Blacksmiths.Breckinridge.HISTORY-OtherFrom: KyArchives [Archives@genrecords.org]
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Subject: Blacksmiths.Breckinridge.HISTORY-Other


Blacksmiths  
Breckinridge County KyArchives History Other 
Book Title: A Glimpse Of The Past 
If there were any indispensable men in the early development of Kentucky or any 
other pioneer settlements, the blacksmith should be at the top of the list.  
His vocation and skills were the backbone of every community.  A blacksmith 
shop could be found in every community, and he and his services were in greater 
demand than doctors and ministers, who administered to the health and souls of 
man.  He kept the wheels of progress turning that were necessary for the 
existence of every family, regardless of their health and spiritual condition. 
With little education, but strong muscles and knowledge handed down by past 
generations or gained by personal experience and ingenuity, made him and his 
services the most important contribution to any community.  With hammer, anvil, 
vise, forge and slack tab, he manufactured or serviced every hoe, wagons, plow, 
harvest tool and shod every work animal used by our forefathers.  He was handy 
at all jobs where skill and craftsmanship were in demand.  He could take either 
iron or steel, heat it in a forge and temper it to any degree desired, with 
nothing but his eyes to guide him. 
The skills and tools needed to do blacksmithing were not peculiar to the 
pioneer farmer.  The iron of the day was cut and wroght by charcoal fire and 
water driven hammers, was sold in long bars of a thickness suitable to the 
making of ten-penny nails.  The farmer who wished to save a blacksmith bill, 
would some times use the fireplace as a forge and a block of wood covered with 
a thick piece of iron as an anvil, cut his nails in the evening with chisel and 
hammer.  Most farmers had to have at least enough iron for horse and ox shoe 
nails. 
The well to do farmer was more inclined to have his own blacksmith shop with 
anvil and small forge.  He could make nails, sharpen plow points, mend wagon 
tires and remedy the many accidents common to the ironware of that day, for 
much of it was badly skill and tools to shape a horseshoe and put it on or to 
make a grubbing hoe. 
The blacksmith bellows, vise, three hammers, a sledge, a shoeing hammer, a 
horseshoe punch, a broken sledge, two pair of tongs, two hand vices, seven 
files, a rasp, a wedge, cold chisel and ox-eye punch, all could be carried on 
one pack horse. 
The pioneer blacksmith like generations before him worked best with charcoal.  
One of the first things made around any forted station was some kind of 
charcoal kiln, cunningly laid so that it would burn slowly. 
Blacksmiths were in demand for many hand crafted metal objects that were so 
much a part of everyday life.  Farmers needed plow shares, hoes, bits and 
bridles for their draft horses. 
The housewife, may hve been the best customer of all.  They needed pots, 
skillets, pans and a rack to hang them on.  She also needed hooks and spiders 
to place them in just the spot over the cooking fire, fire dogs to keep the 
logs in the fireplace, a set of pokers and tongs to tend her fire and 
candleholders for the evening hours. 
Around 1900, a few trade schools offered classes in blacksmithing. 
In 1904, the Sears Roebuck Catalog featured for $14.25, a starter set of 12 
blacksmith tools. 
Spongy ground and marshland created a problem for the horses as the horses 
would sometimes get stuck in the mud.  The farmers tended to avoid working the 
marshland.  Then an inventive farmer went to a blacksmith with an idea for a 
wooden shoe which would be solid, flat and wider around than the horses' hoof 
to distribute the animal's weight more evenly.  After much experimentation, the 
blacksmith came up with a wooden shoe that worked.  By the late 1880s, the 
practice of fitting horses with wooden shoes was widespread.  Some were still 
being used in the 1920s. 
Many of the blacksmith's skills and arts have been copied and incorporated in 
the machines and automatic wonders of today.  Time and progress have outgrown 
his need.  Like many other great men and vocations, he and his services have 
been replaced by the machine age, but his ingenuity and accomplishments should 
be engraved in our nations Hall of Fame, along with other great men and 
achievements that succumbed to progress, leaving only memories of the past. 
The old anvil, hammers, forge and other crude gadgets are yet in possession of 
a few relatives.  They are sometimes used in making minor repairs and 
adjustments by the sons of pioneers, who have retained knowledge gained by 
inheritance or experience by watching Grandpa in the days of their youth.  Most 
of the old tools have been thrown away or sold for junk and now are sought and 
bought by antique seekers, who sometimes pay fabulous prices for these rare 
relics. 
Submitted by: Dana Brown 
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00005.html#0001067 



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