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Shoes 1775-1800
Shoes 1810
Shoes 1820
Shoes 1830
Shoes 1840
Shoes 1850
Shoes 1860
Shoes 1870
Shoes 1880
Shoes 1890
Shoes 1900
Shoes 1910
Shoes 1920
Shoes 1930
Shoes 1940
Shoes 1950
click on a shoe we like, pay with a credit card and wait for the shoes to be delivered.
In the past shoes were made by shoemakers who made shoes for individuals who ordered them.
Breaking in a new pair of shoes was not easy. There were were only two widths to a size; a basic last was used to produce what was known as a "slim" shoe. When it was necessary to make a "fat" or "stout" shoe the shoemaker placed over the cone of the last a pad of leather to create the additional foot room needed.
By the 1850's machines began to replace Shoemakers and the trade of shoemaking began to die.
This section of our vanished website will concentrate on the changing styles of shoes in America from colonial times to the 1950's.
A shoe maker at work. Learning the Shoemaker trade could take as long as 7 years.
Shoe Making tools
Up to 1850 all shoes were made with practically the same hand tools that were used in Egypt as early as the 14th century B.C. as a part of a sandal maker's equipment. To the curved awl, the chisel-like knife and the scraper, the shoemakers of the thirty-three intervening centuries had added only a few simple tools such as the pincers, the lapstone, the hammer and a variety of rubbing sticks used for finishing the edges and heels.