  When the Virginia Assembly first met in 1699 at Middle Plantation (soon to be renamed Williamsburg), its members listened to speeches delivered by several students at the brand new College of William and Mary. Urging that the colony’s capital should be moved thence from Jamestown, one of the students pointed out that Middle Plantation already contained “as many substantial housekeepers ... as is to be found again in the whole County.” He specifically listed a smith’s shop as Despite the young speaker’s effort to make it sound impressive, Middle Plantation was far from being a town by any stretch of the word. But it was no accident that a mere scraggle of structures in a landscape of woods and fields included a smithy. As in the first years at Jamestown, the presence of a blacksmith to make and mend tools was essential to the success of the settlement. Unfortunately, nothing is known of the identity of that first Williamsburg smith—not his name, or the exact location of his shop, or the kind of work he did. The Brush-Everard House is one of some eighty original structures now restored to their colonial appearance in Williamsburg. John Brush was the earliest Williamsburg smith whose name is known today. He was primarily a gunsmith and armorer, but may have done blacksmithing too. He bought two lots in the shadow of the Governor’s Palace in 1717, and the modest home he built there (later enlarged by Thomas Everard) still stands on Palace Green. So far as surviving records have revealed, he was followed by no more than fourteen individuals over the next three-quarters of a century who worked iron and steel in one or Only fourteen. Even granting the possibility that some blacksmiths never left their name or mark in a written record, this seems remarkably few for so long a period in one of Virginia’s chief towns. The small number can probably be taken as another indication that most of the colony’s smiths—like eighty to ninety percent of its population—lived and worked in the country. Surviving advertisements, invoices, and inventories of Williamsburg blacksmiths suggest that the work they did was of a somewhat different nature from that of the rural smith. The following extracts from account books of James Anderson and Thomas Pate indicate something of the urban variety:
It will be noticed that Pate made or repaired several items “for the mill.” No doubt this was the windmill shown on the “Frenchman’s Map” of 1782 as standing on or near Custis’s property to the south of town. The millwright, the wheelwright, the coachmaker, and the shipwright all depended heavily on the blacksmith to produce essential parts of their respective products. The builder of houses, too, could do little without the nails and the tools that came from the local smithy. However, when the “public hospital, for persons of insane and disordered minds” was built in Williamsburg in 1771, the removable iron gratings and padlocks to be installed at all the windows were imported from England. For this large specialty job, even James Anderson, the town’s foremost smith, was passed over. Similarly, wrought-iron gates and balconies on the public buildings of Williamsburg appear to have been ordered from England. The Capitol was to have “on each Side ... an Iron Balcony upon the first Floor,” and the assembly explicitly empowered the overseers in charge of building both the first Capitol and the Governor’s Palace to send to England for ironwork, glass, and other materials necessary. Likewise, the elaborate gates at Westover plantation were made for William Byrd II in England. A “Set of Iron Palisades and Gates curiously wrought,” sold as part of a prize cargo in Norfolk in 1748, probably came from France. When the House of Burgesses in 1768 commissioned a statue of the beloved Governor Botetourt, the sculptor, Richard Hayward of London, was also to provide the iron railing that surrounded the base of the statue when it was set up in the portico of the Capitol. One reason for importing ironwork for these large jobs may have been that local smiths were not equipped to handle them; more likely, the importation was politically wise since manufacturing in the colonies was discouraged by the British government. Ornamental ironwork is less characteristic of the colonial Virginia scene than of Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans. Nevertheless, there are some survivals, none finer than these two gates at Westover plantation on the James River. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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