JOSEPH LYE HIMSELF.
Joseph Lye was born in Lynn, Mass., in 1792, being one of the nine sons of Joseph Lye, a shoemaker and soldier of the Revolution, and Ann Hart. He kept a diary which shows that he “was first clerk of the Second Congregational church (Unitarian), clerk of the Fire club, served as juryman, trained in the militia, watched with sick friends and neighbors. He was something of a traveler in his modest way, worked as a shoemaker, painter, fisherman and skipper, and sailed small boats. He cleaned the chimney, set out posts and fences, fixed the pump, caulked boats and helped kill the neighbor’s pig. Interested in religious matters, he led the active, useful life of a good citizen.”
Altogether, he was a busy man. He viewed life from many angles. His diary is doubtless a good and accurate record of the acts and thoughts of the average man of his time. It furnishes material for contrast with men and their ways of these days.
In Lye’s time all work was done by hand. Machinery was scarcely known. Men often worked alone, for the factory system had not been started. As they toiled in solitude they read from a book or meditated in silence. They were given to deep thinking.
He lived in extraordinary times. His father told him of the Revolution. Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson were laying the foundations of the new nation. Pioneers were pushing their way west. Inventors were busy. Fulton sailed the Clermont down the Hudson. Inventors dreamed of the steam locomotive. American ships opened trade with the Far East and brought back “the wealth of the Indies.” The nation had prospered so much that it had a surplus in the treasury.
The shoe business flourished. John Adam Dagyr, “the Celebrated Shoemaker of Essex,” had taught his fellow workers of Lynn how to make shoes equal to the best imported from London and Paris. Newspapers of the time urged people to buy American shoes instead of imported footwear. Ebenezer Breed, an early captain of American industry, had induced Congress to put a protective tariff on American shoes.
Joseph Lye, the diarist, learned shoemaking of his father, the Revolutionary soldier, as did many a lad of his time. He worked on the farm, too, and became a handy man, able to undertake most any of the simple tasks of his time. He was content to work industriously and to live thriftily. Ambition did not tempt him. He thought deeply upon matters of religion. The Puritan conscience then was alive. He kept a diary. Its records are a good standard by which to compare the acts and thoughts of an average man of a century ago with the acts and thoughts of an average man of today, should any reader desire to do so.