Thomas K. Ford

“ Just as the printing office of William Parks and his successors stood on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg two centuries ago, so it stands again today on its original site. Again today it includes a bindery where gentlemen and ladies may bespeak books to be bound or rebound in the most exact manner and the most elegant taste. The master binder assures his patrons that he uses only the best materials and can, if they so wish, decorate a volume with the egg, the Mousetrap, or any other roll or ornament in his stock that pleases their fancy. ”

“ In the letters he wrote to London, Gilmer seems to refer to himself not as a doctor or surgeon, but as an apothecary, and his name in public documents as well as in private records most often appears not as Dr. Gilmer but as Mr. Gilmer. He was doubtless prouder of being known as a gentleman and a colonel; the title of doctor was often held in poor esteem. William Byrd II wrote in 1706 that “here be some men indeed that are call’d Doctors: but they are generally discarded Surgeons of Ships, that know nothing above the very common Remedys.” ”

“ The entire mill, thus, is about as simple a machine as one could devise. The moving parts are few and could be called primitively clumsy in comparison to some of the sleek masterpieces of modern industrial design. The miller can make only three operating adjustments: in the sail area presented to the wind, in the rate of grain fed to the stones, and in the distance between the stones. He has no control over wind speed, cannot shift the gear ratio of the mill—or even shift the stones out of gear—and, finally, cannot determine his own hours of work and rest. ”

“ Not every man who arrived in the colony, or moved to its western reaches and set up shop as a master craftsman, had actually earned the ancient right to employ that title.
But by and large, colonial boys became colonial craftsmen only by completing an arduous apprenticeship period of seven years—more or less. During this time they learned the “art and mysterie” of the craft and gained skill in using its tools. At the age of 21 they became “journeymen” for an additional period until they acquired enough capital to set up in business for themselves. ”

“ A miller caught with his sails up in such a storm might suffer what was known as “tail winding” if the wind veered faster than he could work. In this event he might be lucky to get off with nothing worse than having the sailcloth stripped from the frame.
A hurricane could do more serious damage—and might overturn the whole mill—no matter which way it faced. For the wind was the miller’s master as well as his servant, an evil genius that he feared as well as a heavenly blessing for which he prayed. Without wind the mill stood idle and the miller earned nothing. ”

“ James Craig advertised as a jeweler during his first two decades in Williamsburg. Then when he branched into silver work he asked to be addressed as “Goldsmith in Williamsburg,” and named his shop the “Golden Ball.” James Geddy, Jr., customarily advertised as a “goldsmith,” but this conceit seems not to have impressed the legal profession in Williamsburg. Deeds and documents drawn up by more prosaic hands refer to him twice as “silversmith” and once as “jeweler.”
By combining several vocations, some if not all of the Williamsburg silversmiths seem to have made at least a respectable living. ”

“ THE EDUCATION OF AN APOTHECARY
Apprenticeship was the usual form of training for all 15 colonial occupations, with the possible exception of the ministry at one end of the scale and ordinary farming at the other. Medicine was not an exception; practitioners normally took apprentices for the same reasons that cabinetmakers or blacksmiths did. The beginning apprentice performed the unskilled and some of the semiskilled duties of the establishment, learning as he did so. As he acquired knowledge, he could give the doctor more and more assistance in his practice. ”

“ Currying—whatever it may have meant to Homer (or to Alexander Pope) —is not a method of preparing hides and 6 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. ”

“ If not much is now known about milling within the confines of Williamsburg itself, a great deal can be related of milling in the larger expanse of the Virginia colony. For despite the late start of merchant milling in the tobacco colonies, the grinding of grain for export had become big business by the time of the Revolution. In 1766 Governor Fauquier noted in a report to the Board of Trade (albeit almost as an afterthought) that the Virginians “daily set up mills to grind their wheat into flour for exportation.” ”

“ The contemporary silversmiths at the Geddy Shop and the Golden Ball do not make mourning rings—there is not much call for them these days. They do, however, make and sell a number of other articles of silver of true eighteenth-century design. For obvious reasons their supply of raw material comes from commercial refineries rather than from melted coins or plate. But they cast the silver, forge it, raise, seam, and solder it, and decorate the finished products just as did their predecessors. ”

“ The binding of such a book was likely to be as painstakingly ornate as were its pages, and a few bindings were quite valuable in themselves. Before full leather covers became standard, the boards of some manuscript volumes—especially for a church altar or a royal library—might even be encased in beaten gold or silver and encrusted with enamel and semiprecious stones.
The invention of printing from type, as everyone knows, had extremely far-reaching consequences on the spread of public education and enlightenment. ”

“ Both men’s and women’s shoes, as well as children’s and slaves’ shoes—, were made on straight lasts. That is, shape and construction were the same for left and right shoe, and either one of a pair could be worn on either foot. This situation resulted not from some primitive crudeness or ineptitude on the part of colonial cordwainers, who could and if called upon did make paired left-and-right shoes. Rather, it embodied an aesthetic preference. Symmetrical shoes pleased the eighteenth-century eye more in themselves and left a more pleasing pattern of tracks than did unsymmetrical shoes. ”

“ If the hopper ran empty of grain, the friction of the stones rubbing against one another could generate enough heat for combustion. So could the friction of the brake if it were used continuously in a strong wind. In either event, a building made entirely of wood and open to every breeze burned readily, and more windmills probably fell victim to fire and storm than to old age. Similarly, its height and exposed position made the windmill an attractive target for lightning.
The sail wheel of the Williamsburg mill has a diameter of fifty-two feet—about average for a small post mill of this type. ”

“ Let’s assume that young John Goodkin of Williamsburg, age 13, must be apprenticed out to learn a trade. Apprenticeship will provide the boy with an assured future livelihood, and at the same time relieve his father of the burden of supporting him. The master craftsman who accepts young Johnny as apprentice will not only teach him the trade but also provide him with board, lodging, clothing, and an occasional shilling (but no wages) for the full period of his apprenticeship. He will also teach Johnny, or see that he learns, a smattering of the three R’s. ”

“ Archaeological excavations on the site of the Printing Office have yielded examples of these tools, some for stamping letters and 10 others for impressing the gilded decoration that made the eighteenth-century bookbinder’s products as attractive as they were useful.
Under the eye of microscope and enlarging camera even mass-produced typewriters reveal slight irregularities that are unique to each machine. The brass stamps and rolls used by eighteenth-century binders for working decorations into leather were all made by hand. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Surely human and animal excreta, mashed-up insects, and the like, which were not uncommon in London prescriptions, could not have been more curative than rattlesnake root and ginseng, whose praises were sung by the famous William Byrd II:
The Earth has never produced any vegetable so friendly to man as Ginseng. ”

“ Both were post mills, more or less like the reconstructed windmill of William Robertson in Williamsburg. This is the simplest among several types of wind-operated mills and was the type first adopted in Europe, in England generally, and in the colonies.
Anyone who has read much poetry cannot fail to realize that a watermill is by nature a more romantic machine than a windmill. Poets recognize this as a fact, and perhaps non-poets who have spent some well remembered moments down by the old mill stream will agree. ”

“ A daybook was simply a running record of each day’s transactions of all kinds, more often called a “journal” nowadays. It would certainly have been bound right in the shop, and this daybook bears the impress of a stamp previously identified with Parks’s Annapolis and earliest Williamsburg imprints.
Another daybook of the Williamsburg printing office also survives in original binding. It dates from the time of Hunter’s successor, Joseph Royle, and almost beyond question was also bound in the shop where it was used. ”

“ The oldest son almost automatically followed the father’s trade and inherited his tools and shop, if he had one.
The same custom prevailed in the English colonies, including Virginia, but in modified form. Here the freedom of movement encouraged by the beckoning frontier of opportunity, and especially of cheap land, broke down many social and economic barriers. A man of one class could more easily climb into the class above or aspire to have his son do so. Even the long-standing apprenticeship system suffered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the scarcity of physicians, especially in rural areas, left a medical gap that the apothecaries, trained through apprenticeship and many times more numerous, naturally moved to fill. In 1727 English law finally recognized and legalized the fact that for most people the apothecary-surgeon was the only available practitioner of medicine. In turn, the business of purveying drugs and compounding medicines passed from the apothecaries to the wholesale druggists and pharmaceutical chemists. ”

“ With an indicated seventeen workers, it was doubtless one of the few mass-production factories colonial Virginia could boast.
The ratio of boots to shoes for men—6 to 103 pairs—seems out of line for Virginia where, as one observer wrote, “even the most indigent person has his saddle-horse, which he rides to every place, and on every occasion.” Virginians being “excessively fond of horses,” one would expect them to have worn boots most of the time, and this expectation would seem to be corroborated by Robert Gilbert’s repeated advertisements for the services of a journeyman bootmaker. ”

“ In essence, thus, there are only three techniques of forming silver into an article of desired shape: casting the molten metal in a properly shaped mold; hammering an ingot into the shape desired; and building the desired shape from smaller pieces soldered together. Wire produced on the drawing bench might be one of these smaller elements. Filing is considered to be a finishing rather than a forming process.
These forming and working processes, as they would have been used by an eighteenth-century silversmith, will be described in more detail in a moment. ”

“ Just inside the front wall of the mill the windshaft rests in a metal bearing, and next to it is the large gear wheel, known as the “brake wheel,” that can be seen when one looks up through the trap door from the mill’s little back platform. The platform, incidentally, was not unusual in post mills, although it was often a convenience added after the mill was built and on which the miller could enjoy a pipe and a moment of repose while the mill ground merrily away. ”

“ Very little the binder had done so far would be visible in the finished product. But at this point he could begin to put his artistry on display. Selecting silk thread in two colors to suit his taste, he bound a narrow piece of leather across both the top and bottom of the spine, completely covering them with something like a buttonhole stitch. These “headbands” added little to the strength but much to the appearance of a book. Careful binders said that a book should no more be seen in a library without headbands than a gentleman should appear in public minus a collar. ”

“ Although Virginia was the only colony to set medical fees by law, the practice of legislative price fixing in other areas of the economy was as common in colonial America as it was in England. In Virginia, to be specific, not only prices and quantities but in some cases even qualities of goods and services offered to the public by tavernkeepers, shoemakers, millers, and ferrymen were regulated by law. The economic philosophy and terminology of laissez faire were among the alien isms imported after 1776. ”

“ 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. ”