Best Foot Forward: The Shoe Industry in Massachusetts

Industrialization

Until America’s Colonial era, shoes were largely homemade. A typical shoe was composed of a “sole,” the layer between foot and ground, and an “upper,” the material that extends across the top of the foot. Early shoemakers could build a shoe at home through a process of pounding and preparing leather then cutting material for the upper to fit one’s foot shape. They would bore holes in both the upper and the sole to peg or sew them together, and then affix an insole and outer sole.
The Massachusetts shoe industry benefitted from the arrival of skilled craftsmen from Europe. One such reputed shoemaker was John Adam Dagyr, who immigrated to Lynn, Massachusetts from Wales in 1750 and found his business “producing shoes equal to the best made in England.” Across the state, other trained shoemakers and their apprentices were beginning to rival and exceed the quality of imported shoes with their custom footwear.
The Revolutionary War necessitated the mass-production of shoes for the Continental Army, as well as an increase in leather tanning from domestic livestock. The efficient “Central Shop System” arose at the turn of the eighteenth  century, with separate stages of shoemaking—cutting, fitting, lasting, and bottoming—happening at different craftsmen’s own shops or homes before the shoe’s components were combined. Years later, technological advancements in the mid-nineteenth century and the need for more shoes with the advent of the Civil War pulled the shoemaking industry into the era of mechanization.

Lye Shoe Shop, Essex St. Interior previously on Mall St

Early Shoemaking

Inventors

Technological Advancements

Workers' Lives

Selling Shoes

War Changes an Industry

The organization of the boot and shoe industry in Massachusetts before 1875

Harvard University

HathiTrust

How did a comparatively small state become the hotbed of early America’s largest industry? As one of the first colonies, Massachusetts had an early and continual flow of immigration to local ports, which brought skilled shoemakers and craftsmen such as Philip Kertland and Edmund Bridges, who came from England to the area that would become the town of Lynn in 1635. The pair began a lineage of master craftsmen and apprentices who would set up shops and create a geographical area of expertise. By 1795, Lynn was producing over 170,000 pairs of shoes annually.
Other cities in Massachusetts, such as Haverhill, Brockton, and Weymouth, had similar growth in the shoemaking industry. These and other towns became home to some of its great innovators, including Gordon McKay and Charles Goodyear, Jr.
Even with the advent of industrialization, Massachusetts remained at the center of both shoe machinery production and the cut stock and finding industry until World War I, producing forty percent of the nation’s shoes in the early twentieth century. In turn, the shoe industry aided in the commercial growth of the state’s cities and towns, forming the backbone of its local industry.

The colonies in 1660, New England and New Netherland showing extent and dates of settlement

Best Foot Forward: The Shoe Industry in Massachusetts

Why Massachusetts?

Why Massachusetts?