THE
BLACKSMITH
in Eighteenth-Century
WILLIAMSBURG
An Account of his Life & Times and of his Craft
Williamsburg Craft Series
WILLIAMSBURG
Published by Colonial Williamsburg
MCMLXXVIII
The Blacksmith
in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg
“Iron seemeth a simple metal, but in its nature are many mysteries,” wrote Joseph Glanvill, a seventeenth-century English churchman. To the contrary, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, two centuries later, found nothing mysterious about the worker in iron. His brawny blacksmith (long hair and all) embodied every simple virtue: he owed money to no man, prayed in church on Sundays, and earned an honest living by the sweat of his honest brow.