Leather Shoes Stitched with Wooden Pegs-circa 1830

14 years ago

While touring Old Sturbridge Village Museum we went into the shoe shop.

As you view the Shoe Shop from the outside the first thing you notice is the total lack of a name sign or company logo such as we would expect today. In fact, if one didn't notice the little sign by the door put up by the museum you might easily dismiss this building as a storage shed.

As you enter the shop you see one small wood stove in the middle of the room for winter heat and a number of low cobblers benches positioned near the windows because they worked sunup till sundown and had no artificial lighting in the shop save for a small tin candle lantern.

The upper part of the shoes were actually cut and hand stitched by women working in their homes then they were sold to the shoe shop where they were assembled into the finished shoes.

The shoemakers were actually young men in the community who would work 2 to 3yrs to save a nest egg to buy a farm or go into another trade. They were paid on a piece work scale for the number of shoes they could finish in a day. The average was 6 pairs which would net them $1/day. Each shoemaker had to supply his own cobblers bench & tools.

Each shoemaker would begin by tracing a pattern on a large piece of cowhide, then cut the inner and outer soles out. The premade upper was then stitched to the inner sole, then they stitched the outer sole and added two layers of leather to make the heel of the shoe.

The stitching was done by first punching a hole through the leather with an AWL, then a small wooden peg was placed in the hole and pounded into place with a hammer. In this closeup you can see the little wooden pegs on the cobblers bench to the left of the shoemaker.

The shoes were not made in the righthand & lefthand style we are familiar with today. They were made on a straight lath and the shoes would fit either foot although they did conform to ones foot through wear. What surprised me was that these shoes are intended as work shoes for farmers and tradesmen and they would last from 12 to 18 months.

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