From farm to factory : craft dynasties and leather tanning in nineteenth century Pennsylvania / David S. Rotenstein.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Microformat

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Rotenstein, David S.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--Folklore and folklife.

Folklore and folklife--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--Folklore and folklife.

Folklore and folklife--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

xi, 348 pages : illustrations ; 29 cm

Production:

1996.

Summary:

Nineteenth century tanneries were places where two traditional technologies met: the processing of bark and the making of leather. The ways that two tanning families built and bought tanneries and acquired and processed bark defined the intergenerational transmission of their trade through craft dynasties. Despite the introduction of new types of machinery, new tanning techniques and highly specialized and large bodies of unskilled laborers, tanning remained a traditional craft as tanneries were passed on from father to son, from generation to generation until the twentieth century. Craft dynasties composed of large families of tanners--sons brought into the family business and daughters married into other tanning families--defined much of the social sphere of tanning that influenced how business was done. The concept of the craft dynasty as it was manifested by Pennsylvania leather tanners is explored through the activities of two families, the Palens and the Fausts.

Gilbert E. Palen's ancestors first tanned leather in the Catskill Mountains of New York. When Gilbert built his first Pennsylvania tannery in 1856, he was part of an initial trickle of New York tanners who left the bark depleted Catskills for the bark rich lands of Pennsylvania after 1850. Shortly after the Civil War, the trickle of tanners into Pennsylvania became a flood as tanners bought vast tracts of land for bark and built large tanneries close to their bark sources.

In 1850, second generation part-time tanner and farmer Alvin D. Faust made the transition to a full-time craftsman when he bought a sixty-year-old Montgomery County, Pennsylvania tannery. Twenty-three years later, he bought a second tannery in the mountains of south-central Pennsylvania. The Faust tanneries continued tanning leather until 1925. Alvin D. Faust's transition from part-time to full-time tanner and the developments he and his sons made in their tanneries provide a window into the ways native Pennsylvania tanners adapted to industrialization and the influx of New York tanners with whom they competed for markets and bark.

Notes:

Thesis (Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife) -- University of Pennsylvania, 1996.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

University Microfilms order no.: 97-12993.

OCLC:

187469428