Dick’s Dispatch #120 

Harry And The Hooves

By Richard E.Venus

When we left off in our story, Harry [Thomas] was in the process of recuperating from a kick in the head, that had been delivered by a wild horse. During this period he must have wondered whether or not he was engaged in the right business. His excellent physical condition was a big factor in his recovery and the doctor suggested that he find less arduous work until his health was fully restored.

The Ox Ridge Hunt Club in Darien was looking for a farrier at the time so Harry closed his shop on Olmstead Lane and took the job. After wrestling with the great draft horses, shoeing the sleek little polo ponies was just a snap for Harry. 

We have seen farriers who felt that it was only necessary to cut down the horse’s hoofs and nail on the shoes. Harry was a perfectionist and settled for nothing less than a first-class job.

After removing the worn shoes, he would carefully cut and shape the hoof, just so. He would take his heavy rasp and smooth the bottom and the outer walls of the hoof. The new shoe was then placed on the hoof to size it up. The shoe was then placed in the forge and shaped until it fit the hoof perfectly. 

The shoe would be red hot when Harry removed it from the forge and when he placed it on the anvil he knew exactly where to apply his hammer in order to bend it to the correct shape. 

Sometimes calks were applied to the toes and heels of the shoe, to prevent the horse from slipping. The shoe was then subjected to more heat from the forge and while it was still hot, several trips would be made back and forth between the hoof and the forge to make sure that the shoe fit perfectly. 

The hot shoe would burn the hoof in each instance as Harry blew away the smoke so as to observe the fit. This all looked very barbaric but really was not and caused no pain or discomfort to the horse.

To carry the shoe back and forth during this fitting procedure, Harry used a punch that had a rectangular point and was inserted into one of the nail holes in the shoe. When he was entirely satisfied with the fit of the shoe Harry would again use this punch to clear all the nail holes in the shoe.

The punch would be set in a nail hole and then tapped with the hammer until the hole was large enough to accommodate the rectangular shaft of the horseshoe nail. Between the clearing of each hole, the punch was inserted in a hole in the large wooden block on which the anvil was set. Into this hole a piece of suet had been packed. I suppose this was to facilitate the removal of the punch from the shoe after each nail hole had been cleared.

Whatever the reason, this maneuver added to the many delightful aromas one could encounter in a blacksmith shop as the punch was hot enough to melt the suet and a gentle little cloud of smoke would arise from the anvil as each nail hole was cleared. 

There were eight nail holes, four on each side of the shoe. Actually Harry only used seven nails. The back hole on the inside of each hoof was not filled as there was the danger of drawing blood because of the location on the wall of the hoof. Harry was so expert at nailing the shoe that the eighth nail was not really needed.

There was a saying that went something like this, “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost and for want of a shoe, a hoof was lost and for want of a hoof a horse was lost,” etc. This did not apply to Harry’s workmanship and we do not recall any of his horses ever “throwing a shoe.”

As each nail came through the hoof as it was being nailed, Harry would twist off the end of the nail, leaving about three eighths of an inch of the nail to be bent over and “clinched.”

Before clinching the end of the nail he would carefully prepare a place for the clincher by using his rasp to make a little receptacle on the side of the hoof to receive it. He was so careful and painstaking in doing this that when the job was completed, the hoof was as smooth as it could possibly be.

If a horse’s hoof could be considered beautiful, then it would have to be said that when Harry was through, the hoof could be considered a thing of beauty. I think even the horses were proud of the way they looked and they probably stepped a little higher. 

There were times when a horse may have had a hoof problem and Harry was expected to correct whatever it might be. Sometimes the frog of the hoof became tender or it might have an infection. The hoof might also have become dry or brittle. 

Harry would cut a piece of leather to fit the shoe and before nailing the shoe he would stuff

pine tar and oakum into the bottom of the hoof. The piece of leather would then be placed over this concoction to hold it in place and the shoe was then nailed over it to keep the leather in place.

This must have felt good as we can remember a horse that was very sore, looking at Harry when be had completed his errand of mercy with a look of gratitude. Harry must have sensed it as well and it is doubtful if any man before or since ever thoroughly enjoyed his own work as much as he did.

Harry was very proficient at correcting many problems that afflicted horses. The speedy driving horses seemed to be particularly susceptible to overreaching (striking their front hooves with their rear hooves as they trotted) or interfering (striking one front hoof with the other or one rear hoof with the other). Harry would correct this by making a shoe with more weight in one area than another to make the horse throw his hoof away from whatever he was striking. Many times this resulted in some very funny shaped horseshoes.

Dr. Edwin B. Van Saun had a bay driving horse that was exceptionally fast. He used to enter it in the Sunday afternoon races on Main Street, along with William R. Keeler, Henry C. Swords, George G. Haven, Edward Payson Dutton, and others. Doctor Van Saun’s horse had a real problem with interfering and Harry was charged with correcting his stride to eliminate this serious problem. 

Harry was a very patient man and this assignment would test his patience to the limit. He must have made at least 15 different shoes before finally correcting the interference. The shoe that eventually would prove to be successful hung in the blacksmith shop for many years after the horse was gone as proof of Harry’s uncanny ability. It sure did not look like a horseshoe and caused many a comment but it enabled Van Saun to beat Haven and the great dentist was always loud in his praise of Harry M. Thomas.

Dick’s Dispatch #119

The Last Blacksmith & Greatest Walker

By Richard E. Venus

Under the spreading chestnut tree, 

the Village Smithy stands. 

The smith, a mighty man is he, 

with large and sinewy hands, 

and the muscles of his brawny arms, 

are strong as iron bands.

It was 143 years ago that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his famous poem. That was 43 years before Harry Marvin Thomas was born, so we can not say that the great poet had Harry in mind, when he composed it. Yet, the description of the village smithy fit Harry to a T, especially the references to his honesty and sterling character.

I was less than ten years of age when l first met Harry Thomas and a friendship began that was to last all those many years. Harry enjoyed a great reputation for miles around and we felt very privileged to be included in his circle of friends. When he passed on, just a few years ago, in his 89th year, he was the last of Ridgefield’s many blacksmiths. Just a few years later his wife Minolia, followed him to her reward at the age of 96.

Harry Thomas was a descendent of Benjamin Stebbins, one of Ridgefield's very earliest settlers. Members of the famous Stebbins family lived where Casagmo is now for almost 200 years.  Harry’s father, George M. Thomas, was a conductor on the railroad branch that ran from here to Branchville. George was only 27 when he was crushed to death while assisting the brakeman in the coupling of two railroad cars.

As reported in an earlier column, the business of hooking the railroad cars together was probably the most dangerous part of railroading. This tragic accident left Mrs. Thomas with  the task of raising three children, a daughter, Edna, and two sons, Harry and Howard.

Howard will probably be best remembered as the proprietor of the West Lane grocery, where Gene Casagrande has his CasaMore store today. Sports enthusiasts will recall how Howard made those great left-handed shots in basketball games at the old town hall. For some reason, Howard would always shout “Hey” as he unerringly made those shots from either side of the court.

Harry and Minolia had three daughters, Gertrude, Esther and Marie. Gertrude is now Mrs. Lawrence Hoyt and still lives on Silver Spring Road. The Hoyts' daughter, Doris, is Mrs. George Ventres and the Ventres’son Dale is proprietor of the Ridgefield Power Equipment Shop. So Dale can easily trace his lineage back to 1714, when Benjamin Stebbins came to town.

The Thomas family has had an active participation in town affairs for many years. Harry's great grandfather, Albert N. Thomas, was town clerk for Ridgefield back in Civil War days. Albert was also an original member of the Library Club, which formed a nucleus for our present Ridgefield Library.

Albert’s son Elijah L. Thomas (grandfather of Harry) succeeded his father as town clerk and also served as a judge of probate for the town. All this would seem to indicate that the Thomas family were pretty solid citizens.

At the time Harry's father suffered his fatal accident, there was no such thing as Social Security to assist Mrs.Thomas in raising her three children. When Harry was 16 he went to Purdy's Station, near Brewster, N.Y., to learn the blacksmith and farrier trades.

Perhaps we should explain for those not familiar, that a farrier is a shoer of horses, whereas, a blacksmith performs all kinds of iron work and may also engage in horseshoeing.

During his years at Purdy’s, Harry worked 12 hours each day and six days each week. The shop opened at six in the morning and normally closed at six in the evening. However, if six o’clock came around and there were still horses to be shod, the farriers continued to work until they were done.

Harry was a religious man and always looked forward to Sunday. After church services he would walk the 15 miles to Ridgefield to visit his mother. He would time his return walk to Purdy’s so that he would arrive in time for work on Monday morning.

Harry Thomas was the greatest walker we ever saw and even in his late 70's, he would think

nothing of a Sunday walk to Danbury or Brewster. Though he was of average height, his long strides were as great as those of the long-legged giants that play basketball today. He was often offered a ride but would always, graciously, turn it down and then many times he would keep pace with the horse, whose driver had offered the ride.

Ridgefield had several real good walkers. Frank Parks Jr. took very quick steps, when he was a young man and Earl Hibbart had a very smooth and graceful stride, but they could not keep pace with Harry Thomas.

He was by nature, a very friendly man, but always walked alone, for no one could keep up with those great strides. He got over the ground, at a walk, just as fast as some of the joggers that I see on the highway.

Harry was born in the old Bailey Inn that was located on Main Street on the west side almost directly across from where the Christian Science Church is now. Before he and his family moved to their new home, next to the firehouse, he walked daily from his home in Flat Rock near the Wilton town line.

He rarely wore a jacket, except in real cold weather and very seldom was seen with a hat, although when he got to his shop he would don the little black cap with the shiny visor that was the trademark of the smithy.

After Harry had finished his apprenticeship at Purdy’s, he returned to Ridgefield and worked at the Big Shop for a short time. The Big Shop was, as everyone knows, at the rear of the Allan Block, where it had been moved from the corner of West Lane and Main Street, to make room for the Congregational Church. Today the old building is home to a multitude of enterprises, but at the time it served as a blacksmith shop and a carriage shop.

Soon Harry was able to open his own little blacksmith shop. It was located on the Rufus Seymour lot on Olmstead Lane about opposite from where the Piser family now lives. It was while he had this shop that he almost lost his life.

When you brought in a horse to be shod, Harry would never refuse to tackle the job, no matter how bad or unruly the horse might be. He was shoeing a real wild horse one day when he received a kick in the head that Dr. Bryon said would have been fatal if it were one half inch closer to a vital spot. Fortunately Harry was in excellent physical condition and recovered.

  [The next  column will continue the story of Harry Thomas. Dick Venus, who became Ridgefield’s first town historian, wrote 365 “Dick’s Dispatch” columns for the Ridgefield Press, telling about life in Ridgefield during the first half of the 20th Century. This column appeared Sept. 27, 1984.].

Benjamin and Sarah Burt:

Surviving Frontier Tragedy

All of the town’s first settlers lived lives of hardship that today would be difficult to imagine. One couple, however, endured incredible adversity before even setting foot in Ridgefield: Benjamin Burt and his pregnant wife Sarah were captured by French and  Indian fighters,  forced to hike hundreds of miles through mid-winter snow to Montreal, and were held captive for two years.

This, after Sarah Burt’s mother, stepmother and several siblings had been slaughtered in frontier attacks.

Yet the Burts survived and became leading citizens of Ridgefield, raising a sizable family and owning considerable property. Their descendants still live in the area three centuries later.

Benjamin Burt was born 1680 in Northampton, Mass., one of a dozen children of David and Mary Holton Burt. Northampton in the late 17th Century was on the western frontier — not unlike the Far West a century and a half later. There was a constant threat from hostile American Indians. It was a time when England and France were at war and the French, who had allied themselves with the Mohawks and other natives, were attacking New England settlers and settlements.  

 When he was 11, Burt got his first taste of the dangers of frontier life. David, an older brother,  was a soldier at a fort in Schenectady, N.Y., on Feb. 29, 1690, when it was destroyed by French and Indian fighters. David was taken prisoner and never heard from again.

As a young man Benjamin learned the smithing trade and in 1701 moved to nearby Deerfield, Mass., to work as a blacksmith. There, a year later he married Sarah Belden. 

Sarah had already been through hell.

On Sept. 16, 1696, Mohawks and French descended on the Belden farm at Deerfield, killing Sarah’s mother, and three of her siblings, aged one, four and 16. Sister Abigail, 13, was wounded. The Indians captured her father, Daniel Belden, along with her 21-year-old brother and 13-year-old sister. Sarah, then 15, escaped by hiding in the barn.

Sarah’s captured father and his two children were marched 268 miles to a town outside Montreal, Quebec, where they were sold to Jesuits to work as servants at a seminary there. Although they were in effect slaves, Daniel Belden later reported that they were “favorably dealt with” by the Jesuits. 

All three were eventually set free with the help of a “Dutch gentleman” after the French and English signed a treaty in 1698. They returned to Deerfield where they were reunited with Sarah and Abigail. Later that year, Daniel married Hepzibah Buell,  who also had a tragic end.

By 1704, the British and French were fighting again. On Feb. 29,  a band of 200 French soldiers and 142 Mohawks attacked Deerfield in what became known as the Deerfield Massacre.

Nearly half the village was burned, 47 people were killed and 112 were taken captive and marched to Montreal. Among those killed was Sarah’s stepmother.

And among the captives were Sarah and her husband, Benjamin Burt. Sarah was eight months pregnant.

The 25-day trek to Montreal was brutal. 

The Rev. John Williams, a pastor at Deerfield, was also taken prisoner after seeing two of his children killed in the raid. He later described the ordeal of the march: “The condition and sufferings of these unfortunate creatures cannot be adequately described; in the few brief, agonizing minutes of the attack, they had neither forethought nor time to make the least preparation for such a fearful journey; poorly clad and shod, the rocks, bushes, and brambles soon rent their scanty garments and when sodden with the penetrating melted snow their power to resist the icy blasts was almost exhausted. At night when the exertion of motion no longer stimulated their blood, they could only save their vital warmth by lying close together in the snow, a feebly palpitating mass of misery.”

A Burt family historian reported that the captives “suffered from fatigue and insufficient food, and when they lagged or were disabled, they were slain.” Nineteen people on the march were murdered, mostly pregnant women. One of them was the wife of Pastor Williams, who later penned this verse:

“I saw in the naked forest 

“Our scattered remnant cast,

“A screen of shivering branches 

“Between them and the blast; 

“The snow was falling ’round them, 

“The dying fell as fast.” 

In an 1893 book on the Burt family, “Early Days in New England,” Henry Martyn Burt  wrote about Sarah Burt’s travails: “The writer has often in fancy depicted to himself this ancestress, subjected in her early wifehood to that direful ordeal; the days of unmitigated misery in the deep snows of the bleak and trackless wilderness; the piercing cold; the sore, aching, frost-bitten limbs; the ever gnawing hunger; the slaughter of her step-mother and of the many women burdened like herself; of the long nights haunted by the vague dread of the morrow with all its known and unknowable terrors. Was it with joy or dread that she felt within her the throbs of her unborn child?”

The Burts survived the march and,  like Sarah’s family had been eight years earlier, were sold to the Jesuits to work as servants. Sarah gave birth to a son, Christopher, on April 25, shortly after arriving in Montreal.

Now a family of three, the Burts spent two years in Quebec before they were given their freedom. On May 30, 1706, they sailed aboard a ship up the St. Lawrence River and down the Atlantic Coast, arriving in Boston Aug. 2. While on the voyage, Sarah gave birth to a second son, named Seaborn Burt. Like his father, Seaborn would become a major character in early Ridgefield. (Historian George Rockwell incorrectly assumed Seaborn’s name was the result of his being born when his parents were immigrating to North America. Benjamin Burt’s father had come to Massachusetts around 1635; the Burts were already a well-established New England family by 1706.)  

The Burts returned to Deerfield but clearly, with 18 family members having been slaughtered in battles with Indians and Frenchmen, the town offered not only great dangers but also bad memories. They decided to move to Norwalk in much safer southern Connecticut where Sarah had family. The Burts had another connection with Norwalk: Benjamin Hoyt — one of the 112 Deerfield settlers captured with them — was also living in Norwalk. Hoyt would soon be among the founders of the new town of Ridgefield in 1708.

Sarah’s uncles, Samuel and John Belden, were early residents of Norwalk, which had been founded in 1649. John Belden would become one of the proprietors — first landowners — of Ridgefield, along with Benjamin Hoyt.

The new community of Ridgefield needed a blacksmith, a tradesman who could produce nails, door hardware, and kitchen utensils for houses, plows, shovels, and other tools for the farm, and  axles, brackets and other parts for wagons. Most of the Proprietors knew Burt from his Belden and Hoyt connections, and offered him the job.

As an incentive to move to Ridgefield, the Proprietors offered Burt a home lot and one-28th of the outlying land. In exchange, he would have to agree to work at least four years to gain full title.

The Burts apparently liked Ridgefield, for they remained here the rest of their lives. They probably lived initially at their granted home lot on Main Street, at the north corner of Catoonah Street (which for years was called Burt’s Lane). However, they may have later moved out near Lake Mamanasco. They added three more children to their family after moving here, and as many as eight offspring may have lived here. Some later moved to New York’s frontier. 

Burt served his community in various offices, including being a selectman in 1720.

He was apparently a wise investor in land and local industry. His name appears frequently in land transactions. By the 1730s, he owned a saw mill on the west side of Danbury Road, selling it in 1746 to David Osburn. 

In 1742, Burt purchased the gristmill at Lake Mamanasco. Probably the major wheat- and corn-grinding mill in town, it had been built around 1716 by Daniel Sherwood, the town’s first miller. 

Sarah Burt died in 1749. After Benjamin’s death in 1759, he bequeathed the mill to his son, Seaborn, who continued to operate it until his death in 1773. 

Meanwhile, members of the growing Burt family were acquiring much land around Lake Mamanasco. In fact, so many Burts lived in that vicinity that the lake was often called Burt’s Pond and an old path on nearby West Mountain was referred to as Burt’s Road. (The land for Sunset Hall, the famous estate on Old West Mountain Road owned in 2018 by Dick Cavett, was once an old Burt farm belonging, in 1890, to Stephen Burt, great great grandson of Benjamin.)

Many of the Mamanasco Burts ran into hard times when the Revolution broke out. Most were Tories and fled Ridgefield. Several children and grandchildren of Benjamin went to Canada and wound up establishing a Burt clan that today is large and spread throughout several of the provinces.

During the Revolution, the ownership of the Mamanasco mill seemed to be in chaos; part of it had been owned by Burts who had fled. At one point, the Proprietors seemed to step in and take control of it. 

After the war, some of the Burts returned to Ridgefield. Among them was Theophilus Burt, one of Seaborn’s sons,  whose property had been confiscated by the state in the 1770s; some was sold off with the notation he “hath absconded and taken side with the British troops against the United States of America.” On his return, Theophilus  petitioned the General Assembly for title to his old land; the assembly in 1792 restored title to what was left of his property in government hands, probably including a share in  Mamanasco grist mill. Burts continued to have an interest in the mill into the 1800s.

Benjamin Burt is a rare example of a first settler for whom we have a sample of writing. That

sample offers a glimpse of the problems experienced by the Burts’ son, Christopher, who had been born in captivity after his mother’s winter trek to Quebec.

In the 1753 letter, Benjamin asks his son, Benjamin Jr., to give Christopher a cow, adding that dad would pay for it when senior and junior next get together. Christopher had evidently had a life of considerable hardship, which Burt family historian Henry Martyn Burt  attributed to the traumatic birth in Canada. He “did not have a prosperous life,”  the author said. He “came into life under such distressing circumstances, ... which does not appear to have lessened in his declining years. The prenatal influences upon the child, which must have colored his whole life, no doubt had much to do in unsettling what otherwise might have been a prosperous and stable career.”

Harry Thomas: 

The Village Smithy

Harry Thomas was a taste of the past in modern Ridgefield. As late as 1970, he could be seen at the forge behind his Catoonah Street house, fashioning things of iron. For Mr. Thomas was among the last of a profession that was once common and essential to any community: the blacksmith. 

Harry Marvin Thomas was born here in 1884, a fifth generation descendant of Benjamin Stebbins, who built a house on Main Street in 1714 that became a hospital in the Battle of Ridgefield and stood where Casagmo is now. 

At 16, he began his apprenticeship, and became probably the town’s leading blacksmith through the end of the age of the horse. In a pinch he could shoe and harness a horse in seven minutes. 

Harry Thomas was a man of strength, not just in his arms, but legs – he thought nothing of walking to Norwalk or to Brewster and back, and did it often. 

In 1927, he built the house still standing between the firehouse and post office, and his blacksmith shop out back, also still standing. 

When the automobile took over from the horse, he went to work for Gilbert and Bennett in Georgetown, but on retirement, fired up the forge again for fun and for special projects that still required a blacksmith’s skill. 

In a 1962 interview,  Thomas bemoaned the fact so many of his old friends had died. “They understood me, they knew what I meant,” he said. “People don’t understand each other now. They’re always fighting.”

Thomas died in 1973 at the age of 88.