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Experience the Life
: Trades
: Carpenter
In a century when most structures were built from wood, no tradesman
was more useful than the carpenter. The main business of the colonial
carpenter was to cut and join timber and board into sturdy wooden
homes and shops. As Williamsburg blossomed, the demand for new homes,
shops, outbuildings stables, sheds, and their repair grew at a rapid
pace.
Carpenters built city of Williamsburg
Carpenters lay shingles on the roof
of a shed near Shields Tavern in the Historic Area.
Click image to enlarge |
The city was literally hammered together in the 1700s by men like
Benjamin Powell, John Wheatley, James Morris, Christopher Ford,
and dozens of other carpenters whose names appear on the ledgers
of building trades customers. Much of the work was accomplished
by slaves that such builders owned or hired. Large numbers of slaves
– skilled and unskilled – helped construct the colonial
capital. Carpenters were also hired to do repair work build additions
to existing structures, or to make smokehouses, dairies, necessaries,
and other outbuildings. Brick structures, too, required finishing
work and routine maintenance.
The carpenter worked from a building's foundation to its roof ridge.
He laid floors, chiseled mortise-and-tenon joints, framed walls,
raised rafters, carved moldings, hung doors, and nailed weatherboard.
Carpenters sometimes acquired building materials from less-skilled
laborers, frequently using planks cut from logs by a sawyer and
shingles made by slaves at a building site.
Common carpentry tools included:
- saw
- broadax
- hammer
- awl
- mallet
- plane
- scribe
- drawknife
- gimlet
- froe
Carpenters built with:
- oak
- locust
- tulip
- poplar
- yellow pine
- cypress
- juniper
- oak chestnut
Colonial carpentry survives in original 18th-century
buildings
Durable examples of the work of carpenters may be seen in the 88 original 18th-century buildings in Colonial Williamsburg. None, perhaps, is finer than the Peyton Randolph House, where carpenters reconstructed the site's outbuildings. Currently, the Historic Trades Carpenters are using 18th-century tools and techniques at Great Hopes Plantation.
For further reading:
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Historic Triangle