Statesville, NC — Fort Dobbs State Historic site will host Historic Trades Day on Saturday, June 20, from 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. The site will come to life with the strike of a blacksmith’s hammer, the rasp of a saw, and snip of a tailor’s shears as it did when Fort Dobbs operated between 1755-65. Rather than a military garrison, the fort will bustle with costumed interpreters and professional historic tradespeople demonstrating the many ways people of colonial America made a living. The event is free and open to the public. Fort Dobbs is administered by the Division of State Historic Sites, within the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The event will feature a variety of historic trades, including a new demonstration this year: gunsmithing. The town of Salisbury and the Moravian settlements around Winston-Salem functioned as colonial North Carolina’s two centers of gunsmithing during this period. Many of these gunsmiths migrated from Pennsylvania to the Carolina backcountry starting in the 1740s and 1750s, developing unique styles of the American long rifle by the time of the American Revolution.
Trades Day will also highlight another essential trade, that of tanning and working with deerskins, which historically would have been harvested by American Indians or colonial longhunters. Wilson LeCount, an apprentice leather breeches maker at Colonial Williamsburg, will be at the event to discuss this lost trade that he’s helping to revive. Other featured trades will include shoemaking, tailoring, blacksmithing, brickmaking, and many more.
Photo: Colonial-era trades like blacksmithing will be demonstrated at Fort Dobbs State Historic Site on June 20.
