\nThrough the courtesy of Mr. Edward Burke of Fairfield I have examined an account book kept by a Vassalboro blacksmith nearly 150 years ago. The keeper of the book was John Pope, member of a family that was among the earliest settlers of Vassalboro.<\/p>\n
The record begins in the year 1825, and the first name entered is that of Vassalboro’s prominent landowner, operator of grist and saw mills, builder of the potash kiln farthest north on the Kennebec until 1790, owner of long boats on the river, and a merchant in general goods. That man was Jacob Southwick, who is credited by this blacksmith in 1825 with an order for $6.00. A few days later Pope charged Thomas Estes nine shillings for setting shoes on a yoke of oxen, and five shillings for four steel shoes and two iron ones.<\/p>\n
Pope did other business besides blacksmithing, for on the same day he charged Estes ten dollars for 10 bushels of wheat and $1.67 for five bushels of potatoes. Potatoes were certainly cheap in 1825 – only two shillings or 33 1\/3 cents a bushel. Pope also collected $1.55 for pasturing four oxen and a calf. His bill to Nathaniel Coe was mostly for blacksmith work: fixing a knife paring machine, sharpening a plow, looping a large kettle, steel caulking a horse shoe, and sharpening 18 barrow teeth. However, Coe’s bill did contain one unusual item: schooling children, 75 cents.<\/p>\n
In those days a century and a half ago, very little money changed hands. Coins were scarce, and most people were wary of paper money, then chiefly in the form of bank notes. So Pope was constantly taking goods in credit for his work. One day when he shod two oxen, mended three chairs, shod a horse, and laid two axes for Joseph Taylor, he accepted 2,000 feet of boards and half a pound of tea. The transaction shows that tea was expensive in 1825, costing 53 cents for the ten ounces. That is at the rate of 85 cents a pound. On another occasion Pope accepted from Jacob Southwick 70 pounds of sole leather; from Jeremiah Bragg the wood for two wagons and from Otis Hamlin 108 bushels of coal. Note that coal was then sold by measure, not by weight.<\/p>\n
The old account book is filled with so many words that long ago passed out of use, that explanation has to be made for most people now living to understand them. One charge is for repairing a plowshare cotter. The cotter was a sharp-edged wheel attached to the beam of a plow, used to cut the ground in advance of the plowshare. One day Pope charged 4 shillings for a clevis to a plow. A clevis was a piece of metal, usually shaped like the letter U, with a pin or bolt passing through holes at the two ends, and used to attach an implement to a drawbar for pulling. Another of Pope’s charges was one shilling nine pence for a gripe for a cart tongue. Gripe was a common term for a kind of handle or hilt, often in the form of a claw. It was also sometimes called a grip.<\/p>\n
What was mending a frow? A frow was a cleaving tool with a wedge-shaped blade and a handle inserted at right angles. Likewise obscure today is the term “sharpening a forelock”. A forelock was a wedge of iron passed through a hole in the inner end of a bolt to prevent its loosening under strain.<\/p>\n
Pope has many references to beetles, and he did not mean insects. A beetle was a heavy ramming implement used to drive wedges. It was much like the big mallets later used by woodsmen. When Pope recorded that he had made a fill iron, he was using a colloquial word for thill, or shaft to a wagon or carriage. When he referred to ears for a pail, he meant the loops resembling an ear, soldered onto a pail for insertion of bail or handle.<\/p>\n
All records of old time blacksmiths speak of laying an axe and upsetting an axe. Laying an axe was preparing it for action, by shaping, tempering and sharpening. Upsetting an axe was shortening and thickening the blade by hammering on the end, usually when the iron was heated.<\/p>\n
On several occasions Pope made a pounding tub. That was a tub in which a woman pounded the clothes for washing, just as for centuries, when clothes were washed in streams, they had been pounded on the rocks.<\/p>\n
On some of Pope’s terms I am completely stuck. So can any listener tell what was a chip for a plow, a galling iron, a gutter iron, a streak for a tire? And what was a snibell or snipbell? Pope spells it both ways.<\/p>\n
Here are some other items in which Pope noted his blacksmith work: putting handles on flat irons, welding steel to pole of a hatchet, mending bail of a baking kettle, strap for a wagon rocker, handling a dung fork, making a hay knife, and riveting a pump box.<\/p>\n
Pope evidently owned a much prized winnowing machine, for he was often renting it at two shillings a day.<\/p>\n
Pope made barking irons, flail staffs, cow pins, all kinds of hinges, door scrapers, and irons, scythes and crane hooks, to say nothing of common axes, broad axes, adzes and frows.<\/p>\n
To show the low price of meat in 1825, we note Pope’s giving credit to Jonathan Farber for 81 pounds of mutton at three cents a pound. On the same day he credited Farber with four dollars for six bushels of corn. Butter also was cheap, 12 cents a pound.<\/p>\n
Before examining these accounts, I did not know that blacksmiths sometimes contracted by the year for shoeing horses and oxen. Pope made several such contracts, more often for horses than for oxen. For a single horse his usual annual charge to keep the animal properly shod was four dollars.<\/p>\n
Most men in those days did their own butchering, but on one occasion Pope paid Isaac Wordsworth two shillings for butchering a cow. That was only 34 cents.<\/p>\n
Interesting are nine separate charges all made on one day to Thomas White. They were for mending a pump rod, splicing a grind stone crank, shoeing two oxen, steeling a crow bar and a post axe, griping and bolting a yoke, making a cooper’s axe, and laying a broad axe.<\/p>\n
Here is one record I would like to see explained: Gridgeons for an electric machine, 25 cents. In 1825 what was that electric machine?<\/p>\n
One day Pope thought the time had come to make some collections on a long accumulated bill of David Fuller’s. So he got from Fuller a load of wood for $1.50; oxen and boy for a day’s plowing, $1.17; hauling potatoes, $2.17; and a barrel of cider, $1.25.<\/p>\n
From a relative, Elijah Pope, the blacksmith made these collections: a quarter of lamb at 8 cents a pound; 1t bushels of apples at 50\u00a2 a bushel; a bushel of potatoes for 40 cents; and a bushel of turnips at 28 cents.<\/p>\n
On another occasion Pope was apparently interested in developing his orchard. For work he did for Charles Wing, Pope accepted 12 apple trees, 6 cherry trees, and two plum trees.<\/p>\n
When Pope made for William Sampson a soldering knife, a manure fork, a potato hoe, a door catch, and a knife for cutting paper, he took in payment 41 gallons of milk (probably not all at one time) at 12 cents a gallon, a quarter of veal at five cents a pound and ten pounds of butter at 14 cents.<\/p>\n
The account book contains one charge for damages. It reads: “John Fifield, for breaking my ox sling in taking off his oxen’s shoes, $1.00.”<\/p>\n
Slipped into the old book is this brief note: “Mr. Pope. Please send us one half dozen of your cheapest four-tined manure forks. Prescott and Hersey, Hallowell, April 28. 1825.”<\/p>\n
Now let us turn to a subject of today – the local telephone directory. In the Waterville-Winslow-Vassalboro section of that directory under the area numbers 872 and 873.,what family names are most numerous? I am sure you would all guess that some French-Canadian names appear more frequently than do any Anglo-Saxon names, and that’s true. Not counting at all the Poolers and other variations of the name Poulin, that is the family name that has the highest count.<\/p>\n
In the Waterville telephone directory there are 116 Poulins. The next commonest name is Roy, with 91 entries. That, of course, is the Anglicizing of the French name Roi. If we add to the Roys, the Kings (English translation of Roi), we get nearly as many as Poulins. There are 66 Veilleux, 65 Michauds, 51 Vigues, and 42 Pelletiers.<\/p>\n
Of the Anglo-Saxon names, the commonest, just as you would suppose, is Smith with 56 entries. Next come 40 Browns, and 30 Whites. Those are the two predominant color names. There are only a few Blacks. Williams appears 27 times and Jones 23. There are 22 Libbys and 21 Johnsans.<\/p>\n
As for our Lebanese people, the commonest name is Joseph, of whom there are 30 listed in the Waterville phone book.<\/p>\n
Now as we close, let’s note a few more of those 100 year old items from the Lewiston Journal. On March 4, 1871 the Journal said: “The coming woman walked up Lisbon Street last evening smoking a cigar, to the great delight of Young America, who followed in crowds to see the sight.”<\/p>\n
“The Court Street Baptist Church announces an oyster supper at their vestry on Saturday evening, after which there will be a wedding in which both parties are colored. The lady is a member of the church.”<\/p>\n
“The newest style for dressing the ladies’ hair is called the Cleopatra. The hair is brushed high off the forehead and braided low in the neck, surmounted by a large, imitation snake coiled around the head.”<\/p>\n
And with that hair-do of 1871, we say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1971<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #884, Broadcast on March 14, 1971<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42946,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}