Thomas K. Ford

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, central Asians, and Chinese all knew tanned leather and used it. But who first discovered how to tan it, when that happened, and where, must remain forever unanswered, since the invention of tanning came before the invention of written records. Primitive leatherworkers probably stumbled on different processes at different times and places, and quite possibly a number of widely separated workers discovered the same processes independently. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Visitors to restored Williamsburg can identify another operating craft shop by the overhead sign of the “Boot & Shoemaker.” The little building not far from the foot of Palace Green represents the shop of George Wilson & Co. “next Door to Mr. Greenhow’s Store,” and stands on foundations of an eighteenth-century structure. In the absence of documentary or archaeological evidence as to the appearance of George Wilson’s shop or its contents, the architecture and furnishings of the shop follow traditional precedents. ”

“ A working shop that demonstrates shoemaking and the general skills of leatherworking, the shop’s size and contents are typical and authentic. One sees in it numerous boots and shoes in various stages of construction, a full set of lasts, other articles of leather, including belts, mugs, and black jacks, and an assortment of knives, awls, and other leatherworking tools of the eighteenth century. ”

“ Eleven advertisements placed in Williamsburg’s weekly newspaper, the Virginia Gazette, from 1768 to 1783, remain the sole evidence of the business venture of Robert Gilbert, boot and shoemaker. The story they tell reveals the hazards faced by most craftsmen in eighteenth-century Williamsburg: debts piling up, excess stock on hand, shortage of capable and reliable help, and a market that dried up when the capital moved to Richmond in 1780. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leather can be stiff as bone or supple as silk, nearly as waterproof as rubber or capable of sopping up water like a sponge, tough and unyielding or resilient and stretchy, smooth and translucent as paper, deeply grained in many patterns, or softly napped. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like any organic matter, skins and hides will soon begin to decay unless they receive some kind of preservative treatment. They may be simply scraped and sundried—or salted or smoked or soaked in brine or in slaked lime. From some of these processes may come extremely tough and durable products—rawhide, parchment, and vellum are limed—but they are not leather because they have not been tanned. ”

“ 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:
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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. ”

“ Boots (sometimes listed as “ffrench falls”) as well as shoes for men, women, and children were imported from England—and from New England—as well as being made in the colony. Among the London makers, Didsbury & Co. enjoyed first preference for orders sent from Virginia and paid for with shipments of tobacco. The wives and daughters of planters, in particular, preferred to wait six months or a year for the arrival of fashionable shoes from London rather than buy what the local shoemaker offered, or they sometimes patronized the milliner for “stuff” shoes. ”

“ Indeed some few Hides with much Adoe are tann’d, and made into Servents Shoes; but at so careless a rate, that the Planters don’t care to buy them, if they can get others, and sometimes perhaps a better manager than ordinary will vouchsafe to make a pair of Breeches of a Deer-Skin.
Nearly a half-century later, as Williamsburg’s era of greatest affluence began, a merchant of Louisa County, Francis Jerdone by name, lamented that “the Virginians have most of their shoemakers in their own families, and have no occasion for any but stuff [i.e., cloth] shoes from Britain.” ”

“ ROBERT GILBERT, BOOT and SHOEMAKER, &c. HEREBY acquaints the publick that he has opened shop near the Capitol in Williamsburg, where he intends carrying on his business in all its branches, viz. shoe or channel, calf or buckskin boots, jockey do. and splatterdashes, mens plain, stitched, spring, and wood-heeled, shoes and pumps, calf or dogskin; campaign, single, double, or turned channels, slippers, blue or red turkey, cork soles, galloches; womens leather, stuff, silk, and braided shoes and pumps, slippers, cork soles, galloches, and clogs. ”

“ A recognition of this will help balance the romantic tendency to see every old-time craftsman as a humble artistic genius with impeccably high standards of workmanship.
THE DIFFICULTY OF MAKING A LIVING
For all its great length and detail, the act of 1691 seems not to have had much effect. Governor Edmund Andros in 1697 asserted, “There are no manufactures setled in Virginia Except Inconsiderable tanning and shoemaking (bad Leather) .” And in 1705 Robert Beverley wrote of the Virginians:
They have their Cloathing of all sorts from England, as Linnen, Woollen, Silk, Hats, and Leather.... ”

“ William Pearson appeared in Williamsburg in 1760. He worked with Alexander Craig and may have been in partnership with him. Pearson later became owner of Craig’s tannery in Williamsburg, which he operated until his death in 1777.
William Plume—tanner (1777-1783) . William Plume came to Williamsburg from Norfolk in 1777 and leased Pearson’s tannery. He operated the tanyard until 1783 when he returned to Norfolk.
William Quirk—leatherdresser (1745) . William Quirk was either an indentured servant or journeyman who worked with Robert Simpson, leather-breeches maker of Williamsburg. ”