The Daily Times and Chronicle, Tuesday, November 30, 1982

Burlington Past and Present, by John E. Fogelberg
(Article # 180)


One of the joys of early boyhood no longer available to
youngsters today was simply watching a blacksmith at work at
his forge or shoeing a huge farmhorse.
Standing in the doorway, almost always open except in the
dead of winter, watching the sparks fly as the smith pounded
red-hot iron with a heavy hammer, almost feeling as well as
smelling the acrid smoke from his fire and wondering at the
seeming dirty and unkept disarray of iron bars, old horse
shoes, wheel tires, picks, crowbars, shears, spikes, and a
hundred other odds and ends made from iron, was a never to be
forgotten pleasure.
Only a person who had watched such a blacksmith many times
could have written "The Village Blacksmith" or the following
lines from the epic Evangeline: "Swiftly they hurried away to
the forge of Basil and Blacksmith. There at the door they
stood, with wondering eyes to behold him take in his leathern
lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything, Nailing the shoe in
its place; while near him the tire of the cartwheel lay like a
fiery snake, coiled around on a circle of cinders."
That poet, as every youngster should know, was Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow.
Longfellow moved to Cambridge in 1836 where he became
professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Harvard, a
chair he held for almost 18 years. Ronald Webber, in his "The
Village Blacksmith", a book mostly about English blacksmithing,
speaks of the experience Longfellow must have had:
"It is almost certain that it was the blacksmith shop at
Cambridge in Massachusetts that Longfellow wrote about in 'The
Village Blacksmith,' though there are guite a few claims to the
contrary. The name of the Smith was Dexter Pratt and smithy
stood on the westside of Brattle Street between Story Street
and Farwell Place. The poet passed the smithy daily on his way
to Harvard College and often paused to watch the blacksmith at
work."
This writer can remember walking daily down Campbell
Street from Woburn High School to the center during the years
1924 to 1928 and passing the blacksmith shop of Sid Brown, now
and then stopping to watch the work within; not too long,
however, for Bill Bustead who drove the Burlington school bus
was nothing if not punctual, and to miss him at the corner of
Winn Street meant a three or four mile walk home unless one had
the dime needed to ride the public buses operated by the Vocell
Bus Company.
For some 200 years Burlington had had a blacksmith shop in
the center of town. It stood on the corner of Center and Bed-
ford streets, now that part of the Common opposite the newly
renovated Union School. It served most of the farmers in this
area and for a period of 50 or 60 years during the early part
of the last century provided whatever services were needed by
the Wood and Marion Taverns, especially while the latter served
as the stage stop on the run from Boston to Nashua and Concord,
N.H. Those years were its most prosperous.
The first Burlington blacksmith of which we have any
record was a Solomon Trull, born 1764, died here in 1839. He
and his wife Lydia had six children, all born here between 1793
and 1807, probably in the house which stood where the Union
School stands today which was moved after his death to become
part of the Marion Tavern. Both Soloman and his wife are buried
in Burlington's Old Burying Ground.
The next blacksmith to run that smithy, although in a new
building was Richard Alley. He originally came from Boston but
boarded at the tavern while courting Selina, the daughter of
Sylvanus and Rebecca Wood, whom he married in October of 1848.
For her he had build a new house which once stood on Center
Street directly opposite today's Police Station. One of the
oddities of the Burlington Town Records is that they include
the complete specifications for Alley's new house.
Happiness for Richard was not to be, however, for his
bride of less than a month died in November. She was but 19.
Richard Alley lived for another 32 years. There is no
record here that he ever married again. Some of his work as a
blacksmith still remains although his house was demolished as
the Simonds Trustees tried to have it moved many years after he
died. When the church was renovated in 1846 he installed the
bell in the new steeple and fabricated the ironwork needed to
support it. When the Center School, now the Museum building,
was built in 1855, there is little doubt that he was the arti-
san who forged and cut the weathervane which graces the cupola
of that building to this day.
Incidentally, the most famous weathervane in New England
is that atop historic Faneuil Hall in Boston. That grasshopper
weathervane has survived several fires, a revolution and numer-
ous blizzards since "that cunning articifer" Deacon Shem Drowne
made it out of sheet copper in 1742.
Alley was found (or followed) by a Henry P. Cox and he by
a fellow by the name of Dockendorf. But sometime between 1910
and 1920 the shop closed its doors for the automobile had
pushed the horse and buggy aside and the remaining farmers were
buying mass-produced cast ironwork from large foundries and
individual blacksmiths were no longer needed. Not too much
ornamental wrought iron work was done in this country, for by
the time the local people had the money and influence to have
it made, it was sidetracked by the much cheaper cast iron which
came in with the 1820s (or 1920s) and 1930s. Note the fence
around Woburn Congregational Church.
Of all trades the blacksmith's is richest in tradition. As
the shoemakers came under the protection of St. Crispin, so the
blacksmith came under the protection of several other saints,
notably St. Eloi in France and St. Dunstan and St. Clement in
England.
Dunstan actually was an important man in his time, for he
became the one strong man behind the throne in a period of
English history which produced a series of weak kings.
Born in 925 he grew up to become first a monk, then the
Abbot of Glastonbury, and finally the Archibshop of Canterbury.
He repaired many an English monastery and was instrumental in
introducing a number of well-educated Irish monks to England.
Folklore in regards to Duncan's miracles are many but facts
regarding his career are few. Several versions are told of his
temptation by the devil whose nose he clipped with a pair of
blacksmith's tongs. For this victory over the devil he became
one of the ironworkers' patron saints.
Then there was Clement, who was nominated as the patron
saint of ironworkers, it seems, because he was tied to an iron
anchor and then drowned. At least until 1880, English black-
smiths celebrated his feast day each year on November 23rd with
a pageant which told the story of King Alfred and the black-
smith.
That king who lived from 849 to 899, once decided to give
some prominence to that craftsman whose work was most valuable
to his kingdom, and so called together representatives of all
the trades. Swayed by the gift of a magnificent coat, the king
nominated the tailor for that honor. The blacksmith was deeply
offended and determined not to work any more until the king had
a chance to revise his opinion.
As times passed the tools of other craftsmen became dull
and worn and broken and there was no one to fix them. Then the
king's horse cast a shoe and there was no one to shoe him. In
desperation the tradesmen broke into the empty blacksmith shop
to do the work themselves. This they found impossible to do and
in the mass confusion the anvil was knocked over and as it hit
the ground it exploded.
At this point St. Clement entered with the angry black-
smith in tow. The king also made an appearance, and bowing
humbly to St. Clement, had to admit that all other craftsmen
had to depend on the blacksmith for their tools and he for the
shoeing of his horse.
As part of their re-enactment celebration, the smiths
filled an anvil's hole with gunpowder and exploded it with a
spark from a hammer blow while their cohorts paraded through
town collecting beer money from bystanders.
Nothing indicates that this English practice followed
blacksmiths across the water but the American colonial black-
smith was just as important a person in his day as was that
fabled English blacksmith to King Alfred.