The size of Edward Charlton’s barber and wig shop is now unknown. For some time it was probably no larger than a front room of the house he owned opposite the Raleigh. Andrew Anderson’s shop was in a building sixteen feet square. The barber shop next to the King’s Arms Tavern is shown on later insurance papers to have been sixteen by twenty feet—and these are the approximate dimensions of the restored barber and perukemaker’s shop.
The restored shop of the barber and perukemaker in Williamsburg. It stands on Duke of Gloucester Street next to the King’s Arms Tavern and across from the Raleigh Tavern. In dimensions, appearance, and equipment it is believed to resemble quite closely a shop that stood on the site about 1770 and may have been occupied successively by the partnerships of Geohegan and Brazier and of Charlton and Nichols.
MASTERS, SERVANTS, AND MATERIALS
In such a small shop it seems unlikely that even a leading wigmaker could have had very many helpers. But Edward Charlton at one time had four apprentices and journeymen, and one of his contemporaries, Robert Lyon, in the space of two years had five known bond servants, at least three identified as barber-wigmakers.
Apprenticeship to a master barber and perukemaker was the normal—in fact the only—way for a boy to learn the trade. The Williamsburg wigmakers presumably all entered the craft in this manner, though Andrew Anderson is the only one about whom the record is clear. Presumably, too, most of them had apprentices in turn; but here the surviving information is quite skimpy.
Journeymen (craftsmen who had finished their apprentice training but had not yet gone into business as their own masters) were in good demand and apparently in good supply. Alexander Finnie gave notice in a 1745 issue of the Virginia Gazette that he was “in want of Two or Three Journeymen, that understand the Business of a Barber and Peruke-maker,” and promised any who applied “good Encouragement.” The response to this ad was prompt, for the very next issue of the Gazette contained this notice by the master barber and wigmaker whose shop was directly across the street from Finnie’s:
Whereas my honest Neighhour, that has advertis’d for Two or Three Journeymen, has lately seduced One from my Service, in a clandestine and undermining Manner; which I am well persuaded, that no Man but one of his Principles would have done: Therefore it’s to be hoped, that one of the Number he has advertised for, will come into my Service, in Lieu of him who has been so villanously cajol’d as above, who may depend on having good Encouragement, from
Andrew Anderson.
Whether Anderson lured anyone into his employ by this ad does not appear. But Finnie a year later announced that he had just imported from London a shipment of wigmaking materials and also “some exceeding good Workmen.” With what has the ring of smug satisfaction he concluded: “As I have a great many good Workmen, Gentlemen and others may depend on being speedily and faithfully served, in the best Manner.”
Finnie’s mention of imported materials was typical. Time and again the announcements of Williamsburg wigmakers contain phrases such as “Just arrived, a choice Parcel of Hairs, prepared by the best Hands in London,” or “A Fresh Cargoe of live human Hairs, already curl’d and well prepared.” By far the larger portion of hair used in Williamsburg-made wigs was imported from England, either by the perukemaker himself or by colonial hair merchants.