Tag: Hardware

  • Hitting the Nail on the Head: The importance of cast iron nails in the colonial economy

    Hitting the Nail on the Head: The importance of cast iron nails in the colonial economy

    Caroline Cook // AMH 4112.001 – The Atlantic World, 1400-1900

    Before currency was regulated in America, purchasing items on debit and credit was a common practice. This not only eliminated currency conversion between colonies, but would also spread out different types of goods within different areas. Many items fluctuated in popularity and could be seasonal, but tools were necessary in any capacity throughout colonial America. The nail was an invaluable tool within the colonial economy that would be traded consistently, helping build the blossoming country’s foundation.[1]

    Nails are used primarily for one obvious reason: to build. This means to expand and create new buildings, nails had to be forged of a material that was not only durable, but also easy to find. Most nails were made of cast iron by blacksmiths. Though these cast iron nails were produced and sold by the dozen, nails weren’t cheap.  Blacksmiths still had to forge nails individually, since the colonies were not prevented from creating large scale operations due to Britain’s protective trade law. Great Britain had factories and workers that could produce standardized nails quickly and efficiently. This means that nails were typically imported from England into the colonies, bringing more product in at a more affordable rate.[2]

    Nails being made at the blacksmith shop at Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia.
    Image courtesy of the Colonial Williamsburg Journal.

    Though not all nails were created equally, blacksmiths would typically produce a nail specific to their own style. Back in England, different blacksmiths would produce different size nails, depending on their client’s needs. [3]  For example, some smiths would make their nails more malleable for coffin nails. Other smiths would use different forging techniques for decorative nails. Different ways of producing different nails transferred over into the Americas, showing in the recovery of excavated sites. American nails were usually more crudely fashioned, with less refined edges due to the tools with which they were produced.[4]

    At the Glassford & Henderson Colchester Store from 1760-1761, nails were usually sold by the hundred. In the Ready Money account in 1761, as many as 1500 nails were purchased at a time with the count varying from as few as 50 nails to as many as 1500.  There were as many as 33 purchases of nails in that year with cash.[5] Though this may seem like a small amount, nails as a whole were too expensive to buy in really large quantities with cash – 1500 8 pennyweight nails costed 13 shillings and 6 pence. The people purchasing these nails may have needed them for small projects.

    Nails purchased at the Glassford and Henderson Colchester store in August 1761 (folio 12).

    Nails are one of the most commonly found artifacts at historic sites.[6] But how important were they to a colonial economy? It seems that nails were an import that show up time and again, being unearthed frequently in archaeological digs. A small piece of economic prosperity, nails would be produced in the Americas at an increasing rate over the next hundred years.

    Infographic on Nails

    [1] Gregory LeFever. “Forged and Cut Iron Nails.” Early American Life. June 2008. Pp. 60-69. Accessed November 6, 2016. http://www.gregorylefever.com/pdfs/Early Nails 2.pdf.

    [2] Ibid.; Kenneth Schwarz. “The Nail Market During the Colonial Period.” Making History. 2011. Accessed November 8, 2016. http://makinghistorynow.com/2011/06/the-nail-market-during-the-colonial-period/.

    [3] Edward J. Lenik. “A Study of Cast Iron Nails.” Historical Archaeology 11 (1977): 45-47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25615315.

    [4] LeFever, “Forged and Cut Iron Nails,” 65.

    [5] Alexander Henderson, et. al.  Ledger 1760-1761, Colchester, Virginia folio 11-13 Debit/Credit, from the John Glassford and Company Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Microfilm Reel 58 (owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association).

    [6] Tom Wells. “Nail Chronology: The Use of Technologically Derived Features.” Historical Archaeology 32, no. 2 (1998): 78-99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616605.

  • Pots from the Furnace to the Household

    Pots from the Furnace to the Household

    Luis Torres Rivera  // AMH 4112.001 – The Atlantic World, 1400-1900

    A sectional cast cooking pot from the early 1700s. Image from Bushcraft UK.

    Iron pots were in use in the 1700s.  They were used to cook over an open fire given that iron is one of the best transmitters of heat. “During the late seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century, Pennsylvanians imported most of the iron that they used from Britain.”[1]  Given that iron ore was mostly imported to the colonies, “ironmasters established early furnaces and forges as a more efficient way to make more iron than local blacksmiths were able to, and as a way to make profits and to diversify their investments.”[2]  Iron pots may have been manufactured either in a large industrial furnace or by a local blacksmith. In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson described iron manufactured from two furnaces as being exceptionally strong: “Pots and other utensils, cast thinner than usual, of this iron, may be safely thrown into, or out of the waggons in which they are transported.”[3]  They were thinner than usual due to that in “1750 the British government enacted the Iron Act which prohibited the erection of new steel furnaces, mills for slitting or rolling iron and plating forges with tilt hammers,” so that jobs would not be stolen from British citizens.[4]

    At Glassford and Henderson’s Colchester, Virginia store, we see the sale of iron pots as part of the Ready Money accounts in 1760-1761.  In November 1760, three iron pots were sold with prices ranging from 9 shillings to 10 shillings and six pence.[5]  In other months like August, April and December iron pots were sold at similar prices. The small variation of prices could be presented in regards of the quality and thickness of the iron used. Also, sales could have been greater in November in preparation for the winter season.

    Examples of “Iron pot” purchases in the November 1760 Ready Money Pages of the Colchester store of Glassford and Henderson (folio 10).

    Looking at the conditions in colonial times, the iron pot was a commodity necessary to the household. “While theoretically, colonists could have manufactured all their own high quality consumer goods and accumulated a valuable a stockpile as that of the person buying on the market, it would be rather unlikely that the nonspecialized home manufacturer could have shone in all areas of production. In fact, most homemade items tended to be crude and cheap.”[6]  Iron pots were hard to make; they were sold in local stores or by blacksmiths that had furnaces to make them. As seen in the Colchester store, iron pots were valuable and necessary commodity.

    Infographic on Iron Pots

    [1] Arthur C. Bining, Pennsylvania Iron Manufacture in the Eighteenth Century (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission), 1973.

    [2]Ibid.

    [3] Thomas Jefferson, “QUERY VI A notice of the mines and other subterraneous riches; its trees, plants, fruits, &c.”, Notes on the State of Virginia, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JEFFERSON/ch06.html (Accessed on 18 April 2016).

    [4] Harold B. Gill, Jr. The Blacksmith in Colonial Virginia. (Williamsburg, Virginia: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1965), (Accessed 5 December 2016), http://research.history.org/DigitalLibrary/View/index.cfm?doc=ResearchReports%5CRR0022.xml.

    [5]   Alexander Henderson, et. al.  Ledger 1760-1761, Colchester, Virginia Folio 10 Debit, from the John Glassford and Company Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Reel 58 (owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association).

    [6] Carole Shammas , “Consumer Behavior in Colonial America,” Social Science History 6 (1982): 67–86, 81.