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Whether cobbler, miller, blacksmith, or other skilled worker, there was little distinction between a man's craft and his farming. No matter what else a man did, he was always a farmer. A look at the daybook of any Weston shop owner might record the sharpening and setting of ox shoes, followed by the sale of a bushel of turnips, followed by the collection of a fee for a load of wood. At the upper end of Lyons Plains Road, Hanford Nichols, Morris Salmon, and Charles Crofut owned small manufacturing establishments, such as the blacksmith shop above. Skilled workers lived in small tenant houses nearby. At the time of the 1860 census there were twenty dwellings (only one being uninhabited) between the corner at Fanton Hill Road and the end of Lyons Plains Road at Davis Hill. After 1870 the economy took a decided downturn from which it did not recover until the 1920s. |
