Women's Roles in the 18th C

[helwen]

Good article on women's roles in the 18th C, in England and the American colonies: http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Spring04/women.cfm

Some similar things happened in earlier times in Europe too, of course, of women working in various trades. Number dependent in part on place and century. Still, nice to see an attempt at raising awareness of this at places like Williamsburg.

Comments

[joyeuse60.livejournal.com]

That was a very nice article.. thanks for sharing

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Welcome. It's amazing what one finds while puttering about... I was doing a search on coopering :)

[lyanna-beth.livejournal.com]

Thank you SO much for posting this article. I found it absolutely fascinating, and I learned a lot.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Welcome. It was good to read that the activity I came across in various trades in the Middle Age and Renaissance never really stopped. Although blacksmithing I found a bit of a surprise, but a lot of smithing involves using one's body efficiently, and letting the tools do a lot of the work for you (momentum), so I guess it isn't as far out as all that...

[druidharper.livejournal.com]

Not far out at all. There have been women smiths throughout history. There are some prints or woodcuts I've seen depicting women in forges and stories of women making various things exist here and there.

If you are hammering correctly it takes little strength for *most* work to get done, although for things like pattern welding or damascus you rather need a bit more...bigger hammers work it better. Or a treadle hammer. The image of someone banging away with a ten pound sledge, raising it over their shoulder and smacking the daylights out of the steel is off. Guaranteed to wear you out in jig time.

Many smithies were located by rivers or streams...water wheel tech was used to make things easier. Especially in the Roman era entire armories were run like factories along rivers. The notion of a tiny smithy doing laborious work at a snail's pace is inaccurate; it's right for a village smith, but there were much larger concerns in operation.

The forge at Saugus Ironworks is a good example of some of this, albeit much later in time frame.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the one thing I'm not keen on with the land above the double sugarhouse is that there's no running water. No doubt we can locate and put in a well, possibly even artesian, but no river. Not that I want to be a smith, but I've been toying with some sort of small water-powered projects.