Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 9 · column 3 of 5 · from the scan, no model involved
tannery in the 1860s and it operated until 1911.
There is a bit of verbal history my Dad related to me. That his Dad, Oscar Baldwin, was an avid hunter, wise fanner, and a frugal man all around, always supplied the family with an abundance of meat to eat, especially wild game.
Groundhog (a.k.a. Woodchuck, Whistle Pig) skins were tanned for making shoe strings. I don’t recall the whole process, but it did involve “bathing” the skins in sour milk. Then, the beating, stretching, and pulling (to soften the finished skin) and the final cutting into strips the desired width and length (by cutting in a circle).
Finally, just for the fun of it, my late cousin, Mick Beam Watkins, of Spokane, Washington, in her book The Haze of the Blue Ridge, and in conversation with her, told one of her stories (fact or fiction you judge), how her grandfather, George Washington Beahm, who was a shoe maker, kept a female dog tied in the backyard and when the male dogs came acourtin’, he would knock them in the head and thus had a steady supply of hides for shoes. »
Wayne F. Baldwin
Culpeper
79.6%