An Anvil's Story: One of the anvils in my collection is an old Colonial anvil that lost its horn a some time in its long life. The break is well worn and the step area is also worn more than would be normal if the horn had still been there. So it had been used for many years after the break. The interesting thing about this old anvil is that the face has been worn completely through. There is a jagged silver dollar quarter coin sized hole where the face has broken out and the wrought exposed. The entire face is gracefully swayed and worn, the edges mushroomed. It is worn out from use.

Where I bought it was in a relatively poor community surrounded by other smaller often poorer communities where share cropping had gone on for a better part of a century after the U.S. Civil War. This old anvil was probably used on some farm shop for several generations repairing equipment and shoeing mules under the most primitive of conditions.

Undoubtedly this old anvil was the pride and joy of some Colonial era smithy when it was new. It is heavier than average making it a shop anvil, not a farm anvil. It traveled from England in a cramped square rigged sailing ship so small that it is unbelievable in modern eyes. It landed at the then busy port of Jamestown, Virgina and was carried West by small boat to the great falls at Fort Charles where Petersburg now stands on the Appomattox River. From there it may have traveled by wagon into the frontier and stopped somewhere near Farmville, VA. At its new home in the village smithy it saw heavy use but no abuse. We know this because the corners had not been chipped. Most of its early life it saw mostly soft wrought iron worked on its surface. It may have seen 100 years of use in that commercial service first as the #1 anvil then getting moved to #2 when it was replaced with a bigger and more modern pattern anvil by the third generation operating the smithy. As the #2 anvil it may have been used in production by apprentices or slaves making nails and shoes focusing the wear from scale onto the sweet spot in the center of the anvil. It takes billions of blows for scale to wear through the hard face of an anvil. They worn it nearly through.

By the time of the Civil War the old anvil was well worn and may have lost its horn due to abuse at the hands of apprentices or slaves. Then again, there is that myth started by Bobby Dodson (another story teller) about Union sappers breaking the horns off anvils in the South. . . At the end of the war the South was as broken as the anvil's horn, industries destroyed, plantations broken up, a confused broken populace needing food. The old broken anvil would have been used in a shop despite its condition. Even without a horn forgings and money could be made. It may have been a #2 or even a #3 anvil getting the worst of treatment. But as soon as reconstruction got on its way and the shop on its feet the old, tired and now hornless anvil would have been passed on to some farmer that needed something to pound on. The anvil moved West to the banks of the Staunton River where the son of a plantation owner was growing tobacco for market and corn for his cattle. As the economy improved and the white farmer moved to steam machinery and profitable times the old anvil passed onto the poor black sharecroppers who still worked the land with a couple mules. The anvil was used hot and cold. The face wore through and a piece broke out. Still the old anvil was used. Besides the mules it was probably one of the farmer's most dear possessions. For three or more generations they worked the land they did not own, in a country that denied their children an education. They survived the depression but not the changing of hands of the farm to the bank that had no room for share croppers. The children moved to the city looking for jobs, the parents too old to start again moved in with relatives and took the old anvil with them.

When the last of the sharecropper's family died out the old lump of an anvil that few even recognized it for what it was sold at an estate auction to an antique dealer for $1. It moved a few miles North to Brookneal, VA an aging little tobacco warehouse and timber town.

A few years later that dealer sold it to a young blacksmith as a curiosity for $5. It was then loaned to his in-laws who had a small farm and needed something to pound on. For a decade it was used as a welding stand on a large stump and to straighten mower blades and bent draw bars. It most often had bits of brass and brazing flux on it rather than scale. When the father-in-law died the widow sold the farm and the anvil came home to the blacksmith. It sat unused for another decade more, continuing to quietly rust as it had for a dozen generations of men.

The next time the old anvil was put into service was at the occasion of a Boy Scout merit badge workshop. Several old anvils that could not be hurt were needed. A stand was made to fit and a group of Scouts pounded on the old anvil all day. This was repeated for several years. Young suburban Scouts that had never used an hammer pounding out hooks on the old anvil.

Most recently the ancient anvil was used as a second station anvil for Josh Greenwood's demo at the anvilfire hammer-in. He selected the anvil over others because of its stout nearly waistless shape that made it more solid than some of the others.

The roughly 300 year old anvil is still in use although not in daily service. It is still useful for students, newbies and apprentices to practice on. The slight sway makes it useful for straightening. It had avoided the scrap yard or use as a counter weight on a piece of farm equipment.

Most importantly it has a great story.