

Of these, only tanners, curriers, cordwainers, and saddlers showed up prominently in colonial Virginia—although always as individual craftsmen, not as members of an organized craft or guild.

Cordwainers—the word comes from cordovan, a kind of sumac-tanned leather much favored in medieval England and made originally in the Spanish city of Cordoba—were shoemakers. The craft is to be carefully distinguished from that of cobbling, which is the mending of shoes. Although practically all colonial Virginia shoemakers also did shoe repairing, the trade of cobbling was looked on, especially by cordwainers, as inferior in status.

Curiously, the initial groups of colonists sent to Jamestown by the Virginia Company lacked any leather craftsmen. Somehow the London “adventurers” thought that the real adventurers to America could get along without tanners, curriers, or shoemakers. Just how the colonists were expected to acquire shoes grows even more puzzling in light of the English law that forbade exportation of goods made of English leather.

In a few years, however, some tanners and shoemakers had been sent over and were at work in Jamestown. But not enough of them came or else (as is more likely) they abandoned their trades to grow tobacco. A 1625 report declared that an extreme shortage of shoes and other apparel endangered the health of the population. Soon thereafter the Virginia Assembly took the first of many steps to promote leathermaking and other manufactures in the colony.

Sometimes with the support of the home government, sometimes without, the assembly passed laws in 1632, 1645, 1658, 1660, 1662, 1680, and 1682 forbidding the export from Virginia of hides, skins, and certain other commodities. They hoped in this way to assure ample supplies of the raw materials and thus encourage colonial craftsmen to make more of the needed products.

The legislation, in actuality, had less effect in Virginia than in England. Colonial craftsmen continued to prefer leathers imported from England, reputed to be the best of their kinds, for quality work—and to prefer tobacco growing to leatherworking anyway. But English merchants and craftsmen repeatedly protested the threat of competition in a market they felt belonged solely to them, so each colonial law in turn was either repealed on orders from London or simply allowed to lapse.

The 1662 effort, somewhat more elaborate than the others, had no greater success in the end. At Jamestown the legislature that year passed three laws intended to increase local manufactures. One barred the export of hides, wool, and iron; another exempted from taxation any craftsman who followed his trade and did not plant tobacco; the third required each county in the colony of Virginia to erect “one or more tanhouses, and ... provide tanners, curryers and shoemakers, to tanne, curry and make the hides of the country into leather and shoes.” The manager of this trade for each county was to allow the people two pounds of tobacco for each pound of dry hide they brought to the tannery, and “sell them shoos at thirty pounds of tobacco [for] plaine shoos, and thirty five pounds of tobacco for [shoes with] wooden heels and ffrench falls of the ... largest sizes, and twenty pounds of tobacco per pair for the smaller shoos.”

_BEFORE FREE ENTERPRISE_

The seventeenth century ended with legislation of a different tenor. “An act declareing the dutie of Tanners, Curriers and Shoemakers,” passed in 1691, regulated working procedures and set quality standards to an extent remarkable even at a time when detailed governmental regulation of economic activity was normal.

Tanners, this law decreed, were not to leave hides too long in the lime-pits, nor put them into the tan-vats until they had been thoroughly cleansed of lime; curriers were not to work “any hyde or skin not being thoroughly dry,” and were not to skimp on the amount or quality or freshness of the grease they used in currying; cordwainers or shoemakers were to use only leather that was “well and truly tann’d and curryed,” and were to make their boots, shoes, and slippers “well and substantially sewed with good thread well twisted and made, and sufficiently waxed with wax well rosined, and the stitches hard drawn with handleathers.”

The law further required each county to appoint searchers to examine all hides, skins, leather, and leather goods produced in that county. They were to stamp their seal of approval only on items that met quality standards in the “true intent and meaning of this act,” and to confiscate all wares that were “insufficiently tann’d, curryed, or wrought.”

Perhaps even more interesting than these regulations are the reasons given for enacting them: “Forasmuch as divers and sundry deceits and abuses have been hitherto committed, and daily are committed and practiced by the Tanners, curriers, and workers of leather in ... Virginia, to the great injury and damage of the inhabitants ...; And forasmuch as no leather can be so well tann’d but it may be marred and spoyled in the currying ...; and forasmuch as leather well tann’d and curryed may by the negligence, deceit or evill workmanship of the cordwainer or shoemaker be used deceitfully to the hurt of the occupier or wearer thereof.”

These phrases (and similar phrases in other laws both colonial and English) make evident that shoddy materials and slipshod workmanship issued from the shop of many a craftsman of the eighteenth century. A recognition of this will help balance the romantic tendency to see every old-time craftsman as a humble artistic genius with impeccably high standards of workmanship.

_THE DIFFICULTY OF MAKING A LIVING_

For all its great length and detail, the act of 1691 seems not to have had much effect. Governor Edmund Andros in 1697 asserted, “There are no manufactures setled in Virginia Except Inconsiderable tanning and shoemaking (bad Leather).” And in 1705 Robert Beverley wrote of the Virginians:

They have their Cloathing of all sorts from _England_, as Linnen,
Woollen, Silk, Hats, and Leather.... The very Furrs that their Hats
are made of, perhaps go first from thence; and most of their Hides lie
and rot, or are made use of, only for covering dry Goods, in a leaky
House. Indeed some few Hides with much Adoe are tann’d, and made into
Servents Shoes; but at so careless a rate, that the Planters don’t
care to buy them, if they can get others, and sometimes perhaps a
better manager than ordinary will vouchsafe to make a pair of Breeches
of a Deer-Skin.

Nearly a half-century later, as Williamsburg’s era of greatest affluence began, a merchant of Louisa County, Francis Jerdone by name, lamented that “the Virginians have most of their shoemakers in their own families, and have no occasion for any but stuff [i.e., cloth] shoes from Britain.” He referred to members of the well-to-do planter class, who customarily maintained on their plantations one or more skilled workmen. Among these there was almost sure to be included a cordwainer to make and repair the footwear of the plantation “family,” a term that included the slaves. The shoemaker might be a slave himself, or an indentured servant, or a journeyman receiving wages.

However, Francis Jerdone could just as well have been writing of another kind of Virginia planter, the small farmer who built his own house and barns, made his own crude furniture, coopered his own hogsheads, ground his own corn, sheared his own sheep, and made the family’s shoes while his wife spun and wove their clothing. These small farmers, far outnumbering the great planters, would not have ordered cloth shoes from London, to be sure. But neither would they have ordered very many leather ones, either from England or from Williamsburg shoemakers.

Documentary records—fairly full in a few cases, fleeting in most—name 24 men who worked in leather in Williamsburg during the eighteenth century. The ghostly existence of others can be discerned in references to unnamed indentured servants, journeymen, slaves, and a few apprentices who were leatherworkers. Among Williamsburg slaves having some craft skills, the second greatest number were shoemakers, the greatest number being carpenters.

A few of these Williamsburg leatherworkers seem to have done fairly well at their trade. Most of the others probably had little success and moved elsewhere or into farming; at any rate they left no trace of a continuing career.

_THE ROBERT GILBERT STORY_

Eleven advertisements placed in Williamsburg’s weekly newspaper, the _Virginia Gazette_, from 1768 to 1783, remain the sole evidence of the business venture of Robert Gilbert, boot and shoemaker. The story they tell reveals the hazards faced by most craftsmen in eighteenth-century Williamsburg: debts piling up, excess stock on hand, shortage of capable and reliable help, and a market that dried up when the capital moved to Richmond in 1780.

ROBERT GILBERT, BOOT and SHOEMAKER, &c. HEREBY acquaints the publick
that he has opened shop near the Capitol in _Williamsburg_, where he
intends carrying on his business in all its branches, _viz._ shoe or
channel, calf or buckskin boots, jockey do. and splatterdashes, mens
plain, stitched, spring, and wood-heeled, shoes and pumps, calf or
dogskin; campaign, single, double, or turned channels, slippers, blue
or red turkey, cork soles, galloches; womens leather, stuff, silk, and
braided shoes and pumps, slippers, cork soles, galloches, and clogs.
As he imports the whole of his materials from _Great Britain_, where
punctual payments are required, he proposes supplying Ladies and
Gentlemen with any of the above articles on the most reasonable terms,
for ready money. Those who please to favour him with their custom may
depend on their work being speedily executed, in the genteelest and
newest fashions, and in such a manner as he hopes will merit a
continuance of their favours.

(_Virginia Gazette_, June 30, 1768)

JOURNEYMEN SHOEMAKERS, who are well acquainted with womens or mens
wood heeled work, will meet with good encouragement by applying to the
subscriber in Williamsburg.
ROBERT GILBERT

⁂ He has a large quantity of fine _English_ CALF SKINS on hand, _part_
of which he would dispose of, on very reasonable terms, for ready
money.

(_Virginia Gazette_, May 25, 1769)

WILLIAMSBURG, _Dec._ 6, 1770