North Country At Work

Boat builder Ralph Morrow with his wife, and three of the guide boats he built. Circa 1970s or 80s. Saranac Lake, NY.

Marble slabs, with company owners (unknown), workers, horse at marble company. Slabs this large would have been used for sculpture. Circa 1910-1920. Gouverneur, NY. Gouverneur was known as Marble City.

Interior of blacksmith shop and unidentified blacksmith standing at anvil, surrounded by tools of the trade. He is preparing to shoe a horse. Circa 1900, Philadelphia, NY.

Three blacksmiths in a Heuvelton blacksmith shop, one of four blacksmith shops in the town. Circa 1900. Heuvelton, NY.

Mrs. Carlton Patterson polishing obsidian. She was a lapidariast. From the Ogdensburg Journal’s Leisure Time Advance News insert from September 10, 1972. Heuvelton, NY.

Baker Rollande Henry, nickname “Sarge,” piping frosting onto a cake. By 1978 she had been making cakes for 25 years. Rollande moved to the US from Hull in Quebec in 1928. From the Ogdensburg Journal’s Leisure Time Advance News insert from July 1978. Heuvelton, NY.

Darcy L. Gibbons, hairdresser, working on a customer at her business, Country Curl Beauty Salon on State Street. From an article written by Deborah O’Connor in the February 5, 1985 Carthage/Lowville Times.

Joseph Leana in his  Church Street Shoe Service store, which he opened in 1953 in Carthage, NY. Leana apprenticed with a shoemaker when he was sixteen and went on to start his own businesses, one in Watertown and the second in Carthage. From the July 2, 1986 Carthage Republican Tribune.

Inside a shoe last factory in Natural Bridge, NY. “Shoe lasts” are the wooden foot forms used to shape shoes. Circa early 1900s.

Employees of a shoe last factory in Natural Bridge. Note the lasts in the picture with the men – these shoe lasts were wooden forms used by shoemakers to construct shoes. Men identified in the photo are Frank Cross (first row, third from the left), George Dooley (first row, far right), and Leon Weatherhead (second […]