Chapter I: THINK it necessary to give this publick Notice, to all Persons who

are in Arrears to me, that if they do not, without Fail, discharge
their Accounts by the _July_ Meeting of the Merchants, they will most
assuredly be put into a Lawyer’s Hands.

_N.B._ In the mean While, from the many Disappointments I have met
with in collecting my Debts, I am obliged to stop Trade, till I can
receive the Money due to me to carry it on.
ROBERT GILBERT

(_Virginia Gazette_, May 13, 1773)

ROBERT GILBERT, SHOEMAKER, Has opened Shop in the back Street, at the
Place where he formerly lived, opposite to Mr. _Richard Charlton’s_,
and intends carrying on his Business in all its Branches, having on
Hand a very neat Assortment of Leather proper Boots and Shoes. The
many Disapointments he formerly met with obliges him for the future to
sell entirely for Cash.—He returns his sincere Thanks to those who
were his former Customers, and shall endeavour to render Satisfaction
to all those who may please to employ him.

☞ _Good Encouragement will be given to a Journeyman who understands
making of Boots._

(_Virginia Gazette_, January 7, 1775)

WILLIAMSBURG, _October_ 10, 1776

GOOD encouragement will be given to journeymen shoemakers, especially
those who understand making of BOOTS by
ROBERT GILBERT.

(_Virginia Gazette_, October 11, 1776)

WILLIAMSBURG, January 3, 1782

Best English made SHOES, To be SOLD, by wholesale or retail, on
reasonable terms, by
ROBERT GILBERT.

(_Virginia Gazette or Weekly Advertiser_ (Richmond), January 5, 1782)

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.

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.”

When Pearson died in 1777, his estate included “four Negro men Tanners and Curriers, two shoemakers” and three other slaves, indicating that the late master tanner operated a considerable business. The tanyard continued in the possession of Pearson’s widow and descendants for nearly sixty years, being operated at least part of the time by William Plume, tanner and currier from Norfolk.

It is hardly a secret that the processes of tanning and currying infuse the surrounding air with a symphony of odors—a circumstance that helps to explain why a tannery was generally located on the far edge of a town, and usually on the downwind side. As if hides and skins were themselves not fragrant enough, eighteenth-century tanners, curriers, and leather dressers made use at various stages or for special purposes of such delectable commodities as fish oil, sour beer, urine, barley mash, and the fermented dung of chickens, pigeons, and dogs.

Sketchily described, the procedures employed by the tanner and currier (separate crafts in England but often combined under one roof or in the same man in colonial America) were as follows:

1) Preparing the pelt included the removal of accumulated dirt and stable trash, removal of the hair and epidermis from the outer or grain side (except for furs), removal of shreds of flesh and adipose tissue from the inner side, and plumping up of the fibers of the remaining middle layer, or corium, to be more receptive to the tanning solution. The tanner accomplished all this by repeated washings, followed by a sequence of soaking in solutions of lime, and then by draining, and scraping. The scraping process, known as unhairing and fleshing, he did laboriously with a blunted knife, the pelt being stretched over a wooden horse or beam. He might repeat the liming, draining, and scraping if necessary, and he followed it up with more rinsing and scraping to remove most or all of the lime.

2) Tanning proper involved soaking the hide or skin in a series of tanning vats, each containing a stronger solution—called “ooze”—than the one before. Careful and complete tanning, a slow process, required from several weeks for a light skin to eighteen months for a heavy hide. During this period the hides or skins were many times “hauled and set,” that is, removed from the vat and piled beside it to drain for a time. The same sort of processing took place in tawing, except that alum rather than oak bark supplied the tanning agent.

3) Finishing included trimming, currying, and coloring (if called for) in whatever combination of processes was needed for the intended use of the finished leather. Readers with uneasy stomachs should be satisfied if some of these processes are here left undescribed, only named, to wit: trampling, scouring, blooming, slicking, stricking, shaving, stuffing, dubbing, boarding, graining, bruising, staking, waxing, blacking, sizing.

Altogether, William Pearson might have subjected a hide to as many as two hundred separate steps (repetitions included in the count) in its passage from the animal’s back until delivery as finished leather to a shoemaker, saddler, bookbinder, or other leather using craftsman. The total time consumed would have been anything from a few months for a lambskin, for example, to more than two years for a thick ox hide.

_ALEXANDER CRAIG, SADDLER AND HARNESSMAKER_

A craftsman who had financial resources large enough to buy a lot in Williamsburg and build a shop on it would seem to have been in business already at another location. Such may have been the case when Alexander Craig, just before midcentury, acquired a lot on the road out of Williamsburg to Yorktown—not far from where the tanyard would soon thereafter be established.

A saddler and harnessmaker, Craig was the town’s most successful leather craftsman, possibly its most successful craftsman in any line. He acquired a number of properties in and near the colonial capital city over the years from 1749 until his death in 1776. Among them were the tanyard and two choice lots on the main street near the Capitol. One of the latter may have become his shop location, and the other did become his residence. His eldest daughter, Judith, married John Minson Galt, the promising young physician and apothecary.

Two of Alexander Craig’s account books survive. They reveal that he carried on a thriving trade, kept several indentured servants and slaves, and employed at least three journeymen leatherworkers—although not all of these at the same time. He bought and sold skins and hides, did tanning and currying for himself and for others, purveyed leather to other craftsmen, made and sometimes mended shoes, and sold shoes that had been made in his own shop, imported from London, or possibly made in other colonial shops. A wide variety of other leather goods issued from his shop, including cushions for couches, for chairs, and even for billiard tables, sword belts, gun buckets, leather pipes for a fire engine, razor cases, cartridge boxes, trusses, and once a “strong Coller for a Bear.”

But the making and mending of horse furniture—saddles, bridles, and harness—was Craig’s specialty. In a colony where everyone rode constantly, saddlery was a vital craft. And where horses, oxen, and human beings hauled, lifted, and carried every burden, harnessmaking was no less important.

The account books show that Alexander Craig valued his labor and sold his products at a good price. He charged Humphrey Hill £7 for “a Harness for a Shaft Chair” and Thomas Atkinson £5 for “a Harness for a Single Horse.” He billed Colonel William Byrd III £25 for harness for six coach horses, and Colonel Benjamin Harrison £16 to make harness for “four Charriot Horses.” For making a side saddle with cover and studded trappings for Robert Hutchins, a tailor of the town of Blandford some 40 miles away, Craig charged £6, 10 shillings.

Some idea, albeit only an approximate one, of the purchasing power of those sums may be gained by comparing them with prices for house furnishings at about the same time. Colonel Robert Carter of Nomini Hall, for instance, bought eight mahogany dining chairs, upholstered and trimmed with brass nails, for £16 from Williamsburg cabinetmaker Benjamin Bucktrout. Four “Elbow Chares” bought at the same time cost him £11. A desk and bookcase—now called a secretary—brought £16.

_THE SADDLE AND HARNESS SHOP_

Elkanah Deane, carriagemaker of New York, removed his business from that city to the little metropolis of Williamsburg shortly before the Revolution. Both in New York and in the capital of the Virginia colony he enjoyed the patronage of His Lordship Governor Dunmore. Deane’s house in Williamsburg looked out upon the same green as did the Governor’s Palace, along with the mansions of the wealthy Robert Carter and the learned George Wythe.

This was heady company for “an Hibernian Cottager,” as one rival coachmaker called him, and perhaps Deane deserved the label of “Palace Street puffer” conferred on him by the same fellow citizen. Be that as it may, the carriagemaker advertised that he also made, repaired, and sold harness, although the actual work was probably done by another craftsman in his shop.

Perhaps this was Edward Roberts, who gave notice in 1775 that he “continues to carry on the business of Saddling, Cap and Harness making, at the late Mr. Elkanah Deane’s shop.” The shop, it is to be presumed, was primarily devoted to the varied specialties that were needed in the manufacture of wheeled vehicles, of which blacksmithing was one of the more vital. Deane’s forge, to the rear of his property, is a favorite attraction in restored Williamsburg, especially for children.

Adjoining the forge, the saddlery and harnessmaking shop of two hundred years ago has again resumed operation. There the visitor may see examples of saddle and harness work done in the eighteenth-century manner with tools and equipment resembling those shown in the great eighteenth-century illustrated encyclopedia of Denis Diderot.

The basic operations in the making of harness were only two: cutting the hides into appropriate strips and shapes, and stitching the pieces together as needed. Simple as it sounds, skillful choice of the leathers, flawless cutting, and thorough stitching made the difference between good harness and poor. Finish and ornamentation, although not essential to the task of attaching a draft animal securely to its load, made the product distinctive and handsome, and no doubt gave the craftsman more pleasure in the making.

The harnessmaker’s knife had a semicircular or half-moon shape to its blade, with the handle sometimes at right angles to the back of the blade and sometimes with a right-angled tang that put the handle parallel to the back of the blade. For sewing he possessed an assortment of punches and awls and a very important holding device called a “clam.” This last was a hinged wooden clamp with jaws somewhat resembling the shell of a clam. Holding it between his crossed thighs, the harnessmaker used it to hold fast the straps he was sewing, thus freeing both of his hands for the tough job of stitching through heavy leather.

In most essentials, and indeed in most details, the harness of the eighteenth century looked like and functioned like that of today—or of the not-so-distant yesterday before the motorization of everything on wheels. Saddles, at least some of them, were slightly different in shape and detail from the present-day English riding saddle. For their making, as well as for the making of collars, the saddler-harnessmaker needed a variety of tools to pack and shape the stuffing of pads. By and large, however, the result would seem to have been less comfortable to both horse and rider than the modern saddle.

_GEORGE WILSON, BOOT AND SHOEMAKER_

George Wilson came originally from Norfolk, where his older brother—or perhaps it was his uncle—John Wilson, did boot and shoemaking on a large scale. In May 1771 the _Virginia Gazette_ of Williamsburg carried this advertisement: