The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1865 – last directory sighting 1884–85
The smith's trade is the town's best-benched nineteenth-century trade, and its head is Elijah Lee. E. T. (Elijah) Lee kept a blacksmith shop from 1865 — Civil War veteran, builder of wagons as well as shodder of horses, operating into the 1900s, his shop fronting Harrison Street behind 140 North Main; the atlas prints him "Blacksmithing and Horse-Shoeing — Wythe Co., Virginia — settled 1865," the gazetteers carry "Lee E T, blacksmith" through 1884–85, the c.1886 patrons list prints him still, and the atlas's views index carries his view. The bench around him: H. C. Baker (from 1870), John N. Fetzer (from 1847, from the Rhineland), and John Keesy (from 1871) in the atlas; B. F. Berger in Polk 1880–81, gone by 1882–83; the c.1886 patrons list prints four smiths at once — Baker, Fetzer, Keesy, Lee. The wagonmakers beside them: Jacob Ritchie (settled 1842), Hiram Rowan (settled 1858), A. Warster [Worster] through the 1880s editions, T. D. Nelson (settled 1872), and F. M. Lee, wagonmaker in 1884–85 only — possibly of the Lee smith family, not merged. Carriage painting: William W. Hamilton, from 1867. No blacksmith or wagon shop appears in Polk 1916–17 or in the 1940 directory; the trade's successors are the garages of the corridor article below and the dealerships leg.