Life has been a little too chaotic over the last four months for me to get much done on this blog, but I haven’t stopped finding interesting old razors and loads of information. I’ll be resuming activity here shortly, but until then let this act as a little preview of what’s to come.
No words or descriptions, just pictures.
Edward Allison and his wife Mary had a daughter, Catherine, in September 1819. Catherine’s baptism record lists her father as a razorsmith, but he doesn’t appear in any of the business directories until late 1820 when Pigot lists him as a Razor manufacturer and operator of the tavern The Barrel. Both the tavern and the razor manufacturing were in Little Sheffield.
Hawcroft & Pearson are first listed as operating from Eldon street in 1834. It’s hard to say if that’s when the business was founded.
Benjamin Huntsman wanted to make better watch springs. He went to great lengths to do it, supposedly burying his failed experiments so no one else would find them.
Most of the historical washers or collars were made of multiple parts of very thin metal stock. Each layer was punched out of a sheet of rolled metal (brass, bronze, nickel, silver, copper, sometimes even gold).
Jared and his father Reuben were both staunch members of the Ashfield Temperance society. This, likely, put them in direct opposition to Jasper Bement, one of the wealthiest men in Ashfield and owner of the tavern. My main candidate and first cousin to Jared.