Perhaps even more interesting than these regulations are the reasons given for enacting them: “Forasmuch as divers and sundry deceits and abuses have been hitherto committed, and daily are committed and practiced by the Tanners, curriers, and workers of leather in ... Virginia, to the great injury and damage of the inhabitants ...; And forasmuch as no leather can be so well tann’d but it may be marred and spoyled in the currying ...; and forasmuch as leather well tann’d and curryed may by the negligence, deceit or evill workmanship of the cordwainer or shoemaker be used deceitfully to the hurt of the occupier or wearer thereof.”
These phrases (and similar phrases in other laws both colonial and English) make evident that shoddy materials and slipshod workmanship issued from the shop of many a craftsman of the eighteenth century. A recognition of this will help balance the romantic tendency to see every old-time craftsman as a humble artistic genius with impeccably high standards of workmanship.
THE DIFFICULTY OF MAKING A LIVING
For all its great length and detail, the act of 1691 seems not to have had much effect. Governor Edmund Andros in 1697 asserted, “There are no manufactures setled in Virginia Except Inconsiderable tanning and shoemaking (bad Leather).” And in 1705 Robert Beverley wrote of the Virginians:
They have their Cloathing of all sorts from England, as Linnen, Woollen, Silk, Hats, and Leather.... The very Furrs that their Hats are made of, perhaps go first from thence; and most of their Hides lie and rot, or are made use of, only for covering dry Goods, in a leaky House. Indeed some few Hides with much Adoe are tann’d, and made into Servents Shoes; but at so careless a rate, that the Planters don’t care to buy them, if they can get others, and sometimes perhaps a better manager than ordinary will vouchsafe to make a pair of Breeches of a Deer-Skin.
Nearly a half-century later, as Williamsburg’s era of greatest affluence began, a merchant of Louisa County, Francis Jerdone by name, lamented that “the Virginians have most of their shoemakers in their own families, and have no occasion for any but stuff [i.e., cloth] shoes from Britain.” He referred to members of the well-to-do planter class, who customarily maintained on their plantations one or more skilled workmen. Among these there was almost sure to be included a cordwainer to make and repair the footwear of the plantation “family,” a term that included the slaves. The shoemaker might be a slave himself, or an indentured servant, or a journeyman receiving wages.
However, Francis Jerdone could just as well have been writing of another kind of Virginia planter, the small farmer who built his own house and barns, made his own crude furniture, coopered his own hogsheads, ground his own corn, sheared his own sheep, and made the family’s shoes while his wife spun and wove their clothing. These small farmers, far outnumbering the great planters, would not have ordered cloth shoes from London, to be sure. But neither would they have ordered very many leather ones, either from England or from Williamsburg shoemakers.
Documentary records—fairly full in a few cases, fleeting in most—name 24 men who worked in leather in Williamsburg during the eighteenth century. The ghostly existence of others can be discerned in references to unnamed indentured servants, journeymen, slaves, and a few apprentices who were leatherworkers. Among Williamsburg slaves having some craft skills, the second greatest number were shoemakers, the greatest number being carpenters.
A few of these Williamsburg leatherworkers seem to have done fairly well at their trade. Most of the others probably had little success and moved elsewhere or into farming; at any rate they left no trace of a continuing career.
