and slaves, owned a tannery and employed eight shoemakers, a number so great that they must have been engaged in part in making shoes for sale.
There are many indications in the records of the latter half of the seventeenth century that both tanners and shoemakers constituted a class of importance in the Colony, including those who were free as well as those who were serving under articles of indenture. It was not infrequent that the sons of planters were apprenticed to these trades.[1] Beverley declared that the workmanship of the tanner and shoemaker was so careless and defective that the people were unwilling to use the product of their rude skill whenever shoes of English manufacture could be obtained. This statement was undoubtedly exaggerated. That shoes made in the mother country were preferred, was natural enough, but that the trade either of the tanner or the shoemaker languished in Virginia is not borne out by the facts recorded in the books of the county courts. There were few planters of easy fortune who did not, like Colonel Mathews, have tradesmen of this character in their employment. Colonel Edmund Scarborough, in a complaint which he entered in the court of Northampton County in 1662, mentions incidentally that he had nine shoemakers in his service, and that he had been at a heavy charge in tanning leather and making shoes. It is probable that he was a party to a contract with the local authorities for supplying the public wants in these particulars. He petitioned that Nathaniel Bradford, a currier by trade, should be punished for his failure to perform the duties which the law imposed upon all who followed that business.<ref>Records of Northampton County, original vol. 1657-1664, p. 153. The following is from the York records: “It is this day agreed between ye Court on behalf of themselves and ye whole County of York, and William Heyward Calvert, who intermarried with the relict of John Heyward decd and the said William did for his part engage himself and negroes that ye tanne house and pitts and other things appertaining shall be maintained and kept at his and their charge as ye County’s
- ↑ Records of Rappahannock County, vol. 1695-1699, p. 112, Va. State Library.
