Transcripts For CSPAN3 Colonial Williamsburg Blacksmith Shop

We talked to tim schwartz about the role of the blacksmith in the colonial era. We will also learn about James Anderson who owned a Blacksmith Shop and public armory in williamsburg during the 1770s. Mr. Schwartz i am the master blacksmith at the anderson Blacksmith Shop, part of Colonial Williamsburgs historic trade program. In Colonial Williamsburg we have , preserved a number of trades from the 18th century. We have 20 trades practiced in the historic area. I run the Blacksmith Shop. We work with iron and steel. Those are Raw Materials that are made into finished products such as construction hardware tools, household accessories, agricultural implements. Parts for wagons and carriages. Here at the armory, we expand into even more work. I will touch on that in a moment. As part of historic trades, our mission is to retreat the Work Environment and the activities you would find in the sorts of workshops in colonial america. That involves hand work. There is no machine process here. It also involves the study of early documentary evidence to teach us about the history of these trades and the technologies that were practiced. The Research Also tells us about the operation of these businesses. Who worked there, what source of sorts of work they were doing, and how they were paid. We also rely on input from archaeologists who have studied remains within the ground that help us to define the outline of footprints of a building. Architectural historians who help to understand common chesapeake construction so we can recreate the building in three dimensions. We are responsible for operating the buildings and bringing them to life. As part of our work, we are producing iron and steel goods used within the historic area. We provide the parts to put together a building. We provide tools for the hands of other workmen in town. We help to construct the wagons and carriages used within the historic area. And all the time we are open to the public. Guests come into the building and they are able to watch what we do and interact with the tradesmen while we produce these things. This site was operated by James Anderson. Anderson was born in virginia about 1740. Probably trained by one of his uncles who was a blacksmith here in town. He comes to williamsburg in the 1760s, shortly after finishing an apprenticeship. He established the workshop here as a blacksmith. On the adjoining lot and operated that successfully. Ew in theccess grou community, it is typical for a government to appoint a blacksmith or a gunsmith to serve in the role as an armorer. Their responsibility is to maintain the government owned weapons kept in the powder magazine about a block from here. In peace time that is not an , overwhelming task. But it is a task that goes to somebody who has had commercial success in operating a business, that has conducted their affairs in the community in a socially acceptable way, and that has the political and social connections to warrant a political patronage appointment, because that is really what it is. The government does not advertise. The government selects from the community the person they want in that role. The armorer is essentially oncall. He received a stipend to cover his expenses of being on call. If he is involved in repair or cleaning of weapons, he charges for that. Also, the government relies on the armorer for maintenance work. Anderson made duplicate keys for the capital building. He did repairs for architecture architectural features at the governors palace. He was responsible for shackling and an shackling prisoners at the jail. He was responsible for winding the clock in the capital building. It comes with these additional responsibilities that allowed them to charge on top of the stipend he gets every year. When the war began, suddenly this becomes a key position. Anderson takes on the same role for the state of virginia. I guess one interesting element about the American Revolution is that it is not really an overthrow of the local authority. It is separation from an empire. James anderson switched from serving the colony of virginia to the state of virginia. I think it is a simple switch. He is working for the same people. It is largely a switch in title or perhaps political philosophy in this new independent nation. But as the armorer, his demands increase. The weapons are getting used and exposed to the weather. Broken in combat. They have to be shipped back here. As the demand increased, the number of workmen had to be enlarged to keep up with the demand. And ultimately a larger facility had to be built at the expense of the state in order to accommodate the additional workmen. In 1775, the workshop employed five workmen. Employed 40it workmen. You get the sense that as demand increases, you employ more hands. During the British Occupation , the site had been built up as the public armory. It was funded by the state of virginia. The armory is a public building the same way the governors building the capitol or the magazine is a public building. It was funded by the state and the output of the workshop was to the benefit of the state. When the british occupied williamsburg, the capital had already been relocated to richmond. Government was the primary customer of James Anderson he moved to richmond as , well. This site had been abandoned of the structures were still here when the British Occupation occurred. Part of military tactics includes disrupting your enemys operations. The public buildings that were part of the war effort were destroyed by the british. The barracks on the north end of town was burned to the ground. The armory here did not get burned because it is right in the middle of the urban center. But i think the british tour down the forges to make a shop in operable. That may have broken out windows and doors and things like that to disrupt the operation. After the war when James Anderson returned, he had but a significant investment into getting the shop back up and running. In the 1780s and 1790s it became a vibrant workshop again. The british did not tear down the building completely. Most tradesmen are working. Your workday is kind of defined by the available daylight here. Summertime you have more sunlight than in the wintertime. You have no cheap artificial light. The sun comes up, you are able to work. When the sun sets, you have to stop what you are doing. Be 1214ne, it could hour workday. In the wintertime, you might only have 810 hours of decent light. It is harder to produce a living in the wintertime them in the summer. The daily routine that begin with opening up the shop. For us that means starting a fire every morning. We heat our iron with a coalfired forge. Bringing in coal, splitting of up kindling, starting a small wood fire and then adding the coal to that in order to build up the heat and the temperatures we need to work with the material. Throughout the day it is the physical work of heating up iron and hammering it into useful shapes. We start with bars of iron. Those are materials we purchase from somebody who is in the business of refining iron or and making iron bars. Our role is to convert his iron bars into useful shapes that consumers here in the town or soldiers in the field need to get their work done. On the armory site in order to keep the workman focused on their work, there was a cook employed who pooled military rations and prepared meals so that at a certain hour, a bell and the wrong rung workmen would take a break for a meal in early afternoon and again late in the evening. Meantime you are working, creating the shapes under the hammer. We do finishing and assembly polishing work with a file and a vice. It would have been a lively workshop. You can imagine the noise, the heat, people hammering, filing, doing the woodwork to restock the weapons. There was work produced for cavalry, things like bits and spurs and stirrups. Horses were being shoed as part of the work. A Great Variety of work. Also on the site during the revolution, we have a great cultural mix. We know among the workforce at the time period, there were free white s and soldiers employed in the shop. There were also enslaved africanamericans that were part of the workforce. There were some scots highlands prisoners of war put to work in the shop. There were also 10 french gunsmiths here under a secret contract that the french had with congress to help the United States in building the armory. Within this site, you begin to see the cultural mix the United States is known for all coming together with the same goal of seeing the soldiers in the field were outfitted. As you enter the site here, you pass by a house that was owned by James Anderson. He did not live in this house. He had a second house as a residence. This house he used to house some of his workmen. Part of employment in the time period included pay but also room and board was provided to workmen. When the site was employing 40 workmen, i think the logical place to put them was in this second house he had. They were probably not luxurious quarters. It was not that each workmen got a house or room in a house or even a bed in a room. I think they were sharing the beds. You may have found a room with half a dozen workmen in it sharing both living and sleeping space. Their meals were prepared by a cook and were pooled. There were mealtimes. As you pass the house, you are faced with a facade of three buildings that all related to the operation here. On the far right is a tin shop. Ing was added to the mix during the revolution to provide soldiers with plates, cups, saucers, coffee pots and containers like shot canisters, cartridge box, tubes, speaking trumpets. Equipment like that. The Center Building is the armory building, the Blacksmith Shop. To the left of the armory building is a kitchen. The kitchen and the tin shop were both buildings that preexisted the armory. The armory was built in between them to create this facade. As you go around onto the property, you come to the main entrance of the armory, the Blacksmith Shop. To the south of the Blacksmith Shop, there is another workshop used by those working on clothing or restocking muskets any number of activities related , to weapons maintenance and care of the workmen. There are also a couple of storage buildings. The entire site was fenced for security. There is a sentry box up front because sentries were posted here. Everybody knew as the government contractor, that the site would be a target of british interests. Posting sentries was a way to keep an eye on the building. We think there may have also been guard dogs on the property. One interesting thing that came up in the archaeology were a number of burials of dogs on the site. They presumably could have been guard dogs within the fenced compound. A blacksmith really is a service industry. We dont have a product line. We dont have a show room. You dont come to a blacksmith to shop for things. Typically you come to a shop with the need. You have looked elsewhere for a piece of hardware or a tool and the stores dont carry that. You come to us and we can custom make objects like that. We are involved in the service end of the work, the Custom Manufacturing and repair. Typically, once you own something made out of iron and steel, if it breaks it will be cheaper to fix it. If it is wearing out, it will be cheaper to fix it than to replace it. That is where we come in. It is all workshop. And it is a service industry. Meeting the service of custom manufacture and repair. The work of a blacksmith can vary depending a little bit on your location. This shop being in the center of an urban community, there are a lot of household goods, fireplace equipment, cooking tools, lighting devices. There are tools used in workshops. If you visit any other workshop, you will see that all the other workers in the Community Use iron and steel tools to get the work done. We are involved in production and maintenance of those. Throughout virginia, the biggest industry is farming. There are more farmers than any other kind of workers in the region. Farm implements are part of the work even in an urban setting like this. There is work to be done on wheeled vehicles, carts, wagons, carriages. There is work you see some shots special as an in horseshoe ing or firearms. There were cutlers in the town that worked on sharp tools. We combine a lot of those activities on our site today. It is far ranging. Just about anything made out of iron or steel might have come into the shop. The last job we know James Anderson undertook according to his surviving accounts was he repaired an umbrella for somebody in the community. Even those sorts of activities were going on. I think our sites in williamsburg have some important things to offer a modern audience. One of the most important things is the fact that we are preserving these hand skills. This sort of handwork is something that is rarely experienced in modern life. At one point, simple hand tool use was something that was taught to almost every school kid. The thought being that if you knew how to use a hammer, a saw, a chisel, a screwdriver, you could do maintenance on your own automobile or house or lawnmower. But that is being lost. Schools really dont teach hand skills any longer. For a lot of young people, this is an environment where you can immerse yourself in this sort of hand tool technology. In the present day, there is also a shift in interest with a whole generation that has been raised in the digital world, there is kind of a response to that. Looking for this sort of handwork, real production work. You see it in the present day what is termed the makers movement. This idea of artisan foods, artisan trades work, artisan clothing, that is all coming back. And Colonial Williamsburg is at the forefront of that. Also, i hope our guests leave here with an understanding that these sorts of industries, handwork and modern Industrial Production is an important part of american success. I think it was best summed up by Richard Henry lee, who was writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1776 when he said, let us have small arms, cannon, and industry, and we will be secure. It is in vain to have a Good Government and good laws if you are subject to the sword without a means of resisting. And i think that is a lesson for today in the 21st century. If we do not maintain a home industry and we dont maintain the ability to supply our own needs, then it makes the country vulnerable. In the revolutionary war period, this was our government, the armory site was our governments response to that need for security. Colonial williamsburg is the only really surviving 18th Century Capital city of the colonial period. We were fortunate in a sense that the geographic location of williamsburg made it difficult to develop largescale industry. We are not on the water or at the falls of a river, so williamsburg was never a port city. Williamsburg was never a huge industrial center. The armory was one of the Larger Industries found in the city. The importance of this city was that it was the seat of government. The other importance are the ideals defined here, the ideals that defined american liberty and american independence. The museum seeks to preserve that along with this environment. The museum offers not only political ideals but architectural splendor. You can see some of the best colonial architecture of the chesapeake preserved here. You have all of these variety of trades that bring the town to life. You have the original town plan, the city of williamsburg was laid out in 1699 and the streets are largely unchanged. It is a great place to visit the past, to touch the past, to understand how the past influences the present, to enjoy the architecture and this wonder the splendor of the georgian period. And to experience these hand trades firsthand. You can watch this and other programs by visiting our website at cspan. Org history. Long, American History tv is joining our Charter Communications Cable Partners to showcase the history of worcester, massachusetts. To learn more about the citys, visit cspan. Org. We continue now with our look at the history of worcester. Ms. Gagne Mechanics Hall was built in 1857 by the Worcester County Mechanics Association which continues to own and operate it today. It was formed in 1842 as an Educational Organization reminiscent of similar organizations that were in europe with the burgeoning of the industrial revolution. The europeans, primarily in britain, established Mechanics Associations to teach skilled labor. The term mechanic means someone who works with their hands. To be a member of the association, you had to be recommended by someone or some sort of authority. You had to be morally upright. You had to be a hard worker. You had to be industrious and to reflect the characteristics that the mechanics believed would bring this community and the country into the future. They built Mechanics Hall to inspire and to be the trade show of the industry of worcester. Its a remarkable building. We opened in 1857, everything in it was American Made which was pretty astounding because prior to that time, many skilled laborers had to be brought from europe. It was built to be a showpiece of what worcester industry could create. The cost of the building was 168,000 and the community was really abashed they would spend so much money on a