[TheForge] doing research

Sun Jan 5 01:17:01 2003

At 07:09 PM 1/4/03, you wrote:

But Norm;
The one calling is as out of date as the other!
If you are  curse/gifted with 2 callings,
wouldn't it be better to have one pay the rent
  if the other's  be hopelessly romantic?....(BG)

>I think Mike Spencer has missed his calling.  He should have been
>a writer.  Very well written, IMHO.
>
>Norm Larson
>
> > When Arch McKnight was young, roughly 1915, he apprenticed
>to Freeland Minard in Barss Corner, Nova Soctia.  At that time,
>Barss corner was a rather isolated farming community but thriving
>by the standards of the time and place.  Freeland's shop was a
>small agricultural shop and the trade was mainly shoeing -- both
>horses and oxen -- and maintainance  work on wagons, bob sleds
>and farm equipment.
> >
> > After his apprenticeship, Arch went to work in "the lumber
>woods" near  the headwaters of the Mersey River.  A great many
>men and boys were  employed in cutting logs and hauling them to
>the river to float down  to the mills in Milton and Liverpool.  There
>was also quite a lot of  gold prospecting and some successful
>mining going on in the same area;  Blacksmiths and farriers willing
>to live and work in remote camps were in demand.
> >
> > Some time later, Arch went down river to Milton, a sizable village,
> > and took employment with the master of the blacksmith shop
>there.  (I  forget the master's name so I'll just call him that.)  The
>Milton shop  had two forges and a very busy trade and was a social
>center for the  men of the area where you could always have a
>chaw and catch up on the  news.  After some years there, Arch
>had saved up $250.  He proposed to  the master's daughter and
>was accepted.  He bulit a house with his  savings (and a very nice
>house it was, for I have been in it), married  the daughter and, when
>the master retired, took over the shop.  He operated the shop and
>worked every day until he was found one day when  he was in his
>late-70s, sitting staring blankly at the wall and unable  to move, the
>victim of a stroke.  After a nearly complete recovery, he  slacked off
>a bit, staying home when the thermometer fell very low or  the
>snow was very deep, but continued to work at the forge for several
> > years after that.
> >
> > The Milton shop has been restored by a community group and
>made into a museum.  Every single item in the place -- something
>like 15,000  tools, widgets, bits of iron and unidentifiable objects --
>has been cataloged (saving only a few crates of sundries that
>they're stil working on.) They've done a nice job, excepting only
>that when they restored the crumbling forge, they couldn't find the
>proper water-cooled sidedraft tuyere and replaced it with a bottom
>draft  Lunenburg Foundry firepot. Also, regretably, Arch sold his
>Jardine 25# hammer and his power hacksaw after he retired and
>the community group doesn't have the funds to buy them back.
> >
> > I visited Arch several times at his shop.  I also met Freeland
>Minard once when he was in his 90s and only worked at the forge
>in warm  weather and on his better days.
> >
> > - Mike
> >
>
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