  The shop that Richard Gamble entrusted to his new partner in 1752 stood next door to the Raleigh Tavern, in what was sometimes called “the most public part of the city.” Certainly no better location in Williamsburg could have been found for a barber shop than on the Duke of Gloucester Street in the block nearest the Capitol. “The Preposterous Head Dress, or the Feathered Lady” is the title of this satirical print issued in London in 1776. Contemporary accounts indicate that the artist did not greatly exaggerate either the size or the composition of the headdresses affected by fashionable ladies in the capitals of Europe. Colonial women seem not to have dressed their hair in such heights of fashion. The broad main street of Williamsburg, muddy or dusty as the season decreed, stretched westward from the Capitol nearly a mile to the College of William and Mary. During most of the year it saw only the normal activity of a small colonial town. But several times each year—when the courts and perhaps the Assembly met—the town’s population doubled or tripled. These “Publick Times” were almost field days of litigation, commercial negotiation, and merrymaking. Then it was that innkeepers and craftsmen lucky enough to have located in that first block knew how fortunate they were. One small shop also near the Raleigh had been a barbering and wigmaking establishment at least since John Peter Wagnon bought it in 1734. It remained so through the long ownership of Wagnon’s one-time apprentice, Andrew Anderson, and the short occupancy of two successor barbers and wigmakers, William Peake of Yorktown and James Currie. Across the street from the Raleigh had stood the shop of Jean Pasteur, one of Williamsburg’s first known wigmakers. Somewhere nearby Alexander Finnie made wigs before moving to the Raleigh itself, and Anthony Geohegan did so later—perhaps in the same shop. A little farther uptown William Peake had briefly set up business as a barber in Mr. Dunn’s Crown Tavern, opposite the printing office. James Nichols first opened his shop in “the corner room of the brick house where Mrs. Singleton lives”—now better known as the Brick House Tavern. And somewhere along the same crowded street Richard Charlton (who was somehow related to Edward and had at least a passing acquaintance with wigmaking) kept his well-patronized tavern. Other craftsmen also located in the same neighborhood. Not far beyond the Raleigh hung the sign of James Craig’s jewelry, watch, and silversmith shop, the Golden Ball. And next to it was the millinery store of the sisters Margaret and Jane Hunter—the latter of whom married her neighbor Edward Charlton. 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. |
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