The Blacksmith in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg

The Blacksmith in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg calls itself an account of the blacksmith's life and times and of his craft. The book quotes Joseph Glanvill, a seventeenth-century English churchman, who wrote that iron seemeth a simple metal, but in its nature are many mysteries. The text says Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, two centuries later, found nothing mysterious about the worker in iron.

Thomas Hariot, one of those who reached Roanoke Island with Raleigh's initial colonists in 1585, reported rocky ground near the water side which, by the trial of a Minerall man, was found to hold iron richly. Among the first group of settlers was George Read, a blacksmith, to be joined the following year by Richard Dole of the same craft, and Peter Keffer, a gunsmith. A page of accounts lists work done for the Capitol by James Anderson, including cleaning a stove. A note on John Moody, 1776-1779, describes a smith and farrier from Philadelphia by way of Norfolk who advertised his shop near the church in 1776.