by Matthew Cumberledge
The invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century by Johannes Gutenburg has been credited as one of the most significant inventions in human history. However, the Near Eastern Hittites have a respectable claim to fame with one of the most significant inventions in human history with their ability to work iron some six thousand years ago.
Slowly, over a period of several thousand years, the ability to process iron ore into useable tools slowly spread across the known world, eventually giving birth to “Iron Ages” in various locations and throughout differing cultural groups. This revolution of iron not only allowed for better weapon technology, but by the middle ages, was starting to enter the daily lives of people everywhere, aiding in agriculture, construction, and it began to shape a new world.
As time passed, the stone and bronze/copper technology that was primarily used to make life easier began to decline; hunting weapons were now of forged iron. Throughout the world, blacksmiths, with their hammers and anvils, set up shop. These early Iron Age craftsman were often viewed with an air of mystery and awe, bending and shaping rocks to suit their will.
Metal working was largely unknown to North America in the years before Columbus. Small groups of Native Americans around the Great Lakes, specifically in what is now Michigan, had discovered copper and were able to cold hammer it into tools and projectile points, and in some cases, elaborately designed ceremonial items that populate museums all over the country. The use of iron would come sailing in with the first European explorers and settlers in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Southwestern Pennsylvania wouldn’t see many Europeans until the mid-18th century. Settlers flowing over the Allegheny Mountains began staking out land claims and settling, mostly on small isolated farms, but small communities eventually developed. Blacksmiths were soon to follow.
In 1821, Greene County conducted a census of the residents of the area; in this census, only heads of households and their occupations were recorded. At that time, Greene County had expanded to contain 2612 households over the 12 townships that existed in 1821. 75 people operated blacksmith shops, with Franklin, Greene and Whiteley having the most blacksmiths.
Blacksmithing seemed a family affair; looking through the various township records in this 1821 census, we find that many of the blacksmiths listed are all of the same family. We can even suggest that this wasn’t a new trend, and that the craft had been passed on for generations.
Joseph Boone, 27 years old, of Jefferson Township was working as a blacksmith in 1821, and smithing was no doubt a craft that was well engrained into his blood. Joseph’s roots traveled back well over 150 years in Pennsylvania, with blacksmiths throughout his genealogy, to a little Quaker settlement in Berks County. In the early 18th century a man by the name of Squire Boone, a blacksmith, lived in this same Berks County settlement and history remembers him as the father of pioneer and statesman, Daniel Boone. Squire was also an ancestor of Joseph Boone.
A very short list of some of the other working blacksmiths in Greene County in 1821 include names that we are still familiar with today: Henry Burge, Jacob Stoneking (a fifer in the War of the Revolution) Apollo Stephens, Isaac Eddy, Shadrach Mitchell, Samuel Rinehart, James Seals, Morford Throckmorton, and Titus Jolly (who would eventually settle and found the town of Jollytown in the 1840s).
The next good snapshot we have of Greene County is Caldwell’s Atlas, published in 1876, just 55 years after the census we just referenced. In the Atlas directory, 50 professional blacksmiths are listed, many of which appear to be the descendants of the same group of individuals we saw as blacksmiths in 1821. Though the number of professional blacksmiths had decreased by 1876, there were no doubt countless farmers with anvils and forges who practiced the skill on their rural country farms.
The Industrial Revolution was on her way and small country blacksmiths would be on the decline. Some blacksmithing shops in the more populated areas were getting bigger, while many of the smaller country shops were retreating back to their farms and working only to make the tools required to use domestically.
The Elms Brothers Machine Shop in Waynesburg is a good example of this transition. George Elms established a blacksmith shop at the southwest corner of Greene and Cumberland Streets in the latter half of the 19th century. It started out as a small wooden structure, but by the roaring 20s it had expanded and grown into Elms Brother’s and Company that specialized in the oil and gas well industry. Also on the site was a lumber planning mill, so big things had happened for the Elms’ blacksmith shop! The Elms Brother’s Machine Shop, as it was locally known, would last well into the 20th century.
Blacksmithing as a trade is not something that will easily give itself up as a relic of the past. Greene County still has at least one functioning blacksmith shop. The W. A. Young Machine Shop and Foundry in Rices Landing is perhaps one of the best-preserved turn of the century establishments of its kind in the country. Fully operational until 1969, it is now maintained and open to the public as a living history experience by Rivers Of Steel.
Gary Shriver of Spraggs, well-known throughout Greene County for his blacksmithing demonstrations is one of several men who put their skills to the test at the Foundry on Sunday afternoons (during normal circumstances) teaching visitors this age old craft. Gary has been blacksmithing for 5 years, and learned blacksmithing as a volunteer at the Foundry. “It’s a dying craft, something people have been doing for a long time, and it keeps me physically strong and healthy,” Shriver says. “I get a lot of fulfillment out of creating things for people. When I started volunteering at the foundry, I would have never guessed in my wildest dreams that I would have the opportunity to teach others about this skill.” After speaking with Gary, he was off to begin working on his newest forge!
One of the Foundry’s up and coming projects, in coordination with the Greene County Historical Society and the Pittsburgh Area Artist Blacksmith’s Association, is to forge and recreate new markers for the graves of the residents that died at the Greene County County Home between 1862 and 1964.
Blacksmithing, though living on mostly as a hobby, is still alive and well, not only in Greene County, but throughout the region and across the nation. Not only have popular TV shows reinvigorated interest in the skill, but some people are learning that it can be fun and useful to have the ability to make your own tools, equipment, and parts with an anvil and forge.