New Boston Historical Society
New Boston, New Hampshire
James Todd's Blacksmith Shop
Bob Todd (1940-2021) wrote a monthly column for the New Boston Bulletin from 1998-2014. You can read some of his articles about history and nature on our Todd's Corner page.
Following James Todd's return in 1852 from Columbia, California, where he and his partners from New Boston operated a gold mining claim and a spring, he invested his substantial gold fortune in remodeling the old farmhouse, building a new barn, establishing a blacksmith shop, and purchasing a water powered mill downstream from the Andrews's mill site.(You can read Bob's story about his great-grandfather's California adventures on our Gold Rush page.)
James Page Todd died in 1917, before Bob was born, but Bob remembered his grandfather Perley working in the blacksmith shop. "Grandpa" Perley Todd (1868-1950) was James's son. In a column titled "Humble Farm Crafts", Bob wrote:
On occasions when Grandpa was more seriously engaged in applying his skills to repairing or crafting tools needed for work on the farm, I just stood out of his way and watched with wide open eyes and a very perceptive right brain. Infrequently, he would need something forged from iron, perhaps a clevis pin, or a special bolt assembly for a horse-drawn implement then being used by my Dad. I followed Grandpa out to the old blacksmith shop that stood on Todd's Corner next to the farmhouse. Although the building was bowing and leaning, held up mostly by the equipment and the iron and wood scraps left inside at the end of his last regular day there, the old brick forge and bellows still functioned.
I stood as he hoed the clinkers out of the fire-pit and added fresh coal to a fire he started with pine shavings. By working the bellows he soon brought the coals to a brightness that was beyond red. I continued to watch as he placed the iron in the center of the greatest brightness and attentively watched the iron and on a certain cue he lifted the piece from the fire with his tongs and placed it on the anvil. The ring of the anvil as he struck hammer to iron still reverberates in my head. Several times he alternately placed the piece in the fire and on the anvil until he saw, and confirmed by measurement, the exact form he intended to make.
Bob's caption: "Brick forge visible in the ruins"
Bob's caption: "Device on right was part of horse-drawn manure spreader"
Todd's blacksmith shop being razed; a horse-drawn dump rake for haying is in the foreground
