In 1860, the federal census says that
Charles and Jane Aikens live in Enfield, New Hampshire, with Elijah
and Indiannah Shattuck. Charles is 27 years old and Jane is 21.
Charles' occupation is listed as blacksmith, and Elijah Shattuck is
listed as a “home maker”. I believe this is actually a builder
of homes, and not a housewife. The man above Elijah on the census is
also listed as a “homemaker”. I did a little further research on
Elijah Shattuck and on any other census, he is listed as a
wheelwright. My guess is that Charles was apprenticed to Elijah
Shattuck, either formally or informally, to learn the blacksmith
trade. It's more likely that he was an assistant to Elijah rather
than truly an apprentice, because I don't think apprentices were
married.
At the time of their marriage in 1857,
Jane was 16 and Charles was 24. They were married in Royalton. When
Charles enlisted in the Union Army, he and Jane had been married for
5 years. Although he was listed as living in Enfield, New Hampshire
in 1860, at the time of his first enlistment, in 1862, he was
credited to the town of Barnard, Vermont. After the war, he returned
to Barnard and was a blacksmith there until he became old.
When I found that Charles Aikens was a
blacksmith, I knew I should do some research on blacksmithing, which
I knew nothing about. I knew blacksmiths used fire, worked in a
shop, and pounded metal on anvils. I vaguely knew what an anvil was
because it was what Wile E Coyote threw out of windows to squash the
Roadrunner, on Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid. I knew
that the post Civil War era was one of huge changes in the life of a
blacksmith.
One thing that didn't change much over
the course of centuries was the blacksmith shop itself. The
blacksmith shop was a building that was about the size of a large
garage. The central feature of the shop was the forge. The forge was
an elevated brick platform, a hearth, really, that was covered by a
metal hood that opened into the chimney. This was where the fire pit
was. The blacksmith controlled the fire by adding fuel or letting
the fire burn down, by adding air, or by arranging the fuel into
different shapes, to create a long, thin area of fire or a more
square area of fire.
There was a metal pipe that entered
the fire pit at the bottom of the forge. This pipe was called a
tuyere. A bellows forced air into the pipe. The bellows (pictured at right) was a huge
pleated leather bag with a nozzle at one end. When the handle of the
bellows was pumped, the bellows pushed air through the tuyere into
the fire pit, making the fire hotter.
When the fire in the forge was the
appropriate temperature, the blacksmith heated a piece of wrought
iron to a blood red heat, then smoothed it into the shape he wanted
by setting it on the anvil and hammering it. If he heated it to a
white heat, he could shape it over the anvil's horn, thin it (draw
it) or thicken it (upset it). At the highest heat, a sparkling
welding heat of 2400ยบ, he could
weld two pieces of iron together, or add a piece of steel onto the
iron, to make a cutting edge for a tool. Later in the 19th
century, blacksmiths worked more and more with steel, as it became
more available and iron was less available. Charles Aikens probably
worked with both iron and steel.
Anvils
were the “work table” of the blacksmith. They were usually made
out of cast iron and mounted on a block of hardwood. Anvils could be
plain or elaborate. Some had holes to hold different tools, and some
had a built-in nail header. The blacksmith had a collection of hand
tools, the most important being hammers, tongs, punches and files,
most of which he made himself.
A blacksmith's anvil
Tubs
of water and various other solutions were used throughout the
smithing process. Rapidly cooling the hot metal made it really hard.
Then when the smith reheated it to just the right temperature, it
wouldn't be so hard that it was brittle, and would be a tough,
long-lasting tool. Blacksmiths used water for cooling the hot metal
items they made, but for tempering they used various solutions,
including milk and water, sealing wax, water and ice, salt water,
mercury, and oils like linseed, neatsfoot, flaxseed, fish oil,
tallow, lard or sperm oil. They also used chemical solutions made of
various recipes of water, saltpeter, citric acid, and alum.
In
the 18th
century, nails were made by blacksmiths. Often a beginning
blacksmith's apprentice would start learning the trade by making
nails. To make a nail, the blacksmith would heat a square iron rod,
and then hammer all four sides to a make a pointed end, then reheat
the pointed rod and cut it off.
Then he would insert the hot nail
into a hole in a nail header (pictured at left) or an anvil with a nail header and
hammer it a few times to form a head. By the early 1800's,
blacksmiths who specialized in making nails were developing machines
to make nails, and by the early 20th
century, nails were made of steel rather than iron and were all mass
produced.
The
Gazetteer and Business Directory of Windsor County Vermont 1883-1884
lists Charles Aikens as a general blacksmith. A general blacksmith
made metal into whatever their customers wanted. Charles could have
made plows, harrows, shovels, axes, hoes, scissors, skate blades,
water pumps, hinges, carpenter's tools, knives, scythes, sickles,
skewers, tongs, various types of chains, parts for wagons, and
household items like spoons, ladles and spatulas. By the 1870's, most
blacksmiths were no longer making either nails or horseshoes, which
were mass produced They did put horseshoes on horses, and make custom
horseshoes for horses with defective hooves or orthopedic problems,
tasks that would eventually become part of a farrier's job. If
Charles had a specialty, it was probably as a wheelwright, since he
had worked for a man who called himself a wheelwright rather than a
blacksmith. Jeanette Lasansky, in her book To
Draw, Upset and Weld,
says that, “The last specialties maintained within a general
smith's repertoire were wheelwrighting and horseshoeing.”
In
the 18th
century, young men who wanted to become blacksmiths were apprenticed
to an experienced blacksmith with a good reputation. Most
experienced blacksmiths who had prosperous businesses had at least
one apprentice. After the Civil War, apprenticeships weren't as
common. However, in 1880, when Charles was 48, the census lists an
apprentice, 22 year old Frank Adams, as part of the Aikens household.
It's impossible not to wonder
about Charles and the changing role of the blacksmith in the rural
economy of post Civil War Vermont. Did he have enough work to earn a
living, or was increased mass production of nails, horseshoes and
household and craft tools causing a slackening of business? There
are several reasons to believe that he had enough business. First of
all, the fact that he had an apprentice as late as 1880 leads one to
believe that he had enough work to keep two people busy, and a good
enough reputation to interest a young man in learning the trade with
him.
The 1883 Windsor County Business
Directory lists a dealer in hardware, iron and steel, and
agricultural implements; and a dealer in agricultural implements in
Andover. I believe these were the new mass produced items that
Charles would have been making in his blacksmith shop. Andover also
had a blacksmith. Barnard had two blacksmiths, including Charles, and
a man who was listed as a blacksmith, carriage repairer and farmer.
Bethel had a man who was listed as a blacksmith, dealer in hard and
soft wood, and farmer; a hardware dealer, a steelworker, a blacksmith
who specialized in horseshoeing, a general blacksmith and horseshoer,
and a blacksmith. Many of the businessmen listed had several types of
businesses at once. Even the farmers were often listed as sugar
makers, and having apple orchards as well as dairy cows and/or sheep.
The fact that Charles was listed as just a blacksmith tells us that
his business was good enough to support a family without a side job
or another type of business. On the other hand, there was a full page
ad in the directory for Robbins and Marsh of Chester Depot, selling
Hardware, Iron and Steel, Carriage Trimmings, Cutlery, Carpenter's
Tools, and Barbed Steel Ribbon Fencing. Although Charles had enough work to make a living as a blacksmith, certainly the new hardware stores would take some of his customers.
A picture of the Aikens blacksmith shop, taken from the book
"Barnard, A Look Back" published by the Barnard Historical
Society in 1982. The shop is the building to the left of the big
oak tree.
Blacksmiths were constantly
working in metal, fixing old tools and fabricating new ones, often
inventing new implements to fulfill a certain need for a customer.
The blacksmith shop retains a special place in the American psyche,
as Lasansky says, “A place where the fire roared, the sparks flew,
and the smith seemed almost god-like as he made hard iron become
pliable and respond to his direction by using his eye, mind and hand
in a series of controlled steps. It was where tools for businesses,
homes and farms were forged, even occasional weapons, and where many
means of transportation were both made and repaired.”
Blacksmiths
entered American culture in other ways. Not only was John Deere a
blacksmith, he was a blacksmith from Vermont, from Rutland, who went
out west and invented the steel plow, and started the John Deere
company we all know today. John Froelich, a blacksmith from Iowa,
invented the tractor. The term “too many irons in the fire”
refers to someone who has so much going on he can't tend to it all,
like a blacksmith who has too many irons in the fire, and can't
properly work with them all.
One thing I wondered is whether
Frank Adams, Charles' apprentice in 1880, stayed with the blacksmith
profession, in view of the increase in mass produced metal tools. In
1900, Frank was 41 years old and living in Lebanon. Not only is he
listed as a blacksmith, but there is a 22 year old living with the
Adams family with the last name of Smith. In the census his
relationship to the head of the family is listed as “servant” but
his occupation is listed as “blacksmith”. He is an apprentice.
Unfortunately, Frank died 7 years later, at age 49.
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