I"ll relate what an older fellow in town told me about my grandfather. I don"t know a great deal about him since he died nearly 20 years before I was born.
Grandpa was born in 1861 and came from Iowa to Kansas in 1886. He learned the blacksmith trade from grandma"s uncle and promptly bought out his shop.
The fellow telling me the story related that grandpa was an excellent blacksmith but made more by buying and selling his various shops rather than at the trade itself.
He had a good business as he knew his work well. He would tire of the work and sell out. Within a few months the new smithy didn"t have much work because of poor skills so grandpa would buy back the shop for a fraction of what he had sold it for. He did that several times always making a decent profit from the selling and buying and then selling again later.
The link below has photos for three of his shops and also an interior view which has been used in a couple of books. The shop was in Utica, KS from 1886 until 1928 which was the year he died. -- An older cousin said on rainy days he would lay in bed all day smoking his pipe and work out details and dimensions for a project, recorded only in his mind and once the rain stopped he would go to his shop and build the item. -- He and another fellow designed and built a centrifugal water pump but their sample pump was stolen during rail shipment and never reached the patent office. The railroad was unable to trace the loss. --- I do have items that belonged to my grandfather. I have two of his blacksmith shop account books, a small notebook which gives his clothing sizes indicating stature, a few hand and measuring tools, his post vise, his last keyring of keys, and even his bowler (derby) hat. Love the packrat ways of my family.
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