February Photo Selection of the Month: Blacksmiths in Stamford

This one goes way back in photographic time, inspired by Whitman Bailey's sketches:

Blacksmiths in Stamford

Before the advent of automobiles, blacksmiths were an important part of local business.  A blacksmith is defined as "a person who makes and repairs iron tools and horseshoes."  Or, as described in one caption:

Horse power was not a cheap means of transportation. Horses required daily care, were regularly shod and still had to be fed when idle. There were many blacksmith shops in Stamford whose primary business was the shoeing of horses.

In 1892, one of the early years that we have city directories, there were thirteen blacksmiths in Stamford.  A number of shops remained within the same family for several generations.  The last one, James Burnes (above photo, at a much younger age) went out with the urban renewal project, old age, and redundancy.  He was 85 years old when a photo of his shop was  labeled "the last standing local blacksmith shop as of 1967."

While most of the shops were in downtown Stamford, Long Ridge village in North Stamford had one and at one point two blacksmiths, Lockwood and Saunders.  From the photos, the C. Saunders shop ("Practical Horse Shoer, Wagon Repairing, General Jobbing") had at least three employees in the 1920s.