Mid 19th century Broad Axe - continued

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wdmn

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This post is a continuation of a discussion in the "It followed me home thread".

Went to the library today and found a bunch of information on the Blasdells and my broad axe. It was in a book called "Axe Making in Ontario in the Settlement Period" by Gary E. French, 2010.

At least three of the four Blasdell brothers (and maybe all) were blacksmiths as was their father Ezra Blasdell (blacksmith and scythe maker) who emigrated from Vermont around the time of the war of 1812 (maybe he was a loyalist?). N.S. and T.M. were important members of the community, and there is a Blasdell street in the Rockcliffe area of Ottawa. 300Six will be interested to know that Sylene, their sister, married Lyman Perkins who was Philemon Wright's blacksmith until he left Hull for Bytown (some sort of litigation occurred between the two). It seems that Wright and then Washburn were the Blasdell's main competitors in the area.

Blasdell is an alternate spelling of Blaisdell, and there were at least two Blaisdell axe forgers in the U.S, both in New York state.

Nathaniel S. Blasdell was the first son, the one who opened the Victoria Foundry and Machine Shop at Chaudiere Falls. and who was briefly in the milling business before returning to smithy work. His shop on Wellington Street had a trip hammer. His brother Thomas M. Blasdell, the shop responsible for my broad axe, was the third son. Both he and his brother N.S. were producing hundreds of axes a day by the 1850s (N.S. produced 10,000 in 1951). They were both selling their broad axes for $5, which was about a weeks wage for a lumberjack at the time. (It seems there was plenty of business for both of them, plus another smithy across the river in Hull named Washburn who was producing axes too). As 300Six said, Bytown was "a huge commercial hub for logging all along the Ottawa Valley," where large white and red pine were being heavily harvested. By 1861 T.M. was operating the City Foundry on Wellington St.

This also means that my axe does not have any direct connection to the Victoria Foundry other than that T.M. was N.S.'s brother.

Here is a N.S. Blasdell broad axe:
2w1z76a.jpg


And here, one like mine, manufactured by T.M. Blasdell:
d5k78.jpg


The second name on the cheek of my axe which, at first glance looks like "FRANCIS", I took to be the name of the actual blacksmith who made the axe (thinking of some of those new gransfors bruks axes). French's book corrected this for me. He has a section on second names stamped on old broad axes, which is interesting enough to transcribe for you all here:

"A number of broad axes have two names' or business names' markings. This has not yet been seen on a chopping axe, but has been seen on an adze. The following is the probable explanation: One name is the name of the manufacturer and the second the name of an axe maker who repaired the axe by "jumping" or re-steeling the bit. This is supported by a number of observations:
a) The second name is sometimes struck over the first name, suggesting a sort of cancellation of the original name or warranty.
b) THe second name is often on the bit of the axe, rather than the poll. This geographical signal suggests that the second axe maker was marking the bit as his work, rather than marking the axe itself.
c) The second name is never the name of a large manufacturer, but usually the name of an axe maker working in a lumbering area and usually in a small community rather than a city. Very often, it is an Ottawa Valley axe maker. This is consistent with the second name being that of an axe maker involved with repair as well as manufacture, and being near the scene of lumbering where repair and renewal of axes would be required, rather than a large factory which probably did not undertake such repairs.
d) When a second-name marking appears on the bit, the place-name marking almost never accompanies it.
e) Archibald LInsday of Aylmer and Samuel Francis of Renfrew, two of the axe makers whose marks are found as "second name" markings, refer in their 1871 census reports to repairing or jumping axes. Thomas Summersett of Barrie advertised in 1868: "Axes Jumped and warranted for 30 days at $1.00 Jumped axes constantly kept on hand for sale."...

The practice was most common in the Ottawa Valley area.

30acopt.jpg


French specifically mentions S. Francis (Samuel Francis) a blacksmith in Renfrew (North and West of Ottawa in the Ottawa Valley where logging was extensive contemporaneous with Blasdells' axe who "jumped" axes, who had set up shop in Renfrew by 1849. In fact, French has in his book a broad axe stamped TMBLASDELL/BYTOWN and SFRANCIS on the cheek just where mine is. You can tell from the picture that the corner of the bit had been repaired (lower right). This all made sense because my broad axe struck me as looking as though the corner of the bit had a patch. When I got home and looked again at my axe and sure enough there's a barely visible "S" before Francis.

Example of TMBlasdell broad axe jumped by SFrancis (notice the discoloured patch on the bottom right corner of the bit):
ev74gm.jpg


My axe. Notice the discoloured patches on both corners of the bit where it has been "jumped":
qnsr9t.jpg


TMBLASDELL/BYTOWN stamp:
29vcuo7.jpg


SFRANCIS stamp on cheek:
4loebq.jpg


This shows that the axe was made in Bytown, and used somewhere in the Ottawa Valley, hewing giant white and red pine. That the broad axe was valued by its owner enough that he was not eager to spend the $5 to get a new one, but was willing to spend the approximately $1 to have it repaired in the lumber town of Renfrew by Samuel Francis.

Well, I hope some of you have enjoyed this journey as I have enjoyed learning.

thanks for reading,
wdmn
 
You hit the jackpot of information on your axe, at the local library, from a real book. :)
That's great that you got the Francis stamp totally explained.
 
Oooh great....now I got to start looking for Broad Axes! Seriously, that is too cool. Nice find. Thanks for the info.

Regards,
HARDBALL
 
Thanks for taking an interest guys. Yes, the library is a good friend to have, but if I didn't have the name of the stamp (provided by you Mr. Tall) it still would have taken me a while to figure out who manufactured the axe. I'm lucky to live in a city with a good public library system, and to have access to a site like this.

This additional information was given to me by the head of collections at the Bytown museum in Ottawa:

Until 1850, the only timber taken down the Ottawa river was square timber. It was floated in rafts down to Quebec City, to be exported to the British market [Blyth 1925]. Cut trees were squared in the bush by men using a scoring axe and broadaxe [Bedore 1975]. Squaring a tree was wasteful; it left 25 per cent of the tree on the forest floor [Adams 1981]. Squared pine timber rafts were comprised of cribs small enough to pass down the timber slides built at the Chaudière falls; the rafts were broken up and reassembled at each such passage, and the men ate and slept on the rafts [Taylor 1986]. After 1850, the demand in the Ottawa valley shifted from square timber destined for Great Britain to sawn lumber sent to the United States [Mika 1982].

I would add that the shift in demand was clearly a slower transition than the last sentence above suggests. The very fact that the Blasdells continued to produce large quantities of broad axes after 1850 demonstrates that, as well as the fact that Samuel Francis is recorded as jumping broad axes in the Ottawa Valley in the 1871 census.

edit: Also heard elsewhere since posting this that Canada's square timber trade peaked in the 1860s.
 
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Astounding piece of detective work!

What a great find - both the axe and the info. Thanks so much for sharing this.
 
wdmn said:
This shows that the axe was made in Bytown, and used somewhere in the Ottawa Valley, hewing giant white and red pine. That the broad axe was valued by its owner enough that he was not eager to spend the $5 to get a new one, but was willing to spend the approximately $1 to have it repaired in the lumber town of Renfrew by Samuel Francis.

Well, I hope some of you have enjoyed this journey as I have enjoyed learning.

thanks for reading,
wdmn
Click to expand...

It is important to remember that in the 1800s $1 was the equivalent of at least $100 in today's money, so if someone could get an axe repaired for $100 instead of buying a new one for $500 they would probably do it every time.
A lot of people look at old tool catalogs and prices and think it is amazing how cheap tools were 50-150 years ago, but they really were not cheap at all if the devaluation of the dollar is considered, they were as much or more expensive than tools are today.
 
gben said:
It is important to remember that in the 1800s $1 was the equivalent of at least $100 in today's money, so if someone could get an axe repaired for $100 instead of buying a new one for $500 they would probably do it every time.
A lot of people look at old tool catalogs and prices and think it is amazing how cheap tools were 50-150 years ago, but they really were not cheap at all if the devaluation of the dollar is considered, they were as much or more expensive than tools are today.
Click to expand...


Inflation is the way they give each of us a pay cut every day.
 
my boss is always saying "the prices have gone up again"... but always leaves out "i should give you a raise."
 
I would think that a quality broadaxe was a significant personal investment and were purchased only by folks that used them to make a living. Financially, think of a broadaxe purchase as being similar to buying a grapple skidder today. The Ottawa Valley was a major Commonwealth center for gathering and export of hand-squared timber for about 200 years until the advent of sawmills. The technology of one (hard steel blade insert) on such a massive head was such that few village blacksmith shops ventured into making them because of the material costs plus the labour and skill involved. Ordering them from overseas (no not China!) would have been additionally costly as well.
We often fail to realize that pioneers went to great lengths even to minimize the use of nails and spikes (and window glass) because of the huge expense!
 
This is a fascinating topic, and it's always interesting to see the material results of broader trends in history. When the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century closed off Britain's access to European timber, its attention turned to eastern Canada as a source, and the result was a proliferation of lumber-related trades in the Ottawa Valley. The square timber trade lasted the better part of the century and was a major economic force, and I'd imagine that there are quite a number of these axe heads still floating around here and there.

There is quite a good book on this subject by Donald MacKay called "The Lumberjacks" which provides an excellent historical account of this topic.
 
Steve Tall said:
Thanks, that look like a great source of info about Canadian axe makers.
Click to expand...

Yes, I found it very helpful when confronted with names of makers that I had never heard of before. Many thanks to the person that put it together.:thumbup:

StLawrenceFowler said:
That list is a wealth of information.

A couple of other links to the topic:

http://100objects.qahn.org/content/broad-axe-1860-1900

http://www.gvhs.ca/publications/utga-when-the-axe.html
Click to expand...

Good stuff. It would be nice to have a sticky for links like these so everyone can access information easily, as well as have more added.
 
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